September 1, 2010 | By Derek Cheshire | Category: Creativity Technique

Have you ever attended a seminar or course and then wondered why you had such a hard time dealing with colleagues or perhaps loved ones when you returned? What is your reaction when a colleague returns from a course? You probably say to yourself, "Don’t you try any of that stuff on me. I’m not going to succumb to your tricks or mind games."

Despite the fact that most of us are responsible adults, we become childish when we think someone may be trying to influence us. The question is how to use our new found skills without anyone noticing. The answer is of course not to tell anyone that we are using our newly acquired skills!

When introducing creative thinking techniques in the workplace, the problems are usually made worse by colleagues thinking that they will always be outside of their comfort zone and then battening down the hatches and resisting all your attempts to involve them.

Next time you wish to use reverse brainstorming, do not start your sentence with "I think that we will try and use reverse brainstorming on this one." The words different, change, creativity and uncomfortable immediately flash before your colleagues' eyes. Why not start your session with a pitch like that below:

“How many of you have encountered negative colleagues in the workplace? Would you like to be able to harness this negativity for the good of the company?”

First of all your colleagues only think that you are trying out a technique or showing them how to use it (which of course you are) and secondly they will jump in because they of course do not wish to be seen to be negative themselves. This type of approach can be used in all sorts of situations. This is guerrilla creativity, sneaking in by the back door, and it works.

September 1, 2010 | By Chuck Frey | Category: Creativity Books

On a recent road trip, I had an opportunity to dive into David Sibbett’s fascinating new book, Visual Meetings: How Graphics, Sticky Notes and Idea Mapping Can Transform Group Productivity. My first impression? Very impressive!

Sibbett makes a convincing case for why teams ought to use visual techniques for group facilitation. For starters, there is a lot more information today and it’s harder for us to make sense of it (and since the recession caused major layoffs and early retirements, there are fewer of us survivors left to make sense of it!). Also, many of the problems we’re trying to tackle are system-level challenges, which require groups to think bigger picture, or over longer time frames than they are accustomed to doing. In addition, today’s rapid rate of change requires that we update our mental models of how things work on a frequent basis.

Depicting challenges visually can help us in all of these areas. Simply put, visualizing challenges creates a shared frame of reference, builds a higher level of engagement of all group members, and tends to draw forth their best ideas. In short, it's a great approach to group-based creative problem solving.

Sibbett does a great job of explaining how to get started. While Dan Roam’s book, The Back of the Napkin, presented a framework or visual dictionary of shapes and symbols that we can use to communicate ideas visually, Sibbett goes another level deeper by demonstrating to the reader how to draw a collection of simple shapes – such as points, lines, triangles and squares – and then explains how to draw more complex shapes based on these building blocks.

I’m also impressed that Sibbett outlines some recommended exercises that help to build engagement among group members. Often, people walk into meetings with their own mental models about their roles, their perceptions about the other people in the meeting and their motivations, and what they have been called upon to accomplish. These perceptions often create conflict and get in the way of the group accomplishing its objectives. Some simple visual exercises help everyone to build a sense of shared purpose and trust, and improve their level of engagement in the meeting.

I still have much more to read, but so far I’m really really loving Visual Meetings!

September 1, 2010 | By Chuck Frey | Category: Creativity Software

Recently, I visited the Eastgate website to find some information on their flagship information management program for the Mac, Tinderbox. I was surprised to discover that several months ago, the developer released a preview version of a lighter-weight application called Twig.

Twig appears to be a stripped-down version of Tinderbox, with a limited number of views and limited analysis capabilities. Where Tinderbox is an incredibly powerful information mapping and analysis tool with a great depth of features, Twig is designed to help the average information manager get started immediately with capturing their ideas and knowledge in a more streamlined interface.

Twig's views include:

• Noter, where you can quickly capture notes of any length, add tags to them, create prototypes (these appear to be like templates, where you can tell Twig to have one note inherit a prototype's properties). The Noter displays a list of related notes and a topical word cloud.
• Map enables you to capture ideas and express relationships between them. This sounds something like a mind map, or at least Tinderbox's flavor of visual mapping.
• Outline gives you the ability to arrange your notes in hierarchical outlines, and to add checkboxes, columns and styles to them.
• Chart displays your notes in a tree-type browser. Like Tinderbox, Twig allows you to add adornments to help you to organize your maps. Adornments function something like intelligent agents, and can even reach out and arrange new notes for you.

