Grateful Deadlines
Given the discussion we had four weeks ago on the pros and cons of establishing “constraints”—including tight deadlines—for creative projects, this provides us with a wonderfully entertaining vantage point for further discussion!
My history of working with teams—WOW! teams, breakthrough teams, process re-engineering teams, quality improvement teams, etc.—has usually involved operating out of a “tight box," dictated by the demands of business. Often the team has to achieve an ambitious outcome within an aggressive time frame and limited resources. This structure can push teams to think outside the lines because they recognize that they can’t achieve the goal conducting business as usual.
Yet Harvard business professor Teresa Amabile has argued persuasively that when it comes to generating innovative solutions, dealing with “time pressure” can be counterproductive, especially for creative thought processing. But this raises the question: what about the extreme case of a team having no consciousness of a deadline (and, perhaps in the case of the Grateful Dead, no consciousness of linear time)?
Quoting from Smith’s December 27th letter:
Lack of preparation, direction and cooperation from the very beginning have made this album the most unreasonable project with which we have ever involved ourselves. Your group has many problems, it would appear.
But wait. It gets better!