Metaskills- Five Talents for the Robotic Age

by Marty Neumeier

  Desiderata are secondary objectives that support a goal or a solution. I once hired a pair of young architects to help me build out a new office space. My company was a startup, so the budget for design and construction was modest. Yet I needed to leave my clients with a memorable experience, and also create a convivial and productive environment for my employees. The desiderata included the budget (small), the hoped-for look (stunning), the number of workspaces (15), the type of workstation privacy (semi-open), and the need for electrical outlets where there were none.

  The architects came back with a plan to spend my entire budget on a single element: a large, curving wall of translucent, corrugated plastic that contained interior uplighting and electrical outlets to feed the entire workspace. Inside the wall was a huge logo looming softly over the reception area. In a single move, this simple but inspired solution established the identity for the new firm, separated the client spaces from the working spaces, supplied electricity to the workstations, and created a buzzworthy experience for visitors. When I asked the two how they were able to conceive such a surprising solution, they grinned at each other and replied in unison: “Talent.”

  The principle of desiderata can be applied to any number of problems. It’s really as simple as compiling a wish list. Ask yourself this question and fill in the blank: Wouldn’t it be great if ______? When you finish your list, call out the wishes that would create the most compelling outcome. These will form a sort of matrix, a convergence of vectors that define the shape of the answer. When the answer appears, it’ll pop into place like the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle.

  There be dragons!

  The frame of a problem is not a comfortable place. It’s filled with tension, confusion, danger, and doubt. It’s a veritable dragon pit of unresolved conflict. On one side you’ve got the reality of what is, or what is common, and on the other side you’ve got a vision for what could be, or what could be different. In between lies a battle. For this reason most people are eager to get in, make a decision, and get out. But creative people know they have to stay in the dragon pit because that’s where the ideas are.

  The uncomfortable tension between what is and what could be creates a mental spark gap—a space between two poles that can only be bridged by a leap of imagination. If you close the gap too quickly by making the easy decision, there’s no spark. If you keep it open longer, ideas and insights will start to appear in rapid succession.

  Pretend you’re a commercial farmer growing tomatoes for a living. On one side you feel competitive pressure to use more pesticides and chemical fertilizers to increase yields and control costs. On the other side you face mounting criticism from environmental groups and customers who are calling for organic farming methods. The quickest fix is to decide one way or the other—either go large and commercial or small and organic. However, neither is a very good solution. The demand for low prices will continue, and the desire for organic produce will keep growing. By staying in the pit it’s possible to imagine a third alternative that exists outside this simple dichotomy.

  How, you ask? By learning to embrace paradox. A paradox is a proposition that contains two contradictory thoughts while expressing a truth. For example, Thoreau’s statement that “the swiftest traveler is he that goes afoot” would seem to be a contradiction. Everyone knows that walking is not the fastest mode of travel, but the paradox contains an idea: You might make more progress by keeping things simple. Or you might learn faster by doing things the hard way. By expressing a problem as a paradox, you force your mind to look for new answers.

  Physicist Niels Bohr found that by holding two opposing thoughts in his mind at the same time he was able to move his imagination to a higher level. In some cases, like the problem of understanding electrons, the paradox he met with was actually the answer. Complementarity, now a basic principle of quantum theory, proves that an electron can be both a wave and a particle at the same time, even though it can’t be viewed both ways at once. While it confounds our sense of reality, it’s true nevertheless.

  One of the qualities of a genius is a strong tolerance for ambiguity. This is often difficult, because the human brain seeks closure. We’re uncomfortable with the feeling of cognitive dissonance, of not knowing the right answer. And a brain that doesn’t like paradox is one that jumps to any conclusion, right or wrong, that can end the debate. The secret to getting the most out of your imagination is to keep the problem in a liquid state as long as possible.

  The scientific tool of hypothesis, defined as a testable supposition, is less science than art. It’s more akin to the maquette of the sculptor or the preliminary sketch of the painter than the provable truths we associate with the scientist. The painter has to be willing to draw badly or paint uncertainly while working through a new composition. “Art needs to incubate, to sprawl a little, to be ungainly and misshapen before it finally emerges as itself,” says Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way. “The ego hates this fact. It wants instant gratification and the addictive hit of an acknowledged win.” Creative thinking, whether in the service of art or science, requires that we postpone gratification while we try out different approaches.

  New ideas can’t be proved in advance. This comes close to being a tautology, as if saying, “New ideas are new.” Yet the ways we’re taught to use logic don’t account for this simple fact. We’re taught to reason using only deduction and induction, two methods handed down from the Greeks that make little use of imagination. Deduction is the logic of argument, drawing specific conclusions from general rules. Induction is the logic of educated guesses, drawing general conclusions from specific observations. While both of these are helpful in judging a hypothesis, neither is suitable for creating a hypothesis. For this we need a third kind of thinking called abduction, the nonlogic of what could be.

