Think! (17 page)

The Creativity Centre

People are not motivated to have ideas if no one is going to listen to their new idea. People around you, and your immediate superiors, often do not welcome the disruption of a new idea about which they might be expected to do something. The Creativity Centre is there as a forum and listening place for new ideas. The Centre can also act as the organising point for the activities of the CCO.

David Tanner came to a seminar I gave in Toronto many years ago. He invited me to DuPont, where I gave several seminars to senior management. He became, in effect, the CCO. He set up a Creativity Centre. He also set up a network of creative people who could communicate with each other. There were many other practical innovations he made in this field. Based on his experience of organising creativity in a large organisation, he is now working as a consultant and has written several books about his experience.

Publication

Although most creative people would not admit it, creative people like other people to know about their new ideas. Even if the idea cannot be acted upon, they would like the idea to be publicised. This is understandable. So it is important in an organisation to have some way of making ideas visible. This can mean a specific 'creative newsletter' or it can be part of the usual internal newsletter. Nothing is more motivating to a creative person.

Networks

As mentioned above, there is value in putting creatively motivated people in touch with each other through a network (as David Tanner did in DuPont). They can exchange ideas, set up meetings, define tasks, help each other, etc. The danger of a network of enthusiastic people is that others might feel excluded and feel that creativity is
not for them, but only for the special people in the network. So networks should not be too tightly configured.

Department

If creativity is so important, it might seem logical to have a special department of creatively motivated people who would do all the creative thinking needed. This would be equivalent to the normal research department. The real danger here, as with networks, is that other people feel excluded and feel that creativity is only for that department. Since ideas are needed everywhere and from everyone, this is a real danger. It is probably better, in business organisations, not to have such a specific department, but to have a strong Creativity Centre that can fulfil the organising functions of a department but is open-ended and not restricted to a small group of people.

Celebration

New ideas should be celebrated. This involves the publication mentioned earlier but can also mean special gestures of appreciation, such as a Creativity Medal or other award for new ideas. Such celebrations not only motivate the people who have had the ideas but indicate that new ideas are expected and appreciated. This is very different from having to persuade someone to listen to a new idea, which is usually the case.

Training

Many businesses have had their people formally trained in lateral thinking (DuPont, IBM, Prudential, Siemens, etc.) Many now have internal trainers who can carry on the training internally.

Motivation

In my experience, the interest in creativity has usually been driven by the CEO, who knows that creativity is needed. This sets the mood and motivation for the organisation. Expectation is very important. If people know that they are expected to have ideas, they will have ideas. If they believe that their job is 'continuity and problem solving', they will find new ideas too much bother.

One bank told me they used to have a few suggestions every month from their staff. After training in lateral thinking they now have over 600 a month.

Motivation and skill go together and they build on each other. Success in creativity increases the motivation, which increases the skill.

Youngsters often take home from school the thinking lessons they have learned. These may be the Six Hats method, or the CoRT perceptual tools. They introduce these tools to their parents – who then use them.

The ideas that I have mentioned for the pre-school age all work well at home. These include setting drawing tasks and then discussing together the output.

Parents can set thinking games for children and play these games with the children. For example, a parent might say 'Suppose all cars had to be painted yellow. Do a PMI on that.' The PMI is a CoRT tool and stands for Plus, Minus and Interesting.

Parents can set aside one evening a week as a 'thinking evening'. Friends' and neighbours' children can be invited to take part. Youngsters really enjoy thinking, as an idea is an achievement.

In discussions, and even in quarrels, the Six Hats framework can be used to explore the situation fully.

With older children, specific creative tasks can be set and then the lateral thinking tools can be used to generate new ideas.

In the
future I shall be writing more fully about 'Family Thinking Sessions'. If the school is not going to teach thinking, then you can do it at home. If the school is teaching thinking, you can still teach it at home too. Thinking is a life skill.

The purpose of thinking is to allow us to enjoy and to deliver our values.

Thinking without values is meaningless and achieves nothing.

Values without thinking have been responsible for persecutions and all manner of nastiness. If someone has different values, then that person must be wrong.

Although values are so central to thinking, we have paid very little direct attention to values. We have assumed that everyone will recognise the values that matter to them.

We have always considered truth to be more important than value in thinking. Once again there was the influence of the Church in the Middle Ages. Truth was
everything. And if you followed the 'true way', then values could come about of their own accord.

Just as discovery is to truth so design is to value. The purpose of design is to deliver the values we want.

Truth is very important – but so are values. Truth by itself is not enough.

Just as a scientific discovery has to be turned into a practical application (in medicine or the commercial world), so truth needs to be turned into value.

We have a very vague approach to values. We reckon that we know what we want or value and we know what we do not want.

A flock of birds is flying overhead. One person looks up and says: 'There are a lot of birds about today.'

Another person looks up and says: 'Do you see the goose over there? Then there is the kestrel. And that might be a magpie.'

The first person just sees birds and the second person has learned to recognise different birds. In the same way it is possible to learn to recognise different values in a very specific way.

Once we have learned to recognise values, we can also look for them specifically. We need a framework for distinguishing one value from another.

