An Executive's Guide to Sparking Creativity in Teams

Right on the heels of Bruce Nussbaum declaring that Design Thinking was Dead, and Creative Intelligence (CQ) becoming the next great bubble in management thinking (with the rush to publish pablum before the bubble bursts into vapour) as it relates to increasing organization’s competency in generating not just incremental (N+1) but disruptive innovation within their respective market, McKinsey released a report called, “Sparking Creativity in Teams: An Executive’s Guide,” (PDF) to which I can readily admit that I opened it preparing to be underwhelmed by the audacity of the report’s mediocrity. I was not disappointed, though I will refrain from an excoriating exegesis on the topic and just give some quick thoughts.

My sentiment might be because I remember Robert Fabricant’s “3 Things Wile E. Coyote Teaches Us About Creative Intelligence,” and was really inspired by the notion he proposes that creativity exists ‘in-between,’ people and is not necessarily an innate trait divino afflante spiritu. It requires context, yes, but more important, it requires the “other,” to borrow a term from social psychology. This notion reminded me of something the philosopher Alicia Juarrero said at my LeanUX conference back in 2015, "Meaning exists in the interactions between things, and not in the things themselves." Huzzah!

Creativity – especially of the disruptive kind, requires friction and interactions between people because most interesting problems, most problems worth thinking about, “wicked problems,” as Richard Buchanan calls them in his article published in 1992, “Wicked Problems in Design Thinking,” are bigger and more complex than any one person can hope to solve on their own.

What’s insightful about Fabricant's notion is that it's also echos ideas of power discussed by philosopher and social theorist Michel Foucault in his book L’archéologie du savoir – that power is not an innate trait of individuals, but instead arises and exists in-between people within a social group. It’s more a friction and a flow, depending on the ever changing dynamics of interaction, situation, and climate. A person standing alone in the forest exerts no hegemony within a social group – because there is none. S/he has no power except as it arises in a social context. Creativity of the sort desired by organization and executives, the innovative sort, the valuable sort, then is a matter of frictions and interactions. Interactions and frictions not just between people but also between ideas, cultures, mediums and messages - and those interactions require a 'space' and conditions which are conducive to turning ideas into something meaningful, testable, and ultimately perhaps -- scalable.

McKinsey, alas, doesn’t follow this path. Instead of focusing on how executives can, dare I say it — engage in the meta-design a context, environment, clearing conditions, and psychological safety where creativity can flourish – the report veers from strategic thinking, and instead decides to explore 4 simple tactical considerations or practices which executives could encourage teams to learn and do. While their article is about teams, they come from the perspective of ‘creativity as innate creative trait’ possessed by the rugged individualists that Ayn Rand wrote about in Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead. We’ll let that slide down the left side of the IQ bell curve into the cesspool of failed ideas, and move forward. McKinsey identifies 4 practical (read: tactical) ways executives can make teams more creative while failing to address the systemic, structural, and cultural conditions necessary to allow divergence, emergent, even deviant, ideas to flourish like arrests after an Ultra Music Festival.

IMMERSE YOURSELF

The article argues that “would-be innovators need to break free of pre-existing views." Unfortunately, the human mind is surprisingly adroit at reinforcing its deep-seated ways of viewing the world while sifting out evidence to the contrary. It's not just confirmation bias, but a whole chorus biases and tacit belief structures that have joined in. The antidote seems pretty straight forward, and actually one practiced by great design teams as a best practice – design ethnography.

“The antidote is personal experience: seeing and experiencing some-thing firsthand can shake people up in ways that abstract discussions around conference room tables can’t. It’s therefore extremely valuable to start creativity-building exercises or idea generation efforts outside the office, by engineering personal experiences that directly con-front the participants’ implicit or explicit assumptions,”

This is actually one of the best recommendations, because it allows teams to understand their customers, embracing the notion that “you are not the user," which I always balance with David Ogilvy's great maxim, "the customer isn't a moron, the customer is your wife." So great start, I can feel a tingling in my soul. Remember – this doesn’t mean just designers or product managers – this means the entire team (and executives from time to time) being immersed in the daily lives of customers to understand their context: for generating insights into problems the team would never uncover sitting at their desk or in a conference room – no matter how many white boards, post-its, or sharpies are present. While some might argue that epiphanies may be intrinsic, insights are extrinsic -- they come from going out and "being-in-the-world," as Martin Heidegger might say.

OVERCOME ORTHODOXIES

The second way the article argues executives can design an environment for more creative teams is by overcoming orthodoxies. The funny thing about orthodoxies is that they can’t be seen when you are inside the bowels of the beast – you don’t know you’re living in the Matrix until you step outside the system and that kind of re-framing of perspective is important. From the article:

Exploring deep-rooted company (or even industry) orthodoxies is another way to jolt your brain out of the familiar in an idea generation session, a team meeting, or simply a contemplative moment alone at your desk.

Okay, yes – I agree that challenging orthodoxies is great, in theory. Problem is, most organizations don’t even realize what their orthodoxies are because they are the intrinsic beliefs embedded within the DNA of the organization - the deep third layer of culture which organizational theorist Edgqr Schein describes. I would argue that only through engagement with outside help, or bringing in fresh blood (and fresh ideas) with strong personalities willing to challenge deep-rooted beliefs, is this possible. I don’t think it’s as easy as the report seems to imply. Liberation is only possible if you first understand and accept that you are a slave to entrenched organization culture, and that culture is structured into the systems of the the organizations governance.

