Creating a Business

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Amy Frazier

Last fall I gave a short workshop on small business development for my local SCORE chapter — a wonderful community resource for entrepreneurs and small business owners. The content was focused on using the creative process deliberately as a tool for business development. It came to me as a result of my recent Master’s work in applied creativity and innovation, and as a sort of “stumbled-upon” process which I discovered I had intuitively fallen into in the course of my own entrepreneurial marching-forth.

When I set out to form a consulting business based on theatre practices, I had a wish to bring to organizations some of the things I’d learned from years being an actor. It took me awhile — talking to people, taking classes, partnering with others, etc. — before I realized I wanted to target leadership and organizational development, and creativity. Once I knew this, I was in the course of playing around with ideas on programs to offer, how to describe my work, how to improve my skills, etc. — when I went back to school and got my Master’s. Strengthened by the teachings, and able to incorporate the content directly into my programs, I then set forth planning how I would continue to move my work out into the world.

What I just described took about 4 years. It also followed, more or less and through no deliberate intention of my own, the classic model of Creative Problem Solving: from Exploring a Goal, Wish or Challenge, through Generating Ideas and Planning for Action, plus it’s six internal process steps — with some looping back and forth for good measure. Had I known the process model at the beginning of my journey, would it have gone by any more quickly or efficiently? Quite possibly.

But that’s not so much the point I want to make here, as much as to draw attention to the natural sequence of entrepreneurial efforts, and how well they match to CPS. This was the topic of my presentation. My audience was a room full of SCORE counselors, who donate their time to helping small businesses come into the world and flourish. They appreciated the connection between a deliberate process of creative thinking, and the sequence of steps a small business goes through in its various stages from conception to execution. At a time when job creation and healthy business development is so sought after, it makes sense to channel the natural entrepreneurial instincts through a tried-and-true model of deliberate creativity. From actresses-turning-consultants, to the next best gizmo, to the new coffee shop down the street, small business development benefits from Creative Problem Solving.

image by Gilles Chiroleu
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Creativity and Empowerment

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Amy Frazier

Both our sense of empowerment and our sense of our creativity arise from a connection with the self — and both have a forward-facing aspect as well, as we experience the many ways in which the world responds to us, our initiatives and our creative ideas. 

When we engage our creativity, we connect to something important inside of ourselves. As we cultivate that connection, we increase our sense of personal power.

And in parallel, our sense of empowerment can help us tough it out in our creative endeavors, especially when we need to go against the grain in the realization of our visions.

We have a very personal relationship with both creativity and empowerment — which is not to say that we do both of them well, all the time. But they certainly cut to the heart of who we are. There’s also a sense of initiative, or agency, embedded in both: in acting on them, we change our environment.

Perhaps the height of empowerment is what Abraham Maslow famously called “self-actualization,” the human drive to develop ourselves into our full selves, and live life from that perspective, as much as possible. Maslow saw a connection between creativity and empowerment. During a time when creativity was often studied in the lives of great artists and scientists, Maslow became interested in what he called “self-actualizing creativity,” which he considered to be “synonymous with…essential humanness.” According to this view, whether making a poem or a soup, a creative life becomes an empowered one.

references: Maslow, A. H. (1968) Towards a Psychology of Being.
photo credit: Lincolian (Brian)

 

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Creativity and Leadership

Posted on December 13, 2010 by Amy Frazier

What are the natural relationships between creativity and leadership?

I’ve recently explored this question in relationship to current issues in creativity studies, through my Master’s work at the International Center for Studies in Creativity. Both creativity and leadership are huge concepts. Defining them is tricky. As Warren Bennis says, “it is almost a cliché of the leadership literature that a single definition of leadership is lacking.” According to the beloved Dr. Mary Murdock — charming dynamo in the field of creativity studies until her death earlier this year, and my first teacher on the subject — the task of defining creativity “is like nailing jello to the wall.”

We may disagree on concise definitions of creativity and leadership, but we can see them operating together. How might we better understand their interrelationships?

