If you’ve read my blog, you know that I am a lover of questions and you know I encourage my daughters to ask them - whatever they may be.

But, I’ll be honest, this one caught me off guard. And, just to confirm - yes, it was in reference to President John Quincy Adams.

My five year old was in stream-of-consciousness talking and questioning mode as she was both trying to get my attention and trying to pretend that a nap wouldn’t be her best option at the moment.

At some point, in hopefully as kind a way as possible, I shared that I was not going to keep answering questions that I knew she already knew the answer to - that I was happy to answer the questions I could, but I wanted her to try and answer for herself when she could. (This was a modestly diplomatic attempt at avoiding saying that she was driving me absolutely crazy.)

So, I was pretty well tuned out when she dropped this one on me. It worked. She got my attention!   

I was immediately laughing hysterically inside - trying to process exactly where this question came from and how - and if -  I was supposed to pretend I knew or didn’t know an answer. So, I did the obvious thing that any decent Dad would do: I let my 7 year old answer.

Yes. Someone had to have seen John Adams’ penis.

With her confident and informed response to her little sister, I recalled that the 7 year old had been learning about Presidents at school. And, of course, she’d remembered the most important facts underlying our Democracy: William Howard Taft got stuck in the White House bathtub and had to be craned out, and John Adams went skinny dipping in the Potomac. So, again, by a leap of logic easily made by a 7 year old but still suspect by a 5 year old - President Adams’ penis was out for the viewing. (Perhaps, a timely lesson on the value of transparency in Democracy?)

The giggles about learning what skinny dipping means had long passed from our initial discussion, but this burning question persisted in my daughter’s mind. And, I was reminded that the barrage of questions she’d been asking that she already knew the answer to were not bad questions. They were just unnecessary. She had to be reminded she knew the answer already - or could easily find them for herself.

So, the only bad question really is the one you have but you don’t ask.

For so many reasons, this was not just a good question, it was epic. ​

That every day we may ask and be asked at least one good question…

On the day before his 62nd birthday, my Father committed suicide. I’ve written pretty extensively about this in previous blogs. Needless to say, I sobbed. In fact, I broke.​

I was on emotional lockdown. I didn’t want to be around people. I didn’t want to talk. I needed quiet. Noise actually physically hurt. For the first time in my life, I understood what anxiety really felt like.

I was hunkered down. Surviving. It had been almost a year.

Around that time, a homeless friend brought a 10 week old puppy to my Mom’s house. It had followed him from wherever he lived - he would never tell us. But, our friend was drunk and this tiny, fluffy, adorable, little puppy was annoying him. So, he left it with my Mom and said she had to take him.

Mom had a dog.

Mom calls me.

I go see it.

I call my wife.

Now, we have a dog. I should mention here that I am actually allergic to dogs - but the sweetness of this little animal was an antihistamine.

But, wait. Ugh. What just happened!? I didn’t want a fucking dog! I didn’t want any new relationships! I wanted less. I wanted to be left alone. I sure as hell didn’t want to have to take care of some helpless little animal. I was having enough trouble taking care of myself at that point.

I had swooned at this puppy’s cuteness and I regretted it immediately.

But, then I started to love him - Augustus Buster a.k.a “Gus”.

But then, within months, we were at the vet. Gus had severe hip problems, probably wouldn’t live for very long - at least not without severe pain.

Goddamnit! I knew I didn’t want this fucking thing. This was all just a setup for more fucking loss and hurt and loneliness.

I was furious. So mad at myself. So mad at the world. So mad that I had opened myself up to this little animal - this creature for whom we were already predicting his end-of-days in his first year.

I sobbed.

But, I also started healing.

One of my first blogs about my Dad’s death was entitled “Living With Suicide.” Before I got my dog, I wasn’t. I was surviving suicide. But, when I opened myself to loving him, as painful and frustrating and scary as it was - as temporary as it might be - I began to live again.

Today, almost 12 years later, we had to put my dog down. Cancer.

I sobbed. I broke.

