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 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.
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.
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?
🔴 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.
This week I enjoyed reading about a new surgical instrument that a parasitic wasp inspired. Not so much the parasitic wasp part 🐝, but the origin story of the innovation.
Biomimicry
A team at Imperial College London are rapidly developing a robotic, flexible needle that can bend to reach difficult locations. The mechanism is inspired by female parasitoid wasps, which use a bendable needle-like ovipositor to bore into wood to lay eggs in hiding host larvae.
Serendipity is a beautiful thing! I stumbled on the unique qualities of this particular wasp when Professor Julian Vincent, who is a friend and colleague, explained at a dinner how the curved ovipositor worked. Suddenly, I wondered whether we could mimic this attribute in robotic medical technology to improve the delivery of treatments. … we now have a medical-grade, clinically sized working prototype, which we hope will ultimately improve outcomes and recovery times for patients with brain diseases.
This is an example of biomimicry. Might you be more familiar with the classic Velcro invention story? The hooks on plant seeds that help them disperse inspired George de Mestral to create the first hook and loop fastener.
Did you know that Velcro is a portmanteau of “velvet” and “crochet” (literally, “hook” in French).
Biomimicry is a practice that learns from and mimics the strategies found in nature to solve human design challenges — and find hope along the way.
Drawing inspiration from natural solutions requires a mindset ready for serendipity. The following mental model explains the reason why we often miss these moments of inspiration.
The Streetlight Effect
The Streetlight Effect can explain one block to new ideas and innovative solutions. You might have heard of this observational bias, demonstrated in the story of the drunk looking for his keys:
A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost. He says he lost his keys and they both look under the streetlight together. After a few minutes the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them here, and the drunk replies, no, and that he lost them in the park. The policeman asks why he is searching here, and the drunk replies, “this is where the light is”.
Sometimes people look for the next breakthrough idea in the most accessible place. They filter for ideas closely related to their work or too similar to their context. That search is doomed to mediocrity. At best, it was a marginal alteration and not the breakthrough they were hoping for.
It may be easier to look at what the school down the road is doing, but that limits what is possible.
The strategy that might be the key to your next breakthrough is to explore beyond your industry.
A lovely example that I often think about is the emergency doctors who consulted with Ferrari F1 mechanics to improve their intensive care unit handoff practice. The doctors at Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital had their moment of serendipity whilst watching the motor racing.
Another healthcare example is Rotterdam Eye Hospital, which implemented six aviation industry innovations such as black box recording, risk analysis, patient taxi service, and valet parking.
Observations indicated that the innovations positively affected quality and safety in the hospital: Waiting times were reduced, work processes became more standardised, the number of wrong-site surgeries decreased, and awareness of patient safety was heightened.
The next time you are at the idea generation stage, hit the pause button and recognise the bias of looking for inspiration in familiar places. Identify and explore similar experiences.
In my previous post about the Spaces You Need to Innovate I explored a range of specific domains of thinking and practice that impact on your ability to innovate.
Each space contributes to the culture and in particular the conditions for innovation. Some spaces are more prominent and noticeable than others, whereas some have a more significant influence than others but cannot be seen.
In this follow up post, I share a few further examples of ‘spaces‘ that seem to influence our ability to bring ideas to fruition.
Digital Space
Technology has always been part of my work as a teacher and as a consultant. I have seen how students can work together on ideas from the the very earliest days of collaborative docs to blogging.
More recently there are a whole plethora of tools that allow remote teams to operate and innovate together. Without such a Digital Space remote teams would not exist.
I wonder if a complimentary Digital Space has become a default arena which helps innovation projects. When digital spaces operate effectively, they improve communication (outside of email), facilitate collaboration and allow for improved project management.
I am still not completely convinced you need a Digital Space for creative, innovative work. Although it has become a standard space for us to operate it in, a Digital Space seems a “nice to have” not a “must have”.
That said, asynchronous work needs to occur somewhere and digital spaces offer us great opportunities for staying connected and organised. What do you think?
