The person you disagree with may hold half the answer.
Creative Experience · Mary Parker Follett, 1924
In Creative Experience, published in 1924, Mary Parker Follett studies what happens between people who think, work and decide together. Read the book in full, and listen to a course of short lessons built on her central idea: a difference, looked at closely, can produce a solution nobody brought into the room.
Same facts, two camps, one vote
The meeting has run for forty minutes. Everyone has seen the same spreadsheet, and the room has still split in two. Someone suggests a vote so the matter can be closed: one side will win, and the other will spend the next year being polite about it. Nobody has yet asked what each side is actually trying to protect.
Mary Parker Follett knew this room well. In Boston she sat on minimum wage boards and watched employers, employees and the public arrive with three different sets of figures. In 1924 she published Creative Experience. Accurate facts, she argued, do not decide for us, and a compromise cuts away part of what each side wanted without creating anything new. Her own example was small. In a library she wanted the window shut, and someone else wanted it open. What she really wanted was no north wind blowing on her; what he wanted was more air. They opened a window in the next room, where nobody was sitting. She called this integration, and the book is about finding it in matters far larger than a window.
The Power of Acting Together
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Keep going with Creative Experience
The complete course has 31 episodes and 183 minutes of audio. One purchase per book, no subscription.
See all 31 episodesThe full course is coming to the App Store with Audeno.
What you will explore
The need behind the position
Follett’s first question about any demand is what it is a symbol of. Through her library window and her unfinished story of a dining table, the course shows how to separate what a person wants from the way they first proposed to get it, and why your guess about it has to be checked with them.
Influence runs both ways
Follett calls it circular response: you answer a person your earlier words have already changed, and their answer changes you. A manager who snaps at bad news starts hearing about problems later and later. Seeing the loop shows more points where it can be broken. It does not make everyone in it equally responsible: the manager still has more power to change the conditions.
Power that grows between people
Follett separates power-over, the ability to make others comply, from power-with, a capacity people develop together that none of them had alone. In the course this becomes practical: being asked while a plan is still forming is not the same as being asked to approve one that is finished.
Who the agreement leaves outside
A deal can satisfy everyone at the table and still send the cost to someone who was never there. Later lessons look at rules, measures and promises through their effect on different people, and at the limit Follett states herself: not every difference can be integrated.
Is this book for you?
- You showed everyone the numbers, and the meeting still went in circles.
- You were asked for feedback on a plan that had already been signed off.
- You won the argument, and working together has been harder ever since.
Seeing the Interaction
- 01Free
Facts Cannot Decide for Us
Lesson · 6 min · A work schedule reveals how accurate data meets the different circumstances of people’s lives.
- 02Free
You Change the Conversation. It Changes You.
Lesson · 7 min · A late warning to a manager reveals reciprocal influence and helps us see where responsibility lies.
- 03Free
A Purpose That Becomes Clearer Along the Way
Lesson · 6 min · A shared bookshelf shows how a purpose develops as people begin using what they have created.
- 04In the full course
The Problem Is Bigger Than One Person
Lesson · 6 min · Warehouse mistakes reveal the connections between attention, information, and the way work is organized.
- 05In the full course
Experience That Won’t Fit in a Drawer
Lesson · 6 min · A workshop revisits a failed attempt and identifies what actually went wrong.
- ↺In the full course
One Dinner, the Whole Situation
Review · 5 min · A dinner with friends brings together facts, reciprocal influence, and the chance to revise familiar conclusions.
Understanding Differences
- 06In the full course
Four Ways Through a Disagreement
Lesson · 6 min · Vacation plans help distinguish submission, domination, compromise, and integration.
- 07In the full course
What Are We Really Arguing About?
Lesson · 6 min · Follett’s unresolved story about a table shows why guesses about another person’s wishes need checking.
- 08In the full course
A Third Possibility
Lesson · 6 min · A library window and a modern film screening reveal how a different arrangement can meet people’s wishes.
- 09In the full course
When What We Want Begins to Change
Lesson · 6 min · Two friends plan an exhibition and gradually develop a different understanding of what matters to them.
- 10In the full course
The Limits of a Shared Solution
Lesson · 7 min · An accessible passage, freely given agreement, and a critical look at a historical example reveal the limits of a settlement.
- ↺In the full course
We Agreed. What Actually Changed?
Review · 6 min · Return to the opening courtyard to distinguish agreement, a new plan, and the overlooked costs of a decision.
Developing Shared Power
- 11In the full course
Power We Do Not Have to Take Away
Lesson · 6 min · Creating a play reveals power developed through working together and distinguishes it from team slogans.
- ❝In the full course
Working Together, Keeping Our Own Power
Author’s words · 2 min · An unabridged paragraph on farmers working together and freedom as an actual capacity to act.
- 12In the full course
Ask Before Everything Has Been Decided
Lesson · 7 min · A library renovation distinguishes early participation from approval of an already completed plan.
- 13In the full course
A Meeting Where an Idea Takes Shape
Lesson · 7 min · Morning traffic at a school becomes a shared inquiry rather than a contest of speeches.
- 14In the full course
Who Speaks for Us?
Lesson · 6 min · A schedule negotiation shows a representative’s two responsibilities: at the shared table and back with their own group.
- 15In the full course
A Small Group and a Larger World
Lesson · 6 min · A bus route reveals the different roles one person holds and the connections between smaller groups.
- ↺In the full course
Whose Voice Is Still Outside?
Review · 5 min · A neighborhood garden connects different ways to contribute, early influence, and accountable representation.
Experience That Lives On
- 16In the full course
The Rules Our Lives Help Create
Lesson · 6 min · After-hours messages show how practice creates expectations and changes through a new arrangement.
