What is half of 8? Most people would immediately think that the right and only answer is the number 4. Why? Because we all learn mathematics in school, and it teaches us that half of 8 is 4. But what if we look at the number visually? We can cut or fold the number 8 into two equal parts. If we cut or fold 8 horizontally, we would get the number 0 or the letter o, depending on whether the number or the alphabet come to mind first, as the half of 8. And if we cut or fold 8 vertically, we would get 3 or , depending on which way we look at it. And if we fold randomly (not horizontally or vertically) from the middle of 8, we could get even more answers.
Now look at this for a moment: O. What is it? Again, most people would think about the number 0, the letter O, or a circle. How many of you would come up with answers like an egg, a top view of a cup, the earth from outer space, a coin, a snake eating away at its own tail? Not many maybe, and if you are one of the few who saw possibilities beyond a number, letter or…a cirlce, consider yourself lucky as you have retained the ability to think beyond the obvious.
If you are one of the majority, don’t feel bad either, as most of us have been conformed either by what we have learnt in school and how we think people (our boss, our teacher from school, the society) expect us to answer the question. Humans are social beings who follow external expectations to various extents. The tighter our relationship is with other people and the tighter the society we live in, the more pressure we seem to get to fulfill others’ expectations.
Here’s a story that will highlight both how most of us have become conformist thinkers, and how we can break out of that mold to become creative thinkers.
In 1905 Niels Bohr sat a physics exam at the University of Copenhagen, in which he was required to answer a question on how to use a barometer to measure the height of a building. According to Arthur J. Cropley in “Creativity in Education and Learning” (2001), the expected answer was “to use the barometer to measure the air pressure at ground level and at the top of the building, calculating the height of the building from the difference between the two.”
Bohr’s response to the question was to attach the barometer to a long string, and lower the barometer until it reached the ground. By measuring the length of the string and the height of the barometer, one could obviously get the height of the building. Not a wrong answer, but not the answer expected by the teacher. Bohr failed the exam. Upon Bohr’s appeal at the outcome, it was determined that although Bohr’s answer was not incorrect, it “showed no knowledge of physics”. Bohr was given a few minutes to demonstrate such knowledge.
Apart from giving the right answer expected by the teacher, Bohr gave other alternatives that demonstrate his knowledge of physics. One of the alternatives was to “throw the barometer off the roof and count the seconds until it hits the ground. Calculate the height of the building with the formula s=1/2at².” Another alternative was to “measure the length of the barometer and of its shadow and calculate the ratio of the two. Measure the length of the shadow of the building and multiply it by the same ratio.”
He even mentioned several other alternatives unrelated to physics. They include “climbing up the fire escape and marking off the height of the building in barometer lengths (using the barometer as yardstick)”, and “offering the janitor the barometer as a bribe to reveal the height of the building (using barometer as an object with monetary value)”! (Cropley, 2001.)
Other than being amusing, this story draws our attention to three issues. The first issue we would like to highlight is the type of education most of us went through: we were always expected to come up with one right answer determined by the teacher. None of Bohr’s responses were wrong per se, but only one met his teacher’s expectation of a predetermined answer. This issue shows how most of us become accustomed to coming up with the ‘right’ solution, thus directing our thinking to what is expected by others – be they our teachers and our parents (when we were young), our boss, or the society at large.
The second issue we would like to emphasis from Bohr’s example is that there are actually many right answers to a problem (even in a field as exact as physics!), but most of us are used to stopping at one solution. We limit ourselves by coming up with only one solution – we consider the solution we have thought of is the one right solution for the problem and stop exploring what perhaps could be more exciting possibilities.
The third issue we would like to underline is the fact that although Bohr knew how he was expected to respond to the problem, he challenged and entertained himself in finding what other possible solutions there were to solve the problem. In other words, he knowingly challenged the system of ‘one problem, one solution’ conventionally used in many schools.
Bohr’s inquisitive mind had enabled him to make fundamental contributions to human understanding of the atomic structure and quantum mechanics that won him the Nobel Prize for physics in 1922.
So we have seen how when it comes to thinking, external expectations, or rather, what we perceive as external expectations, can be very limiting. James L. Adams in “Conceptual Blockbusting” (2001) calls this as the “tendency to delimit the problem area poorly”, defined as our inclination to impose too many constraints upon solving the problems we are facing (p.25).
Going back to the examples at the beginning of this article, the most common answer to “what is half of 8?” is still 4, even when we are no longer in math class. The most common answer to “what is: O?” is still the letter O, the number 0, or the shape circle – answers that appeal again to what we know as the right answer back when we were in schools. The problem is, we are no longer in school.
In real life situations, no one actually gives us problems just for the sake of testing our ability. As such, no one has predetermined solutions for real life problems that have been handed out for us to solve. Yet, most of us are still confined by looking for ‘the one right answer’. So how do we challenge ourselves to find other possible solutions to a problem? How do we break away from conformist thinking?
The answer is to be aware of the limits that we are imposing on ourselves when finding solutions to a problem. Are they actually there? Outside of the school context, no one expects us to limit the answer to “what is: O?” to resemble a known letter, number, or shape. Once we realize this, we can move away from the expected answers and come up with answers like the steering wheel of a car, an eyeball, an unsharpened end of a pencil, etc.
So far, so good; but our responses are limited to the visual realm. Once we realize that we do not have to stop at one answer, we can think of more exciting possibilities, such as O as a sound. It’s the sound one makes when one finally realizes something, as in “Oh, I see.” It’s the sound people use in yoga (Om). It’s the sound of disbelief, as in “Oh no! What have you done!. Like Bohr, it takes courage to give unexpected answers, are you ready to break away?
In James L. Adam’s words, “limits are negotiable”. Expand your limits!
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Choose to be Creative!
Who do you think are creative? Most people would probably think about Picasso, Leonardo da Vinci, Affandi, Basuki Abdullah, or some of the lesser-known artists they like. But are artists the only people who can be considered as creative? And does one have to be well-known to be labeled as creative?
Some time back, we were putting together a presentation to explain, among other things, that creativity isn’t “a gift doled out sparingly by the gods” (Ulrich Kraft, Scientific American Mind) and that creativity isn’t confined to the realms of the arts.
We set out to find examples of people who represent creative achievements in different fields. We listed Bill Gates as the creative businessman who envisioned the use of the personal computer in every house. Maria Montessori as the creative educator who thought that children should be allowed to handle and access real materials as means for learning. Andy Warhol as the creative artist who turned everyday things like Campbell’s soup cans into art.
Gandhi as the creative politician who insisted that independence could be gained without waging a war. Thomas Edison as the creative inventor who persisted until he reached a solution to his problems. Albert Einstein as the creative scientist who saw how the world operated in a new and radical way.
Only one artist among all the creative people.
We also listed Bono (U2’s lead singer) as the creative humanitarian. Granted, Bono’s reputation as a gifted singer and songwriter has earned him world-wide reputation and can be labeled creative in itself, but we listed him as the creative humanitarian because he used his reputation as a bargaining power to gain support for humanitarian causes.
What were the common traits of these creative people? They saw things that others didn’t (Gates, Warhol, Montessori), they imagined (Einstein, Gandhi, Gates), they were not afraid to stand out as different (Warhol, Gandhi), they had the courage to act on their ideas (Gandhi, Bono), and they persisted and worked very hard to succeed (Edison, Einstein).
Looking for eminent creative people from different fields was easy, but what about examples of creative people who are not our obvious creative type? When we set out to look for less eminent examples of creativity (or what the literature terms “everyday creativity”), we were enlightened indeed.
We found a scavenger who tugged excessive cartloads of rubbish by reining himself to the cart he was pulling, similar to the way human rein an ox or a horse (see picture). Why was the scavenger creative? Well, we figured that he had to solve the problem of “How to lug heavy loads around the streets of Jakarta?” in order to maximize his trips on foot. Horses and oxen can carry heavy loads. Most likely, the scavenger stretched his imagination from this piece of knowledge and used the same principle to help him pull his cart.
We found a man who sits in a corner on the street down the road from our office who sells pre-packed rice boxes. Maybe he couldn’t afford to knock up a kaki-lima but that didn’t stop him from selling food. He prepares the food at home. Seeing his problem from a different perspective, from “How to find money to knock up a kaki-lima?” to “How to sell food on the streets?”
We found Kayee’s domestic cook, Mery, who can whip up a meal no matter what scant ingredients are left in the fridge. She is able to deviate from the instructions from cookbooks, to substitute the ingredients that she doesn’t have, to combine recipes when she only has a bit of this and that, and to dare to test her employer’s palate. Kayee, being used to salad dressing being eaten straight out of the bottle, was shocked then pleasantly surprised when Mery actually used it to cook a meat sauce! Mery doesn’t do things just because books tell her to. She thinks. She looks for alternatives. She seeks possibilities.
Then there is Dewi’s dad who found he had freezing cold hands during a vacation to New Zealand. Rush out to buy gloves? That’s probably a solution that doesn’t challenge the creative mind enough. Dewi’s dad put maroon socks on his hands instead. Not afraid to stand out from the crowd, seeing socks in a new way and simply believing that there must be a solution with the resources he had. Persistent and optimistic in finding a solution.
We also found our colleague Petra, who managed to see through our array of work problems and summed it up in one sentence for us. During a series of team meetings, we explored issues that held back performance in the past year and concluded on a few issues. Examples include the communication gap between the different departments, people working on projects with different expectations and harbored feelings over time leading to compromised work relations.
Just as the team was about to embark on how to resolve these issues, Petra piped that the real problem was the lack of honest communication! True, if we had communicated honestly about how we feel about people, relationships and projects, most of our problems could have been ironed out on the go.
What were the common traits of these ‘everyday’ creative people? Again, they saw things that others didn’t, they imagined, they were not afraid to stand out as different, they had the courage to act on their ideas and they persisted and worked very hard to succeed in resolving their everyday problems.
