STD: 10
Reading: Book
Unlocking Creativity
By: Michael A Roberto 2019
Skill Set: 1 / Module: 6
Innovation and Creativity
BOOK
Unlocking Creativity
How to Solve Any Problem and Make the Best
Decisions by Shifting Creative Mindsets
Michael A. Roberto
Wiley, 2019 more
Recommendation
Michael A. Roberto’s useful analysis tells leaders how to support their employees’
creative talents. He identifies six mind-sets that block innovation. He explains their
impact in terms of social science research using practices from such firms as Apple
and Trader Joe’s plus examples from media, sports and the arts. Roberto shows
leaders how to overcome these obstacles, create an open environment and
stimulate employees’ creativity by encouraging them to explore new ways to work.
Take-Aways
Leaders and organizations claim to value creativity, but they often
harbour biases and perpetuate environments that discourage new
ideas.
Leaders can cultivate employee creativity by overcoming “six
mind-sets” – beliefs that discourage employees from being
creative:
One: “The Linear Mind-Set” believes success comes from using
sequential, stepwise processes, but iterative, exploratory methods
better foster innovation.
Two: “The Benchmarking Mind-Set” bases strategies and goals on
rivals’ behaviour, so companies often miss new, distinctive growth
opportunities.
Three: “The Prediction Mind-Set” relies on expert forecasts to
determine outcomes and overlooks nimble, creative ventures that
start small but can have great impact.
Four: “The Structural Mind-Set” believes redrawing the org
chart gets creative juices flowing, however, developing the right
work culture is often more productive.
Five: “The Focus Mind-Set” values concentration, but relentless
focus can impede creativity.
Six: “The Naysayer Mind-Set” says criticism
can challenge groupthink, but too much criticism can crush
creativity.
Leaders who act like great teachers foster
their employees’ creativity.
Summary
Leaders and organizations claim to value creativity, but they
often harbor biases and perpetuate environments that
discourage new ideas.
Established leaders and experts frequently fail to recognize the merit of out-of-
the-box or innovative ideas. Their expertise and success often leads them to
devalue novice or outsider contributions. Organizations tend to value concrete,
measurable outcomes over creativity, and their employees may not want to be
seen as nonconforming thinkers.
Leaders can cultivate employee creativity by overcoming “six
mind-sets” – beliefs that discourage employee capabilities.
Leaders may not realize that their company's underlying attitudes and practices
block creativity or that its work environment stifles its most brilliant minds.
However, they must acknowledge that they have a “situation problem” and not
a “people problem.”
“Once leaders recognize that they have a situation problem, not a people
problem, they can begin identifying and removing the true barriers to creativity
in their organizations.”
To remedy the situation problem, leaders must overcome six mind-sets that
oppress creative thinking:
One: “The Linear Mind-Set” believes success comes from
using sequential, stepwise processes, but iterative,
exploratory methods better foster innovation.
Modern business managers generally approaches problem-solving and
planning in a linear way. Leaders research and analyze, generate a plan of
action with cost and revenue projections, and strive to execute their plans on
schedule. This approach works when the future follows the trajectory of the
past, but reality seldom cooperates. The linear process gives managers the
illusion of predictability, order and control.
“Trying to turn any creative process – design thinking or otherwise – into a
highly structured, linear system turns out to be a colossal mistake.”
The design firm IDEO developed a systematic, replicable creative problem-
solving method called the “design thinking process” to address complex issues
beyond product design. The design thinking process has five stages:
1. Empathize with prospective end users, understand their concerns and
observe their behavior regarding unaddressed needs.
2. Look for user behavior patterns and seek analogous patterns in other
areas of life. Develop a “problem statement” based on the users’
perspective of needs, frustrations and wishes.
3. Generate a variety of possible solutions using methods like
brainstorming.
4. Quickly and roughly prototype potential solutions.
5. Test the prototypes by observing how end users interact with them.
Solicit feedback.
“Enabling others to explore, experiment, learn and create is your duty as a
leader, and it’s potentially the most rewarding work you will ever do.”
