Creativity vs. Conformity

Creativity comes in many forms and is essential within a society in order to progress. Without creative thought about everything we do advancement is impossible.

Conformity is an important part of maintaining order. By having the group conform to a set of norms, safety and efficiency are increased, assisting with the overall quality of society.

A society requires both of these to function but blind obedience to either will lead to failure. This leads to a very obvious question. How much of each do we need?

I'm not sure I know the whole answer but I'm sure part of it depends on your role in society. Where you sit in the system helps determine how much creativity or conformity you require.

For example, controlling air traffic requires a high level of conformity. Everyone in the system has an expectation on how the others will behave. Deviations from the expected norm will lead to potential safety compromises. On the flip side, designing fashion requires a high level of creativity as there is very little safety concern but if you are not new and fresh you are probably not going to be designing clothes very long.

These examples are very obvious but do point out the extremes. These is however another consideration of your responsibilities within an organization. If you are in the lower levels it is your responsibility to run the system. If you are near the top you may very well be responsible for designing the system. There is a problem. The people who are designing the system are not going to run it in the end and the people running the system don't have the resources to design the system.

So where does this leave us?

Everyone needs to have a bit of both but depending where you sit in the world you may need a lot of one or the other. The perfect balance has been haunting most if us forever, but we must try to do the best we can and adapt to the changing situation.