• Original Sinners from the Wall Street Journal’s December 3-4, 2011, edition
• Innovation’s Hard Part from Fortune Magazine’s December 6, 2010, issue

The Original Sinners article was about ethics, describing a study that ‘probed’ students’ creativity and intelligence, and then gave them a test in which cheating was an option. The study found that the high scorers on creativity were more likely to cheat than the lower scorers, whereas there was no link between general IQ and the likelihood of cheating.

Hmm…so what are we to think of this?? Are creative people really more prone to be ethically challenged? Are creative people more likely to be risk takers, and cheating a risk they are more likely to take if given the chance? Are creative people creative about their concept of ethics and more likely to bend their ethics under certain circumstances? Is the experiment described really even valid?

As I was pondering these questions, the Fortune Magazine article caught my attention. (I save magazines for a year and then re-read them before tossing them in to the recycling container.) Innovation’s Hard Part is a book review of The Other Side of Innovation by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble. I’m sure they make more points in their book, but the very thin book review says the authors show that innovative ideas get more attention than they’re due, and the hard part is executing on them.

So that got me thinking that maybe the creative students considered cheating a short-cut to execution (the end result, in this case being filled-in bubbles on a question form). Or maybe creative people are more lazy than others and instead of expending the energy to master something and execute on something, when the end-result appears they’re more likely to take the short cut. I don’t know.

I do know, though, you have to be careful who you do business with. Diversification is fine, but it’s important to have the same values.

Lehrer writes that people experience two distinct reactions to failure. The first one is a mostly involuntary reaction, called Error-Related Negativity, that appears about 50 milliseconds after the failure. The second one is called Error Positivity, and happens when we dwell upon the disappointing result.

We learn most from failure when our Negativity response is large, meaning the reaction to the failure was strong, and when our Positivity response is consistent, meaning we focus on the failure and are trying to learn from it.

Our Negativity response may be more automated, but how we think of things greatly controls our Positivity response. If our mindset is one in which we think we can learn from failure (a growth mindset), obviously that helps us in this type of situation. If our mindset is one in which we think mistakes happen as a result of stupidity and nothing can be done about them (a fixed mindset), that does not help us learn from failure.

Lehrer writes about an interesting experiment that showed that if people were praised for being smart, they tended towards a fixed mindset, and if they were praised for their effort they tended towards a growth mindset. That reminded me of a company I worked at years ago where a senior manager told everyone at the company that the company would not reward people for their efforts, only for their results. That company no longer exists today.

Fisher writes that three new studies have found that, in the business world, creativity is seldom rewarded with promotions, effectively filtering creative people from leadership positions, and that this may be due to an ingrained expectation that creative people are unpredictable whereas people want their leaders to give a sense of security by maintaining the status quo.

Is this good or bad? I think it’s bad if this means that being regarded as creative is used as a disqualification of being in a leadership position, which is how I read Fisher’s blog. However, being creative should not be the sole qualification for being in a leadership position, either.

And then there’s always entrepreneurship, which I’m certain many frustrated creative people have turned to to create their own leadership position.

Clive Thompson writes about drawing in his article, Think Visual. Thomson writes that the best way to solve a complicated problem may well be to use drawings and pictures, that such visual techniques allow people to more quickly understand an issue and have the same mental model of a problem, and that images provoke a creative leap (the “aha moment”) more often than verbal or writing techniques.

Thompson’s article points out that drawing, unfortunately, is considered childish, and that people with higher verbal skills are thought more highly of, including in our school systems.

Related to education and drawing is a company named Smart Technologies which sells large interactive screens to schools, as profiled in a Forbes October 9, 2009, article, Getting to The Top of the Class. These screens replace the old whiteboards and even older chalkboards. The screens can be attached to the Internet, providing a “portal to the digital world,” students and teachers can manipulate what’s on the screen with their fingers, and they can be used as a blackboard, too. The founders of Smart Technologies believe these screens increase student participation and enjoyment in their learning and so decrease behavioral problems and help the students to achieve more. I sure hope so.