Big problems or small problems. Solutions that impact the world or solutions that solve the small hiccups in your work or personal life. When we are faced with problems or challenges that we haven’t encountered before or that we have no known solutions for, if we are optimistic that a solution can be found, if we think, imagine, and take action, then surely we can find solution to the problem. That is what we call creativity.
If you think back now to some problems that you have faced, problems that you didn’t have known solutions for; how did you react? Did you forget about the problem? Did you leave it as a problem for someone else to solve? Did you tell yourself that nothing can be done about it? Or did you amuse yourself in finding a solution?
Based on how we define creativity, we believe that everyone can be creative. Based on how we define creativity, we also believe that creativity is a choice. In all the examples that we have given, perhaps except for the scavenger and the food seller (whom we think had no choice but to think up solutions for survival), people were faced with a problem or a challenge: the choice was theirs to make in how to react to the situation.
This availability of choice often prevents us from taking the creative route because it’s easier to opt for the alternative: don’t think about it and do nothing about it. However, we can assure you that by taking the creative route, your everyday living will be like walking out of a manhole in to a vast expanse - possibilities begin to open up.
Kayee’s favorite example of her own everyday creativity occured when a small object fell down the plug-hole in her bathroom basin. The object was too wide to retrieve with fingers or tweezers. Kayee’s solution was to use a ‘stick and retrieve’ strategy: turn a glue stick upside down, stick it onto the object and pull the object up. Not quite the same as winning a Nobel Prize, but the feeling of solving the problem made her day.
Dewi’s favorite example of everyday creativity is exemplified by a group of children, Tiffani, Matthew, Kenzie and Patrick, who like to play in our studio. Led by the eight-year old Tiffani, every week they come up with new games. In the past few weeks, they have worked on an idea to create a new kind of pen. Their first pass was to put ink inside a straw that was covered with cloth on one end. It didn’t work too well as the diameter of the straw was too small for the ink not to spill all over.
Their second pass was to use a cut-up hose with cloth cover on one end. This one worked better as they could fill the pen without spilling any ink, but the cloth was too porous and the ink ran really fast. Their next passes were a set of experimentations with the type of cloths to use, trying to figure out which ones work better for making what kind of mark. Their last attempt as of a week ago was to put cloth on both ends of the hose, making a pen with double end. They even came up with a name for it: lipstick pen.
As our motto goes: Dare to think. Dare to imagine. Dare to persist. That is what we call creativity.
Some time back, we were putting together a presentation to explain, among other things, that creativity isn’t “a gift doled out sparingly by the gods” (Ulrich Kraft, Scientific American Mind) and that creativity isn’t confined to the realms of the arts.
We set out to find examples of people who represent creative achievements in different fields. We listed Bill Gates as the creative businessman who envisioned the use of the personal computer in every house. Maria Montessori as the creative educator who thought that children should be allowed to handle and access real materials as means for learning. Andy Warhol as the creative artist who turned everyday things like Campbell’s soup cans into art.
Gandhi as the creative politician who insisted that independence could be gained without waging a war. Thomas Edison as the creative inventor who persisted until he reached a solution to his problems. Albert Einstein as the creative scientist who saw how the world operated in a new and radical way.
Only one artist among all the creative people.
We also listed Bono (U2’s lead singer) as the creative humanitarian. Granted, Bono’s reputation as a gifted singer and songwriter has earned him world-wide reputation and can be labeled creative in itself, but we listed him as the creative humanitarian because he used his reputation as a bargaining power to gain support for humanitarian causes.
What were the common traits of these creative people? They saw things that others didn’t (Gates, Warhol, Montessori), they imagined (Einstein, Gandhi, Gates), they were not afraid to stand out as different (Warhol, Gandhi), they had the courage to act on their ideas (Gandhi, Bono), and they persisted and worked very hard to succeed (Edison, Einstein).
Looking for eminent creative people from different fields was easy, but what about examples of creative people who are not our obvious creative type? When we set out to look for less eminent examples of creativity (or what the literature terms “everyday creativity”), we were enlightened indeed.
We found a scavenger who tugged excessive cartloads of rubbish by reining himself to the cart he was pulling, similar to the way human rein an ox or a horse (see picture). Why was the scavenger creative? Well, we figured that he had to solve the problem of “How to lug heavy loads around the streets of Jakarta?” in order to maximize his trips on foot. Horses and oxen can carry heavy loads. Most likely, the scavenger stretched his imagination from this piece of knowledge and used the same principle to help him pull his cart.
We found a man who sits in a corner on the street down the road from our office who sells pre-packed rice boxes. Maybe he couldn’t afford to knock up a kaki-lima but that didn’t stop him from selling food. He prepares the food at home. Seeing his problem from a different perspective, from “How to find money to knock up a kaki-lima?” to “How to sell food on the streets?”
We found Kayee’s domestic cook, Mery, who can whip up a meal no matter what scant ingredients are left in the fridge. She is able to deviate from the instructions from cookbooks, to substitute the ingredients that she doesn’t have, to combine recipes when she only has a bit of this and that, and to dare to test her employer’s palate. Kayee, being used to salad dressing being eaten straight out of the bottle, was shocked then pleasantly surprised when Mery actually used it to cook a meat sauce! Mery doesn’t do things just because books tell her to. She thinks. She looks for alternatives. She seeks possibilities.
Then there is Dewi’s dad who found he had freezing cold hands during a vacation to New Zealand. Rush out to buy gloves? That’s probably a solution that doesn’t challenge the creative mind enough. Dewi’s dad put maroon socks on his hands instead. Not afraid to stand out from the crowd, seeing socks in a new way and simply believing that there must be a solution with the resources he had. Persistent and optimistic in finding a solution.
We also found our colleague Petra, who managed to see through our array of work problems and summed it up in one sentence for us. During a series of team meetings, we explored issues that held back performance in the past year and concluded on a few issues. Examples include the communication gap between the different departments, people working on projects with different expectations and harbored feelings over time leading to compromised work relations.
Just as the team was about to embark on how to resolve these issues, Petra piped that the real problem was the lack of honest communication! True, if we had communicated honestly about how we feel about people, relationships and projects, most of our problems could have been ironed out on the go.
What were the common traits of these ‘everyday’ creative people? Again, they saw things that others didn’t, they imagined, they were not afraid to stand out as different, they had the courage to act on their ideas and they persisted and worked very hard to succeed in resolving their everyday problems.
Big problems or small problems. Solutions that impact the world or solutions that solve the small hiccups in your work or personal life. When we are faced with problems or challenges that we haven’t encountered before or that we have no known solutions for, if we are optimistic that a solution can be found, if we think, imagine, and take action, then surely we can find solution to the problem. That is what we call creativity.
If you think back now to some problems that you have faced, problems that you didn’t have known solutions for; how did you react? Did you forget about the problem? Did you leave it as a problem for someone else to solve? Did you tell yourself that nothing can be done about it? Or did you amuse yourself in finding a solution?
Based on how we define creativity, we believe that everyone can be creative. Based on how we define creativity, we also believe that creativity is a choice. In all the examples that we have given, perhaps except for the scavenger and the food seller (whom we think had no choice but to think up solutions for survival), people were faced with a problem or a challenge: the choice was theirs to make in how to react to the situation.
This availability of choice often prevents us from taking the creative route because it’s easier to opt for the alternative: don’t think about it and do nothing about it. However, we can assure you that by taking the creative route, your everyday living will be like walking out of a manhole in to a vast expanse - possibilities begin to open up.
Kayee’s favorite example of her own everyday creativity occured when a small object fell down the plug-hole in her bathroom basin. The object was too wide to retrieve with fingers or tweezers. Kayee’s solution was to use a ‘stick and retrieve’ strategy: turn a glue stick upside down, stick it onto the object and pull the object up. Not quite the same as winning a Nobel Prize, but the feeling of solving the problem made her day.
Dewi’s favorite example of everyday creativity is exemplified by a group of children, Tiffani, Matthew, Kenzie and Patrick, who like to play in our studio. Led by the eight-year old Tiffani, every week they come up with new games. In the past few weeks, they have worked on an idea to create a new kind of pen. Their first pass was to put ink inside a straw that was covered with cloth on one end. It didn’t work too well as the diameter of the straw was too small for the ink not to spill all over.
Their second pass was to use a cut-up hose with cloth cover on one end. This one worked better as they could fill the pen without spilling any ink, but the cloth was too porous and the ink ran really fast. Their next passes were a set of experimentations with the type of cloths to use, trying to figure out which ones work better for making what kind of mark. Their last attempt as of a week ago was to put cloth on both ends of the hose, making a pen with double end. They even came up with a name for it: lipstick pen.
As our motto goes: Dare to think. Dare to imagine. Dare to persist. That is what we call creativity.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Give Time and Support for Ideas
Imagine you are a participant in a workshop. The facilitator gives you a photocopy of a picture of a strawberry and says: "I want you to recreate the strawberry using these basic shapes: circle, oval, square, rectangle and triangle. But you can only use two of them and they have to perfectly match the size of the strawberry in that photocopy. You can use color markers to make your strawberry, and you only have five minutes to complete it. At the end of the activity, I shall come round to check if you have done the activity correctly."
As you go through this exercise in your mind, try to remember your reaction to the instructions. If you are feeling extra motivated today, you can even try doing the exercise and time yourself. When you're done, the facilitator gives you another photocopy, but of a durian picture.
She says: "I want you to recreate the durian using the same basic shape. You may use any or all of them, it's up to you what you use. Other than the color markers, you may also use origami papers and scissors. I also have these pre-cut basic shapes so you can try arranging them over your durian picture to help you explore the shapes and possible ways of creating a durian with these materials. You have twenty minutes. I am not looking for a correct answer, please explore and we'll share the possibilities you have come up with at the end of the activity." What was your reaction to this set of instructions?
We usually conduct these two activities in our creativity trainings to illustrate what makes a creative environment. During the first activity, we often remind the participants that they only have five minutes and constantly remind them of the time remaining. In the second activity, we encourage participants to explore different possibilities and take their time before deciding on how to create their durian.