New hypotheses and unanswered questions will emerge. The team revisits the
practices of empathy, observation, idea-generation and prototyping – often
multiple times and in different sequences. Organizations that are stuck in linear
thinking often reject this type of problem solving or treat it as just another
linear process. Iteration becomes uncomfortable because people feel invested in
earlier solutions. Their prior efforts become a “sunk-cost trap.” The linear
mind-set is a “how/best” attitude that assumes a single path to the optimal
solution. This kills creativity, which thrives on multiple, open-ended
investigations. Design thinkers learn by doing, visit different stages of the
process, and are comfortable with ambiguity and open-ended investigations.
Two: “The Benchmarking Mind-Set” bases strategies and
goals on rivals’ behavior, so companies often miss
new, distinctive growth opportunities.
“Herd” and “copycat” behaviors are commonplace in competitive industries,
because organizations emulate their most successful rivals. Strategic
consultants specialize in transferring best practices from industry front-runners
to the rest of the pack. Strategies thus converge, which diminishes everyone’s
profitability. Businesses can create and sustain a competitive advantage by
concentrating on a subset of features or services and not competing in other
areas.
“Leaders must step back and consider the beliefs and worries that prevent
people from asking questions, proposing new ideas and trying new things.”
This means you should avoid benchmarking, which occurs when a
leader invokes a previously accepted idea in advance of reconsidering a
problem. That tactic tends to fix the idea in participants’ minds. To defeat the
benchmark mind-set, look for analogous ideas and solutions from outside your
field.
Three: “The Prediction Mind-Set” relies on expert forecasts to
determine outcomes and overlooks nimble, creative ventures
that start small but can have great impact.
A few super forecasters consistently deliver better-than-average predictions.
They succeed not because they know more or have more experience but
because of how they think about the future. They’re flexible and open-minded,
demonstrate curiosity about different perspectives, and treat their own ideas as
hypotheses.
“Devote all your energy to delighting customers today, tomorrow and the next
day. Listen, observe and learn from them at every opportunity.”
The prediction business thrives despite the dismal records of most experts in
identifying future outcomes. Leaders who fear unsustainable growth often shut
down creative ideas in favor of potentially sustainable – but more modest –
profits in smaller or niche markets. When companies fund only projects with
huge forecasted returns, they neglect innovative ideas that might take longer to
mature. When leaders focus on near-term opportunities to serve customers, an
innovative niche provider, product or service – like Trader Joe’s – can grow to
be a market-beater.
Four: “The Structural Mind-Set” believes redrawing the org
chart gets creative juices flowing, however, developing the
right work culture is often more productive.
Popular wisdom holds that less hierarchy makes an organization more
nimble and more creative. Research suggests that hierarchical structures may
even be beneficial when success depends on coordinating and integrating
actions among groups with differing levels of power. A significant percentage
of new CEOs are redrawing their organizational charts. Many reorganize
continually, sowing frustration among employees. Instead, leaders should
focus on how functional groups within their business actually work. To spur
innovation, nurture a healthy work culture, define shared rules of
engagement and design a workflow to cultivate creative solutions.
“Perhaps we should spend more time focusing on the design of the work,
rather than the design of the organization chart.”
The best teams reported making more mistakes – not that they actually had
more errors, but that they felt safe admitting the mistakes they did make and
were able to learn from them, thus improving the group’s overall performance.
Psychological safety makes it easier for people to propose unfamiliar and
untested ideas and to build imperfect but useful prototypes. This
atmosphere makes it acceptable to try something, fail and learn. A safe work
environment offers invitations to dissent and propose alternatives and to
celebrate candid exchanges in pursuit of solutions. These norms build team
members’ confidence that their company values their contributions.
Leaders set guidelines for how employees can interact and empower them to
hold each other accountable.
“A safe climate, clear ground rules and well-designed work…do not come
easily, but they provide the essential building blocks for creativity to flourish
and for teams to thrive.”
Five “task attributes” nurture and support creativity, stimulate intrinsic
motivation and enhance performance. First, a well-designed work environment
challenges people to use their abilities, so they experience their own
competence and efficacy. Second, they develop a sense of ownership
when they follow a task from start to finish with the big picture in mind. Third,
results improve when team members can see how their efforts make a
meaningful contribution. Fourth, employees flourish when they have the
autonomy to make decisions about how to accomplish their assignments. And
fifth, constructive feedback is most helpful if you deliver it at a time when
workers can apply it to improve their performance.