I addressed the question in a longer paper you can read at the Current Issues in Creativity blogsite. Here are some of the highlights:

How we think and how we feel.

Both creativity and leadership invoke cognitive and affective skills — how we think, and how we feel. Complexity plays into this as well. Often, the more cognitively complex our thinking is, the more we will be able to draw on a variety of categories and frames of reference when we are looking for creative answers. Leadership, too, requires attention to complex cognition, since leaders are tasked with thriving within complex environments (for more on this, see my post on the 2010 IBM CEO Survey).

Affective skills, such as our ability to tap into our emotional intelligence, are important in both creativity and leadership. In his work with emotional intelligence, Daniel Goleman says that “coming up with a creative insight is a cognitive act––but realizing its value, nurturing it and following through calls on emotional competencies such as self-confidence, initiative, persistence and the ability to persuade.”

For leaders, awareness of affect and emotional intelligence help them understand and manage behavior, including: knowing when they might be reverting to familiar emotional scripts; skillful reliance upon emotion as a method of interpreting others (especially when the information presented is novel and complex); and when faced with high-emotion situations.

Creativity and Leadership in Tandem

What are some areas we might find creativity and leadership naturally occurring? I propose three: within theoretical perspectives which blend the two constructs, such as Sternberg and Lubart’s Propulsion Model of Creativity, and Sternberg’s WICS model of leadership, which intertwines wisdom, intelligence and creativity; in deliberate problem solving methods like Creative Problem Solving that implicate creativity and leadership in a duet of process; and in the particular nested dynamic found in the creative leadership of creative people.

Inner Source

Both creativity and leadership require intense personal resources. In order to engage in them for any length of time, a person must draw deeply upon personal energy and motivation. This highlights, at minimum, the benefit of being well-centered in oneself; at the maximum, the necessity of it. Both creativity and leadership theories speak of this important connection to the inner self, which can be consciously developed. In this regard, creativity and leadership are seen as being rooted in an internal locus, evoking self-development, maturation, mastery, and even spiritual growth.

Connecting? Coinciding?

Creativity and leadership interrelate in our cognitive and affective skills; in certain theories, processes and situations; and in the inner source from which they spring and are nourished. We can certainly have one without the other, and in some instances we need to. But by drawing attention to their rich interrelationships we can improve our understanding of, and performance in, both.

These are some highlights. You can read the complete paper here.

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Creating the Environment

Posted on December 2, 2010 by Amy Frazier

A few weeks ago, I reported on the launching of a creative environment survey at the organization where I’m doing a systems’ view exploration of creativity. The results are in.

Before discussing them, let me step back a bit and frame the context. The organization in question is one where creativity is the process and the product. The company is hired for its ability to translate learning and messaging content and objectives into engaging products and events. Clients come seeking strong creative ideas with robust, often highly time-sensitive implementation. This organization provides both the ideas and the execution. The projects are widely variable—in content, scope, media, and audience. There is a core team of creatives who have been associated with the organization for about ten years. This organization also pulls in other contract workers to supplement the specific needs of each project. During the development and implementation phase, long hours are not unusual. After a big push to production, there is often a lull to regroup or wait for the next big project.

Got a picture in your mind? Have something of a feel of what the environment might be like for creativity here?

Ok, so how might we try to actually measure the creative environment of this organization? Of the various organizational measures of creativity (such as KEYS, available through the Center for Creative Leadership), I used one which is currently in development. I’ll call it Survey X (highly creative term, I know…). Survey X measures employee’s perceptions of sixteen dimensions which contribute to the creative environment. The results offer a snapshot in time of these perceptions. Two things to note here: perceptions are not reality, but are a reflection of or reaction to individual experiences, and can shine a light on important organizational dynamics, issues, successes and challenges. Second: it reflects a moment in time, which means that the implementation of changes can produce new results relatively quickly. As, of course, can the decision to not implement change…

The dimensions include such aspects as Idea Time, Dynamism, Synergy, Resources, Idea Support, etc.

