ReAppreciating Guidebook / Part 1

Happy spring Humantific readers! Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night and wondered whatever happened to that post you wrote months or years earlier that contained so many themes that keep popping up in business/social media today? I have had that experience several times recently since we updated our Humantific web site deciding to leave behind some of the historical materials in the refresh.

Long story short: This is a two part, slightly edited repost, of something I wrote some time ago on the subjects of Applied Creativity, ReAppreciating Sidney Parnes, and the many astonishing contributions that appeared in Sid's Creative Behavior Guidebook published in 1967. Appearing in this Part 1 post are the five themes of 1. Adaptability, 2. Creativity is Everyone, 3. Facilitation as CoCreation Leadership, 4. Creative Behaviors and 5. Invitation Stems.

Still focused on Guidebook, an upcoming Part 2 will include: 6. Divergence & Convergence, 7. Open Challenge Constellation Mapping, 8. Challenges = Opportunities, 9. BrainStretch Exercises and 10. Research Questions. In the spirit of Sid Parnes, we will include in Part 2, several informative Appendixes from Guidebook, now out of print.

Appendix 1: Creativity: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow written by JP Guildford

Appendix 4: Questions and Topics For Applied Creativity Research

Part 1: OVERVIEW:

Since Humantific works at the intersection of several knowledge arenas we have become familiar with multiple streams of innovation related histories. Here in this post today we are sharing a look at one, not well recognized milestone, in one stream of innovation history, known to some as Applied Creativity and perhaps to others as Creative Problem Solving (CPS) or Creative Intelligence. All are terms that have been around since the 1950s. Suffice it to say this is a community with a long innovation and methodology history. It is one of several communities that we, as Humantific, actively participate in.

It is no secret that many organizational and societal innovation challenges seen today tend to repeat themselves, generation after generation. In practice what we notice is that without some historical innovation knowledge, organizations tend to expend a lot of energy and resources reinventing wheels.

A truth not always made clear in the highly competitive marketplace today is that what is being packaged and sold as Design Thinking often contains forms of knowledge originating from the parallel universe of Applied Creativity (CPS).

What we also notice is that many aspects of innovation history are invisible to new generation audiences, in part because much of the original historical materials from the 1940s, 50s, 60s are out of print, not on-line and therefore difficult to find. Unless you have access to original artifacts, it is unlikely that you would encounter much of that early material. That absence might be fortunate or unfortunate depending on what one’s individual orientations and goals might be..:-)

If we were to choose the top ten 10 early books that Humantific considers to be most significant to understanding the history of the Applied Creativity (CPS) version of innovation enabling, near the top of the list would be Creative Behavior Guidebook.

THE SID TRILOGY

In 1967 Sid Parnes wrote: “Within five years, about one-half of what I have told you will either be untrue or not worth a darn. This doesn’t really bother me; but what does irritate me is that I can’t even tell you which half is which.”

Today, fifty+ years later, the half that was/is most important, most enduring, can more clearly be placed in perspective.

Unofficially published as an experimental edition in 1966 under the Title: Instructors Manual for Institutes and Courses in Creative-Problem Solving, this volume was officially published as Creative Behavior Guidebook in 1967. It was subsequently improved upon and republished as Creative ActionBook in 1976 and Guide to Creative Action in 1977. In the later 2 volumes Sid collaborated with Ruth B. Noller and Angelo M. Biondi. At Humantific we call this amazing 3 part series of publications the Sid Trilogy. Inside in a mixture of elementary and advanced states, are what amounts to the foundations of all future Applied Creativity / CPS workshops.

With a PhD in education, Dr. Sidney J. Parnes (1922-2013) was best known as a pioneering Professor of Creative Studies at State University New York College at Buffalo and cofounder of the Creative Education Foundation. Truth be told, there is a lesser known aspect of Sid to always keep in mind and that is that he was also a highly informed, pioneering practitioner. Sid's R&D contributions to methodology evolution probably cannot be over-stated.

A little unsung industry secret is that much of what appeared in the Sid Trilogy was rapidly transported to the operational realm of consulting practice and remains at the center of numerous innovation consultancies still today. (It is unlikely that you will be reading about this on Wikipedia.) Having already begun to work in the 1950s on how to make the world a better place, it would be fair to Sid Parnes to say that he was ahead his time in many ways. Sid was an early advocate of what would be termed Open Innovation today.