As you may have already guessed, in the first activity, participants end up with rather unoriginal products. In contrast, in the second activity, participants come up with a lot more variety and more creative ideas to represent their durians. Some use color markers elaborately, others fold and cut origami paper, while others combine the color markers and origami paper.
Upon reflection with participants, we ask why they were able to express themselves better in the second activity? What made them more creative? In the first activity, many felt constrained because of these limitations: time and limited availability of shapes and materials. They also felt pressured because they are being rushed and some even feel stressed by the thought that their results would be checked and evaluated. In the second activity, participants reported that they felt they could explore more because they were given more time and materials. They also felt more relaxed because they were told they were allowed to explore and not expected to come up with a pre-determined answer.
This "idea time" and "idea support" are two of the ingredients in the making of creative environment as indicated by Goran Ekvall, a Swedish organizational researcher. As the two activities above illustrate, giving time and support for ideas to develop play a key role in the variety of products participants come up with. Teresa Amabile, a professor of business administration at Harvard University, cites insufficient resources as a barrier to organizational creativity, highlighting the need not only for sufficient time and psychological support and encouragement to work on ideas but also materials, facilities, funds and people.
Take for example 3M, a company that is hailed as a visionary company in James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras' book Built to Last (1994). Founded in 1902, 3M is well-known as manufacturer of Post-It notes, Scotch tape, and waterproof sandpaper. William McKnight, one of the early leaders of the company, created a working atmosphere that encouraged idea time and idea support; or in Collins & Porras's words: a "give-it-a-try atmosphere".
The products of this atmosphere, among others, are 3M masking tape and Scotch tape -- both of which were not planned products. The idea for 3M masking tape was invented when a 3M employee, Dick Drew, visited an auto paint shop and encountered a man who was trying to paint a car in two different tones by using improvised glue and adhesive tapes. But the tapes failed to mask properly, leaving behind ugly blotches and uneven lines. When Drew went back to 3M, he was resolute to create a solution, and invented the 3M masking tape.
The Scotch tape was invented when companies contacted 3M looking for a waterproof packaging tape, which 3M didn't have at the time. According to Collins & Porras, "Drew built on the masking tape technology and invented a product destined to become a household item worldwide: Scotch cellophane tape."
What makes such "accidental" products possible? Apart from the "give-it-a-try atmosphere", one of 3M's mottoes is: "Encourage; don't nitpick. Let people run with an idea." This kind "idea support" is necessary to give employees the courage to pursue their idea and initiatives. Apart from this, 3M also gives "idea time" for their employees.
3M has a long standing tradition where employees are encouraged to spend time for "experimental doodling", spending up to 15 percent of their time on projects of their own choice and initiative. Post-It was the product of this "idea time".
Art Fry, co-inventor of Post-It notes, came across the idea of the Post-It note because the slips of paper he used to mark the songs he was going to sing in church often flew out at the wrong time. This made him think of the adhesive that "didn't stick" invented by another 3M employee, Spencer Silver, who had mixed certain chemicals "just to see what would happened".
As Collins & Porras pointed out: "Although the invention of the Post-it note might have been somewhat accidental, the creation of the 3M environment that allowed it was anything but an accident."
Google is another company that has adopted "idea time" -- enabling its employees to divide "70 percent [of their time] devoted to Google's core businesses, search and advertising; 20 percent on pursuits related to the core; and 10 percent far-out ideas" (Time Magazine, 20 February 2006: 38.)
Giving support and time enable ideas to develop to a state when they can be analyzed fairly. Premature judgment kills ideas too early in the process and will discourage people from exploring and playing with possibilities.
As Collins and Porras quoted McKnight: "Mistakes will be made [by giving people the freedom and encouragement to act autonomously], but the mistakes he or she makes are not as serious in the long run as the mistakes management will make if it is dictatorial and undertakes to tell those under its authority exactly how they must do their job. Management that is destructively critical when mistakes are made kills initiative and it's essential that we have many people with initiative if we are to continue to grow."
At times, we may feel we have no control over allocation of resources and time for projects and ideas. However, we do have control over how we give psychological support to new ideas. How can we react to new ideas to give them a fair chance to grow? We can first look at what's good about the idea before pointing out the weaknesses. The weaknesses or potential pitfalls of a new idea should then be turned into questions, questions to which solutions can be sought.
For example, when a colleague of ours proposed a plan that we immediately reacted to as an impossible idea; we held back and said the following instead: "The plan will definitely make our company known and help create a strong network. How might we gather enough human resources to put the plan into action? How might we create enough interest in our company to increase our chances of success?"
After some initial exploration of how to make the plan workable, we are now in the midst of implementing what began as an impossible idea. We have processed many new ideas in a similar way and many ideas have been shelved after the process. The value in going through this process before rejecting an idea is that the idea giver feels that the idea has been given a fair hearing and fair share of support. This in turn encourages people to continue to think up new ideas.
Ideas don't grow by accident. Give ideas time and support to grow!
As you go through this exercise in your mind, try to remember your reaction to the instructions. If you are feeling extra motivated today, you can even try doing the exercise and time yourself. When you're done, the facilitator gives you another photocopy, but of a durian picture.
She says: "I want you to recreate the durian using the same basic shape. You may use any or all of them, it's up to you what you use. Other than the color markers, you may also use origami papers and scissors. I also have these pre-cut basic shapes so you can try arranging them over your durian picture to help you explore the shapes and possible ways of creating a durian with these materials. You have twenty minutes. I am not looking for a correct answer, please explore and we'll share the possibilities you have come up with at the end of the activity." What was your reaction to this set of instructions?
We usually conduct these two activities in our creativity trainings to illustrate what makes a creative environment. During the first activity, we often remind the participants that they only have five minutes and constantly remind them of the time remaining. In the second activity, we encourage participants to explore different possibilities and take their time before deciding on how to create their durian.
As you may have already guessed, in the first activity, participants end up with rather unoriginal products. In contrast, in the second activity, participants come up with a lot more variety and more creative ideas to represent their durians. Some use color markers elaborately, others fold and cut origami paper, while others combine the color markers and origami paper.
Upon reflection with participants, we ask why they were able to express themselves better in the second activity? What made them more creative? In the first activity, many felt constrained because of these limitations: time and limited availability of shapes and materials. They also felt pressured because they are being rushed and some even feel stressed by the thought that their results would be checked and evaluated. In the second activity, participants reported that they felt they could explore more because they were given more time and materials. They also felt more relaxed because they were told they were allowed to explore and not expected to come up with a pre-determined answer.
This "idea time" and "idea support" are two of the ingredients in the making of creative environment as indicated by Goran Ekvall, a Swedish organizational researcher. As the two activities above illustrate, giving time and support for ideas to develop play a key role in the variety of products participants come up with. Teresa Amabile, a professor of business administration at Harvard University, cites insufficient resources as a barrier to organizational creativity, highlighting the need not only for sufficient time and psychological support and encouragement to work on ideas but also materials, facilities, funds and people.
Take for example 3M, a company that is hailed as a visionary company in James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras' book Built to Last (1994). Founded in 1902, 3M is well-known as manufacturer of Post-It notes, Scotch tape, and waterproof sandpaper. William McKnight, one of the early leaders of the company, created a working atmosphere that encouraged idea time and idea support; or in Collins & Porras's words: a "give-it-a-try atmosphere".
The products of this atmosphere, among others, are 3M masking tape and Scotch tape -- both of which were not planned products. The idea for 3M masking tape was invented when a 3M employee, Dick Drew, visited an auto paint shop and encountered a man who was trying to paint a car in two different tones by using improvised glue and adhesive tapes. But the tapes failed to mask properly, leaving behind ugly blotches and uneven lines. When Drew went back to 3M, he was resolute to create a solution, and invented the 3M masking tape.
The Scotch tape was invented when companies contacted 3M looking for a waterproof packaging tape, which 3M didn't have at the time. According to Collins & Porras, "Drew built on the masking tape technology and invented a product destined to become a household item worldwide: Scotch cellophane tape."
What makes such "accidental" products possible? Apart from the "give-it-a-try atmosphere", one of 3M's mottoes is: "Encourage; don't nitpick. Let people run with an idea." This kind "idea support" is necessary to give employees the courage to pursue their idea and initiatives. Apart from this, 3M also gives "idea time" for their employees.
3M has a long standing tradition where employees are encouraged to spend time for "experimental doodling", spending up to 15 percent of their time on projects of their own choice and initiative. Post-It was the product of this "idea time".
Art Fry, co-inventor of Post-It notes, came across the idea of the Post-It note because the slips of paper he used to mark the songs he was going to sing in church often flew out at the wrong time. This made him think of the adhesive that "didn't stick" invented by another 3M employee, Spencer Silver, who had mixed certain chemicals "just to see what would happened".
As Collins & Porras pointed out: "Although the invention of the Post-it note might have been somewhat accidental, the creation of the 3M environment that allowed it was anything but an accident."
Google is another company that has adopted "idea time" -- enabling its employees to divide "70 percent [of their time] devoted to Google's core businesses, search and advertising; 20 percent on pursuits related to the core; and 10 percent far-out ideas" (Time Magazine, 20 February 2006: 38.)
Giving support and time enable ideas to develop to a state when they can be analyzed fairly. Premature judgment kills ideas too early in the process and will discourage people from exploring and playing with possibilities.
As Collins and Porras quoted McKnight: "Mistakes will be made [by giving people the freedom and encouragement to act autonomously], but the mistakes he or she makes are not as serious in the long run as the mistakes management will make if it is dictatorial and undertakes to tell those under its authority exactly how they must do their job. Management that is destructively critical when mistakes are made kills initiative and it's essential that we have many people with initiative if we are to continue to grow."
At times, we may feel we have no control over allocation of resources and time for projects and ideas. However, we do have control over how we give psychological support to new ideas. How can we react to new ideas to give them a fair chance to grow? We can first look at what's good about the idea before pointing out the weaknesses. The weaknesses or potential pitfalls of a new idea should then be turned into questions, questions to which solutions can be sought.