USE ANALOGIES

This could just as easily be called “Use Metaphors.” Since Lakoff and Johnson published “Metaphors We Live By,” we have come to realize that metaphors aren’t just a poetic devise, but actually a way we understand and make sense of the world around us. It is through the use of analogy – or metaphor – that teams can reframe a problem space, or better understand unmet customer needs, desires, or fears. Use of metaphor is a common brainstorming technique in creative design teams – one that is used rather explicitly (for a great read, check out Dan Saffer’s CMU masters thesis “The Role of Metaphor in Interaction Design.” The report explains the benefit by stating that,

“As we’ve seen, by forcing comparisons between one company and a second, seemingly unrelated one, teams make considerable creative progress, particularly in situations requiring greenfield ideas.”

My only caveat to use of analogy or metaphor in brainstorming is that you want to have facilitators skilled in this process. It actually is an art form to create an environment where people can engage in open ideation that is positive, generative, and exploratory. There are many other great techniques that will allow teams to achieve the goals of open, abductive, generative ideation, Check out Dave Gray and Sunni Brown’s fantastic book “Gamestorming,” for more activities and methods of focused play to spur creativity and innovation.

At a high level, this may be what Nussbaum is alluding to in the article he published today called “3 Reasons You Should Treat Creativity as a Game,” and he introduces the notion playground as metaphor, or the “Magic Circle,” and explains that:

The playground is the place where we leave behind the usual hierarchies, procedures, statuses, and behaviors to act out “as if…” games of discovery. I even have a name for this playground of creativity — the Magic Circle.

ENABLING CONSTRAINTS

It is only after you understand and have embraced some of the activities above, must you remember the importance of enabling constraints. In a process I have used for years to good effect – the Design Studio – we impose constraints across different parts of the process (customer exploration, market exploration, problem exploration, solution ideation, etc). The most explicit of which is time. For instance – your team has 1 hour to go out on the streets of NYC and interview as many people as you can in the pouring rain about their vision, goals, and intent as it relates to their professional development. This was actually an activity I led a team through just a few years ago. It was cold, hostile, and exhilarating. No blood, no glory, and all that.

“Imposing constraints to spark innovation may seem counter intuitive—isn’t the idea to explore “white spaces” and “blue oceans”? Yet without some old-fashioned forcing mechanisms, many would-be creative thinkers spin their wheels aimlessly or never leave their intellectual comfort zones.”

Another example of introducing constraints is saying, “Your team has 10 minutes to generate 8 unique concepts that solve for some clearly defined problem. These concepts must be sketched – no bullet points – ready – GO!” Time boxing team-based ideation narrows the field of view and forces participants to focus and flow. It’s a beautiful thing to watch 5 people act as a single unit to generate ideas as Mike Oldfield's theme from The Exorcist plays and the clock ticks down.

The McKinsey article ends by stating that “creativity is not a trait reserved for the lucky few,” which, given Fabricant’s article in Fast Company, I am forced to disagree with. Perhaps artistic creativity is an innate trait, but creativity in the context of business innovation is a friction and flow that arises between people in teams working towards a common goal of solving a problem in a unique, compelling, and differentiated way. As Peter Drucker once said, “the purpose of business is to create a customer,” and what better way of doing that than immersing yourself in your customer’s lives; completely understand their context; and uncovering insights that can generate elegant solutions that make a person’s life better. Else, why the hell are we doing this, anyway?

Finally, in the beginning of this little blog post I mentioned that I was underwhelmed with this article, and perhaps I should explain that. While I am happy McKinsey published this report, I expected more. There is really nothing new that hasn’t been covered in most of the Design Thinking books to come out in the last five years. The four recommendations are actually activities and methods practiced by many user experience design and product teams, including my own. Nussbaum’s article about treating the creative process as a game actually backs up my argument when he says:

“Designers are the interface between science and society, technology and people. Because of this, design uses ethnographic tools and methods, but its use of sociology, anthropology, and sociolinguistics is shallow. Deliberately framing creativity within a social model pushes it to embrace the rich social-science literature on charisma, calling, sharing, risk, aura, ritual, and, of course, play to deepen our understanding of the making of innovation.”

The biggest benefit, I suppose, of an article like the one published by McKinsey is that perhaps these ideas will find more traction in the C-Suite and ultimately lead to more disruptive, not just incremental N+1 innovation. Less ‘me-too’ products which seem to litter the digital noosphere like cockroaches after the Zombie Apocalypse would be a good thing for society as well because it would free up capital to invest in projects and products that actually make the world just a little better.

My opinion is that the greatest failure of the McKinsey article, which they might have learned if they had decided to consult people in the design or user experience space is to know your damn audience! They are highlighting 4 tactical considerations for spurring creativity and providing them to C-Suite leaders within organizations (operations and production resources within organization tend to not read McKinsey). Does that make any sense whatsoever? The practice of leadership is more than just visioning, missioning, and governance. To make any effective use of the tactical practices advised requires the active and intention design of the context, environment, and culture in which those practices might flourish. It requires a systems-thinking perspective to manage how work gets done, how ideas flow, and how power is distributed. Without that, the practices will inevitably challenge the existing organizational structure - and structure always wins.

How any of this is *not* design thinking (or simply Design) still confounds me, but I’ll keep slogging through it like a banana slug moving across a salt bed in August.

ARTICLES CITED

Sparking Creativity in Teams: An Executive’s Guide

Design Thinking is a Failed Experiment

3 Things Wile E. Coyote Teaches Us About Creative Intelligence

3 Reasons You Should Treat Creativity as a Game

Gamestorming Website, Dave Gray & Sunni Brown

The Role of Metaphor in Interaction Design