Creativity is hard work

In this blogpost anthropologist Kasper Pape Helligsøe reflects on how creativity and innovation can be understood in a team-based context. The thoughts have arisen as a result of his research project based on field studies at Systematic and the professional handball club Bjerringbro-Silkeborg (BSH).

Match day! My expectations were high before the first important game during my fieldwork at BSH. It was the first home game of the season an opportunity to get off to a flying start. Looking back at the match, one episode in particular stands. BSH playmaker Sebastian Skube faked a breakthrough to the right, after which he blindly threw the ball over his own shoulder to the left, right into the hands of line player Jesper Nøddesbo who scored confidently. A roar of surprise and enthusiasm drowned the players from a packed Jysk Arena. It was a stroke of creative genius from Skube – perfectly followed up by a clinical finish from Nøddesbo!

One thing that characterises BSH is the structures in place around the team, which at first glance can seem fairly inflexible and rigid. The training sessions are structured minute by minute, there are fixed systems for attacking and defending, and warm up always starts 41 minutes before a game and ends exactly 29 minutes later – every time.

The training, the games and the daily routines are characterised by agreements and systems rather than freedom and intuition.

“We don’t use a packed Jysk Arena, where people pay to come see us play, to try out new ideas and moves,” explains Peter Bredsdorff, head coach at BSH. “Everything we do in a game, we have done hundreds of times before in training.”

According to Peter, magical moments on the handball pitch do not happen in spite of structures and systems but because of them. Freedom and creativity are not about individual intuition, he explains – they grow out of agreements, structures and a solid foundation.
Understanding creativity as a result of structures and hard work deviates from the common understanding of creativity as individual inspiration.

Creativity is often ascribed to the exceptional individual who, due to his or her ability to “think outside the box”, manages to break free of the shackles of society and conformity of everyday life to create something new and unexpected. Like Van Gogh, Einstein and Steve Jobs. But is that really the truth about creativity? Does creativity belong to the individual rather than the group, to freedom rather than structures, and to the exceptional rather than the ordinary? Not according to my observations and interviews at BSH.

It was a genius pass from Skube! It was unexpected and surprising to the opposing team and the spectators but not to Peter Bredsdorff and the rest of the team.

Nøddesbo didn’t look the least bit surprised when he received the pass. He was ready to catch it, jump up, turn around and smash it past the goalkeeper. Later, over a cup of coffee at his house, Nøddesbo explained to me that creativity and unexpected passes are dependent on you knowing exactly how your teammates move and what they might do when they have the ball.

Agreements, structures and predictability are the building blocks of creativity on the handball pitch. Skube knew that Nøddesbo at that very moment would wedge his body into the narrow space between Sønderjyske’s right back and central defender, and Nøddesbo knew that the pass could come from Skube even when he was moving in the opposite direction and had his back towards Nøddesbo.

They knew this, not because they can read each other’s minds but because they have spent hundreds of hours on the training pitch and know each other’s patterns of movements and ideas.

Though creativity on the handball court often seems to arise out of unplanned in-the-moment impulses and genius individual ideas, I would argue that this is not the whole truth. If you look a bit closer and follow the team throughout their daily routines it becomes apparent that creativity more than anything else, as Peter mentioned, grows out of agreements, structures and a solid foundation.

Creativity is not so much about being able to think outside of the box – it is rather about the ability to act skilfully and with precision inside of it. When structures and playing systems, through endless repetition, are embedded in the players’ body memories, it becomes possible to predict your teammates’ thoughts and moves to the point where you can blindly throw the ball over your own shoulder and into the hands of a waiting teammate. That’s creativity! But it doesn’t belong to the individual rather than the group, to freedom rather than structures, and to the exceptional rather than the ordinary. In BSH, creativity is a team effort. It’s hard work. Every day.

I think the same goes for Systematic though the conditions are completely different. In Systematic as well as in BSH, new ideas and creative solutions come into being during the execution of everyday work tasks in the team. But contrary to BSH, Systematic doesn’t have a training pitch to develop and incorporate new ideas into their daily work routines. As a consequence, employees and teams create their own spaces for sharing, testing, developing and implementing creative initiatives. In Symbology (the team I most recently followed in Systematic) they developed the concept “Mixed Technology Arts” or MTA. MTA is a team meeting without the participation of the project manager where team members discuss and develops ideas, creative suggestions and team standards.

In Symbology (the team I most recently followed in Systematic) they developed the concept “Mixed Technology Arts” or MTA. MTA is a team meeting without the participation of the project manager where team members discuss and develops ideas, creative suggestions and team standards.

To my mind, Symbology has created a sort of training pitch for new thoughts and ideas to be tried and tested – a recurring organizational disruption in the daily demands to productivity free of deadlines, feature requirements and agile scrum processes. With MTA Symbology are taking their time and their space to improve the existing and turn creativity into a team effort. Perhaps your team could do the same?

Oh yeah, in case you were wondering… BSH did win the game! A comfortable and undramatic victory. 32-21. All according to plan.