• Refresh talent often. Genentech has a postdoctoral program where up to 120 Ph.D holders are awarded fellowships for up to four years. These postdoc fellows are not assigned to any particular project, but work on the research of their own choosing, and that research might later be applied to future products. This results in a constant flow of new, diverse people and ideas moving through the company, keeping the “real innovative, entrepreneurial, creative spirit” around the company.
• Encourage risk taking. Most high-risk projects fail, but those that don’t often provide true breakthroughs.
• Share results. This is through papers in scientific journals.

Genentech’s creative processes tie in well with an October 2010 article in Wired Magazine, Where Ideas Come From, where authors Kevin Kelly and Steven Johnson are interviewed. Kelly and Johnson discuss how innovation typically comes not from an isolated lone genius, but rather from environments in which diverse, passionate creators interact and influence each other. These environments produce an increasingly diverse number of things, resulting in an increase of “crap” but also of great things.

So here we have the creativity concepts of diversity, risk taking, and collaboration.

Another interesting point Kelly and Johnson make is that an innovation will only be valuable if it’s not too far ahead of its time. If too many intermediate steps need to be taken, then the innovation will languish. For example, the computer had to be invented before the internet could be developed; inventing the internet before the computer would not have been valuable. The most valuable inventions are usually those that take the smallest possible step to generate the most change.

Here’s another article on daydreaming and creativity from the November 2009 issue of Wired Magazine: Why an idling mind is the mother of invention, by Clive Thompson.

Thompson discusses a study that shows how often people lose concentration (a full one-third of the time), and that when our minds drift the parts of our brains associated with memory and problem solving become busier, thus facilitating creativity. He makes an interesting point about how a focus on productivity tries to minimize mental drift, and how that may actually be counterproductive. And finally, he writes that maybe the distractions provided by social networks (Facebook, YouTube, and the like) and games might actually be a good thing.

There is another concept associated with creativity that is the antithesis of daydreaming and distraction, called Flow, in which a person is fully immersed in a task, where concentration on the task is effortless, they feel real joy in performing the task, and they lose an awareness of time (“time flies by”) and even their own needs of resting and eating. The Wikipedia article on Flow is very interesting, especially the section on Group flow, which seems almost identical to how a brainstorming session should be setup.

Flow may be difficult to achieve. People who are very skilled in their tasks and whose tasks challenge them may be able to enter the state of flow easier than others in different circumstances. Perhaps the bottom line is that if you’re not flowing, then daydreaming isn’t bad; if you are flowing, then daydreaming isn’t even an option.

Jacobs writes how fMRI shows a reciprocal connection between the emotional area of the brain, the amygdala, and the seat of our consciousness, the prefrontal cortex, that ensures our decisions are made with emotions, not pure logic and objectivity. It’s more the case that we make decisions based on emotions, and then justify, or rationalize, the decision with logic.

Our emotions are a shorthand for all our previous experiences in our memory, so we can quickly access our stored knowledge when making decisions. I would call this using intuition in decision making. In fact, the more we use processes that remove emotions out of decision making, the more we lose access to our stored knowledge, and the more risky our decisions can be.

As discussed in the podcast episode, part of decision making is the implementation of the decision, which may involve others. Jacobs writes that trying to influence others with logic may not be successful, as everyone is unconsciously driven by emotions, and offers other ways to more successfully influence people that deals with empathy.

What added extra motivation for me to write this blog post was an article yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, Emotion Drives Many Defaults, which deals exactly with peoples’ emotions when making a very important decision of walking away from their homes. The article says “many of the Americans defaulting on their mortgages are doing so out of anger, fear or despair rather than making a purely sensible decision about their best financial interests.” Some people default on their home loans because they’re struggling financially, of course, but a trend is occurring in which others are furious at their banks or the government for helping others but not them, they feel they’re being treated unfairly, and so feel justified in defaulting. There is also a contagion effect, or what Robert Cialdini defined as social proof in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, in which people who know others who have defaulted feel like they can, too.