Relational Space
“I prefer to bounce ideas of other people.” How regularly have you heard colleagues, friends and peers say something similar?
A strong contender for a fundamental space for innovation is the opportunity to share the innovative work with others. Encased within this effort is, of course, the process of collaboration which defines many projects. It is rare for us to have to implement creative projects alone.
The Relational Space for Innovation not only refers to the level of collaboration that fundamental but also to the quality of the relationships that exist.
We might consider these relationships as being central to the work taking place: colleagues you are working with, teams and others you consult directly regarding the project.
Relationships exist obliquely too. These might be the fundamental relationships between the industry and stakeholders, or even those indirectly impacted by your work.
Whichever type the Relational Space for Innovation is a key component; the quality of the relationships at the heart of the innovation process is directly proportional to the likelihood of success.
Developmental Space
My final contender, in this blog post, is the Developmental Space to Innovate. I define this space as the room you have developmentally to explore new projects, programmes or opportunities.
In a previous article (Innovation Compression) I explored the situation when new programmes and initiatives pile up. Despite the best of intentions we need to clear the way for new developmental work.
How much is on your plate right now? Are those who bought the crockery removing stuff as well as piling things on?
Innovation compression might be when good ideas or innovative programmes are introduced [forced] into a space still occupied by previous innovations. Programmes get compacted as nothing is removed, nothing is freed up. This is about new and old(er) innovations attempting to co-exist and it typically leads to a reduction in efficacy of the newer innovation. I suppose the incumbent might hold existing ground and resources.
If the Developmental Space is not available we will be fighting for attention, resources and energy at every turn. The Developmental Space for our new thinking, renewal projects and creative ideas is key.
FREE Bonus Innovation Resource
My innovation resource explores the conditions for innovation at different levels of an organisation and offers some great prompts for improving your innovation culture.
The PDF resource includes
Question and Dialogue Prompt Cards
Explores the common emotional blocks to creativity
Extends the ideas through various levels of an organisation
Builds on known innovation models
Download your copy of the resource by subscribing to my small but perfectly formed newsletter, the Dialogic Learning Weekly – ideas and insight about Innovation, Leadership and Learning,
Innovation is a process with a range of other ideas nested within it. When you peer inside you see creativity, curiosity, feedback and taking action. All interdependent and collectively they might be called innovation.
When you think of the “space to innovate” what immediately springs to mind? The physical environment around you? Space where you might develop ideas? Alternatively perhaps something about the time you have available?
During my work with architects and learning environment projects over the last eight years, I have started to identify a richer, more complex, set of spaces and dependencies. Beyond just the physical space we design.
Each space contributes to the culture and in particular (for this blog post at least) the conditions for innovation. Some spaces are more prominent and noticeable than others, whereas some have a more significant influence than others but cannot be seen.
For each concept, I have shared some initial thoughts, links and quotes. Each section concludes with some small steps, Protocols and Practices you might take to encourage thinking about it’s relationship to your innovation efforts. You will see these in the green blocks like this one.
To conclude the article I have shared a mental model to explore the relationship between the different spaces. I am interested in what happens when one of these spaces is missing or poorly resourced. What impact might this have on the overall Space for Innovation.?
One of the first times I consciously experienced the impact of the physical environment on my thinking was when organising some of the first Teachmeets in my region back in England.
I was able to secure a modern, purpose-built professional learning space for an inaugural TeachMeet in the Midlands and it was a considerable departure from the Victorian school buildings I was accustomed.
The physical environment signalled collaboration and connection as well as high expectations. It was an inspiring place to plan and develop the event.
Of course, the impact of the physical space on our ability to innovate can be unconsciously negative. We normalise our surroundings pretty quickly and so get used to a lack of collaboration, visibility or space to externalise our ideas.
Physical spaces for innovation have become a little cliche. Whiteboards and open spaces, you don’t have to go far to find image galleries of all sorts of workspaces squarely designed for innovation and creativity.