For example, when a colleague of ours proposed a plan that we immediately reacted to as an impossible idea; we held back and said the following instead: "The plan will definitely make our company known and help create a strong network. How might we gather enough human resources to put the plan into action? How might we create enough interest in our company to increase our chances of success?"
After some initial exploration of how to make the plan workable, we are now in the midst of implementing what began as an impossible idea. We have processed many new ideas in a similar way and many ideas have been shelved after the process. The value in going through this process before rejecting an idea is that the idea giver feels that the idea has been given a fair hearing and fair share of support. This in turn encourages people to continue to think up new ideas.
Ideas don't grow by accident. Give ideas time and support to grow!
Saturday, September 23, 2006
Be Open and Truthful
This past month, we have been going through a process of evaluation. We’ll share some of the issues that keep coming up in the past year, because chances are, some of these issues are rather typical in a work and social setting.
So here they are: how we could appreciate one another, how we could be more helpful, how we could argue about an idea but avoid personal conflicts, how we could be more mindful about other people’s feeling, how we can be more discipline with our time, how can we improve synergy between production and marketing, how we could improve communication with other departments (not that we have that many people in our office), etc., etc.
We were thinking about what actions we could do in the next year to overcome these problems, when Petra , our customer relation manager came up with this brilliant idea: we just need to be open and truthful to one another (why did we not think of this before!!)
The lack of synergy between departments can be bridged if we are open about our intentions and discuss them together. If we feel that someone is not appreciative, is not helpful, is not mindful of our feeling, is not discipline with their time and tasks, then all we need to do is being open and truthful to that person.
Conflicts can be avoided. To begin with, of course, we need to first have open communication. And when issues arise (which are unavoidable), we can be truthful about our feelings and views about the situation.
When you find yourself cornered in this situation, here’s tips from Kayee:
1. Try to see the situation from the other person’s perspective
2. Start with “I” statement. For example “X, I feel that …” (“I” statement would lessen the chance of the other person feeling defensive)
3. End with a suggestion: “It would be great if …”
As the person on the other side of the table, what you should do is listen and defer your judgment during the process. Try it out! It seems to be working in our team!
So here they are: how we could appreciate one another, how we could be more helpful, how we could argue about an idea but avoid personal conflicts, how we could be more mindful about other people’s feeling, how we can be more discipline with our time, how can we improve synergy between production and marketing, how we could improve communication with other departments (not that we have that many people in our office), etc., etc.
We were thinking about what actions we could do in the next year to overcome these problems, when Petra , our customer relation manager came up with this brilliant idea: we just need to be open and truthful to one another (why did we not think of this before!!)
The lack of synergy between departments can be bridged if we are open about our intentions and discuss them together. If we feel that someone is not appreciative, is not helpful, is not mindful of our feeling, is not discipline with their time and tasks, then all we need to do is being open and truthful to that person.
Conflicts can be avoided. To begin with, of course, we need to first have open communication. And when issues arise (which are unavoidable), we can be truthful about our feelings and views about the situation.
When you find yourself cornered in this situation, here’s tips from Kayee:
1. Try to see the situation from the other person’s perspective
2. Start with “I” statement. For example “X, I feel that …” (“I” statement would lessen the chance of the other person feeling defensive)
3. End with a suggestion: “It would be great if …”
As the person on the other side of the table, what you should do is listen and defer your judgment during the process. Try it out! It seems to be working in our team!
Suspend judgment to generate creative solutions
A group of managers meet with the agenda to discuss how to come up with new products or added-value customer service:
"Let's sell our products on our website."
"No,too risky. Imagine all the cost in setting it up and maintaining it. We don't have the expertise. Anyway, sales are good, we're doing fine the way we are."
"We could do a cost benefit analysis to justify the costs."
"Who's got the time to do that now? Not me."
"Let's try working with other companies."
"No, we've tried that before."
"Let's train our staff on new marketing techniques."
"No, the boss won't approve, so why bother."
"Let's hire a consultant."
"No, let's not rock the boat."
"Maybe we can reshuffle the groups. Mix people from different branches."
"No, we don't work like that here."
In this example, we see how the birth of ideas is immediately killed by judgments. The comments in the above dialogue may not even warrant the term "judgment". At best, they are a knee-jerk negativism that resides in most of us. Worse still, once we start on the track of such negativism, it's difficult to set ourselves back on the track of generating ideas again.
Have you ever tried coming up with an idea only to kill it yourself because your mind has quietly told you that your idea won't work? Ray and Myers, in their book Creativity in Business (1986) call this the VOJ -- the voice of judgment.
Let's go back in time. Who, during Leonardo da Vinci's time, would've thought that human flight could be possible? Da Vinci not only suspended his VOJ, but his ignorance of others' VOJ enabled him to proceed on his own to invent a flying contraption. It didn't work, but it laid the foundation for others to build on, and eventually resulted in what we now know as the airplane. Many people in da Vinci's time must have thought he was crazy. But most, if not all, new ideas will seem crazy at the time of their birth.
There are two types of thinking involved in creative thinking: generating ideas and evaluating ideas. It is our tendency to do both at the same time. The secret is to separate the generation and evaluation of ideas into two different stages of thinking.
First, generate as many ideas as you can without judging them in any way, then select the ideas that appeal to you. Then judge the ideas, think about ways to improve on the good ones and think about how to realize the impossible ones.
Of all the golden rules for generating ideas laid down by the inventor of brainstorming, Alex Osborn, the first and foremost one is known as "defer judgment" -- generate first, then evaluate.
In simple language, to defer judgment simply means to not judge an idea prematurely. It's all about exercising one's mental flexibility. Deferring judgment allows us to keep a new idea alive to ensure that the idea receives a fair evaluation.
Deferring or delaying our judgment may mean that we will find ourselves coming up with obvious, crazy or fantastical ideas that we will immediately consider worthy of discarding. But the moment we start thinking whether it's an idea worth getting out of our heads (because we are judging it silently in our minds), we will lose our flow of ideas.
After we learn to defer our own voice of judgment, then it's time for us to defer our judgment on other people' ideas.
From our experience in teaching people to think creatively, people who defer judgment while generating ideas generate on average 100 percent more ideas in the same amount of time than before the "defer judgment" rule is taught to them. Since getting many ideas will increase our chances of getting good ones, the "defer judgment" rule will ensure that we generate the quantity we need.
Once, we conducted a brainstorming session with children between 6-12 years old on how we might improve one of Jakarta's problems: the annual floods. They came up with ideas like blow-dry it, use a giant mop, stop the rain, shoot clouds, cover up the sky, etc. These may sound wildly imaginative, impractical or downright ridiculous.
But let's defer our judgment according to the rule of brainstorming and see what we do have.
Take, for example, the idea of using a giant mop. Although it sounds childlike, we liked the idea. After we played around with it, we thought, why not have the street become a giant mop? If we consider the hundreds of kilometers of asphalted roads that traverse Jakarta, and if the roads are water-absorbent, then this could be one possible solution to Jakarta's floods.
In fact, scientists are currently researching ways on how asphalt can be made water-absorbent. Prof. Bruce Ferguson, Associate Dean of the University of Georgia's Landscape Architecture Graduate School, is working on precisely this matter.
How would you react if someone raised an idea of using coconuts to make sportswear? If you defer your judgment long enough, you would hear out Greg Haggquist, who did just this to create cycling wear that absorbs odor and provides UV-ray protection. Haggquist used the carbon from coconuts and infused it into threads to create a new kind of polyester.
Well, now we know to stop ourselves from reacting negatively the moment someone shares a new idea. Listening doesn't mean approving, but when we hear an idea out, we know to first look for the good, then the bad or concerns we may have with the initial idea, and we can discuss with the idea-generator how might the concerns be overcome.
The next time you make a negative statement, turn it into a question and try to find possible solutions for it. We can turn "that client will never receive my call" into how can I get the client to return my calls?" and "we'll never get this done on time" into "how can we get this done on time?"
Just try it and see the difference it'll make.
Even when we seem to have found the ideas we like, try to push for more. Even when we think we have decided on one solution to a problem we're facing, don't think that we have found the best one. There will always be room for improvement, so don't forget to keep the doors open.
Deferring judgment ensures that we generate a broad range of ideas to increase our chances of finding elegant solutions to the problem or issue at hand. Deferring judgment also keeps new ideas alive until they've been given a fair evaluation.
Remember, most new ideas will seem crazy when they are first suggested. But next time you hear your negative inner voice nagging at you, you can tell it to come back later.
Published in The Jakarta Post May 21, 2006
"Let's sell our products on our website."
"No,too risky. Imagine all the cost in setting it up and maintaining it. We don't have the expertise. Anyway, sales are good, we're doing fine the way we are."
"We could do a cost benefit analysis to justify the costs."
"Who's got the time to do that now? Not me."
"Let's try working with other companies."
"No, we've tried that before."
"Let's train our staff on new marketing techniques."
"No, the boss won't approve, so why bother."
"Let's hire a consultant."
"No, let's not rock the boat."
"Maybe we can reshuffle the groups. Mix people from different branches."
"No, we don't work like that here."
In this example, we see how the birth of ideas is immediately killed by judgments. The comments in the above dialogue may not even warrant the term "judgment". At best, they are a knee-jerk negativism that resides in most of us. Worse still, once we start on the track of such negativism, it's difficult to set ourselves back on the track of generating ideas again.
Have you ever tried coming up with an idea only to kill it yourself because your mind has quietly told you that your idea won't work? Ray and Myers, in their book Creativity in Business (1986) call this the VOJ -- the voice of judgment.
Let's go back in time. Who, during Leonardo da Vinci's time, would've thought that human flight could be possible? Da Vinci not only suspended his VOJ, but his ignorance of others' VOJ enabled him to proceed on his own to invent a flying contraption. It didn't work, but it laid the foundation for others to build on, and eventually resulted in what we now know as the airplane. Many people in da Vinci's time must have thought he was crazy. But most, if not all, new ideas will seem crazy at the time of their birth.
