John Cleese on Creativity

And now for something completely different: Monty Python's Minister of Silly Walks gets serious about learning, growth, and how to generate new ideas.



Bursting onstage in an outlandish orange wig, assuming the persona of his no-nonsense twin brother, Colin, John Cleese interrupts his own speech at the TRAINING '99 conference in Chicago to announce the six sure ways to stamp out creativity in an organization.



1. Always behave as if there's a war on.



2. Strangle curiosity at birth, lest it spread.



3. Open all meetings by reciting the mantra, "The problem has not yet been born that cannot be cracked with more data and newer technology."



4. Defend your preconceptions with your life.



5. If you spot any colleagues engaging in unfamiliar activity such as wondering out loud or gazing thoughtfully into space, poke them with a sharp stick and accuse them of wasting time.



6. Make the questioning of deadlines a capital offense. If you're in a state that does not allow capital punishment, relocate to Texas.



The speech has to do with creativity, after all, and John Cleese, of all people, cannot be expected to play it completely straight.



Best known for his television and movie work with "Monty Python's Flying Circus" and as Basil Fawlty in the bbc series "Fawlty Towers," Cleese also is a founder of Video Arts Ltd., the London-based producer of corporate training videos. Since 1972, he has written and appeared in dozens of training films.



Cleese based his remarks at the February conference on the book "Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind" (Ecco Press, 1999) by British psychologist Guy Claxton. In Claxton's terminology, the hare brain is quick, analytical, logical—in a word, computerlike. The tortoise mind is slower, less articulate, more playful, and given to following whims and hunches. It isn't so much that the tortoise mind is "creative" while the hare brain isn't. It's more that you need both sides if you're going to come up with creative ideas or better solutions to problems. The trouble is, the business world generally behaves as if harebrained thinking is the only valuable kind.



"How many of you seriously believe that these statements are true?" Cleese asked the audience: That being decisive means