Leading at the Speed of Innovation: Four Creative Thinking Practices to Slow Down So Your Team Can Speed Up

Welcome, Creativity Clinic Community, to another riveting dive into the innovative world of healthcare leadership. Today's discussion looks at how health leaders can unlock their teams' creative potential to navigate the exponential complexity and demands of the evolving healthcare environment. With the U.S. healthcare system grappling with spiraling costs and artificial intelligence (AI) breakthroughs, we are at the crossroads of transitioning from a knowledge-driven healthcare economy to a 'healthcare creatonomy.' As we delve into the nuances of critical and lateral thinking, you'll see how fostering an environment that encourages both can lead to transformative outcomes.

An Introduction to Critical Thinking vs. Lateral Thinking

Critical thinking, a perfectly reasonable and rational knowledge-based approach to solving complicated problems, relies on facts and analyses to solve challenges. In my experience as a healthcare leader and advisor to C-suite executives, it is also a much more prevalent and accepted approach to problem-solving in leadership circles. However, when faced with complex problems, critical thinking may fall short due to its very nature–its dependence on known facts and analysis of historical trends and information, which are not guaranteed or even likely to recur in the highly complex and evolving future healthcare landscape.

Alternatively, a less prevalent but highly effective line of attack in solving complex problems is lateral thinking. Lateral thinking involves approaching a problem creatively and solving it using unconventional ways or new approaches. Imagination and creativity are fundamental in lateral problem-solving and are inextricably intertwined. Influential leaders can learn to think critically and/or laterally, as challenges dictate, by avoiding cognitive biases and embracing imagination and creativity.

The Essential Nature of Imagination and Creativity

Imagination is the ability to visualize and conceive of things that are not immediately present through any or all five senses–hearing, seeing, touching, smelling, and tasting. It is the capacity to generate, change, and manipulate mental images, scenarios, or concepts. Imagination fuels creativity. Creativity is the application of imagined futures to create unique ideas, insights, or solutions to issues. It's the process of making something new or improved from the images, scenarios, or concepts formed in the imagination–the bedrock upon which creativity is built.

Creativity also relies on convergent thinking and divergent thinking. Convergent thinking aims to reach a single, correct solution to a problem. It involves linking ideas through common themes, which is helpful in situations with a right or optimal answer. Alternatively, divergent thinking is a method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions.

For example, divergent and convergent thinking could be used to decide on the best approach to improve financial sustainability. At least once per year in the annual budgeting cycle, healthcare leadership teams gather information from different departments about possible savings or income-generating opportunities and then analyze this information. Then, they converge on the most promising options to increase efficiency, reduce waste, improve patient satisfaction, and improve patient care quality outcomes. When they do this, they are engaging in a form of lateral thinking. They diverge and then converge using critical thinking to make the "best bet" on the "most opportune" option based on historical evidence.

In my experience, teams often go wrong in this process when they limit their divergent thinking to just a few ideas by leaving themselves insufficient time or focusing too early on consensus. To further reduce their chance of success, they go for the target far too soon by choosing an option far too early in the convergence process. As a rough benchmark, if you do not have a minimum of 100 ideas that result from your team's brainstorming on financial improvement opportunities, you will not likely extend the team's collective imagination far enough to make substantial progress. And it takes time to process, analyze, and debate many ideas to get to a smaller number of "best ideas" from among the options. From there, you will likely need to test a few of those options to get feedback on the most impactful and meet the team's desired objectives, making the budget process a year-round activity.

An effective leader manages the organization's time and resources and respects diverse perspectives to allow all creative process phases to work magic in planning exercises like the annual budget process.

Effective Leadership, Transformation, and Divergent Thinking

Effective leadership and divergent thinking approaches are inherently linked through their shared emphasis on innovation, adaptability, and challenging the status quo. For example, transformational leaders inspire their followers to exceed expectations for the sake of the organization or a more significant cause. These leaders motivate their teams through rewards or punishment, instilling a sense of mission or purpose, inspiring them intellectually, and giving them individualized consideration. Transformational leaders embrace divergent thinking in a multitude of ways, including, but not limited to:

Encouraging Innovation: Effective leaders value and encourage creativity and innovation. They foster an environment where divergent thinking can thrive, allowing team members to come up with a variety of solutions and ideas.

Challenging the Status Quo: Both transformational leaders and divergent thinkers are not content with "business as usual." They seek to challenge and change existing norms and systems, encouraging others to do the same.

Promoting Intellectual Stimulation: Effective leaders promote intellectual stimulation, encouraging their followers to question assumptions, reframe problems, and approach old situations in new ways. This is very much in line with the principles of divergent thinking.

Fostering Individualized Inspiration and Consideration: Transformational leaders recognize and value the individual contributions of their team members. This recognition helps to promote an environment where divergent thinking can thrive, as each individual's unique perspective is valued and can lead to innovative solutions.

Fostering a Culture of Exploration: Transformational leaders create an environment encouraging exploration, curiosity, and 'outside the box' thinking. They motivate their followers to challenge conventional wisdom and develop innovative solutions. This aligns with the divergent thinking approach, which encourages exploring multiple potential solutions before deciding on the best one.