The results from the survey data for this organization indicated the possible existence of two sets of opposing characteristics (all of the dimensions interrelate, of course; but these two pairings seemed particularly strong). The first: a high level of Dynamism, energy, project variety on one hand appears to be in a state of creative tension with a reported lack of Idea Time. How might the dynamic pace (stimulating to creativity) be reflected in or related to the lack of time available for the development of creative ideas? What happens when dynamism runs amok?

Secondly, the very strong sense of esprit de corps (reflected in the dimensions of Trust, Leadership, Sense of Belonging, and Synergy) appears to be in opposition to the low scores on Resources. This is an organization where resources are highly variable. How might the low scores on Resources be related to the high sense of esprit de corps? Might it be that intrinsic motivators are picking up the slack for the variable resource support? Does this pose a risk? Or does it speak to the strong internal value of the creative dynamic and sense of belonging here? Or both?

The lovely thing about Survey X is that it uses a framework of Appreciative Inquiry to explore these dynamics. One fundamental precept of AI is that we can learn as much if not more through our successes, no matter how small they may seem, as we can through focusing on “problems.” By asking “when was there a situation when there was plenty of Idea Time and the Resources were fully supporting the team?” a chain of reflective thought is engaged. Stories emerge of times of success and positive experiences. This informs how to move toward having more of these moments, instead of focusing on their lack or absence.

In this case, the stories led to the identification of elements which had not been immediately apparent in the data: communication, feedback and mentoring.

By increasing the attention on these three elements, we expect to build in more Idea Time, through clearer communication and building up skills in understanding client perspectives, which will ideally lead to fewer false starts in idea development.

The Resources dimension is a bit harder to resolve purely internally, as it is impacted by project flow. However, communication comes in again, in terms of acknowledging and supporting the value of the esprit de corps. This is one of the company’s strongest assets, and gives it the flexibility to staff up with trained, highly skilled talent on demand. By communicating the value clearly, we expect to be able to honor the individual contributions which contribute to the esprit de corps, hopefully helping the organization to continue to maintain stamina and loyalty in the face of fluctuating resources.

In a nutshell, the results of this survey point to implementing some key internal communications strategies, along with coaching and mentoring to strengthen client communication and understanding. Costs should be minimal, and the benefits will including making more efficient use of Idea Time, thereby building in a margin for incubation and idea testing; and reinforcing to the team the value of their contributions in creating a workplace with strong intrinsic motivators.

The next step will be to consider how the results of the creative environment survey connect with the team FourSight profile, and how the process tools of Creative Problem Solving might be used to move the desired changes forward.

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Novelty and Trimtabs

Posted on November 30, 2010 by Amy Frazier

I’ve been exploring how creativity works within a creative organization. The project will be wrapping up shortly. In the next few blogs, I’ll be sharing some overall insights I’ve had in exploring creativity within a creative organization.

I’d like to relate some insights that have come up for me around the use of language in creativity and Creative Problem Solving.

“Novel” can be a Tricky Story:

A well-established definition for creativity is that offered by Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile, who says that creativity is the production of ideas which are both novel and useful. I will admit that the first time I heard this definition, I wanted to leave the room. It was the first day of grad school, however, so I thought I better stick with it. I’m glad I did. Having spent more time with the ideas of novelty and usefulness, I can appreciate how they relate to creativity — and in fact it’s now become hard for me to think about how creativity operates apart from one or both of these boiled-down, serviceable-but-not-particularly poetic descriptors.

I had forgotten, however, how they can appear at first blush. Especially, as was true in the current case, the word “novelty.”

For a team of creatives, the idea that novelty was required had a few of them pushing back. “It sounds like a novelty — a do-dad — gimmickry.” “I see people doing things all the time that are new to them, and I think ‘so-and-so was doing that fifty years ago!’” “Does this mean that we should be all about the next flashy thing? What about the great products we already have to offer?”

It was a robust conversation. Where did we end up? With the understanding that the company needs to make sure what it offers to the client fulfills the client’s expectations of a creative solution — something that is new (to them, or they could have already done it), and which fulfills the client’s business need, which is the creative service organization’s sine qua non of “useful.”

