A Quick Introduction to E-4
Do you want to build a business? Create a new product?
Do you want to live in a vibrant, evolving community or family?
Do you want to write a novel? Paint a picture? Re-write history?
E-4 is all about how we refine our understanding and practice of the creative process to improve our ability to generate results and engage positively in our work and lives.
The practice is comprised of modes, each a particular way of relating to and working with the creative endeavor. These modes describe your perspective on the creative possibilities and show you how creative engagement moves towards the evolution of the desired result. As we go deeper into our understanding we see then more refined descriptions of how to engage effectively.
- These modes are how successful creative people naturally work. Though even they can grow through learning how to more explicitly manage the process.
- The modes are not used in a particular sequence.
- Many times we move through the modes transparently, but for bigger projects and bigger groups the modes become more explicit.
- Each mode requires a particular focus of attention.
- The process acknowledges that you are working in a changing, evolving universe and to surf the waves of possibilities you need an acute level of attention and the ability to keep awake and aware.
You can learn to be a more powerful creative force.
Click through the process illustrations to see how E-4 illuminates the creative process.
Taking Aim and Taking Action are the first level of breaking out the details of the creative process. Taking Aim includes all the ways in which we decide and determine what we are creating (developing and managing our trajectory to the goal.) Taking Action includes the planning and doing which move us closer to our goal.
Taking Aim breaks down into two modes: Discovery and Design.
Discovery is the process of looking outward to see what exists that could participate in or influence your creative endeavor, and looking inward to see what ideas, intuitions, and potentials you have to inspire the ideas that are evolving.
Design is combining your knowledge and your inspirations into a broad vision and building the mental and physical components you need to do the work at hand.
Discovery decomposes into two modes: Survey, and Sense & Engage.
To Survey one studies what exists in the world that affects your creative process and feeds it back into the definition of what can be created. To Sense & Engage is to discover your creative intuitions, the future possibilities, and the potentials that can define and refine your goal, while helping to leverage it into reality.
Design has three modes:
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Envision - Create an illuminated vision of the goal and its meaning
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Align - Create alignment, or congruence, in beliefs, intents, and actions
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Embody - Create the capacity to physically and organizationally do the work required
Taking Action decomposes into two modes: Map and Maneuver (plan and do).
The new key here is that you define very specific planning horizons for your maneuvers and know that you will re-plan often to meet the new requirements of the evolving environment .