Five: “The Focus Mind-Set” values intense concentration, but
insisting on relentless focus can impede creativity.
Breaks from focused effort could be as short as an afternoon stroll or as long as
several years. A break creates the “psychological distance” that enables
thinking more abstractly and dispassionately. To shift focus, look at a problem
from another point of view. When you ask people to put themselves in
someone else’s shoes, they take on the problem-solving attributes they
associate with that persona. For businesses, assigning a team member in a
strategy session to act like a rival can call assumptions into question and spark
unconventional thinking.
“You must cultivate and nourish curiosity and a thirst for new knowledge in
your organization, much as extraordinary teachers do in their classrooms.”
Imagining oneself in the future creates psychological distance that enhances
creativity and high-level abstract thinking. For example, Amazon programmers
don’t begin writing code for a new project until they draft a prospective press
release for the product they’re developing.
Six: “The Naysayer Mind-Set” says criticism can challenge
groupthink or bad proposals, however, too much criticism
can crush creativity.
Some leaders institutionalize the role of a contrarian or devil’s advocate to vet
important ideas. The goal is to promote consideration of alternative points of
view and to avoid overconfidence and undue optimism. “Troublemakers”
contribute to a team if all participants tolerate the irritation he or she may
provoke.
“Trendsetters and leading-edge thinkers…take purposeful breaks and strive for
psychological distance to stimulate their creativity. They know when to step
away.”
Simply dumping negativity on a brainstorming session is demoralizing. The
right kind of devil’s advocate can help new ideas emerge by offering a
stimulating debate. Have the dissenter’s role rotate from person to person,
or assign two devil’s advocates to a meeting. Peer pressure to conform makes it
too easy to label a lone dissenter as wrong-headed; two people voicing a
minority opinion stand a better chance of influencing majority views.
“Effective leaders…think carefully about who should provide contrarian
viewpoints, when dissent and debate should occur, and how people should play
the devil’s advocate in their organizations.”
The devil’s advocate shouldn’t come into play at the beginning of the creative
process when you need acceptance and openness to encourage innovation.
Early on, leaders should promote the improvisational theater concept of “yes,
and” rather than “yeah, but.” The goal is to delay criticism until the participants
generate a rich spectrum of ideas. At that point, a contrarian can offer
challenges to improve the creativity of responses and generate new
ones. Naked negativity or competitive arguments can be counterproductive.
The most helpful approach combines attentive listening with thoughtful,
probing questions. This demonstrates that the goal is learning and
improvement, not competition and domination. Using the Socratic method,
participants ask questions to elicit the implications of a point of view
or proposed action. A constructive devil’s advocate delights in exploring a
problem or idea but doesn’t promote a specific outcome.
Leaders who use the skills and attitudes of great teachers
spur creativity and unlock their employees’ creative potential.
Leaders must nurture the innate curiosity and ingenuity of their team members.
People may need support to bring their unconventional ideas forward. Open-
ended observations such as “I wonder why” or “I wonder if” invite creative
investigation. Express curiosity and use speculation to spark invention,
engagement and exploration.
“The creative problem-solving process involves going out into the world and
engaging in a healthy dose of trial and error. We must learn by doing.”
Leaders should solicit solutions and answers from employees before revealing
their thoughts. Otherwise, team members may regard the matter as settled.
Your presence might also constrain responses, since employees often hesitate
to challenge a leader. Consider waiting to be the last to speak, so you can listen
to as many voices as possible. As part of the learning process, great teachers
encourage questions, let their students answer and share stories of failure. Great
teachers honor mistakes, empathize with students, and set high expectations for
their talents and abilities. Great teachers introduce new experiences, concepts,
people and perspectives.
Nurturing your workforce brings substantial rewards and creative
achievements. Your employees’ personal growth and satisfaction benefits
everyone – and your organization. When you remove the mind-set obstacles to
creativity, you establish the best conditions for innovation and profit.
About the Author
Michael A. Roberto, PhD, is the Trustee Professor of Management at Bryant
University. He also wrote Why Great Leaders Don’t Take Yes for an
Answer and Know What You Don’t Know.
