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Interviewer: That speaks to something that you said a few minutes
ago, which I thought was a very interesting point that you made. I
believe you termed it as “a culture of creativity” and
then fostering skills in the people in your organization. If you could
give us some ideas about how you foster that “culture of creativity”
because many times I think that might be a stopping point for some
organizations or a barrier. It would be great to hear what you did.
Nancy Brooks-Lane: The most important piece is that you have got
to start with a value aspect of who you are as an organization. The
values have to be very clear. They have to be the yardstick that you
use to make decision from during the systems change effort. That is
so critical, because there is a bit of chaos in terms of who you are
as an organization as you are shifting and families are confused.
The community may be confused, and you are being told “Do this.
Don't do that.” The way you maintain sanity at that point is
that to go back to those values. “If we do this, does that fit
with our values?” So that is critical. I can not say how important
it is to spend time to really come up with that piece of who you are
as an organization. From there, it gives you the framework to expand
in all sorts of ways and that is where you can be so creative. I think
as leaders you have got to role model being creative. In the early
stages of training, where we did not really have any money and it
only cost the price of the books and the video tapes we used, we brought
in all kinds of information, again, just to expand people's perspective.
We used literature. We used video tapes, movies, and book studies.
I guess one of the most moving videos, to give you an example of just
how powerful that can be, was Titicut Follies
by Frederick Wiseman. Are you familiar with that?
Interviewer: No, not that particular one.
Nancy Brooks-Lane: It is very moving, and it was filmed in the sixties.
It is filmed in an institution. In one of the areas, the people are
not even allowed to wear clothing. Those images just were so visceral
in terms of staff being able to see the values perspective. It moves
people forward to be able to couple other ideas that have to do with,
“What are we doing as a society in terms of people who are on
the fringe?”
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