When we encounter something unexpected or unintended, our natural first instinct is to assume we did something wrong. We’ll ignore the unexpected occurrence, and repeat the experiment or test looking for our preconceived intended results. This must be recognized and resisted.The unexpected, unintended event may be perceived as a failure of some sort, but from that failure, a different or more nuanced opportunity may become apparent and success follow from that. Failure, accidents, and unintended variations are an important aspect to innovation and success.

For serendipity, we’re looking for:

• A surprising mental association; an association between ideas we wouldn’t have thought of if it weren’t for the unexpected occurrence.
• Achieving a desired objective in a surprising way, in a way we weren’t intending to.
• Something useful when we were looking for something else.

Part of serendipity is luck. We can be more lucky by:

• Being more observant.
• Improving our Interpersonal Intelligence.
• Asking for things we might not have asked for before.
• Don’t think of a failure as a failure, but rather as an opportunity.

When encountering a failure, accident, or unintended variation, to take advantage of serendipity:

• Reconsider your assumptions. Maybe the experiment didn’t fail, but the assumptions behind the experiment are wrong.
• Use someone as a sounding board. Frequently trying to clearly explain something to someone else actually helps us to better understand what the issue is and to gain insight into it.
• Discuss the issue with others in your field. This may provide additional questions for you to consider or avenues to pursue to gain a better understanding.
• Use diversity to get different perspectives on the issue. Maybe this will lead to the use of different metaphors describing the problem and thereby lead to an innovative solution.
• Try not to filter out any of the information that contradicts your preconceptions.

For an organization to take advantage of serendipity, it should hire creative people and give them new, unexpected assignments;  expose them to diverse experiences and new ideas; encourage them to keep an open mind, to not dismiss their so-called failures, and to keep an eye out for accidents and unintended results of all types. Organizations should encourage risk taking and take steps to lower the cost of experimentation and invention.

References used in this episode:

• How to Make Your Own Luck
• Be Lucky – it’s an easy skill to learn
• Are You Lucky?
• Wall Street Journal Article on Innovation: Oops! Accidents lead to innovations. So, how do you create more accidents?
• Jeff Bezos on the importance of failure on entrepreneurial growth. James Dyson of the Dyson vacuum cleaner also emphasized the importance of failure on innovation in a July 7, 2008, Fortune Magazine article.
• Wired Magazine articles on How To Fail.
• Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, by Jim Collins and Jerry L. Porras.
• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, by Malcolm Gladwell.

San Diego Inventors Forum August 2009 Presentation (Powerpoint)

• Flash of insight moments often materialize unexpectedly “through an unconscious shift in mental perspective that can abruptly alter how we perceive a problem.”
• Researchers have found that sudden insights “are the culmination of an intense and complex series of brain states that require more neural resources than methodical reasoning.”
• It seems that our brains may be the most active when our minds are wandering, when we’re just daydreaming, and we’ll spend maybe around a third of our day daydreaming.
• Daydreaming may be a more creative state than an active, focused, and methodical reasoning state as the unfocused mind may more readily allow new ideas and different, unexpected associations between ideas.
• EEG recordings show a distinctive burst of gamma waves from the right hemisphere of the brain one-third of a second before a person consciously experienced their moment of insight.
• No one really knows why problems sometimes trigger an insight or what makes one person more inclined to one and someone else not, but a prepared mind does favor flashes on insight.
• People in a positive mood were more likely to experience a flash of insight.

