Creating space for deep change

Mastering creative intelligence

How can we create value and meaning in today’s incredibly complex world? How can we feel alive, inspired, active, empowered, full of energy and agency, when there is so much going on? At times it all feels very hard to create a way forward when everything is confusing and chaotic.

These are the questions we've been working on with the wonderful participants of the Creative Intelligence and Strategic Innovation program at UTS. These pioneers are leaders within their sectors and are building their innovation ecosystem through the program.

Twelve months in to the program, Professor Kees Dorst and I offer these reflections on what we are aiming for with this program:

On reflection, complexity in itself is not the problem. We can deal with that. It is all the paradoxes that make it hard to find a way forward,?that lead to?stress and overwhelm. They paralyse us, push us into indecision and inaction,?or into action that is based on fear.

The good news is that all this chaos and confusion we experience in dealing with the world can be traced back to one single underlying issue - the bad news is that this issue is a deep one. We need to radically reinvent the way we think.?

The point is that in a very complex environment, where everything is connected, our normal ways of problem solving don’t work anymore. They are all based on causality, but what can we do when ‘one thing’ actually?doesn’t?‘lead to another’, but to many shifts and changes that are hard to foresee? How can you then move forward with confidence you are doing the right thing??

We need to shift our thinking away from looking for ‘the solution’ to ‘the problem’ because in a complex problem situation this?causal relationship?just doesn’t?exist. What we must do in a complex situation is to create high-quality interventions that move the whole system to a better state.?

For that, we need to park what we have learned as the way to ‘solve problems’. Our current approaches have got us to exactly where we are now, and our trajectory isn’t great. Instead we need to create space to?delve deeply into the problem situation, all the way to the level of value and meaning (‘what is this really about?’). This is where the deep creativity sits that can lead to deep change. For this creative step,?we seek to engage with many disciplines, creating a space for the emergence of new approaches, that are greater than the sum of their parts (what we refer to as TD or Transdisciplinarity).?

These new approaches?create new frames?through which?we can then approach the problem situation in ways that escape the thinking of the paradoxes, and create new ways forward.?These new ways forward move us towards possible futures that would be beneficial to the world, not just a patch, a fix, or a good business idea.?

One way of framing these questions from the start is to ask, how then shall we live????

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Building strategic innovation?

We tend to say that the world is complex but a good part of the complexity we experience is actually not out there, but lies in ourselves. We are paradoxical beings. The issue is not that we have to be consistent at all cost, or ‘resolve’ the paradoxes – on the contrary, these paradoxes are crucial for survival as they create dynamism and hold creative tension. We need to keep them alive… This does play out in our private lives, and in our professional lives, in our organisations.?

When we engage deeply and creatively on the value level, we can navigate whatever paradoxes the world throws at us with confidence. The focus on values allows us to reconsider the current forms of the world of systems and organisations, rebuilding them in a way that reconnects them to the lived world of humanity (because we should not forget that value is ultimately created for the lived world, not in the world of systems).?We need to embrace the real complexity that is there on the world, hold on the paradoxes and resist the temptation to simplify.?Simplification can be built on assumptions.?Assumptions?built on assumptions?create?risks built upon risks.?Deep change comes from an unflinching commitment to look reality in the eye, with all its paradoxes and complexities, build a deep understanding on the level of value and meaning, and to build again from there. Then we learn and grow.?

In a rapidly changing world, the future?is?shaped by?quickest learners.??

For organisations, the capacity to radically rethink?themselves?should be supported by an ‘innovation ecosystem’ centered around?an acute sensitivity?to the signals of the unfolding futures.?If we create such innovation ecosystems then?nothing can hold us back.?

Confronted with problem situations that are more open, complex, dynamic and networked than ever before, organisations will need to become open, complex, dynamic and networked themselves.?

The good news is that to move down this path is not a decision we have to debate endlessly: we have no choice.?

Applications to join the Creative Intelligence and Strategic Innovation program in 2021 close on the 5th of September. For more information please get in touch with us. There's more information here: https://www.uts.edu.au/about/td-school/creative-intelligence-and-strategic-innovation

UTS CRICOS 00099F