Persistence and Resilience: Transformational leaders display high perseverance and resilience, inspiring their followers to do the same. Similarly, divergent thinking often involves generating many ideas, some of which will fail to be successful or feasible. Even in the face of failure, the ability to persist is critical in both transformational leadership and divergent thinking.

Future Orientation: Transformational leaders are visionary, always looking towards the future. They inspire their followers to consider the big picture and how their actions today can affect the future. This future orientation aligns closely with divergent thinking, which involves imagining a wide range of possible future scenarios.

In sum, influential transformational leaders create the conditions for divergent thinking to flourish. They emphasize creativity, challenge existing norms, and promote intellectual stimulation so divergent thinking can thrive. And reciprocally, teams' collective divergent thinking can reinforce and drive the objectives of transformational leadership by providing creative and innovative approaches to achieving the shared purpose or vision. This symbiotic relationship can result in innovative solutions, continuous learning, and a vibrant, forward-looking organizational culture.

The Four Creative Thinking Practices to Slow Things Down So Your Team Can Speed Up

Next, let's dive into four divergent thinking processes–integration, splitting, figure-ground reversal, and distal thinking–which transformational leaders can use with their teams to generate creative ideas and help them solve highly complex problems by working fast, but slow.

Divergent Thinking Practice #1: Integration

Integration is a thought process that combines seemingly different ideas or elements into a unified whole. Chief Quality Officers have used integration to combine the expertise and perspectives of various professionals in addressing challenges. For instance, they might create a task force combining administrators, doctors, nurses, and patient advocates to develop a comprehensive strategy for improving patient care.

Divergent Thinking Practice #2: Splitting

Splitting refers to dividing a problem or an idea into smaller, more manageable parts for better understanding and solution development. Chief Financial Officers have used splitting to break the problem down into smaller, more manageable tasks. For instance, they might divide the task of adapting to a new reimbursement policy into separate steps like understanding the policy, assessing its impact, adjusting billing procedures, and training staff.

Divergent Thinking Practice #3: Figure-Ground Reversal

Figure-ground reversal is a type of perceptual grouping that is vital for recognizing objects through vision. In leadership and problem-solving, this concept involves shifting focus between an 'object' (the problem or challenge) and the 'background' (the broader context or environment). Chief Executive Officers have used this with their leadership team to balance the collective focus between immediate operational issues (figure) and long-term strategic planning (ground). For instance, they must also consider the organization's long-term financial health and sustainability while addressing an immediate financial crisis.

Divergent Thinking Practice #4: Using Distal Forms

Unlike integration, splitting, and figure-ground reversal thinking, grounded in current known realities, distal divergent thinking is far removed from the original or existing framework or problem. Thus, an essential element of distal thinking is imagining things very different from the here and now. Without imagination, distal thinking is impossible. And without a rigorous creative process that leverages clarifying, ideating, developing, and effective implementing, distal thinking results in ideas that cannot overcome the gap between present realities and future potentials. Let's look at AI adoption as one challenge facing distal innovators in the new healthcare creatonomy.

An Example: The AI Reality Gap Facing Distal Innovators

In the new healthcare creatonomy, transformational leaders are well-positioned to be distal innovators. In this case, the transformational leader's role bridges the chasm between the present reality and future possibilities. However, they must have a strategy to overcome the current realities/future potentials gap, especially concerning artificial intelligence. This will likely necessitate at least a two-pronged approach:

First, they can escalate the pace of departmental, organizational, or market maturity. This process entails bolstering promotional activities, initiating internal and external collaborative strategic partnerships, and executing meticulously targeted incremental AI solution launches. Accelerating these endeavors can bring the department, organization, or market to the maturity required to accept future AI technologies much quicker. At the individual level, generative AI solutions like ChatGPT and Midjourney are a couple of incremental solutions that achieve this objective with shocking success.

Second, they can employ the concept of 'backward' innovation. Develop intermediary AI solutions that can be marketed (or deployed internally) immediately and concurrently push stakeholders further along the maturity curve. This strategy ensures they are prepared and receptive to the actual invention when it arrives. In essence, distal thinking equips you to drive the department, organization, or market from its current state toward a future ready to embrace your ultimate innovative solutions. And you can save tremendous amounts of investment by making multiple smaller steps to reach incremental maturity.

Pro Tip:?You can also use Integration, Splitting, and Figure-Ground Reversal divergent strategies embedded within a distal innovation approach to help achieve this greater speed to maturity and acceptance of stakeholders.

As we wrap up our discussion this week on "Leading at the Speed of Innovation: Four Creative Thinking Practices to Slow Down So Your Team Can Speed Up," I hope you've found this dive into critical thinking, lateral thinking, and the four divergent thinking practices - integration, splitting, figure-ground reversal, and distal thinking - enlightening. Transformational leaders can harness these powerful tools to navigate complex challenges and maximize their teams' innovation potential.

With distal innovation at the forefront, you can bridge the gap between present realities and future potentials, especially us artificial intelligence. The dual strategy of accelerating market maturity and developing intermediary solutions can pave the way for a future-ready healthcare landscape. The transformative power of creative thinking is yours to wield. Let's push the boundaries, challenge the norms, and lead with innovation. Until next time, stay curious, and stay creative.

Sincerely,

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