The importance of daydreaming was also written about in a book I’ve referenced before in podcast episodes, The Creative Spirit, by Daniel Goleman, Paul Kaufman, and Michael Ray, in the section titled “Perchance to Daydream.” They wrote that daydreaming and relaxation is useful in the creative process, but it can be hard to get away from other people trying to control your attention, either at school, work, or even just watching television. It’s important to get away from the noise, turn off the TV or radio, relax without interference, and just let your mind wander.

Creativity is morally neutral; it is neither inherently moral or immoral. It is how you use it that gives it its moral character. Morality is usually subjective, depending on the person making the judgment and when they make it.

Some possible dark sides, or down sides, of creativity or of being creative:

• Collaborating with the wrong person. Be careful who you collaborate with and how you collaborate with them. The podcast episode offers some suggestions on how to avoid partering with the wrong person:
  • Look for obvious red flags: do they have a history of being active, do they have basic business behavior, do they network, do they have the energy to contribute, are they overly paranoid or defensive.
  • Do a background check and a credit check.
  • Use the services of a good business attorney (not some other kind of attorney) to get a buy-sell agreement in place, corporate by-laws indicating what the expectations of everyone is, etc.
  • When in doubt, just don’t do it. Other opportunities will come.
• Working when tired, creating more problems than you solve.
• Drug use to be creative, whether sleeping pills or other drugs.
• Being open to bad or harmful ideas.
• Being affected by over-negative or over-positive emotions. Be careful of “Compliance Practitioners” who try to manipulate you.
• Lack of critical thinking. It’s good to inhibit critical thinking for creativity purposes, just don’t turn it off permanently.

References used in this episode:

• Leaders, by Richard Nixon, page 330 on leadership and morality.
• Google motto of “Don’t Be Evil”
• The Power of a Positive No: Save The Deal Save The Relationship and Still Say No, by William Ury, pages 12-13.
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert Cialdini.
• Masaru Emoto and his water experiment.
• Quantum Entanglement.
• Particle Wave Function.

Among other things, Christensen says in the interview:

• Today’s economic downturn will have a huge positive impact on innovation as:
  • It forces innovators to not waste as much money as they normally would innovating by keeping them focused on their goal
  • “Breakthrough innovations come when the tension is greatest and the resources are most limited. That’s when people are actually a lot more open to rethinking the fundamental way they do business.”
• Private companies are more likely to produce disruptive innovations than public companies, as public companies tend to focus more on short-term performance to please their shareholders and are not as likely to risk near-term performance reductions in rolling out such an innovation.

• Lessons From 40 Years of Education ‘Reform’, Wall Street Journal, December 1, 2008, by Louis B. Gerstner, former CEO of Intel and former chairman of the Teaching Commission, “which reported on ways to improve the quality of public school teaching.” Gerstner writes that after decades of reform efforts, America’s K-12 schools as a whole have not improved in terms of high school and college graduation rates, test scores, and the number of college students majoring in science and engineering, and he’s worried about what this means for America’s future workforce. He then writes about things that can be done to improve education: abolishing all local school districts, establishing a national standard for a core curriculum (starting with reading, math, science, and social studies), establishing national testing days, establishing national teaching standards, measuring student and teacher performance, and extending the school day and the school year.
• Bill & Melinda Gates Go Back to School, Fortune Magazine, December 8, 2008, by Claudia Wallis. Wallis describes Bill and Melinda Gates “crusade to fix schools”. Mr. Gates is quoted as saying that the reason “America has been so successful with such terrible education” is that we pamper the elite 20% who attend the top colleges and the best public high schools and private academies. (Does anyone else find that as insulting as I do?) Gates says that has to change now with low-skill jobs vanishing and global competition on the rise. Mrs. Gates said their goal “is to double the number of low-income students who earn post-secondary degrees or credentials that let them earn a living wage” in order to make a dent in poverty in America. The article then describes their ideas to do that: performance-based scholarships, business-college partnerships, and rapid mediation. They also talk about a common set of standards and teacher quality. Intel chairman Craig Barrett is quoted as saying global corporations like Microsoft and Intel are already finding the talent they need off-shore, and that they “don’t need the U.S. to be successful”; I guess it’s implied that they would still, however, like the U.S. to be successful.

