The Discipline of Openness

Before I Had a Word for It

For a long time, I assumed ego was the primary obstacle. I don't believe that anymore.

As a teenager, I loved music. What fascinated me wasn't simply finding the music I liked. I wanted to hear different kinds of music because I wanted to know how each style of music would make me feel and think.

What confused me was how differently many of the people around me approached the same experience. They seemed remarkably certain about what constituted good music and bad music. Entire genres could be dismissed without much exploration. Even then, something about that bothered me.

It seemed that people were confusing two very different statements: I don't like this. And, This isn't good.

The first is an observation about ourselves. The second is a judgment about the world.

I noticed the same pattern again in art school. We were young artists who had supposedly come together to learn, yet many of us had already decided what good art looked like. Certain styles were worthy. Others weren't. Certain approaches were serious. Others could safely be dismissed. I didn't understand it. How could we understand something we refused to even experience?

I wouldn't have called it openness then. I simply knew there was more to see.

When Talent Stops Growing

Years later, when I began leading professional artists, that early observation took on much greater significance. I had the opportunity to work with extraordinarily talented people. Some had already worked on major films and games. They had spent years developing their craft and, in many cases, were considerably more accomplished in their particular specialties than the people around them.

But I began noticing something strange. Talent wasn't predicting growth.

Some very capable artists continued improving at an astonishing rate while others seemed to reach a certain level and stop. The difference wasn't intelligence. It wasn't opportunity. And it certainly wasn't whether they had received enough feedback.

It was what happened when the feedback arrived.

The artists who continued growing asked questions. They debated. They experimented. They tried unfamiliar techniques. They allowed other people to challenge the way they thought about lighting, composition, color, value, storytelling, or whatever problem happened to be in front of them. Most importantly, they didn't interpret critique as a judgment of who they were.

The artists who struggled to grow often reacted very differently. They defended.

Sometimes they had reached a level of accomplishment where they believed they had little left to learn. Sometimes they questioned whether the person offering feedback had earned the right to give it. Sometimes they simply returned to the techniques that had already made them successful. And when something failed, the explanation was often somewhere else.

Over time, the pattern became difficult to ignore. Talent mattered. Openness determined whether it kept growing.

What We Are Protecting

For a long time, I assumed ego was the primary obstacle but, I don’t believe that any

Ego certainly plays a role. There is a particular danger that arrives with accomplishment. If the world has spent years telling us that we are exceptional at something, eventually that capability can become entangled with our identity. Then criticism becomes complicated. If I am the expert, accepting someone else's solution may threaten that identity. If I am the talented artist, making something terrible may threaten that identity. If I am the leader, admitting that I don't know something may feel like weakness.

But I've also worked with deeply humble people who were remarkably resistant to change. Their obstacle wasn't arrogance. It was insecurity.

Trying something unfamiliar meant temporarily becoming less competent. The technique they already knew produced predictable results. The new one didn't. Exploration carried the possibility of failure, and failure reinforced the very thing they were already afraid of: Maybe I can't do this.

Arrogance and insecurity appear to be opposites. Yet they can lead us to exactly the same place. One says, I don't need to learn this. The other says, I'm afraid I can't.

Both close the door.

Conviction Is Not Certainty

This changed the way I think about confidence. I don't believe the answer to ego is simply humility. Some of the most powerful creative people I've worked with possessed tremendous confidence. They had strong opinions and were willing to argue passionately for them.

That wasn't a weakness. In many cases, their conviction had been earned through years of study, failure, practice, and experience.

But something separated the best of them. They could believe deeply in an idea without needing the idea to be right. Show them something they hadn't considered and they became interested. Challenge an assumption with compelling evidence and they wanted to understand it. Present a better solution and the conversation wasn't experienced as a defeat.

It was an opportunity.

That combination is incredibly powerful. Conviction gives us the courage to move forward. Openness allows new information to change where we're going.

Perhaps expertise isn't knowing that we're right. Perhaps it is knowing enough to have strong convictions while remaining interested in discovering where we're wrong.

Openness Compounds

The longer I worked with teams, the more I noticed that openness produced another unexpected effect. It compounded.

An open person learns something new. That knowledge expands their capability, which gives them more context for understanding whatever comes next. New information begins connecting to things they already know. Relationships emerge that they couldn't have recognized before.

What happens if you put several people like that together? One person's observation changes another person's thinking. That new thought produces another possibility. Someone from a completely different discipline sees a connection neither of them noticed. Soon the team is discovering solutions that no individual brought into the room.

The possibility space expands.

This is one of the most exciting experiences I've had in creative leadership. A highly open team can become far more capable than the sum of the individuals inside it.

But the opposite compounds too. Defensiveness suppresses disagreement. Territoriality prevents ideas from moving freely. People learn which subjects are safe to challenge and which aren't. Eventually the team stops offering information that might create friction.

The intelligence is still sitting in the room. It simply stops moving.

Can Openness Be Taught?

For years, I believed the answer is yes. But I don't think we teach openness by telling someone to be more open-minded. We create experiences that allow them to discover its value themselves.