  If architect Frank Gehry had used logical reasoning as a starting place for his projects, he never could have invented the swooping, shimmering forms of Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum. He would have designed a very nice building that the city could be proud of, but that few tourists would consider a destination. To escape the trap of logic, he started by drawing shapes that made use of his imagination, emotion, and gestural instincts. Undoubtedly, many of these were “ungainly and misshapen,” but something mysterious and satisfying began to emerge, a highly sculptural edifice with the curving forms of a sailing ship. He called this stage “capturing the dream.” It’s not the result of logic but of nonlinear thinking, a conscious choice to avoid the deeply rutted road.

  The search for innovation is progressive, starting with the most obvious ideas and moving further out with each attempt. First ideas are rarely the best ideas, and real innovators recognize this. They force themselves to climb onward and upward until they arrive in virgin territory. In some creative circles, this is known as “third-pasture thinking.” When horses are let into a pasture, most will be content to eat the grass they find there, even though it’s been trampled by previous herds. Some horses, however, will move up into a higher pasture where the grass is slightly fresher. One or two others will climb all the way to the third pasture, where the grass is pristine and new.

  The New Yorker hosts a popular contest in which readers are invited to fill in the caption for a new cartoon. Tellingly, the editors found that about 20 percent of contestants would come up with the same funny line for the cartoon. Very few would make the leap to a surprising and concisely written caption that rose beyond the simply logical. Those 20 percent got stuck in the second pasture. They probably never realized there were fresher ideas further up the hill.

  The proper approach to invention is not logic but wonderment. Creative thinking begins with phrases like “I wonder,” “I wish,” and “what if.” It sets out from a position of not knowing, then winds slowly and circuitously through the problem until it finds something unexpected and untried. It then takes that something—the so-called “germ of an idea”—and begins to poke and pull and twist it until it resembles
something new. It only attains the status of knowledge when it’s been tested in the real world. How does it get to the real world? Through the dogged persistence of a dragon slayer.

  A most unpleasant young man

  Steve Jobs, a cofounder of Apple Computer, was only 30 when I interviewed him in 1985. Back then I was the part-time editor of a design journal, and the interview was to be the highlight of a two-issue cover story. I could hardly wait to meet the man behind the Macintosh.

  Right from the start it didn’t go well. We argued. I don’t know how this happened, because my only task was to pose questions and record the answers on a pocket tape recorder. Maybe it was similar to what occurs when you place the negative poles of two magnets together: they repel each other. I still wince when I remember the interview.

  ME: What’s this device here on the table?

  STEVE: It’s new. It’s called a LaserWriter. You can print whatever you see on the screen.

  ME: You’re kidding—that’s fantastic!

  STEVE: No big deal. We just buy these from another company.

  ME: I see it has an Apple trademark on it. And the trademark looks a little different. Is that new, too?

  STEVE: Yeah, we’ve updated our logo.

  ME: You mean the typographical part?

  STEVE: No, I mean the symbol part. Logo is Latin for symbol.

  ME: Actually, it’s Greek for word. I thought maybe you changed the letterforms, too.

  STEVE: You’re wrong. Logo means symbol.

  ME: Okay.

  STEVE: It’s Latin, not Greek.

  ME: Okay.

  STEVE: What I like about our logo is that it’s completely unique.

  ME: Hmm, I thought it might have been a witty homage to Apple Records.

  STEVE: That’s absurd.

  ME: Well, it’s not completely unique, because I designed a similar trademark about eight years ago—an apple with a bite taken out of it—for an educational company. (I happened to have a copy of the awards annual in which it appeared. I shared. There was a pause.)

  STEVE: Ours is better.

  ME: Can you tell me who designed it?

  STEVE: I have no idea.

  ME: Well, I guess we don’t have to credit the designer.

  STEVE: Any other questions?

  ME: I guess not.

  STEVE: Then I think we’re done.

  I drove home feeling sick. I had the man of the year all to myself, and the best I could do was spar with him.

  My wife kindly offered to transcribe the tapes, which also contained interviews with several other Apple executives. When she got to the last interview, she threw her headphones to the floor. “Who is this guy?”

  “I think you mean Steve Jobs.”

  “Well, he’s extremely unpleasant.”

  Apple’s board of directors agreed. Three weeks later they forced him to leave the company he founded. When he returned after nearly 12 years in exile, the company’s value had shriveled to about $4 billion, a fraction of Hewlett-Packard’s $62 billion valuation. Yet over the next 12 years under his strong-willed leadership, Apple’s value rocketed to $184 billion, surpassing the worth of both Hewlett-Packard and Dell put together. By the time of his death in 2011, Apple had become the world’s most valuable company.

  What was it about Jobs that enabled this level of success? Was it his immaculate design sense? His visionary stewardship? His Buddhist leanings? His vegan food preferences? His Sixties idealism? The adoration of his adoptive parents? His belief that he was chosen to “put a dent in the universe”?

  Probably all that. But there’s one more thing, and it’s readily apparent in the conversation above: He was a prime contrarian. If you said the sky was blue, he said it was wide. If you said a trademark couldn’t be printed in three colors, he would stamp his feet until he got six. As a designer, he was slow to recognize the potential of another person’s idea. But after knocking it around in his head for a while he would often take ownership of it.