- 17In the full course
The Rule Works. But for Whom?
Lesson · 6 min · Shorter support calls reveal the difference between an improved measure and help that actually works.
- 18In the full course
A Promise in Changed Circumstances
Lesson · 6 min · A promise to help someone move reveals good faith, self-deception, and responsibility for consequences.
- 19In the full course
Keep What the Disagreement Taught Us
Lesson · 6 min · A double-booked room shows how a lesson can become a clear way of working together.
- 20In the full course
What Can Only Emerge Between Us
Lesson · 6 min · A conversation about photographs reveals how shared attention can help a thought find its own voice.
- ❝In the full course
Remaining Ourselves in a Shared Life
Author’s words · 3 min · An unabridged passage from the book’s conclusion on difference, freedom, and the hope of creating together.
A Conversation After the Book
- ?In the full course
Something New Comes Into Being Between Us
Conversation · 6 min · How a shared situation changes facts, participants, and the possibilities of understanding.
- ?In the full course
A Solution That Wasn’t There at First
Conversation · 6 min · From fixed positions to actual desires and a new possibility.
- ?In the full course
Power That Comes Into Being Together
Conversation · 6 min · Shared power, early participation, and representation that develops understanding.
- ?In the full course
What Our Encounter Calls Forth
Conversation · 7 min · Living rules, faithfulness to a promise, and capacities people awaken in one another.
In the author’s words
A few lines from the book, kept in context: each one leads to its place in the text.
Take a disagreement with someone: if we find that it was caused by a mere misunderstanding, there is little development there, but if we find that there was real difference and that we can unite what was of value in each point of view, it is a step in our growth. To keep to our own "side" either in the hope of downing the other side or in order to delimit the boundaries of the compromise is against all growth. We must guard against Mill's "deep slumber of a decided opinion." Our "opponents" are our co-creators, for they have something to give which we have not. The basis of all coöperative activity is integrated diversity.
Here we should have not necessarily the opposing, but the confronting, of interests. This confronting would make apparent many incompatibilities of interests, but does not judge the case beforehand as to what shall be done about it. Confront does not mean combat. In other words, it leaves the possibility of integrating as the method of the meeting of difference.
We should send our representatives not to win a victory but to come to some agreement on the basis of an enlarged understanding on both sides. We should send men to a "conference" to confer, not to fight for something already decided on before meeting; if the latter, they will use the balance of power of the moment, will rely on diplomacy and the handling of groups.
Creative Experience
Follett builds her argument from things she saw herself. Her Boston subcommittee found that most young working women in the city lived with their families, not in boarding-houses, and for weeks afterwards the main committee went on arguing as if they did. A businessman offered her free rein to study groups in his plant if she would write him a book on how to manipulate them. Both stories are in Creative Experience, and against manipulation she sets power that people develop with one another. The examples come from the factories, labor unions and farmers’ associations of the early 1920s; the questions are the ones people still ask on the way home from a bad meeting.
18 chapters · about 88,000 words
Contents
- Introduction
- Vicarious Experience: Are Experts the Revealers of Truth?01
- Vicarious Experience: Is the Legal Order the Guardian of Truth?02
- Experience in the Light of Recent Psychology: Circular Response03
- Experience in the Light of Recent Psychology: Integrative Behavior04
- Experience in the Light of Recent Psychology: The Gestalt Concept05
- Experience Not a Process of Adjustment06
- Experience Not a Verifying Process07
- Formulated Experience: The Relation of Percept to Concept08
- Experience as Creating09
- Power: The Condition of Its Validity10
- “Consent” Not the Technique of Democracy11
- A Participant Electorate12
- The Dynamics of Representation: A Non-Intellectualistic View13
- Law as Self-Creating from the Daily Activities of Men14
- The Limits of a Pragmatic Jurisprudence15
- The Creative Area of Law16
- Parallel Developments in Psychology and Law17
- Conclusion: Experience as Evocation18
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The Power of Acting Together: Creative Experience
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- Every quote, with its place in the text
- The introduction and the first three lessons
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Coming soon to the App Store in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Ukraine. Until then, the free episodes and the full text of this book are here on this site.
Questions
Is Creative Experience a book about art or creativity?
Not in the usual sense. Follett calls experience creative because people make it together: each response changes the situation it answers, and from that meeting new wishes, decisions and even rules can come. The book covers experts, conflict, power, participation, representation and law, and the first conversation after the course opens with exactly this question.
How long is the course, and what is free?
There are 31 episodes in each language: an introduction, 20 main lessons, three recaps, two readings from the book, a closing lesson and four conversations after it. In English the course runs a little over three hours, most episodes about six minutes. In the Audeno app on iPhone, the full text, the quotes, the introduction and the first three main lessons are free. One purchase, 4.99 USD in the US and adjusted by country, opens the whole course in every language it has now and later, today English and Ukrainian. No subscription, and the course can be downloaded for listening offline.
What does the purchase open?
The complete audio course of this book, all 31 episodes, in every language it has now and every language added later. One purchase at the App Store price, $4.99 in the United States, adjusted by country. No subscription.
Can I listen offline?
Yes. Each lesson downloads the first time you play it and then stays on the iPhone; a course you own can be downloaded whole for listening with no connection. The text and quotes are inside the app.
Also in Audeno
Creative Experience
In Creative Experience, published in 1924, Mary Parker Follett studies what happens between people who think, work and decide together. Read the book in full, and listen to a course of short lessons built on her central idea: a difference, looked at closely, can produce a solution nobody brought into the room.
Coming soon to the App Store. Until then, the free episodes and the full text of this book are here on this site.