The content you capture in Twig is readable in Tinderbox, and vice versa. Here's how the Twig web page describes the relationship between the two products:

"Twig is great for quickly capturing new ideas and for discovering relationships among them. Almost everything happens in a single window, making Twig ideal for conferences, meetings, and brainstorming on the run.

Tinderbox gives you unequalled power for analyzing and sharing. Tinderbox agents and rules can move and modify notes, letting you build intelligent notebooks that help organize themselves. And Tinderbox export templates provide unmatched flexibility for export to the Web, to XML, or to almost any modern format."

The Twig preview version is available on the Eastgate website for US$79; in comparison, Tinderbox retails for $249. Sounds like Twig may be just the thing for those of you who are looking for an elegant information management solution; if you outgrow it, you can always move up to Tinderbox. Eastgate may also be trying to blunt the momentum of other lower-cost information management applications for the Mac that have emerged during the last few years, such as  DevonThink and Curio.

August 30, 2010 | By Michelle James | Category: Best Practices

Interview # 21 in the Creativity in Business Thought Leader Series is with Stephen Shapiro, one of the foremost authorities on innovation culture, collaboration, and open innovation. Stephen is an author, consultant, speaker, and the Chief Innovation Evangelist for InnoCentive, a pioneer in the burgeoning field of open innovation.

Over the years, Stephen has shared his innovative philosophy in books such as 24/7 Innovation, The Little Book of BIG Innovation Ideas and Goal-Free Living - a manifesto on how to increase your creativity by not being so hyper-focused on your goals. Shapiro's work has been featured in Newsweek, Investor’s Business Daily, Entrepreneur Magazine, O - The Oprah Magazine, The New York Times, and other prestigious publications. His clients include Staples, GE, BP, Johnson & Johnson, Fidelity Investments, Pearson Education, Nestlé, and Bristol-Myers Squibb.

His latest creation, Personality Poker, has been used by more than 25,000 people around the world to create high-performing innovation teams. It hits the book stores on October 28th and is a "game" that improves the performance of innovation teams by encouraging divergent thinking.

How does your work relate to creativity?

Shapiro: My life is about creativity and innovation. I help individuals and organizations connect the dots; that is, make connections between ideas, experiences, people, departments, and companies. For example, in my role as Chief Innovation Evangelist for InnoCentive, I help organizations leverage Open Innovation as a tool for connecting to "solvers" and solutions that exist outside of their organization. My passion is connecting the dots between people by encouraging new collaboration models that might not occur naturally.

What do you see as the new paradigm of work?

Shapiro: In the past, transactional work was outsourced (e.g., manufacturing or finance). But now even creative endeavors are being sent to external partners. Open innovation is providing new methods for finding solutions. If you want a solution to a problem you are working on, you are no longer limited to the expertise within your organization. You can now tap into a diverse group of experts who have experience across many disciplines. And the cost associated with some open innovation models is driven by the value received, not by the time invested. This ensures higher returns on investment.

What do you see the role of creativity in that paradigm?

Shapiro: Open innovation, when done successfully, truly encourages creative thinking. The reason is, it is perfect for helping to connect the dots across disciplines. For example, an oil spill recover problem (from the Exxon Valdez spill) was solved by someone from the construction industry. NASA solved a solar flare prediction challenge by tapping into someone in the cell phone industry. And a potato chip manufacturer found a way to reduce the fat in their chips from a musician. As I like to say, if you are working on an aerospace engineering challenge and you have 100 aerospace engineers working on it, adding the 101st will not make that much of a difference. But if you add a biologist, a chemist, or a musician, you might just find some breakthrough solutions.

What values and behaviors do you see as essential for effectively navigating the new work paradigm?

Shapiro: Before you can be open externally, you need to be open internally. This means you need to become more effective at connecting the dots with the people inside your four walls. Unfortunately, most organizations suffer from "chronic sameness" – the innovation-restricting disease in where commonality is valued above individuality. Contrary to conventional wisdom, opposites do NOT attract. Organizations are designed to be efficient which means that "fitting the mold" is critical. But this kills creativity.

This is why I created Personality Poker - it is the cure for chronic sameness. Innovation only occurs when multiple points of view are encouraged, valued, and utilized. Therefore, it is useful to get people to seek out the person who is their "opposite" – that is the person whose style is different yet complementary to their. For example, creative individuals might seek out planners while analytical people might seek out more emotional, intuitive individuals.

What is one approach that people could start applying today to bring more creativity into their work or their business organization?

