Tania Katan is big on creativity in all aspects of our lives.
She’s the author of the 2019 book "Creative Trespassing: How to Put the Joy and Spark Back into your Work and Life," in addition to being a public speaker, among other roles.
Clearly, though, a lot has changed over those seven years — from the pandemic and work-from-home to the increased use of artificial intelligence.
Katan joined The Show to see how she views some of those differences.
Conversation highlights
MARK BRODIE: Tania, let’s start with COVID — and given the fragmentation of how and where we work since the pandemic, how has that changed how we see work and how we’re able to be creative and find joy at work?
TANIA KATAN: Well, I think before the pandemic, for example, where we now have dispersed and hybrid and remote, creativity was sort of a nice to have, right? Everybody said, "Oh, creativity's great." And they had vinyl letters on the wall that said "Be innovative." And yet it was the first thing to kind of go away.
But what happens now in this moment is that creativity is not a nice to have. It's a necessity. It's really the foundation for any kind of innovation. And also what we're finding is that people who are working from home are happier.
BRODIE: Well, so how do you find that that is maybe changing how we as workers think about creativity? Because, you know, you have the same people who maybe were operating under a nice-to-have kind of mentality. Now those same workers in many ways need to bring creativity.
KATAN: Yeah, so one of the things that I write about in "Creative Trespassing" — and I talk about in companies from Expedia to Cisco — is that we have to stop waiting for inspiration. We have to stop waiting for permission to be creative. And we actually have to start asking what-if questions.
And so that's a tool I give everyone, which is the possibility that lies beyond the space and time. So what if instead of Zoom being this sort of like crappy 1 inch by 1 inch thumbnail of people, it's actually a portal to see people ... more clearly and deeper and really connect with them? And what if I launched a marketing campaign in outer space?
What if ... allows for possibilities beyond this time and space, beyond any form, beyond an office, beyond buildings. So that's a way in which people can start who haven't felt comfortable engaging in a creative process or practice. Start it. What if?
BRODIE: Do you find that people are hesitant to do that?
KATAN: [LAUGHS] I'm laughing, because I think that if we have not trained or practiced something, of course we're hesitant to do it.
It would be like, Mark, if you're like, "Tania, you know what, would you be hesitant to run a marathon tomorrow?" And I'd be like, "Oh yeah, I am."
BRODIE: [LAUGHS]
KATAN: And so that's another thing that I help people do, again, in the book and also in real life, which is do one thing as opposed to no things or nothing. So small incremental steps every day lead to something. So, for example, with creativity, if we decide to practice it at work — and creativity just for everybody who's listening, there's two kinds: the big C — I'm a playwright, I'm a choreographer. And the little C, which everyone has. We're all born with the little C, which is our ability to come up with infinite solutions, ideas and innovations to any single problem. We all have it.
So creativity solutions to problems that exist. Let's say their problem is I and my colleagues who work really hard haven't gotten a raise in years. What if I raised my hand during the next meeting? That's an act of creativity. And what if I asked for a raise, and what if I spoke up and da-da-da. But it doesn't all happen at once. So one thing over time adds up to something significant.
BRODIE: It's interesting, because I think for a lot of workers and a lot of people like raising their hand and asking for a raise would not be seen as an act of creativity. It would be seen maybe as an act of something else, but not creativity. So I wonder if there's maybe a mentality shift that — or maybe just a creative way of thinking about things that people have to undertake here.
KATAN: Yeah, it's a whole reframe, but it's a reframe. It's not like a reconstruction of reality. It's looking at reality.
So for example, in the title of my book is joy, and people are like, "Joy at work? That's crazy." So when I was working at a company, I actually left my desk to do my job.
I would interview people and make silly silly videos and all of these things. And at some point the board of directors said: "Tania's not working, she's just running around having fun." And I showed the return on investment of my running around having fun, the metrics I could qualify and quantify it. And when I could do that, what we realized together is that work and fun aren't mutually exclusive.