  A key characteristic of an inventive mind is a strong disbelief system. Einstein and Picasso were dyed-in-the-wool skeptics. Einstein’s physics professor once told him, “You are quite smart, but you have one big failing. You never listen to anybody.” Similarly, Picasso’s lithographer Fernand Mourlot once said, “Picasso looked, listened, and then did exactly the opposite of what was shown him.” In science and art, as well as in other fields, innovation is an act of rebellion. You have to reject conformity if you’re looking for brilliance.

  The challenge, then, is how to put contrarian thinking to work without alienating the people you depend on. I have a few suggestions:

  Learn to recognize judgments. Develop an ear for authoritative pronouncements about second-order reality—the world of meaning, not fact—and subject them to questioning. “Who says?” is a good place to start. Another is “So what? A third is “Why not?” You don’t have to be rude, just curious.

  Dare to be wrong. What would the answer be if you reversed one or more of the assumptions? What would happen if you did the opposite of what other people would do? As the saying goes, “If you only think what you’ve already thought, you’ll only get what you’ve already got.” Some groups and organizations place such a high premium on being right that there’s no room for being wrong—even for a moment. These are the groups with the most severe cases of “infectious repetitis.”

  Stay in the dragon pit. Entertain competing ideas for as long as possible, instead of scrambling to the safety of the known. It’s common for managers and business leaders to think they have to have all the answers. This not only sets you up to fail, but undermines your credibility. Real innovators revel in the unknown. They love a mystery. As business advisor David Baker says, “An entrepreneur is someone who dives into an empty swimming pool and invents water on the way down.”

  Be disobedient. Don’t play by the rules. If your goal is innovation, aligning with current practices is anathema. Alignment works well when the world isn’t changing. But of course the world is changing. Rules can be helpful, but some rules are nothing more than scars from a previous bad experience.

  Don’t wait for research. Working without knowledge can feel like driving without headlights, but there’s no law that says all the research has to come first. Sometimes it’s better to grope your way toward an answer, then check it against reality when you have a specific hypothesis in hand.

  Cannibalize yourself. Do what The Atlantic did when it found itself stuck in the dying world of print magazines: Pretend you’re a venture-capital-backed startup in Silicon Valley whose mission it is to attack The Atlantic by disrupting the industry. Steve Jobs put it bluntly: “If you don’t cannibalize yourself, someone else will.”

  Stand up for quality. The 20th century has been a triumph of quantity over quality, but in the 21st century we need to reverse the trend. “Be a quality detector,” says systems thinker Donella Meadows. “Be a walking, noisy Geiger counter that registers the presence or absence of quality. If something is ugly, say so. If it is tacky, inappropriate, out of proportion, unsustainable, morally degrading, ecologically impoverishing, or humanly demeaning, don’t let it pass.”

  There you have it. Seven tips for being a contrarian without becoming a bully, a tyrant, or a curmudgeon. Ego-driven unpleasantness will always be a temptation for innovators. But how many inventions, masterpieces, and market disruptions would have happened without the researcher’s hubristic ambitions, the artist’s grand designs, or the entrepreneur’s blithe disregard of risk?

  “Here’s to the crazy ones,” intoned the announcer for Apple’s comeback commercial. “They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them…Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

  The play instinct

  How do you picture something that isn’t there? What’s the process for unco
vering insights? Why do some people seem more inventive than others?

  Hint: It’s not because they work diligently. Instead, it’s because they work differently. Imagination is the child of obstinacy and playfulness. It comes from a refusal to settle for the comfortable answer while having fun doing it.

  During the Industrial Age, fun was discouraged. It took time to have fun, and time was the nonrenewable resource that needed to be managed, maximized, and measured. Employees were paid by the hour, the day, or the year. They were paid by number of pieces they could complete. Or they were paid by the predetermined function they performed. They were not paid by the number of new ideas they brought to the table or by the passion they brought to their work. Time was money and money was time.

  After the clock came to Europe in 1307, it took less than a century for mechanical time to sweep the continent. With clocks you could agree on the delivery of a shipment, regularize the baking of bread, and estimate the completion of a brick wall. Clocks paved the way for sophisticated banking, transportation, mass production, and eventually computers. They brought precision to business. But they also brought an undue emphasis on quantity over quality.

  The ancient Greeks understood that time came in two flavors: objective time, called chronos; and subjective time, called kairos. Chronos could be measured by the sun, the moon, or the seasons. Kairos could not be measured, only judged by the quality of one’s experience. My kairos is different from your kairos, but our chronos is the same. Today we use the phrase quality time to describe the experience of living in unmeasured time. We find that as soon as we measure or limit quality time, it quickly turns into quantity time.

  Think back to a day in your childhood when you were so busy playing that you lost track of the clock. The minutes and hours blended seamlessly, one into the next, while your mind focused on some absorbing project or engaging activity. As you grew older, your play instinct began to fade. The requirements of society demanded more attention to objective time—an adherence to deadlines, agreements, and social courtesies—until play became more and more associated with nonproductivity, a kind of time that had no commercial value.