Category: Creativity

If You’re The 1st Responder To New Ideas, You Have A Critical Job

Creativity, CuriosityPublished onUpdated onLeave a Comment on If You’re The 1st Responder To New Ideas, You Have A Critical Job

You get a moment to choose.

Your decision influences the dynamic of talk and wonder, whether you like it or not.

The pocket-sized hidden curriculum encourages or dampens enthusiasm-worse still, it spirals into self-preservation.

Questions litter the learning space in the primary and early years, often strewn around quite randomly.

I was once asked, If a pea had a brain, how big would it be?

Mourn Those Precious Little Sparks

These precious sparks exist momentarily, but the impact of our response to questions has an extended half-life.

Each of us is born with two contradictory sets of instructions: a conservative tendency, made up of instincts for self-preservation, self-aggrandisement, and saving energy, and an expansive tendency made up of instincts for exploring, for enjoying novelty and risk. We need both. But whereas the first tendency requires little encouragement, the second can wilt if it is not cultivated.

Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

How you react to ideas is comparable. Consider the response when new ideas or contributions are shared in your team. There is a fundamental similarity to this moment of micro-judgement.

I wonder how the tiny moments of judgement or encouragement shape the climate of our teams? My hunch is, over time, they shape our experience in a significant way.

Culture Is Key To Innovation Potential

The Australian software company Atlassian recently published results of a study into the health of teams with evidence from 1,500 team members outside of Atlassian in the US and Australia. They found that 88% of participants are operating in an ‘unhealthy’ environment.

56 percent feel their team is poorly connected on a personal level, and 37 percent feel like they can’t try new things or express themselves fully.

This is the outcome of the block we started to explore, the micro-judgement of new ideas (or questions).

I wonder why 37 percent of participants can’t express themselves fully? The reasons for holding back might be:

  • fear of being penalised unnecessarily
  • perceived lack of impact or influence
  • worries about how their manager will respond
  • fear of not looking like a team player (they don’t want to appear different)

The Hidden Curriculum of Your Teams

I’ve seen this happen many times. A team member shares something new, and others require an immediate response in the group. Someone questions it confidently (because decades of experience tell them it’s not worth exploring), and the others on the team nod (because they’re too afraid to be the first one out). The new idea is squashed.

It takes more courage to applaud someone who shares new ideas than put them down.

What does this do, though, in the long term? If we belittle, shoot down or diminish new ideas or people who present them, the person might learn that it’s not safe to share in this environment.

In our study, members of healthy teams noted feeling a sense of belonging and support for new ideas. This creates an environment of high engagement, which, in turn, serves as a buffer against burnout and fuels even higher performance.

The first responder to questions or new ideas sets the tone.

Your Talking Points

A few weeks ago, I shared the mental model of compounding in issue 237.

Unnecessary negative micro-judgement of new ideas compounds, the result is unhealthy teams — an example of how compounding works even for negative behaviours.

Your challenge is to notice the first responder and reflect on what behaviours and responses are your standard.

Some of the report’s takeaways direct leaders to focus on encouraging ideas and are worth discussing with your colleagues. Let me draw your attention to these below:

  • Carve out time to explore new ideas, both individually and as a team.
  • Make space for calculated risks and incorporate the lessons you learn.
  • Elevate the importance of diverse viewpoints and make space for respectful dissent.​

You can read the complete set of recommendations here from the State of Teams Report 2021 — Work Life by Atlassian.

My weekly email helps educators and innovation leaders enhance their practice by sharing provocations, ideas and mental models. Join today, and get your copy this week.​

Be More In Love With The Problem Than The Solution

CreativityPublished onUpdated onLeave a Comment on Be More In Love With The Problem Than The Solution

In a creative development process, a common problem I come across is the rush to jump headlong into solving, fixing, and idea mode. 

Here’s why we need to trade assumptions and ambiguity for empathy and understanding.

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Photo by Jiroe on Unsplash

When you come up with an idea, and go “aha!” and you fall in love with it. You assume it’s the right answer and keep moving forward. ~ Suzanne Pellican

Clinging onto ideas and falling for our first creative sparks can lead to heartbreak.

This is a common problem during a creative development process. We jump headlong into solving, fixing, and idea mode.

We want to share ideas too soon and then get smitten. Stuck, we trade ideas disconnected from the real issue.

One of the main reasons this is often ill-fated is we base our creative thinking on assumptions and ambiguity.

We need to slow the pace down and stay in the question or problem for longer. More empathy and understanding creates waves of benefit that ripple through the rest of the process:

  • We increase our focus on exactly what it is we are solving.
  • We clarify who needs our help the most.
  • We challenge any assumptions that are floating around in the team.
  • We are more precise when it comes to developing solutions.