I’ve not cried like this since I lost my Dad. I feel the horrible emptiness of losing Gus, but it has also pulled at something deep in the wounds from my Father’s death. I’ve thought about this day since that first visit to the vet. I knew it would be brutal. I knew my dog’s death was coming. But, I had no idea how badly this would hurt.

I miss my dog. I miss my Dad.

My natural instinct again today is to hunker down, but I can see my dog looking up at me with his big, brown, knowing eyes: “did you miss the whole point!?”

Life and love are full of fear and loss and anxiety and vulnerability, but they are also the source of healing and peace and our connection to something beyond ourselves. Life and love take courage, but also create meaning.

Death doesn’t take that meaning away. It reminds us of it.

​

I grew up and still live in a house with no right angles. It’s just the reality of a now 130-year-old structure. Between plaster walls and settling foundations, you are best served just to eyeball distances and angles, or at least eyeball and measure - but trust your eyeball.​

Which is why I stopped in my tracks yesterday and snapped this picture. A marble. Sitting still. On a smooth surface. In our house. Seriously, what the hell? Never seen it. Never conceived of it. Not in our house.

And, like anyone whose brain never cared much for - nor knew much about - right angles, I didn’t really care about how that marble was sitting there. The science. I wanted to know why.

I saw the marble as I was doing post-holiday house cleaning and, as is often the case when I am doing chores, I was deep in my head. I was deep in the sadness of goodbyes to family, shaking off the echoes of my sobbing child - so sad to see her cousin and great aunt and uncle leaving. Fighting my own tears. I was processing the realities of aging loved ones and the impotence of limited time across great distance. I was wrestling with the chronic unknowns of a sick family member now weeks in the hospital. I was wondering about my dying dog - how much longer? What’s our plan?

We all have our stories. Mine is not unique nor is it even particularly extreme. In fact, I acknowledge that sorrow such as mine is born of fortune and abundance. This messiness (the right angle-less-ness) is just part of the rich possibility of human existence.

And, most of the time, I am fine with this. I see it for what it is. I thrive in the fluidity, the uncertainty. It’s probably why I became an artist. It’s how I understand the world and it reinforces my beliefs in why I am on the planet for this relatively brief period of time.

But, there are also times when it is frustrating and even overwhelming, when the lack of right angles starts to feel like formlessness, when I feel the need for structural reinforcement. Stillness and stability from somewhere.

And yet, this marble. Shining. Reflective. Still. Fragile, but whole. Simple, but profound. Somehow insistently present, defying the potentiality - and probability - of its rolling, falling, getting lost.

It couldn’t just be sitting there on the dresser; that would be impossible in our house. It was somehow transcending the crookedness of its world - or perhaps just owning it.

At the same time, the marble also drew my eye to some old pictures of my family. And, given my unsettled spirit at that moment, I just spiraled further into what wasn’t, what was wrong, what was past, what was no more. Memory. Reality. Sadness.

I need a fucking right angle!

Except, I didn’t. I was missing the why of this odd, little marble.

There is no real truth to my memories or my longing or my emotional analyses. There is no truth in my fighting the dissonance and sorrow of here and now. These are tools to futilely seek and feign control over life itself. Struggle.

The truth is in this marble somewhere, this thing that drew me in, out of myself, reminding me of a deeper, more real - and yet more nebulous - truth. A truth of both passing time, and yet, a truth eternal. Of life and loss, of highs and lows, light and shadow. A truth where our connections with others, with the world, and within ourselves manifest as the ultimate why of our existence and the surest path to our transcendence.

A truth where right angles may or may not exist - it doesn’t matter.

This truth is love. Shining. Reflective. Still. Fragile, but whole. Simple, but profound. Somehow present amidst all of the temporary conditions that could start me rolling, falling, getting lost.

The question is not whether or not we are creative; it is whether or not we have found the right medium to express our creativity in a way that matters to the world.

​I have written before in my blogs and books about the idea of creative tension and how it can help us understand and diagnose the challenges and opportunities embedded in our relationships and work.
 
At the end of this week, I am stepping away from a team with whom I have worked for many years and with whom I have sustained a consistent, productive, and genuine creative tension.
 
