Creativity & Milking Cows

“All the good ideas I ever had came to me while I was milking a cow.”
Grant Wood (Iowa painter, American Gothic)

Since I’m shooting in Duluth, Minnesota today I’ll make this my last Kansas City-related post for a while. Gordon MacKenzie worked for Hallmark Cards in Kansas City for 30 years—to the day. He began as a sketch artist and worked his way up the creative ladder. After that he began giving creative workshops and did creative consulting with groups like IBM, Microsoft, and the United States Marines, and in 1996 published the book Orbiting the Giant Hairball; A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace. My favorite illustration in the book is this one:

“Picture in your mind’s eye a pastureland of gently rolling hills painted in the rich greens of early spring. Within the meandering confines of a zigzag, split-rail fence stands a scattering herd of black-and-white holstein dairy cows. The sun is shinning, and some of the cows have sought the cool protection of the field’s occasional massive shade trees. Others are clustering idly around a large, sun-sparkling pond. Most are quietly eating grass. One regurgitates her cud and chews it.

Outside the zigzag of fence stands a rotund gentleman in a $700, power-blue, pinstrip suit. He is leaning over the fence —as best he can. One hand is holding his unbuttoned jacket against his generous belly so that the suit’s fine cloth will not be soiled by the fence’s grimy rails. His other hand is shaking a stern finger at the cows. He shouts:

‘You slackers, get to work, or I’ll have you butchered.’ 

What this man does not understand is that, even as he threatens them, the cows are performing the miracle of turning grass into milk. Nor does he understand that his shouting will not cause the cows to produce milk….A management obsessed with productivity usually has little patience for the quiet time essential to profound creativity. Its dream is to put the cows on the milking machine 24 hours a day. Crazy? It is happening in workplaces all over the country: workers being sucked inside-out by corporate milking machines.”

Tom Kelley, of the design and innovation consulting firm IDEO, has called MacKenzie’s book one of his favorite on creativity. (And he wrote two pretty good ones himself; The Art of Innovation and The Ten Faces of Innovation.)

Related post:
The Advantage of Boredom

Scott W. Smith