How to bring about creative change

Perhaps the greatest problem in making imaginative and effective change of any kind is getting any two people to agree on a goal and a strategy for achieving it – and then seeing the plan through to success.  

Americans, with their deep-dyed romantic traditions of rugged individualism, always seem to be starting their own little solo things instead of working together on projects that could have more impact because of their larger size and numbers of participants. I’d be entertained to see, for instance, a comprehensive list of all the foundations my countrymen and -women have started over the last 50 years to help stamp out diseases, problems or moral wrongs that hurt their loved ones. I’d also like – maybe less – to see a list of all the redundant little businesses Americans have set up and seen fail. 

Being American myself, I think individualism matters for many reasons, one of which is that encourages every person to have confidence in the power of his or her own initiative. You don’t get anywhere if everyone waits around to be led.

But the truth is, you also don’t get far enough if everyone is charging off in 300 million different directions. We tend to do that here.

Maybe we should try something else – like identifying our most important creative goals, pooling resources and working together to get results instead of each one of us closeting himself with his ambition and reinventing the wheel by the light of his own ego? 

Europeans seem to be doing just that kind of collaborating. At a major conference of the European Year of Creativity and Innovation 2009 (a project of the European Commission) this month, thinkers and doers from all over the continent got together, determined what the three main focuses of their creative efforts should be – employment, well-being and education – and made a list of things to do. A lot of it involves reaching across barriers, sharing resources and being regional in attitude.

If they can make this plan work – with over a  thousand more years of tribal, national, ethnic and class strife to overcome than does the U.S. – we Americans won’t have any excuses left for our own fractious, short-sighted and self-involved approach to the future.