And, at the same time, for this organization to keep its creative juices flowing, and to also continue to differentiate from its competitors, it can’t shy away from pushing into frontiers of new and implementable ideas.

What is might be in a Word?

Creative Problem Solving (CPS) is a deliberate approach to creativity, which uses words in key ways, as prompts to the creative process. This is seen the most obviously in the CPS tool called “statement starters,” short phrases which begin either statements or questions. An example: if I say to myself “I need a new car,” my internal response is likely to be: “Ok. Yep.” It’s a statement of fact, with which I happen to agree. No forward motion here.

If, however, I were to say: “In what ways might I acquire more comfortable transportation?” then my internal response is much more likely to involve the production of ideas. And if I stick with it, and try to come up with lots of ideas, I just might land on one novel and useful enough to give me some options I hadn’t considered before.

So, in the CPS training with this team, we have spent some time learning to work with these statement starters. They include: “In what ways might I/we…” “What might be all the….” “How to….” “How might I/we….” etc.

In a recent session, one of the team members phrased a question thus: “What is a way our company can accomplish x,y,z?” I stepped in to redirect. Why? What might have been less than ideal about that question?

It’s a small thing — so small that when I mentioned it, it didn’t make sense at first.

If we ask ourselves “what is the/a…”, even though it’s a question and thus more likely to spur a response, it’s a definitive one-on-one set up. What is the. The use of the word “is,” as small as it is, suggests a decision, an answer, a solution, a formulation. Compare this to the word “might,” which leaves us still in the land of possibility, openness, consideration. Secondly, to use a definitive article “the/a” is to imply that we are looking for one clear response. Ultimately, yes, we’ll want to narrow down the field of choices to a manageable one or few. But not yet. In posing these initial questions, we want to stay away from language which alludes to “the one answer.”

Is this tough to do? Sure can be. Especially when we have a desperate need for a good solution to a big problem. However when we try to get the answer within the question, we are attempting to diverge and converge at the same time. Doesn’t work so well. By separating divergent thinking from convergent thinking, especially early in the CPS process, we tease apart the complementary needs of seeking and finding, to let each flourish on its own for awhile.

As I reflected on the difference between something so small as using “is” or “might,” in the face of articulating substantial challenges or big wishes, I was reminded of something that Buckminster Fuller had to say about turning a big boat. The rudder is involved, but a small portion of the rudder, the trimtab, initiates the action. A very small element of a very big machine helps to determine its course.

So it is with little words like “is.” When faced with a clear need for creative thinking, how might we instead make better use of “might?”

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Feeling Our Way Through

Posted on November 12, 2010 by Amy Frazier

How does it feel when you’re working your way through the creative process? Especially if you’re following a deliberate process, like Creative Problem Solving, you may find yourself concentrating on the process steps—getting swept up in brainstorming, or intensely focusing on selecting ideas, for example.

But are you aware of how you’re feeling?

The quality of our affective state (which represents feelings and attitudes) plays a role in how we engage with our creativity. Daniel Goleman, who writes about Emotional Intelligence, says that “coming up with a creative insight is a cognitive act—but realizing its value, nurturing it, and following through calls on emotional competencies such as self-confidence, initiative, persistence, and the ability to persuade.” There’s also the excitement we feel when our creativity is sparking, and the frustration we feel when it isn’t.

The Thinking Skills Model (TSM) of Creative Problem Solving speaks to this. (See Puccio, Murdock & Mance, 2007, below.) It distinguishes different cognitive and affective skills that are matched up to the process steps. For example, the step, “Exploring the Vision,” elicits visionary thinking and dreaming. Think about it: when you’re really wondering what all might be possible, you are thinking about things with a visionary mindset, and you might even find yourself feeling in a sort of reverie of imagination. Or at least doing some serious “blue sky” pondering.

Similarly, “Formulating Challenges” calls for the ability to feel or sense our way into the gaps of what might be missing. “Formulating a Plan” asks that we engage our tolerance for risk.

