Somewhere between childhood and young adulthood we lose our creative edge. In our early years, we engage with the world with great passion and joy – playing, creating, experimenting, laughing, and disrupting, all with great purpose and energy that arises from the natural-born foolishness and creativity that comes with childhood.

Ask a group of first graders, “How many artists are there in the room?” and almost every hand will eagerly reach for the sky. Ask a group of sixth graders the same question and one or two hands will hesitantly go up. What happens between the first and the sixth grade? According to Gordon MacKenzie, adult attempts to remove the natural-born foolishness of a child often result in the unintended casualty of removing creativity.

The last years of his career at Hallmark Cards, Gordon MacKenzie held the title Creative Paradox – a title that meant nothing to most people and yet allowed him to do some of his greatest work. Throughout his entire career, MacKenzie did his best to escape corporate bureaucracy – the Giant Hairball – and maintain his creative edge, ultimately for the good of the Giant Hairball that is Hallmark Cards. In his book, Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace, Gordon Mackenzie gives insights on how we might do the same.

Orbiting the Giant Hairball

A Hairball is a disgusting thing. It did not start out this way. It begins as one hair is added to another, and so on, until it becomes a tangled, impenetrable mass. MacKenzie argues that every organization – without exception – eventually becomes a Giant Hairball. “Every new policy is another hair for the Hairball. Hairs are never taken away, only added” (31).

The Giant Hairball’s gravitational pull increases with its mass, sucking everything into it. The Hairball’s dedication “to past realities and past successes” leaves no room for original thinking or creativity (31).

What does one do in the face of the Giant Hairball? One can either be sucked into its gravitational pull and become part of the tangled mess. Or, one can escape to other endeavors, which usually means being sucked into another Hairball. Or, one can actively engage the opportunities the Hairball offers without getting sucked into it.

This balancing act is called orbiting. The Hairball is a twisted mass of “policy, procedure, conformity, compliance, rigidity and submission to status quo, while Orbiting is originality, rules-breaking, non-conformity, experimentation, and innovation” (39).

“Orbiting is responsible creativity: vigorously exploring and operating beyond the Hairball of the corporate mind set, beyond ‘accepted models, patterns, or standards’ – all the while remaining connected to the spirit of the corporate mission” (33). The challenge is to figure out how to individually support the corporate mission without losing one’s creative edge. MacKenzie writes,

you must invest enough individuality to counteract the pull of Corporate Gravity, but not so much that you escape that pull altogether. Just enough to stay out of the Hairball.

Through this measured assertion of your own uniqueness, it is possible to establish a dynamic relationship with the Hairball – to Orbit around the institutional mass. If you do this, you make an asset of the gravity in that it becomes a force that keeps you from flying out into the overwhelming nothingness of deep space. But if you allow that same gravity to suck you into the bureaucratic Hairball, you will find yourself in a different kind of nothingness. (33)

When a newcomer enters an organization, he or she experiences the organization’s “cultural chalk line” – “This is our history. This is our philosophy. These are our policies. These are our procedures. These are our politics. This is simply the way we are” (52). The challenge is

to choose not to be mesmerized by the culture of the company. Instead, find the goals of the organization that touch your heart and release your passion to follow these goals.

It is a delicate balance, resisting the hypnotic spell of an organization’s culture and, at the same time, remaining committed from the heart to the personally relevant goals of the organization. (53)

The Ultimate Hairball

Though well-meaning people attempt to deny it, the church is a Hairball. Indeed, it probably qualifies as the world’s biggest Hairball.

The church is both an organism and an organization. Any living organism consists of some level of organization to support and sustain life. This is true for any church, whether it is a home church of 12 people or a megachurch of 12,000. Over time, every organization will become a Hairball.

A Hairball, though a mess, is not completely bad. It provides the intense gravitational pull that allows the possibility of orbit. Its policies and procedures provide some measure of security. And like any security blanket, the security offered can be life-saving or life-sapping. MacKenzie offers this contrast:

So: Sky diving without a parachute is suicide. Total freedom is suicide.

And: Holing up in a closet is vegetating. Total security is vegetating.

Somewhere between the ridiculous extremes of vegetating and suicide is the right place for each of us. (104)

The challenge for every church leader is learning how to orbit the giant Hairball of the church. Supporting the corporate mission while maintaining one’s individual creative edge is a difficult balancing act, but it is possible. Learning to use the gravitational pull of the Hairball to support and sustain one’s orbit is a key ingredient to this endeavor.

Insights on Maintaining a Creative Edge

Even though MacKenzie remains pessimistic concerning any real change in the Hairball, he offers two insights to reorient the Hairball to better facilitate its orbiters.

First, he calls leaders to remember the invisible process that results in visible productivity. Those obsessed with efficiency and productivity may easily forget all that is involved in the creative process. He uses an example concerning a cow’s production of milk to make his point. The time that a cow is hooked up to a milking machine is its productive time.

But the earlier, larger part of the event, when the milk was actually being created, remains invisible.

The invisible portion is equivalent to the time the cow spends out in the pasture, seemingly idle, but, in fact, performing the alchemy of transforming grass into milk.

A management obsessed with productivity usually has little patience for the quiet time essential to profound creativity. Its dream of dreams is to put the cows on the milking machine 24 hours a day. (64)

Those of us in church leadership should never forget that the product we see is simply the result of a long, invisible process – a process that includes preparation, prayer, reflection, meditation, understanding, wisdom, etc. None of these things come quickly or easily. They all involve time. If we focus so much on the end product that we forget the process we do damage to the product and the producer.

Secondly, MacKenzie challenges leaders to shift from a pyramid structure to a tree structure. In a pyramid, the overseers (top managers) are at the top. Managers at the second level exist to motivate and increase production from the product creators and producers at the bottom. Those at the bottom are often crushed by the weight of the mountain.

Instead of a pyramid, MacKenzie argues for a leadership structure modeled after a tree. In the tree model, everything is reversed. The product creators and producers are at the top, producing the fruit of the tree. The managers exist, like branches, to support the producers. The overseers are the trunk of the tree – the enduring central support channeling life from the root to the fruit. Unlike the pyramid model, where function follows form, in the tree model the form follows function. The goal of good leadership is to serve, support, and sustain the producers at the top.

MacKenzie concludes his argument: “A pyramid is a tomb while a tree is a living organism.”

Conclusion

It is possible to maintain a creative edge in relationship to a Hairball – even the giant Hairball of the church – by learning to wisely and effectively orbit it. By using the gravitational pull of the Hairball to one’s own advantage, a wise leader can remain committed to the corporate goals of the Hairball while seeking to creatively contribute to its mission.

© Richard J. Vincent, 2005