There are two types of thinking involved in creative thinking: generating ideas and evaluating ideas. It is our tendency to do both at the same time. The secret is to separate the generation and evaluation of ideas into two different stages of thinking.
First, generate as many ideas as you can without judging them in any way, then select the ideas that appeal to you. Then judge the ideas, think about ways to improve on the good ones and think about how to realize the impossible ones.
Of all the golden rules for generating ideas laid down by the inventor of brainstorming, Alex Osborn, the first and foremost one is known as "defer judgment" -- generate first, then evaluate.
In simple language, to defer judgment simply means to not judge an idea prematurely. It's all about exercising one's mental flexibility. Deferring judgment allows us to keep a new idea alive to ensure that the idea receives a fair evaluation.
Deferring or delaying our judgment may mean that we will find ourselves coming up with obvious, crazy or fantastical ideas that we will immediately consider worthy of discarding. But the moment we start thinking whether it's an idea worth getting out of our heads (because we are judging it silently in our minds), we will lose our flow of ideas.
After we learn to defer our own voice of judgment, then it's time for us to defer our judgment on other people' ideas.
From our experience in teaching people to think creatively, people who defer judgment while generating ideas generate on average 100 percent more ideas in the same amount of time than before the "defer judgment" rule is taught to them. Since getting many ideas will increase our chances of getting good ones, the "defer judgment" rule will ensure that we generate the quantity we need.
Once, we conducted a brainstorming session with children between 6-12 years old on how we might improve one of Jakarta's problems: the annual floods. They came up with ideas like blow-dry it, use a giant mop, stop the rain, shoot clouds, cover up the sky, etc. These may sound wildly imaginative, impractical or downright ridiculous.
But let's defer our judgment according to the rule of brainstorming and see what we do have.
Take, for example, the idea of using a giant mop. Although it sounds childlike, we liked the idea. After we played around with it, we thought, why not have the street become a giant mop? If we consider the hundreds of kilometers of asphalted roads that traverse Jakarta, and if the roads are water-absorbent, then this could be one possible solution to Jakarta's floods.
In fact, scientists are currently researching ways on how asphalt can be made water-absorbent. Prof. Bruce Ferguson, Associate Dean of the University of Georgia's Landscape Architecture Graduate School, is working on precisely this matter.
How would you react if someone raised an idea of using coconuts to make sportswear? If you defer your judgment long enough, you would hear out Greg Haggquist, who did just this to create cycling wear that absorbs odor and provides UV-ray protection. Haggquist used the carbon from coconuts and infused it into threads to create a new kind of polyester.
Well, now we know to stop ourselves from reacting negatively the moment someone shares a new idea. Listening doesn't mean approving, but when we hear an idea out, we know to first look for the good, then the bad or concerns we may have with the initial idea, and we can discuss with the idea-generator how might the concerns be overcome.
The next time you make a negative statement, turn it into a question and try to find possible solutions for it. We can turn "that client will never receive my call" into how can I get the client to return my calls?" and "we'll never get this done on time" into "how can we get this done on time?"
Just try it and see the difference it'll make.
Even when we seem to have found the ideas we like, try to push for more. Even when we think we have decided on one solution to a problem we're facing, don't think that we have found the best one. There will always be room for improvement, so don't forget to keep the doors open.
Deferring judgment ensures that we generate a broad range of ideas to increase our chances of finding elegant solutions to the problem or issue at hand. Deferring judgment also keeps new ideas alive until they've been given a fair evaluation.
Remember, most new ideas will seem crazy when they are first suggested. But next time you hear your negative inner voice nagging at you, you can tell it to come back later.
Published in The Jakarta Post May 21, 2006
The Incentive to Learn
I read a review on Freakonomics written by my economist friend Arya Gaduh a while ago. But only recently I finished reading this interesting and highly entertaining book [1] by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. Among many things that could be discussed in relation to creativity, the one that I would like to bring up in this posting is the claim that most people are driven by incentives, be it in the form of financial, social, and/or moral reward. How would this in relation with learning? What are the incentives to learn?
Within school setting, the reason why students perform is without a doubt to get good grades. Yet, there’s a danger to stop here, for the reason that once school (or class) is over, the motivation to learn would stop accordingly. This may explain the lack of motivation I encountered in my ex-students as mentioned in this posting.
Getting good grades may bring praise and admiration from teachers and peers alike. For some, getting good grades may even bring financial rewards – be it from their own parents or to get/ maintain scholarship. Yet, these rewards leave us with the dilemma of having external instead of internal motivators to learning. Externally-motivated learning is more or less controlled by other people, which would most probably stop when the external motivator is no longer monitoring the learning process (and product).
If we extend the motivation to get good grades to getting social and moral rewards, we may get longer-lasting result – albeit still externally-motivated. So what must we do to instill intrinsic motivation to learn? Nothing much perhaps, because intrinsic motivation is processed within a person. But getting social and moral rewards will bring with it a sense of pride, and most likely the personal joy of what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called flow – that special feeling of personal satisfaction when we are so immerse in the process of doing something we really enjoy.
In the scheme of incentives-driven world of economics, I’m not sure where this ‘personal incentive’ would fit in. But it is this ‘personal incentive’ that will keep the desire to learn burning within us – even long after school is over.
Note
[1] Trust me, before I read Freakonomics, I wouldn’t put the word economics in the same sentence with interesting and entertaining! No offense to all economists in the world :)
Within school setting, the reason why students perform is without a doubt to get good grades. Yet, there’s a danger to stop here, for the reason that once school (or class) is over, the motivation to learn would stop accordingly. This may explain the lack of motivation I encountered in my ex-students as mentioned in this posting.
Getting good grades may bring praise and admiration from teachers and peers alike. For some, getting good grades may even bring financial rewards – be it from their own parents or to get/ maintain scholarship. Yet, these rewards leave us with the dilemma of having external instead of internal motivators to learning. Externally-motivated learning is more or less controlled by other people, which would most probably stop when the external motivator is no longer monitoring the learning process (and product).
If we extend the motivation to get good grades to getting social and moral rewards, we may get longer-lasting result – albeit still externally-motivated. So what must we do to instill intrinsic motivation to learn? Nothing much perhaps, because intrinsic motivation is processed within a person. But getting social and moral rewards will bring with it a sense of pride, and most likely the personal joy of what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called flow – that special feeling of personal satisfaction when we are so immerse in the process of doing something we really enjoy.
In the scheme of incentives-driven world of economics, I’m not sure where this ‘personal incentive’ would fit in. But it is this ‘personal incentive’ that will keep the desire to learn burning within us – even long after school is over.
Note
[1] Trust me, before I read Freakonomics, I wouldn’t put the word economics in the same sentence with interesting and entertaining! No offense to all economists in the world :)
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Creativity in Adversity
Oka, one of our team members, often forwards us emails with interesting visuals. One of them was this picture of a person who created sandals from two plastic bottles. This reminded me of my experience in training facilitators from East Bali Poverty Project. Below were some of their definitions of creativity, which they formulated before the training started.Kreativitas adalah suatu kegiatan yang bersifat positif – yang mewakili hati nurani (Kartawa).Under adverse condition, people will find a way out and think creatively. See here and here for other examples. What about us?
Kreativitas adalah kemampuan diri kita untuk mengeluarkan atau mengekspresikan kemampuan yang ada dalam diri kita untuk mencapai apa yang kita inginkan (I Nyoman Subagia Bimartha).
Kreativitas adalah kemampuan seseorang untuk menciptakan sesuatu yang bersifat positif yang dapat ditampilkan atau digunakan oleh orang lain atau juga untuk diri sendiri (Kadek Indah Sari Dewi).
Kreativitas adalah kemampuan seseorang untuk dapat memanfaatkan/ mengolah sesuatu yang ada di sekelilingnya dari yang tidak berguna menjadi benda yang bermanfaat untuk diri sendiri maupun orang lain (I Nyoman Subagia Arnawa).
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Only Fools Work (Seriously!)
Person 1: What do you get when you cross a pig and a centipede?
Answer: Bacon and legs.
Person 2: Knock knock.
Answer: Who’s there?
Person 2: Scott.
Answer: Scott who?
Person 2: Scott nothing to do with you.
Person 3: What is a ten letter word that starts with gas?
Answer: Automobile.
Person 4: Why does Superman have a S on the front of his shirt?
Answer: Because Batman bought all the medium and large ones.
Person 5: Why is Batman more stupid than Superman?
Answer: Because he wears a cape even though he can’t fly.
We all know about the five senses: taste, smell, sight, touch and sound, and most of us were born with these senses. Some are said to have the sixth sense: intuition, and sometimes it is interpreted as the awareness for other-worldly creatures. Kayee has a friend who adds a seventh sense to the list: humour.
While it is tempting to discuss the sixth sense and for once beat the rate of TV shows such as “Pemburu Hantu” (“Ghost Buster” in Lativi) or “Dunia Lain” (“The Other World” in Trans TV), unfortunately we can’t seem to associate ourselves with such fame… yet. Instead, we will attempt to have some fun while exploring the sense of humour.
So, why all of a sudden we are interested in humour, you may wonder. Believe it or not (not in Ripley’s Believe It or Not sense but in the everyday sense), humour and creativity are related. According to E. Paul Torrance, Professor of Educational Psychology Department at University of Georgia, both creativity and humour revolve around unusual combinations, element of surprise, conceptual and perceptual incongruities (Torrance, 1999).
Think about it: good jokes require a great deal of wit. In the examples above, the answers take us by surprise because we find them unusual, absurd, un-thought of, and therefore funny. The answers make unlikely interpretation of the questions (joke 3), make connections with what we are familiar with – but at the same time turn it into unfamiliar setting (joke 1 and 4), and make uncommon combinations (joke 2 and 5).