From a startup trying to take a mobile communication product into high schools to a pivot into healthcare, an acquisition by a healthcare company, and finally to an acquisition of that company by an even bigger healthcare company, we have worked and grown and learned and iterated together for the better part of six years.
 
We all brought different skills and perspectives. Our ages varied. Our backgrounds varied. Our approaches to creativity and problem solving varied. Ultimately, however, we aligned around a set of principles that I now discuss as the elements of creative tension, but identified and learned largely through our work together. We didn’t know them and then practice them. We practiced them and came to know them.
 
Shared Purpose: There is a common goal that necessitates working together to accomplish.
 
Ownership: The collective owns the goal and understands various roles, responsibilities, skills, perspectives, and relationships needed to achieve the goal.
 
Commitment: All parties commit not only to the process of working together but to their individual roles and responsibilities in the work.
 
Teaching/Learning: Everyone is a teacher. Everyone is a learner.
 
Collective Action: The act of working together creates tension that informs the evolving purpose and nature of the work as a whole.
 
Reflection: The collective remains vigilant and reflective, as individuals and as a group, so that the tension remains creative and not destructive.
 
Creative tension is a constantly changing dynamic of a relationship – a relationship between people and the work they are trying to accomplish together.
 
For a visual, take a look at the images above and imagine yourself holding one end of the rubber band(s) with your colleague(s) holding the other. Sometimes, we are pulling the band(s) too tight. We introduce too much tension, reduce the flexibility of the rubber band, and introduce a fear that someone may drop their end and pop us with it, or even pull harder until it breaks. This is destructive tension caused by too much tension. Other times, we aren’t pulling much at all. The band is limp, without energy or possibility. This is destructive tension caused by an absence of tension.
 
Creative tension is all about finding that right degree of tautness in the band where there is energy, and sound, and possibility, and the people holding it are relating positively and actively to each other and the band itself. The right amount creative tension is always changing, just as we and our work and our lives outside of work are always changing.
 
As people change and as work changes, maintaining this creative tension requires constant vigilance – and as I have learned recently, simply may not always be maintainable. As I move on to a new startup, I feel the sincere loss of the creative tension of my team – although I look forward to helping build it with a new one. But, as our work and the organizations in which it has happened have evolved over the years, I found myself no longer able to generate the sense of purpose, ownership, and teaching/learning I needed to hold up my end of the rubber band, maintain my part of the creative tension.
 
For me then, I feel a responsibility to move on. I genuinely believe that this is the creative act even as it comes with a significant sense of loss.

Over my 6 years of being a parent, particularly the last few, I have stumbled several times upon otherwise mundane words and phrases that when I say them to my kids suddenly feel newly important. They are never planned, but as they come out of my mouth they do so with a fullness that I immediately recognize and attach to.
 
The first phrase I remember finding re-remarkable as a parent was: thank you. I certainly had said thank you to my kids when they were babies and offered me a handful of their smashed bananas or their slobbery stuffed animal or something like that. This wasn’t the thank you that gave me pause. It was when they were old enough to start to take on tasks, either by request or their own motivation. It was that first time I dropped something and they picked it up for me. Or, the first time her sister needed help and she scurried over to provide it. Or maybe, that first time I asked them to go get something for me in another room and they happily did so – proud to be able to help.
 
Regardless of the specifics, when I said this kind of thank you to my girls for the first time, it felt like a sincere validation of their contribution – their proactive and meaningful presence making purposeful contact with me, with the world. It overtly acknowledged their power to help other people – hopefully reinforced by some sense of what that means, or at least how it feels to do so. Because of this, I have found myself more mindful of sharing my gratitude with my kids not merely as a tool to reinforce the behaviors I want or expect but as a way of telling them they have the power to create meaning with others. I don’t know: maybe I’m just a tired, somewhat defeated, overly emotional parent looking for “a win”, but that feels like something profound to me.
 
