Innovation Blog

“To systematize is to sterilize”

By Shlomo Maital

    Nils Middleboe:  Let Joy Flourish!

Today’s Global New York Times has a fine column by Rob Hughes, global soccer columnist, titled “let talent blossom”.  The theme is how Spain creates enormously talented soccer players like Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, Fabregas and others.  It is not just Barcelona that has a great youth school but other Spanish teams as well.  China recently announced it is sending 500 youngsters abroad on a five-year program, mostly to Spain.  Why Spain?  As European soccer champions, Spain’s results speak for themselves. 

      In an era when there is a global top talent shortage in management, as baby boomers retire,  much can be learned about talent development from the realm of world class football.    But what?

      Hughes cites an old, out-of-print book, published in 1970, by Nils Middleboe, a Danish merchant banker and amateur soccer player.  The book is “Common Sense about Soccer”.   Alas, common sense is often the least common quality. 

     According to Hughes, Middleboe implores coaches not to overload kids with theories, not to spoil their joy, and let their imagination and intuition guide the ball.   Middleboe was afraid that the rule-based regimentation, discipline and rigidity of adults, and their insistence on control, would ruin the kids.  And indeed, it has, not only in soccer, but in general.  Bureaucratization has ruined many creative organizations, as they grow and scale up.

    The last words in Middleboe’s book implore adults to give kids freedom:  “to systematize is to sterilize”.  Ever watch Italian football clubs like A.C. Milan?  Sterile unimaginative defense. It may work, but it is ruinous for viewing and for talent.  It creates unmotivated professionals who play not for the love of the game but for the paycheck, and who usually forget whom they are playing for.  And sterilization is precisely what most of our schools do to our kids.

    There is a fierce dilemma for innovators.  To systematize may indeed be to sterilize (the creative process).  But — NOT to systematize at all is to RANDOMIZE,  and few great things happen randomly.  A Las Vegas roulette wheel is not the best paradigm for continual creativity and innovation.  This is why many startups fail.  They strike it rich one time, but fail to replicate the innovation process with Version 2.0.   

    Here is the innovator’s dilemma, the core dilemma in a series of them:  How to systematize creativity, build a creativity machine,  without destroying the creative spirit by sterilizing out the spontaneity and openness, and above all, the fun.    For kids, soccer is a game. It is fun.  As they become professionals, a few retain the spirit of joy and run, like Messi.  Most have it sterilized out of them.  For innovators, a handful retain the childlike joy of creating.  Most lose it. 

     What is your organization’s creativity machine?  Is is systematic?  Is is sterile?  Does it replicate ideas constantly, retaining the fun, the joy, the thrill? 

      Every human being, every business, every organization, needs a systematic creativity machine.  But it must not sterilize.  Each person, each business must find its own solution to this extraordinarily difficult dilemma.