On a much more personal level, the physical space for innovation may look very different for each of us. Fresh air and exercise is an excellent primer for new thinking. Or perhaps you prefer the utility of the whiteboard and the proximity to abundant post-it note supplies.
Of the spaces I am exploring in this post, the Physical Space for Innovation is the most observable. Take a look around you now dear reader; you can quickly judge your surroundings for yourself in how much they are the right conditions for curiosity and ideas.
Protocols and Practices > Triage your space for what is not needed or used infrequently. > Create visible spaces for externalising and storing your ideas. > Change things up – get outside, get out of the room.
Temporal Space
A further space that often conceals the opportunity for innovation is Time. It is one of the most critical aspects of creating the right conditions for change and new ideas to flourish.
It is not just about the amount of time we have but the way we use that time. Too much haste is an emotional block to creativity and will likely push people away from exploring original ideas.
Think carefully about how the pace of thinking and work is being used to suit the needs of different people. Vary the pace to allow everyone the opportunity to share ideas and develop original concepts.
Just as “one size does not fit all” – when it comes to the Temporal Space for Innovation one pace does not fit all.
There’s never enough time to do all the nothing you want.
Bill Watterson
The structure of Time can be lightly resting on us, or it can create pressure. A pressure to perform, create or submit ideas by a deadline. This false-haste can have a negative impact. We need time to play.
John Cleese explains it well:
The open mode is a relaxed, expansive, and less purposeful mode in which we’re probably more contemplative, more inclined to humour (which always accompanies a wider perspective), and, consequently, more playful. It’s a mood in which curiosity for its own sake can operate because we’re not under pressure to get a specific thing done quickly. We can play, and that is what allows our natural creativity to surface.
In schools, we organise time into a table. That enduring structure can dictate the experience way beyond the original remit. Blocks of time signal the start and end of thinking or work. Often days are punctuated by a rhythm a long way from what might be considered ideal for play, deep thinking and innovation.
We might have beautiful, creative physical spaces but time structures that do not match. We have to pay attention to them both.
Protocols and Practices > Explore different times of day for development work. > Protect longer blocks of time you have set aside for deeper work. > Look at the medium to long-term provision of quality project time.
Cognitive Space
The further we are from the Physical the more difficult it is to observe these concepts. The Cognitive Space for Innovation refers to the capacity we have for thinking in a playful, creative and exploratory way.
When our thoughts are swamped or overwhelmed with too many projects, deadlines and tasks it is very difficult to be able to commit to the challenge of innovative work.
You will always be able to pick those moments when your Cognitive Space is crowded, or when your colleagues say, “I don’t have time for that now.” We need to ensure we clear some room for the wide-ranging thinking that innovation requires.
One of my favourite mental models is the analogy of the mind used by Sherlock Holmes. He describes the (Cognitive Space) as an attic. You may have heard of Attic Theory. This passage from a Study in Scarlet explains it some more:
“You see,” he explained, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these, he has a large assortment and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”
A Study in Scarlet – Arthur Conan Doyle
Attic Theory is an excellent example of applying a physical space analogy to the Cognitive Space between our ears.
The Cognitive Space for Innovation is something that can be hidden to us. Teachers, facilitators and leaders need to carefully uncover the signals of an overcrowded cognitive space.
My favourite method is to ask “What is on your mind?” to a group. Give it a try and then adapt what you are about to do in response.
Protocols and Practices > Identify ways to relieve the pressure so others can focus. > Pay attention to the number of active projects and programmes. > Ask “What is on your mind?” to allow the pressures to be shared.
Emotional Space
“Head, heart and hands” right? The Emotional Space for Innovation is a close ally to the Cognitive Space. The Emotional Space for Innovation for me refers to the commitment, passion and purpose each person has.
This space is about how much we care about the ideas and challenges we are exploring. Perhaps it is linked to whether the people in your team have self-selected (see Agentic) to be there or they have been told.