Prior to the publication of Creative Behavior Guidebook, Sid worked closely with the most recognized hero in Applied Creativity history, Alex Osborn (1888-1966). In 1955 Sid attended the first Applied Creativity conference organized by Osborn. Attendence at that event changed the course of Sid’s life. In Sid Parnes, Osborn saw a person who could help him operationalize Applied Creativity as it was then conceived. Osborn and Parnes co-founded the Creative Education Foundation in Buffalo. They worked together to cocreate the most influential deliberate creative problem solving process model (it had numerous iterations) in Applied Creativity history, as well as the Institute’s learning program, a version of which still remains in operation today. Within what we now refer to as the Buffalo School of Applied Creativity, Alex and Sid remain highly respected Giants in that Hall of Fame. Outside that corner of the universe what Sid did, how, when and why is not widely understood today.

The 1967 version of Creative Behavior Guidebook was published a year after Alex Osborn had passed away. It was the same year that JP Guilford (1897-1987) published Structure of the Intellect and The Journal of Creative Behavior (founded by Sid) first appeared. These are important milestones in the timeline of the modern Applied Creativity movement that is still very much active today.

Don't you love context? What else was going on in 1967? Yes, it was the year that Warhol showed Marilyn, the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper and Elvis starred in infamous Clambake! Of course Sgt. Pepper eventually landed on the list of 500 Greatest Albums of All Time and it has been occurring to us recently that Sid’s much more humble Creative Behavior Guidebook was also a legendary album of sorts, from a quite different, less glamorous realm of knowledge.

THE CPS MOTHER-LOAD

Breathtakingly under-designed (some might say awful), Sid’s Guidebook is a 345 page soft cover volume that looks like it was created on a typewriter by an engineer. With an introduction written by JP Guilford the book contains 99% text, with only a couple of primitive visualizations. Inside however, is a mother-load of what might be called the beginning synthesis of modern Applied Creativity knowledge for which there is frankly no equivalent in Design / Design Thinking history.

“This Creative Guidebook is written for the creative educator in schools or in industry, for the leader who desires to see blossom in others this trait he holds most valuable: the ability to perform effectively by bringing to any task a part of one’s unique self…The teaching manual is the culmination of eighteen years of research and development with creative problem-solving courses and institutes of the State University of New York at Buffalo…It reflects the extensive experiences of scores of instructors in the Creative Education Foundation’s Creative Leadership Council..”

To say this another way: Sid’s Guidebook was a synthesis of experiments in teaching creative problem solving process skills that had been underway in Applied Creativity workshops since 1950.

Having worked with Osborn, Sid saw early on a need to systematize and structure the delivery of teaching others the emerging skills of Applied Creativity in an experiential way. Sidney was already thinking about scale and global delivery of Applied Creativity skill-building in 1967. In Guidebook, Sid generously lays out an experiential logic connected to process orchestration that underlies many Applied Creativity workshops still today. Of course it’s not difficult to see that Parnes did not yet have everything figured out in 67 that is known today but he certainly did place a large chunk of experiential knowledge on the table for public viewing.

Long before the competitive copyrighting “I own this technique” wave of the 1970s and 80s changed the dynamics of the Buffalo Applied Creativity community there was Sid, sharing with a global perspective.

Not only was Parnes already writing in 1967 about everyone everywhere working creatively together, he was advocating the global sharing of the knowledge and tools that he and his collaborators were placing on the table without strings attached.

10 ENDURING THEMES

Here are ten solid-gold, enduring themes and ideas that appear in the original 1967 version of Sidney’s Creative Behavior Guidebook:

1. ADAPTABILITY

In Guidebook a prescient Sid Parnes wrote in 1967 about the importance of adaptability in a continuously changing world. That was six years before Paul Mott published his 1972 study; Characteristics of Effective Organizations and forty years before “Fast Company” was telling its readers in 2012 that the next new thing is for individuals and organizations to forget history and become continuously adaptable as part of “Generation Flux“ and fifty+ years before The Adaptation Advantage appeared...:-)

Long before VUCA arrived, Sidney wrote in Guidebook: “Obviously there is an urgency for developing in people the ability to live with constant change in a dynamic society.”

What is most important is that Sidney saw deliberate creative problem solving process mastery (not decision-making) as the way for humans to realize sustainable adaptability, instead of chasing flavor of the month trends.

In Guidebook he wrote: “Problem solving [contains Problem finding in CPS] may be considered the process of human adaptation to cultural life. This means adapting ourselves to our environment, as well as adapting our environment to suit us. Throughout our lives, this process of adapting ourselves and our environment is a continuing challenge. Creating deliberate means of treating perplexing situations is therefore an opportunity, a challenge. The means or workable ways of meeting challenge or opportunity are only temporary measures that change as our needs change. Thus each of these means of treating perplexing situations becomes in itself another challenge.”

Whether you refer to it as Adaptability, Agility, Flexibility, Resilience, Fluency, Fluxability, Adaptive Capacity or something else, adapting to continuous change has been a recognized human challenge spanning numerous generations. It is a theme that has been reframed, renamed and repurposed over the years by thought leaders from numerous fields including Alex Osborn, Paul Mott, Ikujiro Nonaka, Karl Weick and others. As is evidenced by Guidebook, enabling adaptability has been at the center of Applied Creativity skill-building for decades.

