Innovative Brain Food from New & Improved

Creative Problem Solving: How to do it, How it works.

You already know the basics of Creative Problem Solving (CPS) because it's coded into your DNA. Just as running is. But, like running, with practice and coaching, the skill can be improved.

CPS is not an "invented" process. Rather, it was observed and described by watching for the repeated patterns followed by good creative individuals and effective problem solving groups. Since that observation over 60 years ago by Alex Osborn and Sid Parnes, researchers and practitioners have developed ways to help individuals, teams and organizations enhance fluency and speed with this process. The partners at New & Improved continue to be significant contributors to the development of this field of practice. Our work on innovation strategy is intended to make CPS live well in organizations.

As currently articulated, the process has 6 stages, each with 2 steps. Each stage begins with a divergent step, following the "Rules for Divergent Thinking" (commonly called brainstorming rules). Upon the completion of an effective divergent thinking session, the stage always then has a convergent step, following the guidelines for convergence.

Below, you'll see two images describing the 6 stages and a diagnostic question to help you determine which stage you are in. Additionally, you'll see the guidelines for divergence and convergence, as well as specific tools and methods that we've found useful for the various stages.

Specifics on the tools is beyond what we want to cover in this post, but many of them are described in our whitepapers which are searchable. Send an e-mail to info@newandimproved.com, and we can send you the cheat sheets as a .pdf.

Bottom line: the world needs as many of us as possible to be skilled at leveraging this natural ability to its maximum effect. As a global community, we have a lot of gnarly problems to solve and opportunities to pursue that will make the future better for everyone. Keep learning. We'll do the same, and share what we find useful via this blog, our Facebook Page, our LinkedIn page and Twitter. At least that's it for now.

The first three stages: (Click on the image for a more clear view)

 

The second three stages: (Click on the image for a more clear view)

 

 

"12 Strategies for Innovation Excellence" - Deep Dive into Accountability & Recognition

Demystifying Innovation Culture Efforts is a comprehensive eBook that distills Bob Eckert's and Natalie Jenkins' research and experience down to 12 Strategic Action Areas that leaders need in order to build a sustainable culture of innovation. In this series of articles we will take each of the 12 Strategies in turn. 

Recently, we highlighted our first strategy, Skill Development.  If you missed it, you can learn more here.

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Series 2:  Deep Dive into ACCOUNTABILITY and RECOGNITION

Over the next few months we will provide you with tasty treats featuring a deep dive into a single strategy. While we highly recommend you read the complete eBook, we appreciate that many readers prefer to tackle such a complex subject one bite at a time.

The second strategy we are serving up is Accountability and Recognition.

ACCOUNTABILITY and RECOGNITION MANTRA:  Leaders, managers and the workforce are held accountable to innovation-fostering behaviors.

Keep in mind that we are not talking about systems of perks and rewards for those who produce notable innovation. We are talking about the big picture basics. Such as: How are people rewarded when they support the creative thinking of others or held accountable when they don't?

Read more about Accountability and Recognition to:

• assess if your organization is investing an optimal amount of effort into this Strategy Area, if it has fallen off the radar screen, or if it has become a dangerous obsession
• explore a real world example from Amazon
• learn a success tip from Starbucks

 

Watch out!  The strategy around recognition as it relates to "rewarding" innovation can be tricky. In fact, it is not uncommon for strategies that are put in place to encourage creativity and innovation to have the opposite effect and actually cause fierce anger toward innovation efforts.

Watch this video for an example of what can go wrong with rewards: 

  

Imagine if members of an organization applied creative thinking to a “business problem” which resulted in a significant savings to that organization. And they simply received a nice "good job" pat on the back. While at the same time, members of a “new product” development team that brought a product to market are given significant cash bonuses. What do you think the impact might be?  Let's just say it would likely be less than a warm & fuzzy feeling and as such, wouldn't help to foster a sustainable culture for innovation.

Success Tip:  Since there is already a system for rewarding good employee performance in general, we wonder why there is a need to create a separate system for innovation. Consider improving the existing system to include innovation attributes. Read more in Accountability and Recognition.

Accountability and Recognition is only one of the 12 Strategies for Innovation Excellence. We find that it is important to look at accountability and recognition during the early stages of designing your innovation roadmap because it is through accountability that employees are supported to maintain integrity with the fundamental behaviors and values that drive creative thinking and collaboration in themselves and others.  

We support what Stephen R. Covey says, "Accountability breeds response-ability."

This is a critical strategy to get right so that well intentioned strategies don't become dangerous obsessions that undermine your efforts.  Read on...

 

 

 

 

 

Can Creativity be Measured?

An American psychologist and professor, E. Paul Torrance, became curious about children's creativity in the late 1950s. During his time working with boys at a military academy he became aware that creativity was misunderstood.  

Frustrated by the fact that creative individuals were often labeled as troublemakers, Torrance set out to change this view or at least prove that creativity was an important part of intelligence.

As a result of his research Torrance developed a number of ways to test for creativity. Today, the framework he developed is called the Torrance Test.

Learn more about this test and how it measures creative potential.

While there is always room for improving the ways we measure the creativity of an individual, the methods developed by the early pioneers, like Torrance, are still respected and considered valid. So, yes, there are well-founded ways to measure individual creative thinking skills.

 

Lemonade Tames the Gator Brain

Often times when a new idea is presented to us, our first reaction is to see what's wrong with the idea, the danger in the idea, why it won't work.  

It's reasonable that we want to make sure we don't do something that's a bad idea, and it's reasonable that if we continue in this way we will kill a lot of valuable ideas.  

What might be a way to find value in ideas?  Here's a personal story from Bob Eckert that illustrates his gator brain in action and how he used a process to upshift his thinking that led to a positive outcome in a tricky situation.  

 

Next time you are woken up to your gator brain behavior by someone who pushes back on you (and there will be a next time) -  look for what is good about the idea. Even better, lean on the full POINt (Pluses, Opportunities, Issues and New thinking) process to to make sure you are treating new ideas wisely and giving valuable ideas a chance. Learn more about POINt in our white paper.