This linking of feeling (or affective) states with the process steps of CPS helps to bring into awareness what Goleman said about emotion and creativity.

I recently led a training on TSM, and began by asking the group how they had felt at different times during the process of Creative Problem Solving (they had just completed a project where they each took a work-related challenge through the CPS model on their own).

Here are some of their remarks:

  • daunted while gathering data
  • intrigued while clarifying the problem
  • abundant while generating ideas
  • focused while selecting and strengthening solutions
  • competent while planning for action

Not all of these feeling states match up to the TSM model, but what matters is the awareness that our feelings come along for the ride, whether we’re conscious of them or not. So, bringing awareness and vocabulary to the process will probably help.

But be prepared as you start drawing awareness to emotions! People may believe you are advocating for emotionality. There’s a difference. A balanced awareness of our affect, our attitude, our mood, can support us in the creative process, and help us diagnose when we might be getting off track. Fundamentally, it’s about bringing all of our resources into the game.

References:
Goleman, D. (1998) Working with emotional intelligence. Bantam: New York;
Puccio, G. J., Murdock, M. C. & Mance, M. (2007). Creative leadership: Skills that drive change. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
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Clarifying and Developing: A Balancing Act

Posted on November 10, 2010 by Amy Frazier

I’m exploring how creativity works within a creative organization — what are the strengths and where are the potential blind spots? In an earlier post, I described how the eight members of the core team recently learned their FourSight Breakthrough Thinking Profile preferences for different stages of the Creative Problem Solving process. The team profile showed high preferences for Ideation and Implementation (the orange and purple bars), and low preferences for Clarification and Development (blue and green bars):

FourSight Team Profile

There was a general sense of recognition of the abundant energy that drives the team’s work from generating creative ideas into implementing them. That’s what the company is hired for; its brand differentiators are reflected in the team profile. This is a good thing.

And yet, what about these other spaces of clarifying and developing? (Clarifying refers to gathering plenty of data on the big picture before beginning to generate ideas; developing is the stage where the best ideas are elaborated and strengthened.) The team could see their low preferences playing out here, as well. More than once, the lack of thorough clarification has shown up when the project concept was further along in development. New understandings with clients surface, sometimes late enough in the game to require stressful last-minute adjustments. Perhaps, one team member suggested, it was because the clients hadn’t been clear themselves. How much more important was it, then, to make sure that really thorough clarification happened from the company’s end?

A suggestion was made to develop a white paper to educate clients on how to think about the engagement in ways that would really help them bring forth all the relevant information at the beginning. Additionally, by customizing some Creative Problem Solving clarifying tools, the company can develop a template to use with clients when scoping out projects.

The low preference for developing also piqued discussion. For a team that has a high preference for generating ideas, there’s a tendency to continue to pump new ideas into the developmental phase, which can muddy the waters and sometimes take the concept off-track. A method for tracking idea development was suggested as a way of distinguishing between iterations that enrich the final product, versus great ideas that are best saved for another opportunity.

And how about working together as a team?  One team member remarked that knowing where the individual preferences lie reminded her of a relay race, where team members hand off energy to each other through the process. It’s a lovely observation. For a creative team, some of them working together for a decade, the insights into individual and team preference from the FourSight measure have given them new understandings of how to support each other through the balancing act of the creative process.

Next steps: training on some Creative Problem Solving tools to support the developmental phase. In the meantime, if you’d like more information on FourSight, and how it can help you or your team, let me know.

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Creative Environment

Posted on October 15, 2010 by Amy Frazier

I’m exploring how creativity works within a creative organization (see Pulling Back the Curtain for more info).

In creativity studies, we can investigate how creativity manifests through looking at “the 4 P’s:” the Creative Person, the Creative Product, the Creative Process, and the Creative Press, which refers to the environment.

Earlier posts have described moments of the creative process in action; others have explored where the creative person and the creative process intersect, though looking at the FourSight Breakthrough Thinking Profile. Now we’re digging into what the environment for creativity is like at this organization.

