Practical Solutions for Creatives in Crisis

I usually just blog a bit about what I’m up to or a bit about what’s of interest to me, but given the circumstances I thought I’d write a blog specifically to help people see their way through the mess we’ve found ourselves in. The following is a loose breakdown of a model I use when coaching creatives around career and life concerns and one which always surprises me with the ingenuity and results it produces from them.

A solution focused approach to problem solving or strategic thinking is not as I first suspected; solely about beginning with the end in mind. Nor is it wishful thinking, blinkered optimism or pointless positivity. Solution focused thinking has its roots in therapeutic and counselling psychology but is regularly used by businesses and governments around the world. Well… most governments. It is a practical exercise in strategic thinking that works especially well in complex, volatile and uncertain times. Pandemics included. I take a look at the process as applied to an imaginary theatre director trying to identify their next professional steps. You can apply them to your own situation as you read on and see what comes of it.

Step 1. The Problem (or Platform)

I might begin by asking our director to write their problem down in one sentence. Ask yourself: What’s going on right now? Our director might say “the world is falling apart and I can’t take it anymore” and although this may be true in many respects, we might better begin by stating it in terms that are short, simple and accurate e.g. “I’m a theatre director, all of my work for the next four months has disappeared and I’m not sure how I’m going to make next month’s rent”. Here we have the problem stated clearly and more specifically and we can begin to look at it with an element of objectivity and calm that we may not have had moments before. I prefer to refer to it as the ‘platform' at this stage as it reminds me that this is required starting place from which we will now build our solution.

Step 2. The Future Perfect

This step often brings up the most resistance. Being asked what your perfect outcome is when you’re panicking about next month’s rent can seem like an abusive waste of time. But here’s why it’s essential to really get a clear picture of it. Problem thinking is blinkered thinking; it focuses on the problem and often only on the problem. This has three notable downsides: (1) We miss everything else and, everything that is not linked to the problem right now, we fail to see. A limited perspective means further limiting our options, (2) Some problems don’t need to be solved for there to be a solution; they are not always directly linked, and finally (3) Spending so much time on the problem may just leave us with a more detailed picture of its mechanics but still no solution.

Our director might describe their future perfect as “I’m at my desk in two months time, I’ve somehow paid off the rent using money I’ve earned through my skills, knowledge and experience as a director, the production I was working on is still moving forward in some way and I’ve another project that I'm reaching out to theatres about for next year. Oh, and I’m feeling more chilled in general”. Our future perfect also has the added advantage of being ours, not advice from someone else. It will instinctively be based on our own values and so we are much more likely to persist in working towards it as it will naturally make sense to us.

Captain Sully attributed his decision to land in the Hudson to his priorities, his values and collaboration with his team. His ‘future perfect’ was to have the plane and all onboard safely back on ground level. He constantly applied solution focused thinking at an astronomical rate to achieve this. He found his solution by landing in the Hudson river. The solution in this case did not involve dealing with the ‘actual’ problem which caused the crisis: complete engine failure. He does all this in 30 seconds only mentioning the problem once, at the beginning, acknowledging it briefly before applying a solution focused approach.

Step 3. Resources - (Future, Past and Present)

Now we mine all the resources available to us as we begin to build the solution, applying multiple perspectives.

(Future)

We start looking for the solution first in the future perfect. We are more motivated and excited to work towards a ‘future perfect’ as it feels better than being immersed a problem, but that’s not its main function. Working in this way elevates our thinking to an imaginative and creative level instantly; we see beyond the obstacles in a way we couldn’t before. Now we can draw this back from the future and see how we can bring it out in the present. I might ask our director the following “Where does your future perfect already happen in some way?” They might respond “I am still communicating with the team for the production that was cancelled, I have an idea for a project that I might want to do next year and who I would ideally like to collaborate with, but I’m still quite tense and have no idea about the rent issue’. The problem will always pop back up at each stage but your job here is to identify resources. Here there are two (1) The existing connections with their first project and (2) The idea for their next. 