Here’s a creativity exercise: open those articles in your browser and search for the words “creativity”, “individual” (in the context of treating students as), “leadership” (in the context of teaching to students), “entrepreneurship”, “art”, “music”. What?? Can’t find them? Neither could I. Hmmm…

I wonder what Gerstner, the Gates, and other billionaires/business titans/masters of the universe/education experts are teaching their own children. Do you think they’re preparing them with plenty of math and science so they can join the workforce and work for other billionaires/business titans/masters of the universe? I would bet not. I suspect they’re teaching their own children such things as the importance of meeting people and maintaining relationships, entrepreneurship, leadership, finance, and marketing. And where is their concern for the creativity and expression of the individual, or even freedom, for their global workforce?

If I was cynical, I would say the business elites are advocating a system for creating interchangeable, inexpensive, and disposable employees — those who are one minute away from termination and one paycheck away from homelessness. However, I’ll be charitable and assume they really do have the best interests of our children at heart. Yet, unfortunately, this really is the best we can expect from business elites in looking out for our childrens’ best interests. Thank you for your concern, o holy masters of the universe with huge bank account balances…now step away from our children!

And also, unfortunately, based on my own observations and personal experiences, I don’t think the education establishment has it right either. It seems to me they want to have an assembly-line educational system where the good eggs go through and the bad eggs are identified, disciplined, and disposed of. Teachers want a room full of good “girls”, who sit quietly and listen, don’t make a fuss, and don’t talk out of order. Their education on education seems to be one of keeping their thumbs on the students in order to maintain control at all times; students are shepherded through classes, and woe be unto the uninterested, disinterested, talkative, disruptive “boy”.

I don’t have all the answers, but I think it would be good to start with the basic principle of treating our young people as the individuals they are. Out of that could come curriculums and schools tailored to the interests of the individual student, ultimately leading our young to the heights of their potential, causing an explosion of creativity in this country. And that means not everyone comes out of school readied for an employee-at-will position at intel, Microsoft, etc. We’ll also have musicians, painters, dancers, and other artists, along with the mathemeticians, scientists, and engineers…and doctors, lawyers, politicans, teachers, business leaders, etc.

The article Experts: Lack of playtime is hurting children discusses how the average American child has 8-12 fewer hours of free play today than they did in the 1980s. This is due to things such as parents’ reluctance to let their kids play outside due to fear of abduction or injury; parents’ scheduling of lessons, organized sports, and other structured activities; kids watching more hours of TV, playing video games, using the Internet and cell phones; the shortening or elimination of recess at many schools; and more emphasis on formal learning in preschool and more homework for elementary school students.

Some excerpts:

• Play equals learning. Creative, spontaneous play is vital. It fosters innovation and creative thinking.
• The most vital form of play for young children involves fantasy and role-playing with their peers. They’re inventing abstract thinking before the world tells them what to think.
• Lack of play in early education “could be the next global warming” crisis. It puts American children at a disadvantage in the global economy.
• Diminished time for free play with other children is producing a generation of socially inept young people and is a factor in the high rates of obesity, anxiety, attention-deficit disorder, and depression in our youth.
• Organized sports do not necessarily breed creativity and can lead to burnout and frustration.
• Lack of free play at preschools, with more emphasis on academics, reduces children’s chances to learn on their own about fairness, kindness, and other social interactions.