In my book
The Six Value Medals,
I provide a framework for distinguishing one type of value from another. I have mentioned it earlier in this book but it is so important that it is worth repeating here.

In the book there are also methods of setting out a value scan. This is a visual display of values. Value scans from different people can then be compared. The points of difference are not obvious. They can be discussed. This is a much more precise process than arguing about values in a vague way.

Gold Medal:
These are human values. They are values that apply specifically to human beings. There may be values like praise, achievement, pride and significance. There can also be negative values like humiliation and being ignored. The value medals include both positive and negative values.

Silver Medal:
These are organisational values. For a business corporation it may be a matter of profits, market share or brand image. For a political organisation it may be public perception or votes. For the organisation of a family unit it may be cooperation, peace or honesty.

Steel Medal:
These are quality values. Steel is supposed to have certain qualities, such as strength and durability. Quality values of any sort come under the Steel Medal.
The intrinsic nature of an item or procedure determines its purpose. Quality determines how well it fulfils that purpose. Is it what it is supposed to be? Does it do what it is supposed to do?

Glass Medal:
Glass is a simple but very versatile material. With creativity you can make all sorts of things from glass. So the Glass Medal is about innovation and creativity. This medal looks at new ideas and new suggestions. It may even be that an idea has no value at the moment other than its newness. The Glass Medal allows us to look at and appreciate creative effort.

Wood Medal:
This medal is to do with ecology and the surroundings. This is not limited to nature. If a factory is the major employer in a small town, then policy changes might have a strong effect on that town. That is ecology.

Brass Medal:
These are 'perceived values'. They are extremely important but usually neglected. How will this decision be perceived? You may do something that is worthwhile but is perceived very badly. You may do something that is not so good but produces a positive perception. Brass looks like gold but is not. In the same way, perceived values may not relate to real values. Perceived values need to be considered directly. It is not enough to suppose that if you do something worthwhile it will be perceived positively.

Once we have a way of distinguishing different types of value, we can search for each of the different values in a situation. Some change is proposed. What would the effects be under each of the value medals? We can look at the consequences of the change through the frame of each value medal. What might be the positive values? What might be the negative values?

In assessing any situation we can now pick out and assess the different values (in the book, a method of giving a strength to values is provided). It is like the person who had learned to pick out the different birds in the flock flying overhead.

Once we can see a type of value clearly, we are able to assess its strength and importance. This is not possible if values are all mixed together and only seen in a vague sort of way as with the flock of birds.

Why six Value Medals and six Thinking Hats?

We know from psychology that the brain can perceive a maximum of seven things at any one time. If there are more than that, the brain starts to subdivide. So from the point of view of perception, seven would be the maximum useful number of categories.

I prefer to use six. That leaves one unused category should experience indicate that there is a real need for another category. It has not done this so far.

As far as I know, and subject to correction, I believe that 'the right to think' is not spelled out in the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

There are several possible explanations for this. There is no specific right to walk, to talk, to eat or to breathe. So it is assumed that thinking is a natural function and there is no need to spell out any specific right to do so. This is a very bad mistake. At a primitive, animal level, there is some natural thinking, but that is very simple and crude. It consists mainly of recognising situations and applying the right routine.

Another possible explanation is that it is assumed that thinking comes naturally under the heading of 'education'. This is another bad mistake. The thinking taught in education, at best, is about judgement, analysis and debate. This is only a small part of thinking. To be sure, there are some schools and even countries where thinking is now taught explicitly, but they are few.

You might have the right to play tennis or to play the piano, but unless someone teaches you how to do it, that right is meaningless. Everyone knows that children need to be taught how to read and write. It would never be enough to say, 'You have the right to read and write – now get on with it!'

Of course, it will be argued that if 'instruction in thinking' is mentioned, then totalitarian regimes will instruct youngsters how to think according to the rules of that regime. This is not to be encouraged. Yet we have to realise that all religions have done this since their inception.

It is no more difficult to teach thinking in a neutral manner than it is to teach mathematics. Around the world there are various regimes of different political natures that are happily teaching my thinking in their schools. This is the case in Christian countries, Islamic countries, Buddhist countries and in the old days of Communist countries. Thinking is a skill, like mathematics, and is not political.

In the Republic of Ireland, Jim O'Sullivan decided to teach my thinking to his employees at an electronics company. They saved so much money that he could afford to pay them more. At one point some people from the shop floor
designed a new computer keyboard in which they subsequently invested $5 million – and it was a sales success.

I have told elsewhere the story of the Argentinian who ran a textile company. He gave his staff 'permission to think' and instruction on how to do it. At that time the company was half the size of its nearest competitor. Today, a few years later, the company is 10 times the size of that competitor.

There is a huge human resource potential in employees if they are given permission to think – and some simple instruction on how to do it.

It is an absurd and antique attitude to believe that thinking is natural and therefore needs no instruction.

It is an absurd and antique attitude to believe that normal education teaches sufficient thinking.

There is a real need to teach thinking deliberately and directly as a separate subject in education (both schools and universities). This means thinking in its fullest sense, not just logic and argument. Judgement is an essential part of thinking, just as the rear left wheel is an essential part of a motor car – but it is not sufficient: excellent, but not enough!

How is it that we have progressed so far without this realisation?