The time we spend in the problem state is often much more important than jumping to ideas.

Be more in love with the problem than the solution.

Your Talking Points

  • Don’t allow your tendency to want to fix things or jump to ideas, get in the way.
  • Stay open to what the real challenge is for the people that you’re trying to help.

Counter Wooden-Headedness and Break Your Echo Chambers

Creativity, Decision MakingPublished onUpdated onLeave a Comment on Counter Wooden-Headedness and Break Your Echo Chambers

This article explores the importance of ‘good conflict’ in idea generation, decision making, and leadership teams. Add some mental models to your cognitive toolkit to help you develop collective intelligence.

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Photo by Bruno Aguirre on Unsplash

Break Your Echo Chambers

For the first time in my life, the England football team made it to a final of a major competition, the European Championship.

The last time was 1966 when we won the World Cup. Fifty-five years of waiting. (update: still waiting, congratulations Italy)

A lot of attention and credit has gone to Gareth Southgate, the manager of the England football team. I enjoyed Matthew Syed’s article about his leadership and multi-faceted team.

Syed explores the limitations of a homogenous team of like-minded experts.

You would have an echo chamber. They would reflect each other’s assumptions back to each other. It would be comfortable, chummy and consensual. It would also be monolithic and non-creative.

The FA Technical Advisory Board has been advising on performance and development since 2016 and consists of a broad range of different backgrounds:

  • Kath Grainger, an Olympic rower
  • Stuart Lancaster, the rugby coach
  • Manoj Badale, a tech entrepreneur
  • Sir Dave Brailsford, a cycling coach
  • Colonel Lucy Giles, a college commander at the Sandhurst Military Academy
  • David Sheepshanks, the mastermind behind the St George’s Park national football centre.

the group is capable of offering fresh insights on preparation, diet, data, mental fortitude and more. This is sometimes called “divergent” thinking to contrast it with the “convergence” of echo chambers.

Syed concludes by explaining that:

The key is to bring people together whose perspectives are both relevant to the problem, and which are also different from each other. This maximises both “depth” and “range” of knowledge — leading to “collective intelligence”.

Your Talking Points

⟶ How are you creating “depth” and “range” in your team recruitment?

⟶ How are you exploring beyond your industry for insights and innovations?

Euros 2020: What all of us can learn from Gareth Southgate
Part of Gareth Southgate’s success could be his willingness to turn to football outsiders to help prepare his England…www.bbc.com

Counter Wooden-Headedness

The acceptance of divergence and good conflict led me to think about the Tenth Man Principle. This is a mental model or dialogue protocol that has resonated with me for a long time.

The Tenth Man is a devil’s advocate. If there are 10 people in a room and nine agree, the role of the tenth is to disagree and point out flaws in whatever decision the group has reached.

This approach originated after the Yom Kippur War (known in the Arab World as the Ramadan War) in 1973. The Israeli Defence Force’s Intelligence Directorate created a Red Team, a devil’s advocate team that can challenge prevalent assumptions within intelligence bodies.

We have three intertwined mental models or structures we might use.

  • The Tenth Man Principle
  • A Red Team
  • The Devil’s Advocate

You will be familiar with the Devil’s Advocate, a discourse convention of prefacing a dissenting viewpoint with, ‘just to play Devil’s Advocate.’

A Red Team — terminology from the world of security systems — is set up to deliberately challenge and stress a plan or structure to identify weaknesses. We can use this idea to explore alternative viewpoints or offer critique on a proposed project.

The author, William Kaplan, finishes with broader brush strokes. He extends the Tenth Man concept beyond military intelligence and frames the problem in the words of historian Barbara Tuchman as ‘wooden-headedness’.

Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists of assessing a situation in terms of preconceived or fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts. ~ Barbara Tuchman

The Tenth Man Principle and the Red Team or Devil’s Advocate Team are protocols to counter fixed or closed-mindedness.

The purpose of the Tenth Man Principle is to:

  • Challenge conventional and received wisdom;
  • Look at things creatively, independently, and from a fresh perspective;
  • Engage actively with and reconsider the status quo;
  • Search for information and arguments that contradict theses;
  • Provide a sounding board for anyone who wishes to raise issues;
  • Explore alternative assumptions and worst-case scenarios.

This list is a robust set of critical thinking intentions, which in the aggregate, define open-mindedness. We need to increase our open-mindedness to develop innovative solutions to complex problems.

Your Talking Points

⟶ How is your team identifying your assumptions and actively challenging the status quo?