And yes, creative thinking is about making unusual combinations, looking at things differently, and thinking of and seeing things that don’t normally ‘fit’ or ‘belong’ together. This is why many experts on creative thinking actually prescribe humour (playfulness, spontaneity) as one of the necessary ingredients to being creative.
Dr. Göran Ekvall, Professor Emeritus of Industrial and Organizational Psychology at University of Lund, conducted research in major corporations to find out what differentiates companies that produce more innovative products to those that are less innovative. Among other things, Ekvall’s research showed that organizations that had a playful and humourous environment were more likely to have creative behaviour exhibited by employees.
Back in February this year, Time magazine reported Google to be the biggest media company in the world, in market-cap terms. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google were described as “playful” (they used to take part in the regular roller-hockey games in the Google parking lot). The Time article featured a photograph of Brin and Page playing with Lego pieces during the interview.
Not only are the founders of Google playful people, Googleplex, as the headquarters of Google is known, is also described as “quirky”. Toys for employees and their children, individualized road signs inside the building, electronic scooters to get from one place to another, a sand-volleyball court, a ball pit with brightly coloured plastic balls and a London style telephone booth (minus the telephone) were just some of the examples cited that contribute to Googleplex’s quirkiness (Time magazine, February 20, 2006).
Amidst all this playfulness, however, much serious work gets done. Brin and Page were reported to be “tough sells” when it comes to approving projects and keeping their engineers on their toes with their project proposals.
So we don’t need to be serious all the time to be productive. Dr. Roger L. Firestien, Associate Professor of International Center for Studies in Creativity at Buffalo State College, concludes that “There is a positive link between humour, productivity and creativity!”. People with a sense of humour are less rigid, less tense, less stressed and therefore able to get more work done. Humour is also found to alleviate boredom (very useful when one needs to get through those unavoidable mundane tasks).
And here is a bonus for having a sense of humour: research shows that group leaders who are able to laugh at themselves are perceived to be more effective at relieving tension, better at encouraging member participation and more willing to share opinions. Humour has a positive influence on effective communication in groups.
Our experience in facilitating problem solving groups and training substantiates what research and the creativity literature are telling us about having a sense of humour. We have never failed to have a smiling participant and a more relaxed atmosphere once we pose to participants the problem of how they can stop us from talking. A more relaxed atmosphere enables participants to focus on learning and generating ideas rather than being on ‘defensive’ mode.
So now the big question…if we don’t have one already, how do we go about acquiring a sense of humour? Moody – and the name is not a joke! – describes a person with a good sense of humour as one who sees himself and others in a detached way, thus being able to laugh at himself and things that don’t quite go right and remain positive at the same time (in Torrance, 1978: p.223).
So, first, you have to be willing. Having read this far in this article, we would assume that you are interested in acquiring a sense of humour, or at least to explore the idea of acquiring a sense of humour. As we believe, once you are aware and willing, you are half way to positive change.
So, here’s our recipe for a sense of humour. What you can do on your own: Set a quota for a laugh a day (our motto: a laugh a day keeps the doctor away). Read humour or joke books (keep some in the office). Meditate to relax. Put a funny mirror in your bathroom or on your desk. Imagine. Take deep breaths. Think of happy thoughts. Exchange your brain for a day. Use laughing gas (joke!).
What you can do with your coworkers: Ask yourselves silly questions (e.g. how to stuff an elephant into my boss’ mouth). Throw a party. Pop balloons (exercise sends oxygen to the brain and has an invigorating effect). Meet our boss, Elli. Treat your employees or employers like they’re your precious kids. Dance at work.
What you can do whether you are alone or with a group of people you know or even do not know (we suggest you try various situations and don’t forget to let us know the result!): Pretend you’re the guest star. Start playing. Exercise your mouth muscles. Watch comedies. Smile for nothing. Tickle yourself (it doesn’t work, so get someone else to tickle you). Talk to, play with, or pretend to be children, animals, or plants. Or, just laugh when others are laughing (even if you don’t know what they’re laughing about).
We love to play and laugh. If none of the above work for you, come and join us. We get lots of work done too.
“We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” (George Bernard Shaw).
Answer: Bacon and legs.
Person 2: Knock knock.
Answer: Who’s there?
Person 2: Scott.
Answer: Scott who?
Person 2: Scott nothing to do with you.
Person 3: What is a ten letter word that starts with gas?
Answer: Automobile.
Person 4: Why does Superman have a S on the front of his shirt?
Answer: Because Batman bought all the medium and large ones.
Person 5: Why is Batman more stupid than Superman?
Answer: Because he wears a cape even though he can’t fly.
We all know about the five senses: taste, smell, sight, touch and sound, and most of us were born with these senses. Some are said to have the sixth sense: intuition, and sometimes it is interpreted as the awareness for other-worldly creatures. Kayee has a friend who adds a seventh sense to the list: humour.
While it is tempting to discuss the sixth sense and for once beat the rate of TV shows such as “Pemburu Hantu” (“Ghost Buster” in Lativi) or “Dunia Lain” (“The Other World” in Trans TV), unfortunately we can’t seem to associate ourselves with such fame… yet. Instead, we will attempt to have some fun while exploring the sense of humour.
So, why all of a sudden we are interested in humour, you may wonder. Believe it or not (not in Ripley’s Believe It or Not sense but in the everyday sense), humour and creativity are related. According to E. Paul Torrance, Professor of Educational Psychology Department at University of Georgia, both creativity and humour revolve around unusual combinations, element of surprise, conceptual and perceptual incongruities (Torrance, 1999).
Think about it: good jokes require a great deal of wit. In the examples above, the answers take us by surprise because we find them unusual, absurd, un-thought of, and therefore funny. The answers make unlikely interpretation of the questions (joke 3), make connections with what we are familiar with – but at the same time turn it into unfamiliar setting (joke 1 and 4), and make uncommon combinations (joke 2 and 5).
And yes, creative thinking is about making unusual combinations, looking at things differently, and thinking of and seeing things that don’t normally ‘fit’ or ‘belong’ together. This is why many experts on creative thinking actually prescribe humour (playfulness, spontaneity) as one of the necessary ingredients to being creative.
Dr. Göran Ekvall, Professor Emeritus of Industrial and Organizational Psychology at University of Lund, conducted research in major corporations to find out what differentiates companies that produce more innovative products to those that are less innovative. Among other things, Ekvall’s research showed that organizations that had a playful and humourous environment were more likely to have creative behaviour exhibited by employees.
Back in February this year, Time magazine reported Google to be the biggest media company in the world, in market-cap terms. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google were described as “playful” (they used to take part in the regular roller-hockey games in the Google parking lot). The Time article featured a photograph of Brin and Page playing with Lego pieces during the interview.
Not only are the founders of Google playful people, Googleplex, as the headquarters of Google is known, is also described as “quirky”. Toys for employees and their children, individualized road signs inside the building, electronic scooters to get from one place to another, a sand-volleyball court, a ball pit with brightly coloured plastic balls and a London style telephone booth (minus the telephone) were just some of the examples cited that contribute to Googleplex’s quirkiness (Time magazine, February 20, 2006).
Amidst all this playfulness, however, much serious work gets done. Brin and Page were reported to be “tough sells” when it comes to approving projects and keeping their engineers on their toes with their project proposals.
So we don’t need to be serious all the time to be productive. Dr. Roger L. Firestien, Associate Professor of International Center for Studies in Creativity at Buffalo State College, concludes that “There is a positive link between humour, productivity and creativity!”. People with a sense of humour are less rigid, less tense, less stressed and therefore able to get more work done. Humour is also found to alleviate boredom (very useful when one needs to get through those unavoidable mundane tasks).
And here is a bonus for having a sense of humour: research shows that group leaders who are able to laugh at themselves are perceived to be more effective at relieving tension, better at encouraging member participation and more willing to share opinions. Humour has a positive influence on effective communication in groups.
Our experience in facilitating problem solving groups and training substantiates what research and the creativity literature are telling us about having a sense of humour. We have never failed to have a smiling participant and a more relaxed atmosphere once we pose to participants the problem of how they can stop us from talking. A more relaxed atmosphere enables participants to focus on learning and generating ideas rather than being on ‘defensive’ mode.
So now the big question…if we don’t have one already, how do we go about acquiring a sense of humour? Moody – and the name is not a joke! – describes a person with a good sense of humour as one who sees himself and others in a detached way, thus being able to laugh at himself and things that don’t quite go right and remain positive at the same time (in Torrance, 1978: p.223).
So, first, you have to be willing. Having read this far in this article, we would assume that you are interested in acquiring a sense of humour, or at least to explore the idea of acquiring a sense of humour. As we believe, once you are aware and willing, you are half way to positive change.
So, here’s our recipe for a sense of humour. What you can do on your own: Set a quota for a laugh a day (our motto: a laugh a day keeps the doctor away). Read humour or joke books (keep some in the office). Meditate to relax. Put a funny mirror in your bathroom or on your desk. Imagine. Take deep breaths. Think of happy thoughts. Exchange your brain for a day. Use laughing gas (joke!).
What you can do with your coworkers: Ask yourselves silly questions (e.g. how to stuff an elephant into my boss’ mouth). Throw a party. Pop balloons (exercise sends oxygen to the brain and has an invigorating effect). Meet our boss, Elli. Treat your employees or employers like they’re your precious kids. Dance at work.
What you can do whether you are alone or with a group of people you know or even do not know (we suggest you try various situations and don’t forget to let us know the result!): Pretend you’re the guest star. Start playing. Exercise your mouth muscles. Watch comedies. Smile for nothing. Tickle yourself (it doesn’t work, so get someone else to tickle you). Talk to, play with, or pretend to be children, animals, or plants. Or, just laugh when others are laughing (even if you don’t know what they’re laughing about).
We love to play and laugh. If none of the above work for you, come and join us. We get lots of work done too.
“We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” (George Bernard Shaw).
Friday, September 08, 2006
Should Parents Leave Education to Teachers?