While you might assume that creative companies (those that generate creative products of some sort) would have an advantage over “non-creative” companies, this is not necessarily the case. Ever known a production company where everyone is continually stressed out on short deadlines? How about PR/advertising agencies where people are afraid to share ideas out of lack of trust? Or arts organizations that are chronically short of funding? All of these things—idea time, trust, resources, and many more—contribute to the creative environment.

With Pulling Back the Curtain, we’re lucky to be able to test-drive a survey of creative environment which is currently under development. I’ll keep the name secret for now, but will tell you that this survey measures sixteen different dimensions of the environment that impact the perceptions employees have of “interactions, events, policies and procedures” within the organization. The survey takes an “appreciative inquiry” approach: what has worked well in the past, and how might you have more of that in the future?

We sent the surveys last week. By next week the study authors hope to be able to start gathering the data, and piecing together a picture of how this creative company stacks up in terms of creating an environment that supports and invites creativity.

Does the daily arrival of baked goods contribute to an “abundance mentality?” How about the personalized production badges—are they supportive of a “sense of belonging?” What will the “just set up your computer anywhere” office design say about how organized the environment is? We can’t wait to find out!

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Diary of a Process: Moving Forward in Uncertainty; Perfecting the Pitch

Posted on September 16, 2010 by Amy Frazier

DIARY OF A PROCESS: MOVING FORWARD IN UNCERTAINTY; PERFECTING THE PITCH

Diary of a Process: an episodic peek into a creative company’s internal process.

  • The company: a design and production firm that creates learning environments and opportunities for team-building, exhibit design, education, training, branding, etc.
  • The project: designing a visitor experience for a small west coast museum.

Episode 2, September 9: Moving forward in uncertainty; perfecting the pitch.

At the end of the last installment, Budget Slashed in Half, owner Bryan Thermo had agreed that his best option for restoring the project budget would be to re-pitch the board of directors on the original concept. Meanwhile, if the project (a museum visitor experience) was to stay on track, certain core elements needed to be advanced.

Thus, from a creative process point of view, a level of tolerance for ambiguity was needed in order to proceed in uncertainty. This ran side-by-side with the need to generate ideas on how to better communicate the value of the original concept, select the best of these solutions, and strengthen them into an inspiring pitch. Lastly, a willingness to embrace risk was necessary in order to move the project forward without knowing how much money would be there. Let’s pull back the creative curtain on these concepts, from a Creative Problem Solving (CPS) perspective.

Tolerance for ambiguity is one of the key attitudes or emotional skills needed for effective Creative Problem Solving (1). Why? One reason is that when we’re uncomfortable with ambiguity, we tend to rush to the first idea or solution we can find—which isn’t necessarily the best one.

Generating Ideas and Selecting & Strengthening Solutions represent two phases of the Creative Problem Solving process. Both steps involve divergent thinking, where ideas are generated (the more ideas the better) and convergent thinking, where the best ideas or solutions are chosen (2). These steps can be used as many times as you need throughout a project.

The willingness to embrace risk is important in creative thinking (1). Once we’re ready to Plan for Action (another Creative Problem Solving step), we’re putting our creative products out into the world—where they may succeed or fail. If we don’t have tolerance for risk, we may find excuses to forestall or sabotage our efforts. Creative companies tend to have a higher rate of product failure than other companies. But they’re also identified by the successful creative products they produce.

So how did the team engage around these concepts? Organically. This is one of the beauties of Creative Problem Solving: it capitalizes on our natural creative thinking process. As it so happened, the team members involved worked through the process in an organic and effective way. The team member charged with developing a key element of the project moved smoothly through clarifying what was needed and, along with the owner, generated ideas to get started. The pitch meeting, while a bit more intense since it was all about the funding, also rolled organically from generating ideas to strengthening them as solutions, and onto planning for action as the team developed visual aids and talking points to support the pitch.

