Card #96 – ”Exercise Humility” from the Creative Whack Pack
Available on the iOS App Store and as a physical deck of cards

On the morning of the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte smugly assured his generals:
“I tell you Wellington is a bad general, the English are bad soldiers; we will settle this matter by lunchtime.”
Within a few hours h was driven from the battlefield, and then spent the remainder of his life exied on a small spit of land in the south Atlantic.
If we’re repeatedly successful, we’re tempted to believe that we’ve found the formula for success and are no longer subject to human fallibility.
This is devastating to the creative process; in a world that is continually changing, every right idea is eventually the wrong one.
With an arrogant attitude, we cease paying attention to different points of view and information that contradicts our beliefs. We screen out the “boos” and amplify the “hurrahs.” We believe that we’re not subject to the same constraints as others.
For example, shortly before the Chernobyl (Ukraine) nuclear reactor melted down and exploded (1986), its engineering team (comprised of respected experts) won a distinguished award for operations excellence. The team felt that the safety rules they were asked to follow were designed much too narrowly for such an experienced group, and so they disregarded them during their reactor experiments.
The result was a great catastrophe, with considerable loss of human life and potential damage to untold future generations.
— How is your ego adversely affecting your judgment?
— Has arrogance clouded the way you think about your problem?
— Where have you been successful in the past when dealing with similar issues? Has this success made you less receptive to alternative approaches?
— Where might some humility benefit you?