In teaching, we often talk about how our relationships are at the centre of what we do and how to engage students on an emotional level. Deep down this is true for creating the right conditions for innovation and creativity.
It is literally neurobiologically impossible to think deeply about things that you don’t care about.
So our neurobiology dictates terms when it comes to purposeful work. Regardless of the Physical, Temporal or Cognitive Space, unless we care, we will always be working against a neurobiological tide.
Protocols and Practices > Take your time to connect to the wider purpose of your work. > Use empathy activities (like shadowing) to connect with others. > Regularly re-establish the emotional connection to the task.
Agentic Space
Many of us have experienced this particular space, mainly due to the lack of agency we have. The Agentic Space for Innovation is the room we have to define our own experience.
Put a different way it is how much license we have to implement new ideas. This type of space impacts the pointy end of any innovation process, the implementation and application of ideas.
Without agency, innovation can falter. I sit here writing this thinking I have complete agency over my work. I have control over my calendar and who I work with. As a small business owner, if there is a new idea I want to implement, I don’t need to seek permission or beg for forgiveness.
Collective agency – coordinate with others to secure what cannot be accomplished in isolation.
Personal agency – act with intention, forethought, self-reactiveness, self-reflectiveness to secure a desired outcome.
Which do you most commonly experience during Innovation processes? I would hazard a guess that Collective Agency is the most frequent experience. This is due to the collaborative nature of innovation.
If we are relying on other people, we have very little ability to act with intention and purpose.
The Agentic Space for Innovation may well be a circuit breaker. With all others in play, we may still be waiting for the permission from others. Consider how you might de-couple teams and colleagues enough to have a more open Agentic Space for innovation.
Protocols and Practices > Establish how much agency a team has from the beginning. > Reinforce the permissive culture within the project. > B authentic about follow through and implementing ideas.
What happens to innovation when one of these spaces is missing?
The relationship between these spaces is perhaps the most interesting aspect of this work. They each depend on each other in varying forms. Let’s explore some of the potential ripple effects if we have a space that is not functioning well.
What do you think?
When you don’t have the Physical space for innovation, the process takes longer. This might be true because there is less visibility of ideas and progress, fewer opportunities for working collaboratively and poorer communication between teams.
If our Cognitive space is crowded and overwhelming us, we will likely only engage at the surface level. The commitment to the work will probably wain over time as other competing agendas and projects take their toll. Mental energy is limited.
Time is a crucial ingredient for any creative or innovation work. Without enough quality time, ideas might become less ambitious and revert to safe bets.
Without the Emotional commitment to the work, we get projects that fizzle out. We don’t see the connection to the broader purpose and start to reduce our energy and effort as the drive is not there. Fighting our neurobiology is futile.
If we are trying to innovate without Agency in a culture that historically moderates heavily from the top-down, it creates apathy. Why bother getting invested in innovation when nothing changes? Why should we care when the decision is out of our hands?
Other Spaces
This article is not an exhaustive list so let me know what different types of spaces for innovation you might add.
While I have been working on the post, I have been wondering about the Digital space for innovation as remote teams across the world build software products together.
Alternatively the Collaborative space for innovation which directly refers to the overlapping physical and digital spaces we use for creating ideas together.
From an education perspective, the concept of a Pedagogical Space for Innovation is interesting. The room provided in the approach to teaching and learning for change and renewal.
This article is an exploration of some emerging ideas, and I would be pleased to hear from you in the comments about each of the different concepts.
FREE Bonus Innovation Resource
My innovation resource explores the conditions for innovation at different levels of an organisation and offers some great prompts for improving your innovation culture.
The PDF resource includes
Question and Dialogue Prompt Cards
Explores the common emotional blocks to creativity
Extends the ideas through various levels of an organisation
Builds on known innovation models
Download your copy of the resource by subscribing to my small but perfectly formed newsletter, the Dialogic Learning Weekly – ideas and insight about Innovation, Leadership and Learning,
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.
