When the chair fears the creative mind, management shifts from producing achievement to weaving intrigue

By Abdullah Al-Omirah

Working life, wherever it may be in the world, is filled with contradictions.

It contains seriousness and play, diligence and laziness, calm and storms, creativity and stagnation, originality and repetition.

It contains intrigue, just as it contains integrity, honesty, and transparency.

Some people work to produce. Others pretend to work merely to remain in place. And some devote more effort to proving their presence than to creating any meaningful impact.

There is no perfectly comfortable workplace, no institution without problems, and no environment entirely free of negative people.

What is certain, however, is that humanity would never have progressed without creative minds—those who see what others do not, turn ideas into reality, and transform obstacles into roads.

If creativity in a supportive environment is an achievement, then creativity inside a fragmented or discouraging one is achievement multiplied.

It is the ability to continue producing extraordinary work in an environment that resists rather than supports you—one that tests your ability to survive more often than it examines the value of what you create.

In this article, I place several human and managerial models under the light, not because they are the most numerous, but because, when present, they are often the loudest and most influential. At times, they impose their own weakness upon an entire organization.

I value criticism not because life is not wonderful, nor because I search for flaws in everything beautiful, but because I can see in those I criticize a possible completeness they began constructing but never learned how to finish.

True criticism does not destroy a person.

It removes whatever conceals the finest part of them.

I begin with a familiar expression:

“Neither God nor conscience.”

The phrase does not question anyone’s faith. It metaphorically describes a person who behaves as though stripped of religious restraint, moral principle, and human feeling.

Some, however, add further emptiness to the description:

Neither God, nor conscience, nor knowledge, nor character.

When all four are absent, nothing remains in the scene but a large chair occupied by a very small man.

I remember the feudal landowner who stood before a group of impoverished farmers laboring under the sun. Raising his hands, he prayed loudly enough for everyone to hear:

“May God give you strength—but never make you rich.”

He wanted them strong enough to work and poor enough to remain.

He did not want to break them until they became useless, nor raise them until they no longer needed him.

This is not merely a story from the age of feudalism. Some managers still repeat the same prayer, having simply replaced the fields with offices, the hoe with a computer, and the estate with an administrative department.

They want people to be creative—but not creative enough to become known.

To succeed—but without receiving credit for their success.

To carry the institution—but never to raise their heads above the manager’s shoulder.

When a creative employee makes a mistake, the manager reaches for a loudspeaker.

When that employee succeeds, the manager closes his mouth and opens a drawer in which to bury the praise.

He believes that acknowledging talent creates a ladder, and that once the creative employee climbs one step, he may look toward the chair—and perhaps discover that the man sitting in it is shorter than he appeared from below.

That is why such a manager drives creative people away and surrounds himself with the mahateel.

Mahateel is the colloquial plural of ahtal: a foolish, dim-witted, or reckless person who lacks judgment and has little control over what he says.

The manager does not keep them close because they are better, but because none of them casts a shadow longer than his own.

The creative person unsettles him by asking, proposing, and comparing.

The empty person reassures him: nodding before understanding, applauding before listening, and crediting the manager with everything—even the sunrise.

A Western professor specializing in marketing and management once accepted a highly paid position in a Gulf country, entrusted with what appeared to be a promising mission.

She left before completing her first month.

She said they spent far more time weaving conspiracies than creating ideas.

She discovered that the organization possessed many looms, but not one of them was used to weave an idea.

Every thread led to a whispering campaign. Behind every door was a murmur. And every success required a committee to investigate the person responsible for it.

She left without regretting the enormous salary.

She had realized that money may purchase a creative person’s time, but it cannot buy their willingness to suffocate.

Does poverty produce creativity?

Need may awaken ingenuity, and hunger may compel someone to invent a way to reach a loaf of bread.

But hunger does not build a laboratory.

When poverty persists, it does not manufacture genius. It consumes concentration, erodes dignity, and leaves the creative person preoccupied with survival rather than innovation.

A creative person does not need a palace.

They need security that cannot be weaponized against them, room to ask questions without punishment, sufficient tools, the right to make mistakes, fair recognition, and a leader who is not afraid to see the people around them grow.

As for the official who has no word of his own, he resembles a polished storefront with nothing inside.

His opinion changes with everyone who enters. He signs whatever is placed before him, then devotes himself to polishing his image until he imagines that the shine of the frame will prevent people from looking at the painting.

He may succeed for a while.

An image travels faster than the truth, and flatterers are often more energetic than achievers.

But polishing cannot create metal.

A two-faced person is no more intelligent than anyone else.

He merely postpones the moment of his exposure.

He has one face for the meeting and another for the corridor; one position while you are present and its opposite after you leave.

Such a person should not be entrusted with a secret, nor should his promises be trusted.

Give him a document.

Paper does not have a second face.

Intrigue does not spread through the cunning of its author alone.

It also requires a mind prepared to believe it, an official who prefers a story that excuses him from investigating, and an unjust judge who fears retreat because he considers an apology a defeat.

That is why some people cling to their errors even after the truth has emerged.

It is not because they failed to understand it.

It is because they understood that acknowledging it would bring down the image they had spent a lifetime polishing.

The message to those who occupy the chairs is simple:

You may delay a creative person, but you cannot erase their value.

You may deny them recognition, but you cannot credit the lamp for the light when everyone knows where the electricity comes from.

And you may surround yourselves with applauding hands, but applause cannot run an institution when its walls begin to collapse.

Beware the moment when the creative person falls silent.

They may not have surrendered.

They may simply have found the door.

The creative person does not die inside the organization that fights them.

They leave.

It is the organization that slowly dies.