Notice how, even though CPS can be used to direct an entire project or product cycle from concept through roll-out, it can also be used within the various stages. At any point, you can dip in to get what you need: idea generation, action planning, clarifying the problem, etc. This is in fact what happened in this episode: the core concept had already been completed, but the team needed to go back do some creative thinking on some trouble spots. Think of it as cycles within cycles, or a mini-iteration within the project as a whole.

The result: the board restored half of the money that had been cut, which was the amount Thermo requested. Meanwhile, a key component of the visitor experience has not lost too much time in development.

Question: if these things had not happened, would it have meant that the creative process had been unsuccessful? (see “tolerance for risk,” above…).

Process in a nutshell: by embracing ambiguity and risk, and by creatively developing a strong pitch, the team succeeded in persuading the board to restore the project budget to close to its original level, while losing a minimum amount of time in the project development.

This experience, or one very much like it, is probably familiar to you and your organization. By shining a light on the different aspects of creative thinking, we become more aware of how well the process is (or isn’t) working for us, and—ideally—we also learn to identify and embrace our natural creative thinking skills.

What’s next? now that most of the money has been restored, as one team member said: “now we gotta deliver.” Check back to see the next steps in the diary of a process…

Sources:
(1) Puccio, G. J., Murdock, M. C. & Mance, M. (2007). Creative leadership: Skills that drive change. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

(2) Miller, B, Vehar, J, Firestien, R (2001). Creativity unbound: An introduction to the creative process. Williamsville, NY: Innovation Resources, Inc.

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Riding High on Ideas

Posted on September 7, 2010 by Amy Frazier

A Creative Thinking Profile of a Creative Team

I’m exploring how creativity works within a creative organization — what are the strengths and where are the potential blind spots? As an important first step, the eight members of the core team recently learned their preferences for different stages of the Creative Problem Solving process. We’ll look at how this creative team stacks up as a group…

We used the FourSight Breakthrough Thinking Profile to generate the data. FourSight is a great tool for understanding where your energies lie for different phases of the Creative Problem Solving process: clarifying the situation, generating ideas, developing ideas, and implementing them. For example: are you energized by coming up with ideas, or do you find your greatest preference to be in implementing them? Does gaining a through understanding of a situation give you the most energy, or are you attracted to developing ideas and fleshing them out? Maybe you have two preferences, or three, or all four. FourSight brings this information to light.

A key thing to keep in mind is that FourSight measures personal preference, and not ability. Talented, motivated people can develop their abilities across all four preferences. But: what you’re good at doing and what you love to do often feel differently; this is where the question of preference comes in.

Why is this important? Apart from the value of knowing how we thrive within the creative process, this information helps us avoid pitfalls. When we’re stressed, tired, or under time pressure, our low preferences can become potential hazards, blocking us from bringing our best and most thorough creative thinking to the task at hand.

Understanding preference is also very important in team work. What happens if a team is loaded with developers who love to perfect things, but has few people who gain energy from implementing? Or what about a team that loves to hold onto the first step of clarification, generating reams of data, but gets stuck moving forward? And, in a situation many teams can identify with, what happens when people with different preferences step on each other’s toes? Looking at a group FourSight profile gives a clear snapshot of the creative thinking strengths and tendencies for weakness within a team.

So how did this group of eight creative people show up? This company’s stock in trade is in coming up with creative ideas and implementing them in memorable ways. It’s no surprise, then to see the results:

Creative Team FourSight Profile

The team shows a strong preference for ideation (the orange bar), followed by implementation (the purple bar). But clarification (blue) and development (green) are low preferences for them collectively.

How might this play out during project work for clients? Might there be ways in which ideas are generated without a thorough understanding of the client’s needs or context? Might there be times when the development stage becomes muddied? Do the dual preferences of ideation and implementation energize this team to dependably identify strong ideas and successfully carry them out?

Most importantly, knowing there are no wrong scores, how to make the best use of the information, and help this team build on their successes?

In an upcoming post, I’ll share insights the team generated, and plans for applying them.

In the meantime, if you’d like more information FourSight, and how it can help you or your team, let me know.

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