⟶ Discuss the potential trap of missing the best solution because you seek harmony and consensus.

How Israeli intelligence failures led to a ‘devil’s advocate’ role
The October 1973 Yom Kippur War, known in the Arab World as the Ramadan War, showed the risks to Israel of…www.thestar.com

The Value of Dissent and Conflict

When we generate ideas, conventional wisdom encourages a zero feedback zone. We often withhold criticism and feedback as we are sharing ideas. But perhaps that is not always the best technique.

According to research by Charlan Nemeth, and her team, a degree of conflict can increase the number of ideas we generate.

The approach they outline is to encourage open debate and feedback as ideas are shared. Participants are encouraged to communicate freely and not limit any reaction or contribution.

They describe a 25% increase in ideas generated from a debate and critique approach than straightforward brainstorming tasks.

The paper offers some connected insights to our exploration of the value of conflict and diverse teams. Here are some highlights, the second quote directly links to the Tenth Man Principle:

The notion that groups perform better when they share and even confront differences bears some resemblance to the research on the value of dissent and diversity. Diversity is often found to aid the quality of decisions, presumably because of the multiple perspectives that it provides.

in more naturalistic settings, there is evidence that groups with a dissenter make better decisions. Organizations fare better when dissent is valued and expressed.

A further detail referenced in the paper offers some insight into whether it is better to generate ideas on your own or within a team:

individuals working separately generate many more, and more creative (as rated by judges) ideas than do groups, even when the redundancies among member ideas are deleted.

This insight emphasises the importance of designing time to work solo before other team structures for idea generation.

Your Talking Points

⟶ Is there enough trust in this team to use deliberate debate? (see link below to explore this further)

⟶ How do you provide individual time to generate ideas alongside team sessions?

This article is a snippet of my Dialogic Learning Weekly. ⚡A weekly email designed to build your cognitive toolkit and enhance your practice. It saves you time and provokes your thinking.

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5 Methods For Creatives To Overcome The Crippling Blocks To Original Ideas

CreativityPublished onUpdated onLeave a Comment on 5 Methods For Creatives To Overcome The Crippling Blocks To Original Ideas

Did you know that you judge ideas more harshly when you feel uncertain?

In this article, we explore some of the crippling blocks to creativity and five methods to overcome them.

William Blake reminded us — in chilling words — that the person who does not alter their opinion in the face of new knowledge is like a “stagnant pool which breeds reptiles of the mind” — Photo by Krystian Piątek

What gets in your way?

Your fear of making mistakes or taking a risk is one of the most common emotional blocks to your creativity.

James L. Adams, the author of Conceptual Blockbusting, also lists “an inability to tolerate ambiguity and the overriding desire for order” as a block.

You can jump down this rabbit hole if you like 🐇 6 Emotional Barriers to Generating Ideas and How to Overcome Them

Here’s @JimAdamsSU again

You must usually wallow in misleading and ill-fitting data, hazy and difficult-to-test concepts, opinions, values, and other such untidy quantities.

When it comes to problem-solving, your ability to tolerate ambiguity is vital. This emergent idea space is where you make unexpected insights and new connections.

If you’re in a truly new space, you won’t always know the answer. Your team won’t either. You’re going to venture into the unknown together. Curiosity is a great way to lead that charge.

@IDEO Tim Brown 

Negative Bias Towards Creative Ideas

Your inability to tolerate ambiguity also means you don’t appreciate a new idea when you see one.

A 2011 study by Jennifer Mueller whilst at the University of Pennsylvania, points to an underlying negative bias towards new ideas when we feel uncertainty.

Our results show that regardless of how open minded people are, when they feel motivated to reduce uncertainty either because they have an immediate goal of reducing uncertainty, or feel uncertain generally, this may bring negative associations with creativity to mind which result in lower evaluations of a creative idea.

What’s Blocking Corporate Creativity?

When you attempt to reduce uncertainty, you are less receptive to promising ideas.

This negative bias compounds in scenarios that need your creativity. These scenarios are often periods of change or transition, which bring more ambiguity.

Phew, let’s rest here a while. How about some Calvin + Hobbes inspiration on getting in the creative mood?

Do some of these blocks resonate? 

🔴 Fear of making mistakes
🔴 Inability to tolerate ambiguity

Let’s have a look at some methods to help overcome these challenges.

Five methods for overcoming common blocks to creative work.

1 ⟶ Write a Catastrophic Expectations Report

Keep it all in perspective by writing a report on the worst-case scenario. What is the worst that could happen? Analyse the details.

swap your analytical capability for your fear of failure — a good trade 

2 ⟶ Create with others

Team up with trusted colleagues to create and share your ideas. Fears and uncertainty almost always reduce (or at least, fade) in a collective.