One thing that caught my eye is “playing video games.” Isn’t “playing video games” playing, and therefore being in a creative state? Are they “creative, spontaneous play” and “fantasy and role-playing with peers”? I suppose some could be. Games do involve fantasy and you can role play with peers. The peers may be on-line and not face-to-face, and the peers could be complete strangers who happen to be on-line and playing at the same time. The fantasy involved in a lot of games is the killing of people in a crime or combat setting, though games for younger children are more tame. The kids are still playing someone else’s game, someone else’s set of rules. Are the kids developing innovative, abstract, and creative thinking? Are they learning about fairness, kindness, and how to be social? If a kid can sit down and play a video game for hours, can they be diagnosed with ADD? Can video games be addictive? Can they change a child’s behavior, cause anxiety or depression? You may want to check out:

• Computer games stunt teen brains – CON
  • Video game “brain damage” claim criticised
• Your brain on video games – PRO
  

The author, George Gilder, is a venture capitalist, and his article is about entrepreneurship, creativity, and four emerging technological areas he expects huge growth in. Here’s some quotes from it I thought were interesting for this blog:

• “The real source of all growth is human creativity and entrepreneurship…”
• “No amount of knowledge about the present can predict the specific profile and provenance of innovation.”
• “If creativity was not unexpected, governments could plan it and socialism would work. But creativity is intrinsically surprising and the source of all real profit and growth.”

The four technological areas he writes about are cloud computing, graphics processing, nanotech engineering, and energy-saving construction materials.

So is all this creativity stuff important? Heck yeah!

In the article, the author, Cari Tuna, writes that frontline workers are often better at identifying problems and suggesting creative solutions to fix those problems, but when managers micromanage, employees become complacent. She writes of a company founder saying that when he micromanaged his team previously, his employees stopped making suggestions because they were afraid they’d be shot-down. Another company found their employees purposefully not following orders as they were resentful of the boss’s micromanagement.

Complacency…fear…resentment…yep, micromanagement sure sucks!

From the perspective of being micromanaged, I can only recall a couple of experiences. One was a boss who micromanaged only in certain things, every so often. It could be annoying, but overall no big deal. He’d do his bit of micromanagement on people and then leave us alone to get work done.

But I have had the experience of a CEO of the company I worked at who swooped down to my mid-level management position, sat in meetings with me and the folks I lead, and gave detailed instructions on what everyone was to do. Was I resentful? Resentful is too gentle a word. This was a creativity killer, morale killer, team killer, project killer. The CEO really had nothing better to do? Really??

From the perspective of micromanaging, it is kind of easy to micromanage a junior team member, though you may think of it as teaching. This is where you have to be mindful of exactly what it is you’re doing. Are you helping them learn something, or are you doing it for them? Maybe letting them make a mistake is a good way for them to learn, and maybe what they’re doing isn’t a mistake anyway, just a different way of doing something than you’d do.

Is there ever a case to be made for micromanagement? Is it ever the appropriate thing to do? I’m not creative enough to see it, I guess. If you want to make a case for micromanagement as a way to improve someone’s performance, be a real leader and give feedback and coaching instead. If you want to make sure that things just “get done right,” then don’t have employees and do everything yourself, or accept that you can utilize other people so you can focus on higher-level, better, more important things and let people do their jobs. If you’re using micromanaging as a way to force someone to quit, again, be a real leader, take responsibility that you made a bad hiring decision, and show them the door.

Tuna writes that the “best managers help employees learn to work independently by giving them meaningful responsibilities,” that managers “should give employees goals and leave them to work out the details”. Of course, there’s a place for feedback, coaching, and teaching, but NOT micromanaging.

This episode discusses:

• Selection, hiring, and interviewing
• Organization culture, values, morale, and motivation
• Developing trust
• Advocacy vs. Inquiry
• Belbin Team Roles: Coordinator, Shaper, Plant, Team Worker, Implementer, Completer-Finisher, Monitor-Evaluator, Resource Investigator, Specialist
• Situational leadership
• Leadership styles: Visionary, Coaching, Affiliative, Democratic, Pacesetting, Commanding

References used in this episode:

• Management: Skills and Application, by Leslie W. Rue and Lloyd L. Byars, for a history of management and a good “Management 101″ book.
• Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t, by Jim Collins, and First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, for a discussion on the importance of selection and how to select people.
• Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else, by Geoff Colvin for a discussion on talent and how to improve it. There is a good book excerpt in Fortune Magazine.
• Leadershiptraq podcast on leadership.
• Management Powertools by Harry Onsman for good descriptions of Vision, Mission, and Values statements for an organization and many other topics.
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable, by Patrick Lencioni, for a discussion of what great teamwork is comprised of.
• Manager Tools podcasts on Communication for discussions on the importance of communication with personal relationships andmotivation, plus much other good stuff. Specifically, check out the episode on Virtual Teams.
• What You Don’t Know About Making Decisions, by David A. Garvin and Michael A. Roberto, a Harvard Business Review article on Advocacy vs. Inquiry for decision making.
• Belbin Team Roles.
• Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules, by Steve McConnell, and Death March (2nd Edition) (Yourdon Press Series), by Edward Yourdon, for a discussion on team roles.
• Primal Leadership – Realizing The Power Of Emotional Intelligence, by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee, for their descriptions of the various leadership styles.
• The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your Customers, Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market, by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema, for a discussion on how to focus company resources to be either a leader in operational excellence, product innovation, OR customer intimacy.
• U.S. Global Investors Funds Annual Report, June 30, 2008.

We all fall into a rut from time to time that limits our creativity. Diversity is a way to break out of that and look at something from perspectives we might not have otherwise.

This episode discusses:

• Applying diversity to yourself
  • Seek different kinds of people to interact with, different kinds of knowledge, learning, and experiences
  • Break out of your routine
  • Be an active observer
• Applying diversity to your team
  • You can diversify by gender, age, culture
  • You can diversify by job function. This produces a Cross-Functional Team aka Business Team. Team members can include, as appropriate, a representative from marketing, sales, finance, production, engineering, technical documentation, QA, etc.
  • You can diversify by team role. Doing/Acting Roles (Implementer, Shaper, Completer/Finisher), Thinking/Problem Solving Roles (Plant, Monitor/Evaluator, Specialist), and People/Feelings Role (Coordinator, Team Worker, Resource/Investigator)
  • Can add others to your team, like customers, investors, and other stakeholders, but try to keep team smallish, maybe 6-12 people, and keep communication complexity low.
  • You can diversify by personality types. This may come anyway, but by paying attention to it, you can optimize for it. Be aware of conflict sure to arise from people of different personality types (and even the same types) and the need to manage conflict. Personality models briefly discussed:
    Social Style Matrix, PIAV (Personal Interests, Attitudes, and Values), Jung-based models and the Jung Type Indicator, DiSC.

References used in the episode:

• The Managerial Decision-making Process, by E. Frank Harrison, for discussion on falling into ruts and breaking out of them, advantages of working with a group (page 232), and communication complexity vs. creativity (page 226).
• Cracking Creativity: The Secrets of Creative Genius, by Michael Michalko, for a discussion on how creative people look for alternate ways to think about a subject, even when the old ways are well established, that they will create a large number of different perspectives and then pick one they want (page 285).
• MovieMaker magazine I mentioned.
• Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules, by Steve McConnell, for a discussion on team members and roles (pages 282-284, kinds of teams (pages 300-301), and Business Team structure (page 304).
• Death March (2nd Edition) (Yourdon Press Series), by Edward Yourdon, for a discussion on team roles (page 115).
• The Creative Spirit, by Daniel Goleman, Paul Kaufman, and Michael Ray, for a discussion on diversity by age, geographical region, political faction, and culture (pages 171-174).
• Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques (2nd Edition), by Michael Michalko, for a discussion of diversifying people for brainstorming (page 297).
• Belbin’s Team Roles
• Social Style Matrix info
• Selling: Building Partnerships, by Barton A. Weitz, Stephen B. Castleberry, and John F. Tanner, Jr., for a discussion on the Social Style Matrix (pages 153-157).
• PIAV article in Wikipedia
• PIAV info from The Coughlin Group
• Jung Type Indicator info
• Jung Typology Test at HumanMetrics
• Jung Type Indicator article in Wikipedia
• Myers-Briggs Type indicator Wikipedia article
• DiSC Wikipedia article
• Manager-Tools DiSC info. This contains some free DiSC resources. The podcasts are all free, though for the specialized ones you’ll need to register as a member (which is also free). There’s also some handy PDFs that can be found there.