Sometime, maybe a year or more, after thank you took on new meaning, another mundane phrase also resurfaced with a sense of newness: I’m sorry. I am certain I had said I’m sorry to my daughters previously for accidentally bumping them in the head with an errant elbow, tripping over them as they crept up behind me in the kitchen, or doing something in the wrong way. But, the I’m sorry that was so meaningful was related to my being wrong about or mishandling something. I’m sorry I raised my voice. I should have handled that better. I’m sorry I got after you without really understanding what happened. I should have listened to understand the situation better. I’m sorry I forgot about or minimized that thing that was so important to you.
 
In these cases, I wasn’t sorry because of an accident; I was sorry because I was wrong. And, those are profoundly different in nature.
 
I want my children to know I am human and I am flawed and I am willing to admit it, because I want them to grow up and be the same way. I don’t want my children to look up to me and respect me because they think I have all the answers. I want them to do so because they know I don’t and they know I know I don’t. In other words, I want our relationship to be based on truth and for that to be a prism through which they seek to know and impact the world around them.
 
Along the lines of truth-seeking, I have most recently found myself thrilled by the random, inane, brilliant, innocent, and humbling conversations I am beginning to have with my kids. In these, I have heard myself repeatedly saying: that’s a great question. Again, this isn’t much of a mind-blower under normal circumstances (it’s often just a way to buy time to concoct an answer), but as I heard myself start saying it to my daughters, it felt like the most important thing I could ever say to them. You have questions. Questions are important. You should ask them. You should seek answers. Please, always ask questions!
 
Beyond the gratitude and power and humility of the thank yous and I’m sorrys, I don’t know what I could wish to instill more in my children than an insatiable curiosity and confident exploration of their lives, relationships, and anything and everything else that makes them wonder. I’ve written previously about two of these questions: 1. What is freedom? and 2. What is peace?
 
I obviously don’t have all the answers, but I think validating the question is more important anyway.
 
I am sure there will be more words and phrases that take on new meaning as my children and my parenting continue to grow up.
 
What word or phrase will be next? Well, we will obviously have to wait and see.
 
But, I think it’s a good question.

​I was at a meeting recently where attendees were discussing innovation and how and where - and even whether - it should happen in large organizations. To innovate or not to innovate…
 
As sides made their cases for and against, I offered a comment to the group that while we appeared to be presenting contradictory positions we actually agreed on the problems large organizations face in innovating. And, there wasn’t really any disagreement about whether they needed to. The difference in perspective was that one group saw the problems preventing innovation in large organizations as too big and too entrenched to solve and the other group thought they presented the perfect opportunity.
 
In response to my assessment, someone commented: “Yeah, this group is the realists and that group is the idealists.”
 
Everyone seemed to agree.
 
And, I guess I didn’t immediately disagree, but it seemed way too simple, and it bothered me for some reason. For starters, I don’t like being put into an idealist box - which of course is where I was - simply because I believe human-created problems are solvable by humans.
 
But, I let it go, and just started furiously taking notes on my phone about all the ways I felt that this seemingly simple comment presented a patently unhelpful view of innovation, organizations, and the world.
 
Why do we attribute realism to the point-of-view that things cannot, will not, and perhaps even should not change? Why is that realistic in today’s world?
 
Why do we attribute idealism - as the counter to realism - to people who believe things can and should change? In today’s world, isn’t that a lot more realistic?
 
Isn’t it realism to know that change is inevitable? That innovation is necessary to keep learning, stay competitive, and to keep up with customers and markets?
 
Is it really idealism to try and predict, invest in, and prepare for not just reacting to but leading that inevitable change?
 
An idealist should be more than a dreamer, and idealism should never just be an excuse to pretend difficult problems are any less complex than they really are - or to deny that their solutions should be grounded in reality.
 
Alternately, a realist shouldn’t passively accept that the current state is inevitable, and realism should never just be an excuse to lie prostrate in the face of difficult problems because, well, that’s just the way it is.
 
Innovation is messy work and organizations are messy places. The most innovative organizations need idealistic realists mixing it up every day with realistic idealists.
 
Anything that makes the people or the process sound any simpler may make innovation easier to talk about but can also make it a lot more difficult to achieve.