The process begins with trust. Before someone can hear that they have an area to improve, they have to believe the person saying it is invested in their success. Without that trust, feedback can sound like judgment.

Rather than simply prescribing a solution, I begin with the underlying question: What are we actually trying to accomplish?

Then we explore together. I might establish the beginning of a framework, provide research, or demonstrate part of a solution—but deliberately leave enough unresolved for them to continue the discovery. Eventually something important happens.

They find something I didn't show them.

Now the idea begins becoming theirs. They research it. Expand it. Test it with their peers. Incorporate new ideas. Present it. Refine it again.

Eventually they don't simply understand the solution.

They own it.

Their confidence grows because it isn't confidence I’ve given them. They have accumulated evidence that they can enter unfamiliar territory, learn, discover, build something useful, and help other people understand it. Eventually the particular problem we've solved matters less than what happened to the person solving it.

They begin thinking differently about problems.

The Narrowing Cone

There is a danger in all of this. Openness can easily be confused with endless exploration. I've watched that destroy projects too.

Creative work needs possibility, but possibility cannot remain infinite forever. At the beginning of a project, I want the cone to be wide. Explore. Experiment. Challenge assumptions. Try things that may fail. But put a boundary around that exploration. Establish what success means. Agree on the criteria. Give the team time to explore and continually remind everyone where they are in that process.

Then narrow the cone. As painful as it can be, some ideas must die.

That isn't a failure of creativity. It is part of creativity. The experiments have given us information, and we now know more than we knew when we began. If the evidence tells us that something isn't going to work, openness requires us to allow that evidence to change our direction. Then we explore again within the smaller possibility space.

And narrow again.

I've watched enormous projects fail to do this. People with decision-making authority hold onto concepts long after the evidence suggests they will never succeed. Possibilities remain alive because someone is unwilling to let them go. Eventually reality makes the decision for them. The project runs out of time. Half the ideas are thrown away anyway, only now the team has spent months or years trying to make them work. Worse, all of that time was unavailable to the ideas that survived.

That cost is enormous. The last ten percent of refinement can be the difference between something good and something exceptional. But that refinement never happens if everyone is desperately trying to bring too many ideas to a mediocre level of completion.

Killing an idea can feel like closing a door.

Sometimes it is what allows us to walk through the right one.

The Courage to Say “I Don't Know”

Being in a leadership position can make openness particularly difficult. People expect leaders to have answers. Many leaders eventually begin expecting the same thing from themselves. That can be dangerous. Some of the most useful words I've spoken to teams throughout my career have been: I don't know.

Not because I lacked conviction. Not because I was unwilling to make the decision when the decision needed to be made. Because sometimes I genuinely didn't know. That was why I had hired all those extraordinary people in the first place.

When a capable leader can admit uncertainty, something changes in the room. Other people become more comfortable admitting uncertainty too. Half-formed ideas can be spoken aloud. Assumptions become easier to challenge. People are more willing to expose things that aren't working. Trust grows. And more of the intelligence already sitting inside the team becomes available to everyone else.

Eventually, however, the leader has to decide. There is a time for exploration and a time for commitment. A great leader can be deeply open and highly decisive. Those qualities aren't opposites.

Decisiveness should come after openness, not instead of it.

Becoming a Beginner Again

Perhaps the greatest surprise is how much my own relationship with openness has changed. When I was younger, being wrong frightened me more. A failed painting could feel like evidence that perhaps I wasn't as capable as I hoped. Trying something unfamiliar meant risking the competence I had worked so hard to build.

That fear has diminished enormously. Today I am far more willing to make terrible things. I'm willing to enter disciplines where I'm a beginner. I'm willing to throw away days of work. I'm willing to discover that an idea I loved isn't very good.

Failure still frustrates me. But it doesn't frighten me in the same way.

Perhaps mastery eventually gives us something more valuable than mastery itself. I've traveled from ignorance to competence enough times now that I no longer need to feel capable at the beginning. I trust the journey. That has made becoming a beginner easier.

Not effortless. Easier.

And strangely, despite knowing vastly more about the world than I did as a child, I think I may be more curious now than I have ever been. There is still so much I don't understand.

I find that exciting.

The Discipline of Openness

I used to think openness was primarily a personality trait. I no longer believe that. I think it is a practice.

It is the willingness to listen when our instinct is to defend. To remain curious even when experience tells us we already know the answer. To try something we may initially be terrible at. To hold strong convictions without requiring them to survive every challenge.

And sometimes openness requires something that looks remarkably like its opposite. It means closing doors. Making the decision. Killing the idea we love because the evidence says it isn't working. Moving forward.

The goal isn't to remain uncertain forever. It is to remain willing to be changed by what we discover.

I certainly don't expect to reach the end of my life having been right about everything. Not even close. Some of the things I believe today will almost certainly prove incomplete. Some may simply be wrong. I hope I encounter people who challenge them, experiences that complicate them, and discoveries that force me to reconsider what I thought I understood.

What frightens me isn't discovering that I was wrong.

It's becoming so certain that I stop looking.