You can and will use creativity in decision making, and you will make decisions in your creative pursuits, and depending how you look at it, creativity and decision making look a lot alike.

This episode discusses:

• A definition for the term “decision”
• Intuition, judgment, and emotions
• Interpersonal intelligence and courage in decision making
• Intuitive Decision Making
• A Rational Decision Making Process
• Considerations of who is involved in implementing a decision and who is involved in making a decision
• How to maximize creativity in decision making
• The Wisdom of the Crowd

References used in the episode:

• The Managerial Decision-making Process, by E. Frank Harrison, for many topics on Decision Making, including the definition of the term Decision and the rational decision making process described in the episode. Jung’s and Freud’s perspectives on intuition are also discussed here (pages 203 and 204).
• Primal Leadership – Realizing The Power Of Emotional Intelligence, by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee, for their discussion of intution.
• Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell, for a discussion on the fallibility on intuition. He refers to this as the Warren Harding Error.
• Inc Magazine article on the Wisdom Of The Crowd.
• Wikipedia topic on the Wisdom Of The Crowd.

References used in the episode:

• Primal Leadership – Realizing The Power Of Emotional Intelligence, by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee, for understanding the importance of emotions, recognizing your and others’ emotions, and managing them.
• Beethoven (Revised Edition), by Maynard Solomon, for a biography on Beethoven. Beethoven’s Heiligenstadt Testament is where is discusses his dispair.
• Wikipedia article on Vincent Van Gogh.
• Wikipedia article on Edgar Allan Poe.
• Wikipedia article on Ernest Hemingway.
• Wikipedia article on Apollo 13.
• The History of English Speaking Peoples {4 Vol Set} The Birth of Britain, The New World, The Age of Revolution, The Great Democracies, by Winston S. Churchill, for the history of Napoleon. The quote I gave is in the volume “The Age of Revolution,” page 339.
• Wikipedia article on the Tiune Brain Model.
• Paul MacLean’s triune brain hypothesis.
• Men’s Health article on Addiction.
• Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques (2nd Edition), by Michael Michalko, for the description of the Tick-Tock techniques and the Affirmation techniques (in chapter 1).

References mentioned in the episode:

• Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World, by Jill Jonnes, for the quote of Nikola Tesla (page 110). This book is very entertaining. It is part biography, part history, part science, and part business.
• Cracking Creativity: The Secrets of Creative Genius, by Michael Michalko, for a discussion on Einstein’s and Mozart’s techniques. This is an excellent book on creativity tips and techniques.
• Beethoven: The Man and the Artist, As Revealed in His Own Words, edited by Friedrich Kerst & Henry Edward Krehbiel, for the quotes from Beethoven (pages 24 and 29). An interesting book if you’re a Beethoven-phile.
• Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell, for a discussion about left-brain/right-brain.
• The Creative Spirit, by Daniel Goleman, Paul Kaufman, and Michael Ray, for a discussion on creativity and schools.
• How to Change The Way Kids Learn, by Clayton M. Cristensen, in Forbes Magazine, August 11, 2008, for a discussion on creativity and schools.
• The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done (Harperbusiness Essentials), by Peter F. Drucker, for a discussion on Management Theory.
• First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, for a discussion on Management Theory.
• Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques (2nd Edition), by Michael Michalko, for the discussion of the publishing house study (in chapter 1).