While working on our annual review (we were established in the month of August – thus the oddity of timing), we noticed the lack of participations in our parenting seminars and the little response we got in our parenting surveys. In the past three years, on average, parents’ participations on free seminars we conducted had been less than 5%, while surveys, although waged better than seminars, were at less than 20% of our database.
While this result came as no surprise, this year we discussed the issue and were strucked by our own conclusion. In general, we categorize parents into: (1) those who want to get involved with their children’s education and development vs. those who don’t want to get involved; (2) those who have time to get involved vs. those who don’t have time; (3) those who are motivated to get involved and put (1) and (2) into action vs. those who are not motivated.
Now this coming part may come across rather harsh and judgmental, but we find that we can only get through to parents who want to get involved, have time to get involved, and are motivated to get involved with their children’s education and development. Any other combination won’t work (e.g. want to, have time, but don’t have motivation; or want to, have motivation, but don’t have time; and the rest of the variations).
Point (2) that has to do with time is probably the least problematic. Time is a luxury that not everybody has. While some people can schedule their own time, others are strictly regulated by schedules that are set by other people. So we can understand if parents can’t find the time to attend our seminars or fill in our parenting surveys, with a note that they actually spend time for their children’s education and development at home. But if the latter one is also difficult, then maybe it’s time for them to rethink their priorities in allocating time. Time is finite, so we often must juggle our priorities to figure out which one we will spend time for. And we would argue that if we find something is important, we will definitely spend the time for. Thus, we would ask: What is more important than your own children?
Point (1) gets a little bit more tricky, and can be broken down into three sub-problems. Don’t parents want to get involved because (a) they don’t want to or because (b) they can’t or because (c) they feel they can’t? Of these three sub-problems, the last one is the least problematic. Parents can always get involve. In fact, parents must get involved. When you look at who you are today, we bet that a lot of who you are is influenced by your parents – be it in a positive or in a negative way. So is and will be your influence to your own children. We think that you can always get involved if you want to – a sub-problem we will turn into soon enough.
Now, to the sub-problem (1b): what if one can not get involved? We will have to ask: Why? Is it because of time (which has been discussed in point (2) above)? Is it because of capability? What other possibilities are there? If it’s a matter of capability, there’s a saying that we would like to share at this point: “I can, because I believe I can”. We would add to this that as long as there’s will (which is related to point (3) motivation), and time (i.e. you want to put your children as a priority for your time allocation), you will be able to get involved in your own children’s education and development.
But what if the problem is the sub-problem (1a): you don’t want to get involved? Well, we can only rest our case. We would just ask you to remember the time when your child was born: how did you feel about him or her? What were your hopes and fear for him or her?
We could only say the same when it comes to point (3), which is motivation to get involved in the education and development of your own children. As we discussed in this article, education is as much a responsibility of students as it is of teachers. When the students are young, then parents do have major part in sharing this responsibily with teachers. As the best kind of motivation comes from within, when parents role-model intrinsic motivation for their children, they too will most likely become intrinsically motivated individuals.
Education is as much a responsibility of parents as it is of teachers.
While this result came as no surprise, this year we discussed the issue and were strucked by our own conclusion. In general, we categorize parents into: (1) those who want to get involved with their children’s education and development vs. those who don’t want to get involved; (2) those who have time to get involved vs. those who don’t have time; (3) those who are motivated to get involved and put (1) and (2) into action vs. those who are not motivated.
Now this coming part may come across rather harsh and judgmental, but we find that we can only get through to parents who want to get involved, have time to get involved, and are motivated to get involved with their children’s education and development. Any other combination won’t work (e.g. want to, have time, but don’t have motivation; or want to, have motivation, but don’t have time; and the rest of the variations).
Point (2) that has to do with time is probably the least problematic. Time is a luxury that not everybody has. While some people can schedule their own time, others are strictly regulated by schedules that are set by other people. So we can understand if parents can’t find the time to attend our seminars or fill in our parenting surveys, with a note that they actually spend time for their children’s education and development at home. But if the latter one is also difficult, then maybe it’s time for them to rethink their priorities in allocating time. Time is finite, so we often must juggle our priorities to figure out which one we will spend time for. And we would argue that if we find something is important, we will definitely spend the time for. Thus, we would ask: What is more important than your own children?
Point (1) gets a little bit more tricky, and can be broken down into three sub-problems. Don’t parents want to get involved because (a) they don’t want to or because (b) they can’t or because (c) they feel they can’t? Of these three sub-problems, the last one is the least problematic. Parents can always get involve. In fact, parents must get involved. When you look at who you are today, we bet that a lot of who you are is influenced by your parents – be it in a positive or in a negative way. So is and will be your influence to your own children. We think that you can always get involved if you want to – a sub-problem we will turn into soon enough.
Now, to the sub-problem (1b): what if one can not get involved? We will have to ask: Why? Is it because of time (which has been discussed in point (2) above)? Is it because of capability? What other possibilities are there? If it’s a matter of capability, there’s a saying that we would like to share at this point: “I can, because I believe I can”. We would add to this that as long as there’s will (which is related to point (3) motivation), and time (i.e. you want to put your children as a priority for your time allocation), you will be able to get involved in your own children’s education and development.
But what if the problem is the sub-problem (1a): you don’t want to get involved? Well, we can only rest our case. We would just ask you to remember the time when your child was born: how did you feel about him or her? What were your hopes and fear for him or her?
We could only say the same when it comes to point (3), which is motivation to get involved in the education and development of your own children. As we discussed in this article, education is as much a responsibility of students as it is of teachers. When the students are young, then parents do have major part in sharing this responsibily with teachers. As the best kind of motivation comes from within, when parents role-model intrinsic motivation for their children, they too will most likely become intrinsically motivated individuals.
Education is as much a responsibility of parents as it is of teachers.
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Education: A Shared Responsibility
Yesterday’s article in Kompas attracted our attention. Ika Dewi Ana in “Kearifan dalam Pendidikan” wrote:
The article puts the responsibility on the hands of the lecturer and the system of education in university level. But where should the responsibility of students be?
We are currently conducting surveys with university-level students who have gone through trainings on Creative Problem Solving within this past year in preparation for this conference: “Creativity or Conformity? Building Cultures of Creativity in Higher Education”, hosted by Cardiff School of Art&Design UWIC in UK.
We have received about a third of the total number of response we expect. So far we conclude two general findings. First, some students admit openly that they are lazy. Second, although most students know that the training has increased their ideas and open-mindedness, and for some their creativity, they are not interested in expanding their knowledge and practice of creative thinking. In other words: they are not motivated to learn beyond what is required by the facilitator.
These two findings raised some questions in our mind: Are students unable to transfer knowledge they gain from one class to another? But what can we (facilitators, trainers, teachers) do when students are not motivated to learn and to extend their own knowledge? What can we do when students realize that they are lazy but don’t want to do anything about it? Where does the responsibility of facilitators stop and the responsibility of students begin?
We would like to advocate that learning is as much the responsibility of facilitators as it is the responsibility of each and every students. Learning can’t happen when students are being spoon-feed by their facilitators. Likewise, learning can’t happen when students are lazy and unmotivated.
In her full article here, she noted that learning at university level seems to still focus on “transfer of information”, through which students lose the opportunity to learn.“Mahasiswa sekadar datang, duduk, mendengar, dan mencatat (dikurangi berpikir) apa yang disampaikan dosen. Usai kuliah, salah seorang mahasiswa akan meminta salinan kuliah yang biasanya disusun dalam presentasi power point. Tak ada lagi hakikat belajar.”
The article puts the responsibility on the hands of the lecturer and the system of education in university level. But where should the responsibility of students be?
We are currently conducting surveys with university-level students who have gone through trainings on Creative Problem Solving within this past year in preparation for this conference: “Creativity or Conformity? Building Cultures of Creativity in Higher Education”, hosted by Cardiff School of Art&Design UWIC in UK.
We have received about a third of the total number of response we expect. So far we conclude two general findings. First, some students admit openly that they are lazy. Second, although most students know that the training has increased their ideas and open-mindedness, and for some their creativity, they are not interested in expanding their knowledge and practice of creative thinking. In other words: they are not motivated to learn beyond what is required by the facilitator.
These two findings raised some questions in our mind: Are students unable to transfer knowledge they gain from one class to another? But what can we (facilitators, trainers, teachers) do when students are not motivated to learn and to extend their own knowledge? What can we do when students realize that they are lazy but don’t want to do anything about it? Where does the responsibility of facilitators stop and the responsibility of students begin?
We would like to advocate that learning is as much the responsibility of facilitators as it is the responsibility of each and every students. Learning can’t happen when students are being spoon-feed by their facilitators. Likewise, learning can’t happen when students are lazy and unmotivated.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Different working preference boost teamwork
Have you ever been in meetings where lots of questions are asked but nothing is achieved? Or meetings where lots of people throw around lots of ideas with no follow-up action? Or situations where a detailed plan is worked out only to realize that you were working on the wrong problem or idea? Or a situation where people actively jump into action on the first idea?
To effectively and creatively solve problems, people need to find out exactly what the problem is, generate ideas to solve the problem, develop an action plan that works and finally, implement the plan. But often, some of the steps are not taken, resulting in the creation of the aforementioned situations in the work context.
Much as we would like to see all these steps taken by a single individual, the truth of the matter is that not all of us like doing all the steps of clarifying the problem, generating ideas, developing solutions and implementing a plan.
A while back, we assessed people's preferences in the process of creative problem solving (FourSightT; www.FourSightOnline.com). As it turns out, even we (Kayee and Dewi) are very different in our working preferences.
Not too long ago, we started to collaborate on a writing project. Kayee (who has a preference to clarify, generate ideas and implement) had a big picture of what we needed to do (clarify) and many ideas here and there (idea generation), and immediately started typing away (implementation), and presented her output to Dewi the next day.