Connecting to today's interest in the future of work, most recently we certainly noted that Adaptability was the central theme of the new book The Adaptation Advantage by Heather McGown & Chris Shipley.

What’s fundamentally different today is not the theme, not the rerenaming of it as ”Flux” or the need for adaptability capability, but rather the ever evolving combination of tools and skills that are brought to the table to address this enduring challenge for teams, organizations and societies. Since this is essentially what we teach in our skill-building program we have great interest in this subject.

2. CREATIVITY IS EVERYONE

Contrary to the once popular notion that creativity was the realm of an elite few, Sid Parnes was among the early Applied Creativity pioneers strongly advocating an opposite perspective. Underlying much of Buffalo School Applied Creativity history is an optimistic, American (United States) can-do orientation that was sprouted during the (1940s) war years when everyone was expected to pitch in. Front and center is the notion that everyone has the capacity to be creative and that there is a place for everyone. It is an orientation not found in Design Thinking history. It’s probably not possible to overstate the importance that Sidney and other Applied Creativity pioneers placed on encouraging and enabling creativity among laypersons of everyday work life.

Radically different from traditional Design Thinking orientations in Applied Creativity there is no special group called the “Creatives”. This simple truth has had enormous implications past and present. While the notion of “Participatory Design” is a relatively new phenomenon to the Design Thinking community the goal and orientation of intentionally enabling wide participation in deliberate creative processes has been central to Applied Creativity since the 1940s. In Sid’s Guidebook one can see the early seeds of “Here Comes Everybody”, long before the technology existed to globally enable it. That prolonged focus has resulted in the creation and refinement of many tools for enabling inclusion of everyone that are not found in Design Thinking history. Thanks to Sid, in Guidebook we can see the philosophical roots of the “Creativity is Everyone” movement in practice circa 1967.

Today, with many organizational leaders seeking to maximize inside and outside brainpower, its a theme that resonates more than ever. Again, what’s different now is the greatly expanded, hybrid toolkit that is utilized to realize thinking diversity via deliberate inclusion in the context of changing organizations and societies.

3. FACILITATION AS COCREATION LEADERSHIP

Among the radical ideas embedded in Guidebook and throughout the SidTrilogy is the then revolutionary notion that facilitation can be a form of leadership. Sid Parnes is the de-facto godfather of this approach to leadership that was much different from what was being taught in business schools (and design schools) in the 60s. The truth is, this approach to leadership is still not widely appreciated, understood and or taught even today. In hardball subjects where traditionally content knowledge has been king, the notion of facilitation as leadership is a bit of a mind bender for some people not accustomed to this approach. Unlike in traditional Design Thinking mode, in Applied Creativity mode content knowledge is separated from process knowledge.

In a practical sense what it means is that the person at the front of the room leading the meeting is in a process, not content role. This separation is found throughout Applied Creativity history and remains central to the movement today. With increasingly complex challenges facing planet earth, the page has turned in favor of this leadership approach. Today there is growing awareness that as the scale of challenges grow, more stakeholders are involved, more diverse forms of knowledge are involved and thus more facilitation of cocreation across many disciplines is needed. Guidebook predates the arrival of this public awareness by many decades. This is the form of leadership that Sidney advocated, modeled and taught throughout his life.

In practical terms, facilitation as leadership remains in its infancy, but its relevance today is stronger than ever. The reality is that much of what was taught as facilitation in those days by Parnes and others at Creative Education Foundation looked a lot like Sid’s Guidebook, very engineering oriented, dominated by words. What is different today can be summed up in the word bundled. Rather than trying to address complex issues by operating in only one language mode, utilizing primarily words, today we address complexity with bundled modes that includes much more visualization and involves more than just facilitation. In this approach, leadership by facilitation of cocreation is one of several streams of skill being recognized as extremely useful for change-making leaders. Whether you want to call it bundled, meshed, combined, integrated, fused, or Sid+, the notion is that we recognize this as the era of the hybrid toolbox rather than the engineering toolbox. OMG did I just say Flux meets Fuse! :-)

4. CREATIVE BEHAVIORS

As is evidenced by the book title, Sid Parnes and his collaborators had deep interest and expertise in behaviors. One of the most striking differences between Design Thinking history and Applied Creativity history is the appearance of behaviors as a focus in early literature. Always front and center in Applied Creativity historical literature, the behavior consideration is essentially missing in action in Design Thinking history. That presence and that absence have had enormous consequences that reverberate across education and practice still today. Building on the 1950s-60s era work of JP Guilford some might say that the Buffalo based Creative Education Foundation was and still is the de-facto Behavioral School of Applied Creativity.

