I've been staying out of this one. At my own place of business we are in an odd creativity Catch-22; where creativity is both quashed and encouraged in equal parts.

I won't go so far a Bill to say that "the brain is not designed to be creative," but certainly in my experience fewer people are naturally creative than are naturally not creative. Which is probably just as well, because if everyone was a visionary and no one was perfectly happy just following the recipe for some particular task, not much would ever get done.

I also believe that many institutions are far less appreciative of creativity than others. The regular military and its heavy reliance on doctrine and objective metrics is a poster child for this. Add to this institutional inclination the Darwinian effect of selecting for promotion those who most reflect the values of the institution, and it will be a rare senior leader indeed who rises through the system as a naturally creative thinker.

I remember clearly how ironic I found it to be when during the introductory phase of my War College class we were told that "now we were going to be taught to think strategically." News flash Army War College, your personnel system had flushed 90% of the officers with a natural inclination for strategic thinking out of the back end of the system long before they had an opportunity to be enlightened on the dogmatic "ENDs-WAYs-MEANs" perspective on strategy taught there.

The one question that needs to be asked the most, but that is asked the least is "Why." After all, the commander has told the staff what to do, so asking "why" may be fundamental to design (which is why we added this dogmatic approach to creativity to begin with, and why equally it is not really taking root), and "why" is largely unnecessary to the Military Decision Making Process. "Why" opens up all manner of messy issues that are largely viewed as unnecessary, or even dangerous, to effective military operations.

The intel community tells us who the "threat" is; and a narrow band of "experts" in think tanks and academia tell us why they are the threat in terms that fit the paradigms of those who designate who the experts are and who cut the checks that pay for such insights. Telling the person who pays the bills and bestows the status of "advisor" something that he/she doesn't want to hear is simply not good business; and as we all are sadly aware, this has been a very good business for many over the past 12 years

In fact, a personal theory is that the tremendous flexibility and creativity on the battlefield that the American Military likes to boast about was due largely to the fact that our wars were fought by civilians, conscripted for the duration of the conflict, and therefore largely either unaware or unhindered by the doctrine so carefully written about how we had fought the last war by the small cadre of regulars who wrote doctrine in peace, and wore stars in war. After nearly 70 years of sustaining a war fighting military during peacetime years and waging conflicts with regulars this is simply no longer the case. There is a downside to "professionalism," and that is the monoculture of thought that comes with it. Not just what people think, but how they think about similar situations.

How do we fix our creativity problem? Recognizing the problem for how systemic it is to our institutions is a great start. Creativity initiatives are a Band-Aid, but better than no effort at all. The real cure would require a major change in how we value that trait, and then adjusting the personnel system to identify, nurture and advance those who demonstrate that attribute.

The regulars love the creativity the irregulars bring to the military in war. We celebrate it in our military histories, movies and narrative. But the first thing the regulars have always done when the conflict was over, was close ranks and either demote or run off the irregulars whose creativity was so central to the recent success. After all, creativity is rare, and rare things tend to make the majority uncomfortable.