Dewi, being a solution developer, told Kayee that we really needed a plan, so we'll know how our writing project will develop over time. She couldn't start working on the project without a detailed plan. While Dewi nodded away when Kayee tried to convince her to go with the flow, the moment she stopped talking (thinking Dewi was convinced), Dewi turned to her computer and started creating a matrix of ideas, how they can be structured and hoping to see our much needed plan emerge.
You're probably wondering what happened to us -- both working on the same thing, going off in different directions. Well, for many people, the partnership may have been on the brink of collapse. For us, our understanding of each other's working preferences allowed this to happen without much mishap.
Kayee was aware that she was jumping the gun. Dewi's plan would bring her back to earth like a child tugging at a runaway balloon. Dewi, knowing Kayee's impatience to start, knew not to keep her at the planning stage too long and convincingly gave her the impression that "things were moving" while subtly leading her through the planning process.
You see, we understand each other's working style. The assessment we took helped us to gain this understanding and have a common language to talk to each other about how to work together or give space to accommodate each other's working preferences. In this case, a little understanding paved the way.
So Kayee has a strong preference to clarify the problem, generate ideas and implement. Dewi, as it appears, is a solution developer. Now be mindful that preference is not the same as saying that a person will be good at what they prefer to do, nor does it mean that a person does not have the ability to do what they don't prefer to do. Preference -- that is all it is -- is what people like to work on. Also note that Dewi's and Kayee's preferences combined to equal the four stages in the creative problem solving process! To put it bluntly, if we work together, we can be sure that no stages are skipped in the process!
Some people may have a preference for in-depth understanding of a problem (clarifiers), some may prefer to think up new ideas (idea creators), some may prefer to work out an action plan in detail (solution developers) and some may prefer to put ideas into action (implementers). People may have preferences in only one or a combination of any of the four stages of the creative process.
The idea for Tetra Pakr, the ubiquitous carton used for packaging liquids, was conceived by Erik Wallenberg; but it was his partner at work, Ruben Rausing, who invented the process to form and fill the cartons. While it is not clear whether this delineation of tasks was due to a process preference or possession of skills and knowledge, what this example illustrates is that a great idea needs a workable solution that gets implemented to bring the idea to fruition.
IDEO Product Development has a very strong team of product designers. Apple mouse, PalmPDA and Polaroid's I-Zone instant camera are just a few products to highlight the strength of the team. The team is not short on identifying challenges to work on and finding ideas to solve their product design challenges. However, without people skilled in marketing to develop solutions or plans to bring their products to the market and to market and sell the products, the creative problem solving process would be incomplete. IDEO recognized their lack of marketing expertise and began to hire people with marketing and consulting backgrounds to fill the gaps in the process (Sutton, 2002).
In their book titled Breakthrough, Stefik & Stefik (2004) included excerpts of an interview with Dave Robson, a member of the team that created Smalltalk (an influential object-oriented programming system developed at Palo Alto Research Center), who described the collaboration of two other members of the Smalltalk team: Alan Kay and Dan Ingalls.
Alan Kay was described as a great visionary. He had many ideas on how Smalltalk should work. Dan Ingalls was described as an implementer. He shared practical issues that he encountered that in turn guided Kay's thoughts in realizing his visions. In Robson's words, "Alan's main products were ideas ..." and "Dan ... has designed and implemented a whole variety of elegant and efficient systems". Robson concluded: "I think that both of them were necessary to create the first generation of Smalltalk. Without Alan, Dan wouldn't have seen that possibility. And without Dan, Alan would not have made it actually run" (Stefik & Stefik, 2004: 172).
What do we have here? We have Alan Kay the clarifier and ideator and Dan Ingalls the solution developer and implementer. Both were necessary to see a possibility and to work through the process to realize the possibility.
When Thomas Edison was asked why he had a team of assistants, he replied: "If I could solve all the problems myself, I would." As is the case in most work situations, we can't solve big problems or challenges on our own.
Knowing your working preferences is a good starting point to see where you can make the most valuable contributions in a team. Knowing your colleagues' working preferences will enable you to appreciate the value your team members bring to the table -- even if it brings along frustration to you because you enjoy being in that part of the creative problem solving process. Each part of the creative problem solving process is valuable to the outcome of the process, so be sure that your team includes clarifiers, ideators, solution developers and implementers.
If you are facing a challenge on your own, knowing your own preferences will help you navigate the creative problem solving process. We tend to skip the stages of the process that we don't enjoy -- be aware of the stages that you are skipping and bear with staying at that stage just long enough for you to effectively and creatively problem solve.
"Self-knowledge is the beginning of self-improvement" (Baltasar Graci n). How well do you know your own creative problem solving process preferences?
To effectively and creatively solve problems, people need to find out exactly what the problem is, generate ideas to solve the problem, develop an action plan that works and finally, implement the plan. But often, some of the steps are not taken, resulting in the creation of the aforementioned situations in the work context.
Much as we would like to see all these steps taken by a single individual, the truth of the matter is that not all of us like doing all the steps of clarifying the problem, generating ideas, developing solutions and implementing a plan.
A while back, we assessed people's preferences in the process of creative problem solving (FourSightT; www.FourSightOnline.com). As it turns out, even we (Kayee and Dewi) are very different in our working preferences.
Not too long ago, we started to collaborate on a writing project. Kayee (who has a preference to clarify, generate ideas and implement) had a big picture of what we needed to do (clarify) and many ideas here and there (idea generation), and immediately started typing away (implementation), and presented her output to Dewi the next day.
Dewi, being a solution developer, told Kayee that we really needed a plan, so we'll know how our writing project will develop over time. She couldn't start working on the project without a detailed plan. While Dewi nodded away when Kayee tried to convince her to go with the flow, the moment she stopped talking (thinking Dewi was convinced), Dewi turned to her computer and started creating a matrix of ideas, how they can be structured and hoping to see our much needed plan emerge.
You're probably wondering what happened to us -- both working on the same thing, going off in different directions. Well, for many people, the partnership may have been on the brink of collapse. For us, our understanding of each other's working preferences allowed this to happen without much mishap.
Kayee was aware that she was jumping the gun. Dewi's plan would bring her back to earth like a child tugging at a runaway balloon. Dewi, knowing Kayee's impatience to start, knew not to keep her at the planning stage too long and convincingly gave her the impression that "things were moving" while subtly leading her through the planning process.
You see, we understand each other's working style. The assessment we took helped us to gain this understanding and have a common language to talk to each other about how to work together or give space to accommodate each other's working preferences. In this case, a little understanding paved the way.
So Kayee has a strong preference to clarify the problem, generate ideas and implement. Dewi, as it appears, is a solution developer. Now be mindful that preference is not the same as saying that a person will be good at what they prefer to do, nor does it mean that a person does not have the ability to do what they don't prefer to do. Preference -- that is all it is -- is what people like to work on. Also note that Dewi's and Kayee's preferences combined to equal the four stages in the creative problem solving process! To put it bluntly, if we work together, we can be sure that no stages are skipped in the process!
Some people may have a preference for in-depth understanding of a problem (clarifiers), some may prefer to think up new ideas (idea creators), some may prefer to work out an action plan in detail (solution developers) and some may prefer to put ideas into action (implementers). People may have preferences in only one or a combination of any of the four stages of the creative process.
The idea for Tetra Pakr, the ubiquitous carton used for packaging liquids, was conceived by Erik Wallenberg; but it was his partner at work, Ruben Rausing, who invented the process to form and fill the cartons. While it is not clear whether this delineation of tasks was due to a process preference or possession of skills and knowledge, what this example illustrates is that a great idea needs a workable solution that gets implemented to bring the idea to fruition.
IDEO Product Development has a very strong team of product designers. Apple mouse, PalmPDA and Polaroid's I-Zone instant camera are just a few products to highlight the strength of the team. The team is not short on identifying challenges to work on and finding ideas to solve their product design challenges. However, without people skilled in marketing to develop solutions or plans to bring their products to the market and to market and sell the products, the creative problem solving process would be incomplete. IDEO recognized their lack of marketing expertise and began to hire people with marketing and consulting backgrounds to fill the gaps in the process (Sutton, 2002).
In their book titled Breakthrough, Stefik & Stefik (2004) included excerpts of an interview with Dave Robson, a member of the team that created Smalltalk (an influential object-oriented programming system developed at Palo Alto Research Center), who described the collaboration of two other members of the Smalltalk team: Alan Kay and Dan Ingalls.
Alan Kay was described as a great visionary. He had many ideas on how Smalltalk should work. Dan Ingalls was described as an implementer. He shared practical issues that he encountered that in turn guided Kay's thoughts in realizing his visions. In Robson's words, "Alan's main products were ideas ..." and "Dan ... has designed and implemented a whole variety of elegant and efficient systems". Robson concluded: "I think that both of them were necessary to create the first generation of Smalltalk. Without Alan, Dan wouldn't have seen that possibility. And without Dan, Alan would not have made it actually run" (Stefik & Stefik, 2004: 172).
What do we have here? We have Alan Kay the clarifier and ideator and Dan Ingalls the solution developer and implementer. Both were necessary to see a possibility and to work through the process to realize the possibility.
When Thomas Edison was asked why he had a team of assistants, he replied: "If I could solve all the problems myself, I would." As is the case in most work situations, we can't solve big problems or challenges on our own.
Knowing your working preferences is a good starting point to see where you can make the most valuable contributions in a team. Knowing your colleagues' working preferences will enable you to appreciate the value your team members bring to the table -- even if it brings along frustration to you because you enjoy being in that part of the creative problem solving process. Each part of the creative problem solving process is valuable to the outcome of the process, so be sure that your team includes clarifiers, ideators, solution developers and implementers.
If you are facing a challenge on your own, knowing your own preferences will help you navigate the creative problem solving process. We tend to skip the stages of the process that we don't enjoy -- be aware of the stages that you are skipping and bear with staying at that stage just long enough for you to effectively and creatively problem solve.
"Self-knowledge is the beginning of self-improvement" (Baltasar Graci n). How well do you know your own creative problem solving process preferences?
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