Early key pioneers of that school were Paul Torrance, JP Guilford, Alex Osborn and Sid Parnes. Today it’s easy to take this perspective for granted but at that time it was like they discovered and opened a window unto a new dimension of space that had not previously been considered in the context of creativity. In Guidebook and throughout the SidTrilogy one can see the excitement and the certainty of purpose there. The behaviorists’ position then and now was/is to advocate recognition that much of formal education serves to kill the creative spirit resulting in blocks to creativity in many adults.

In Guidebook Parnes wrote: “The basic techniques of invention and innovation…ought to be taught, but are not, among the fundamentals generally taught in the engineering and business schools. The same can be said of schools in general..Although teachers show increasing awareness of the need and opportunities for encouraging creative behavior, our present educational system to a large extent still overlooks the intentional enhancement of such behavior.”

The difficult truth is, Guidebook and the rest of the SidTrilogy series spanning from 1967 to 1977 are so poorly designed graphically that it is easy to miss the big picture within.

Embedded in SidTrilogy is a strong orientation towards the optimistic notion that a better place, a better world can willfully be created. In the workshops described in SidTrilogy participants undergo a journey of-sorts that includes a sense of heightened self awareness, departure, transport and arrival. In essence workshop participants are transported to a new land where old habits are left behind, values are different, new much more inclusive rules apply, and all are appreciated.?

What Parnes and his collaborators discovered, teaching workshops early on in the 1950s and 60s, was that many adults in the workplace longed for such a place. Due to the state of everyday work-life for many, it is a longing that has endured across the generations as we see in Humantific workshops today.

At a tactical level, one can see in Guidebook, the philosophy of deliberate behavior enhancement played out in the various hands-on exercises designed to raise awareness of blocks, help restore dormant creativity circuits and connect rekindled capability to synchronized action. Many exercises from the Behavioral School seen in Guidebook were designed to make habitual behaviors transparent and visible for the good of all. The resultant learnings by participants remain at the center of many Applied Creativity workshops today. The thinking being that it is difficult to change habits if there is no collective awareness of what the habits are.

Today there is additional recognition that many historical Applied Creativity interventions, including numerous exercises seen in Guidebook, were geared towards increasing generative capacity. In the Guidebook era the assumption that there was such a need was often an educated guess based on general awareness of what was not being taught in various business schools, engineering schools, etc.

The temperature check instruments that exist today that are capable of mapping the existing thinking styles of a team to an organization’s innovation strategy did not exist in the era of Guidebook. As a result what is different today is that such blind assumptions regarding what the nature of the intervention might be, should be, need no longer be made. Today we do not automatically assume that there is a default lack of generative thinking capability.

Today cross-disciplinary innovation skill building can be geared to the thinking style “fingerprints”, to the mapped “innovation DNA” of the team or organization and to deliberate strategy. Now we customize the fit. Depending on what that “fingerprint” turns out to be we may gear intervention towards increasing generative ability or a number of other objectives. Thinkerprints talk…We listen…:-)

5. INVITATION STEMS (“How Mights”)

The introduction of what are known as invitation stems, sometimes referred to as How Mights are among the important tactical instruments included by Parnes in Guidebook. Invitation stems became important fundamental building blocks in the still evolving logic of what is known today as challenge framing or challenge mapping. In Guidebook Parnes introduces numerous key invitation stems that have sometimes been creatively attributed to later arriving others, included are: How Might I (page131) How Might We (page 125), How Might You (page 161), and In What Ways Might We (page 127). Since that 1967 publication many additional invitation stems have been added by others, including: How Might They? How Might Our Team? How Might Our Organization? etc.

Thanks to Sidney’s early work, “How Mights” have been in the public domain for decades and have become integral to numerous creative thinking systems. Framed as questions in search of answers, “How Mights” can be seen in practical everyday use within many innovation consultancies today including Humantific, IDEO and many others. What’s different now is what we do with them.

What transpired in the competitive arena since the Sid Trilogy was published was probably not exactly what Parnes had in mind at the outset, but from a global sharing and impact perspective Sidney rocked! The spirit of Sid Parnes has inspired many movements past and present. We have great respect for his many contributions.

The super good news is that much of what Parnes created and shared early on, has long since passed into the public domain. Many have built on Sidney’s work and that of his collaborators.

Continued in PART 2!

Related:

HUMANTIFIC: Double Diamond Method: Understanding What was Missed

HUMANTIFIC: Building Better Brainstorms / ReAppreciating Alex Osborn

HUMANTIFIC: Kick it UP!: Understanding Deeper Creativity

*Cover image is a detail from the original Guidebook, Humantific Collection, New York.