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?