Create the space for dialogue
Next time you’re afraid to share ideas, remember someone once said in a meeting let’s make a film with a tornado full of sharks.
I had to laugh about this advice, which received an automatic promotion into my future talks and presentations on creativity and innovation!
Hello there! Welcome to the Dialogic Learning Weekly. It’s Friday, February 20. I’m Tom, writing to you from Melbourne, Australia. Thanks for spending part of your day with me. Reach out with comments, questions and feedback at tom@dialogiclearning.com or on Twitter at @tombarrett. If someone forwarded you this email, subscribe to get the Dialogic Learning Weekly sent straight to your inbox.
In our last issue, we explored the notion of innate creative thinking. Today, we look at mental models associated with ideas, creativity, and originality.
Regardless of the model, we use to understand creativity, at its heart is a desire and an intention to be creative. Our focus will be: how we can create the right intention to be more creative.
Divergent thinking involves exploring lots of possible solutions to a problem. At the same time, convergent thinking looks for the correct answer to a specific problem.
Culturally, we are trained to think in ‘right or wrong’ terms and that the only way to be creative is to come up with new ‘right’ answers. When we feel like this, it is impossible to be genuinely innovative.
I often describe Divergent Thinking as a mode when we generate lots of different options. It is an expansive and open mode of thinking.
We narrow down the options in convergent thinking, finding a smaller selection of possibilities.
Convergent thinking is often described as a more analytical and closed mode. Usually, this is done by filtering or voting on collections of ideas or datasets.
When we think in convergent thinking mode, we are not open to new ideas because we attempt to make decisions.
Example questions to encourage convergent thinking:
Sometimes there can be a clash of people thinking in opposite modes. Which explains much of the conflict and idea squashing that can happen. This is a dynamic to look out for and facilitate with care.
The analogy is that the moment you get a great idea is like getting hit with a large jolt of electricity — your mind becomes excited and can’t wait to get started.
When looking for ideas, this is the feeling you want, so if it doesn’t happen right away, don’t worry. Keep asking questions until the jolt happens.
The more you can get in touch with your feelings of excitement about an idea, the closer you are to being creative.
According to this model, creativity is a habit that requires dedication and effort. This means while great ideas may come naturally to some people, they can also be developed by anybody who knows how to practice regularly.
By practising our creative thinking every day, we gradually retrain our brains to think in new ways, increasing our ability for originality and increasing the number of ideas we can develop.
A simple exercise you can use every day is to ask "What if…" and to follow with any question you feel inspired to ask. Some examples:
> What if I didn't have to work?
> What if we didn't have to travel?
> What if the students chose when to learn?
> What if we could harness energy from the wind?
> What if we create an app that makes it easy for people to water their gardens?
This model suggests that creativity isn’t only about understanding when and how to be creative and learning the correct type of thinking for a given situation.
Thinking of creativity and idea generation as a process also helps us manage and understand what we are doing and where we want to go.
We need to learn how to apply different types of thinking to different situations.
Complement this issue with my Atomic Essays: Solution Siren Call, Walt Disney Creative Strategy, Feedback is Oxygen For Your Ideas, Willful Blindness, Counter Wooden Headedness.
Thanks for taking a moment to join me this week — drop me an email at tom@dialogiclearning.com to connect and say hi. Or you can connect with me on Twitter > @tombarrett
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?
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.
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:
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.
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:
You can read the complete set of recommendations here from the State of Teams Report 2021 — Work Life by Atlassian.
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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.
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:
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”.
⟶ 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
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.
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:
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.
⟶ 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
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.
⟶ 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?
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Drafting or prototyping is one of the later stages of the design process. Our approach and mindset have the potential to influence anything we create.
The key to success: share your ideas early and often.
One of the simplest prototypes you can create is to describe your idea to someone else.
Your Minimum Verbal Prototype or MVP is a more rounded description of your idea — not just one of many ideas on a list. Your verbal outline creates the first impression and helps someone understand your initial intent.
The MVP is the kick to begin representing your idea in a more tangible way.
The Word prototype is from Greek prōtotypon “a first or primitive form,” from prōtos “first” + typos ‘impression, mould, pattern.”
A different way to approach prototyping is:
To engineer as many opportunities for feedback as you can.
Feedback is the main reason we share drafts. Rough and ready versions give us the chance to test and think about what works and what doesn’t.
And to truly understand how bad our ideas are.
When you share a First Verbal Prototype, you activate a feedback loop to develop your creative ideas.
Remember, the only thing worse than a bad idea is to isolate an idea from feedback for too long.
Feedback is oxygen for your ideas. It will help them grow and get stronger, starved of it, and your ideas weaken.
This 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.
Exactly the nourishment I need on a weekly basis.
⚡️ Subscribe now and get started this week.