Shapiro: In Personality Poker, we identify four key principles for creating high-performing innovation teams. One is to "play with a full deck." That is, make sure you have a balance of different innovation styles in your organizations. Here are some principles that can help you create a full deck:

Hire in pairs: Build diversity into your hiring process by hiring opposites at the same time. For example, when you hire a good project manager, hire a strong creative individual.

Ignore the golden rule: Don’t treat people the way YOU want to be treated, treat them the way THEY want to be treated.

Provide feedback based on style: Praise individuals based on their style. For example, praise a creative individual for their new ideas, and praise planners for their "on-time, on-budget attitude."

Balance your meetings: Meetings have "personalities," too. For every brainstorming session, have status meetings. For every customer data analysis meeting, hold a talent engagement meeting.

Balance your leadership: Make sure that your leadership team has multiple points of view. Balance your bottom-line, operationally-driven leader with a creative, innovation-driven leader.

Finally, what is creative leadership to you?

Shapiro: Leadership that encourages creativity. When this happens, leaders inspire others to be leaders. They create an environment where each individual feels and acts like they are an owner of the business. Connecting the dots between individuals, departments and organizations becomes natural.

In the end, it is less about new products, new processes, new services, or even new business models. The key is to create an organization that can adapt, evolve, and change repeatedly and rapidly. This is the only sustainable business model.

The Creativity in Business Thought Leader Interview Series is developed and conducted by business creativity catalyst, Michelle James, CEO of The Center for Creative Emergence and founder of Quantum Leap Business Improv.

August 30, 2010 | By Roy Luebke | Category: Best Practices

The cable TV channels History, Discovery, and Science have each been running a series of programs recently on the origin of the universe, the creation of planets, and an array of topics related to chemistry and physics.

On the surface this description sounds pretty boring, so imagine what it must sound like to your average high school student. Pretty lame. The origin of the universe is a complex and abstract concept. However, the way these television programs present this information was absolutely stunning.

It has been quite awhile since this author studied science in high school, and much of the knowledge presented didn’t exist back in those stone-age studies. These programs caused a reflection on how complex subjects are presented today and how students are being taught. Schools back in the day were geared toward preparing students for factory jobs. If a teenager was extremely bright they could go on to college and become an engineer, scientist, doctor, teacher or a lawyer.

The world has changed exponentially in the past 100 years, but our schools continue to teach in the same, rote manner. This author’s son is a 16-year-old high school junior, and his comments lead one to believe they are memorizing facts, regurgitating facts and basically being bored to tears.

In contrast, when this young man gets his hands on a cell phone or computer the entire world opens up and his engagement begins. His generation is interactive, online, always-on. Yet the schools don’t seem to be integrating new technology and approaches into their teaching methods.

One can only ask why there is not more interactive teaching going on. Why are teachers not embedding the Internet into their lectures? Why are tests not interactive? Why are students not researching and writing more, and taking abstract theories and trying to prove them through research?

Students are still compared individually to one another and not being taught to work in teams. How is this approach preparing them for 21st century work requiring collaboration, teamwork, and creating and sharing knowledge?

Socrates was probably a pretty good teacher. Maybe he was even a nice guy. His teaching methods still have practical use in schools in certain circumstances. We should take a lesson from Socrates and remember that teachers lead students toward knowledge.

In today’s parlance, teachers should be looked at a project managers. Teachers understand the spectrum of information that needs to be presented to students so they understand the current rules and current knowledge, but they also need to prepare students to discover and invent the next generation of rules and knowledge.

Teachers as project managers means they can establish the curriculum for a course, and point the students to outrageously cool and interesting on-line spaces to discover what the teacher is aiming for them to learn. On-line testing can be interactive, embed many visuals, and allow the student to better define what they have learned. The teacher can serve as the organizer and teach the students to work together in teams to define answers to complex problems.

Our schools must begin to use current technology more effectively to prepare our children for a new, emerging workplace. Schools should be involving working professionals in the classroom on a regular basis to invigorate the learning experience.

Emerging market economies are taking over the manufacturing of most goods in the world. Even those jobs will be eliminated sooner-or-later by robots and other technological advances. How are the societal and economic issues of the world going to be addressed when people have been taught to memorize basic information and not stretch their minds?

Humans are by nature visual storytellers. For thousands of years, knowledge was passed from generation to generation through stories told from elders to youngsters, and we remembered. We remembered because the stories captured our imagination and made us ponder what was beyond our daily reality.

In economically and socially advanced societies, education is the leading industry going forward. Yet it continues to operate as if it is still 1950. If education is the imperative in our societies, it needs to use new techniques, new methods, new tools, and creativity to make the educational experience more rewarding. It is time for education to catch up with society once again.

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