(Present)

What is working well right now? When you stuck you’re usually in the middle of a process, not quite where you want to be but possibly a long way from where you started. You are likely to have forgotten this when neck deep in a problem. Our director, after a moment of consideration might say “Well I’m part of this online group where a bunch of fellow artists meet up and check in with each other. I have time to read now and I’m doing more research on my next project that I hadn’t been doing before and oddly I’m meeting more people in the industry via zoom and attending workshops online. That’s all good I guess. But none of that is going to pay the rent”. Here, the resources I’d pick out might be (1) Fellow artists as a source for information, support and collaboration, (2) Time! They have more time now for reading and research, (3) Skill-sharing online, because they seem open to it and like they enjoy it. I’m not ignoring the rent issue, we acknowledged the problem at the beginning, but I’m going to continue to explore resources before we consider it again. Mining the present, I might also ask our director to list their skills, training, experience, connections etc. Anything that might help.

(Past)

What’s worked well for you in the past? Anyone who is an artist or has chosen to make a career in highly competitive profession where the majority of people are out of work most of the time will be a survivor. They will have developed multiple strategies for managing themselves, their finances and their careers to get to where they are now. To get a clearer picture of what these are I might ask our director the following “When you’ve been faced with unemployment or loss of work in the past, what’s worked well for you?” After a suprised look they might respond “Err well, when I first left university I used to tutor kids in LAMDA exams, I didn’t do it alot but it brought in some pocket money… I used to temp for a guy who had his own IT company, he was pretty nice, he let me work quite flexibly, and I left it because I had theatre work, but that was okay, paid well. And yeah, I guess I spent a lot of time online looking for jobs, all kinds of things that I thought I might in some way be suitable for and that might be appealing or beneficial.” From this I might pick out (1) Tutoring as a skill to offer, (2) A former employer who was liked, where the work seemed okay and who seems to be flexible with work, (3) The ability to really scour the internet for suitable work in a focused way.

Step 4. Options

We have generated a series of potential options at this stage. Our director will already have some new ideas about the solution but it would still be beneficial to list all of the options for yourself in simple and plain terms. I would read all of them back to our director and ask which they feel to be the most useful and important. Which will take them on the next step to their future perfect? “I guess I can look at offering some LAMDA sessions online, maybe there’ll be more of a need for that with schools being closed. I can ring that former employer, find out what his deal is, maybe he needs someone he knows and trusts to temp from home, his business is likely to be open and busy still. Maybe there’s some new digital offering I can make, I’ve learned quite a lot since I first left university and was tutoring kids. I can give one day a week to purely research my next project to keep that moving along and maybe I can organise some text analysis sessions with the cast of my current play, just to keep the ideas in our heads while we’re in lockdown"

Step 5. How, What, Will

What will you do? Up until now this has all been a thought experiment, an exploration of possibilities and potential. Here the rubber meets the road. Of the options listed, which will you do and when? A key question to ask yourself here - and one often over-looked by artists who can spend so much time working on their own projects and developing their own work and ideas by themselves - is 'who can help me with this?'. List them; family, friends, colleagues, former colleagues, partners, old teachers, mentors, employers etc. 

Now you’ve reached the end of the blog and you might be thinking ‘our director still hasn’t paid their rent? They’re not leaving with their future perfect, so what’s the point?’. The beauty of the solution focused approach is that it works with systemic and emergent principals. It acknowledges the reality that our situation will change constantly as we move forward and both allows for and utilises that. Our director has some leads now, they have the next steps. Their rent issue might be solved with one call to their former employer. Or they may reach out to a theatre who ends up hiring them to run their online community outreach project. The likelihood is that when we next meet their circumstances will have changed, and if our strategy is adaptable to this then so are we.  

This approach is far from new, but often either neglected or discounted as putting the cart before the horse. The essence of it can be found in Stoic philosophy which suggests that all of what befalls you can be used as fuel to grow from.

"The blazing fire makes flames and fires out of everything that is thrown into it”

Marcus Aurelius