3 ⟶ Trust a process

Do you have a clear method to follow? We tend to tolerate more ambiguity when we know there are discrete phases. It is not going to be ambiguous forever.

4 ⟶ Activate feedback loops

The sooner you can jump into the iterative process of sharing, the sooner you increase your tolerance for ambiguity. Identify a trusted feedback buddy and talk about your ideas.

5 ⟶ Review Your Success Swipefile

Anchor your creative work in past success. Swipe through previous ideas, projects and periods of creativity that illustrate how you can overcome any fear or uncertainty. Bookmark those moments, note how you can reprise what worked.

Quick recap

⟶ You judge ideas more harshly when you feel uncertain
⟶ Fear of making mistakes is a common block to creativity

⚡️Write a Catastrophic Expectations Report
⚡️Create with others
⚡️Trust a process
⚡️Activate feedback loops
⚡️Review Your Success Swipefile

One final thought. This beautiful description from author @danijshapiro makes me smile, as it captures the challenge of doing, crafting and shipping creative work.

#antifragile

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Time for Creativity in Schools

CreativityPublished onUpdated onLeave a Comment on Time for Creativity in Schools

Shaking off old timetabling structures will to be one of the most significant challenges our schools face in becoming more creative organisations.

On the one hand, schools are developing incredible curriculum opportunities and learning spaces for students to think and work creatively. Also, on the other hand timetabling of a student’s day remains very similar to what it was like 10, 20, even 30 years ago. I am sure you remember the tone of your school bell telling you to stop thinking and move on to your next lesson.

Many of the working norms of timetabling have not changed in line with new thinking about learning and creativity. Constructs such as time have merely lingered as part of the school experience.

The basic grammar of schooling, like the shape of classrooms, has remained remarkably stable over the decades. Little has changed in the ways that schools divide time and space, classify students and allocate them to classrooms, splinter knowledge into ‘subjects’ and award grades and ‘credits’ as evidence of learning. (Hoffstetter 2013)

“Changes in Mass Schooling:‘school Form’and ‘grammar of Schooling’as Reagents.” European Educational Research Journal 12.2 (2013): 166-175.

Hofstetter, Rita, and Bernard Schneuwly.

It would seem that some of those lingering structures might be getting in the way.

I am not proposing students spend their time with open agendas and no structure, lolling around being “creative”. We can strike a balance in school timetables between the standard lesson block structure and uninterrupted time to become more deeply immersed in creative learning.

Schools understand the need for their students to be creative, but that might mean only on a Thursday afternoon in a 50 minute period. This flies in the face of what we know about creativity.

In the recent Netflix original documentary, The Defiant Ones, Dr Dre the rap artist, producer and entrepreneur points out:

You never know when you’re going to be inspired and what’s going to inspire you. You can’t put a time limit on creativity.

Dr Dre

Unfortunately, I don’t have a beach-side recording studio to retreat to, but I can relate to how I get immersed in creative work. I am sure you will also have experienced when ideas come to you at different times. How might we adjust the learning environment to reduce the barriers to this type of immersive creative work?

The blocks to being creative are deeply connected to the time we have available to us. According to James Adams in his acclaimed book Conceptual Blockbusting, we face a range of emotional blocks to the creative process.

These behaviours and habits stultify our creative endeavours, and they are accurate in education as well as business.

  • A fear to make mistakes, to fail, to risk.
  • Preference for judging ideas rather than generating them.
  • No tolerance for ambiguity or chaos.
  • A lack of challenge – not engaging enough.
  • Excessive zeal – too much speed, pace and haste.
  • An inability to relax and to incubate ideas.

As school leaders, we have to overcome these blocks to nurture conditions for children to be actively creative little souls and provide an environment for innovative learning and teaching design.

What might these conditions include? What principles can we use to guide us? I recently re-discovered this lovely essay on creativity by Issac Asimov, in which he offers some thoughts on creating the conditions for others to generate ideas:

  • Daring cross-connection
  • Free of responsibility
  • Thoroughly relaxed
  • Deep knowledge
  • Discussing something of interest
  • Being by nature unconventional

Organising a timetable that functions efficiently and also embraces Asimov’s conditions, providing the appropriate time and pace for our students to be genuinely creative is a complicated issue. It will be one of the most significant hurdles for our schools to overcome and is a vital component of contemporary learning design. However, changing the way we organise time might be the key to unlocking the ideal conditions for creativity in schools.