Disengaging Creativity Locks

By Waldemar J. Ramirez, P.E., CC

As the global economic crisis keeps curbing our wellbeing, we keep hearing about prescriptions based on becoming more “creative.” As budgets get cut, organizational leaders repeat ad nauseam to their teams that they must be “more creative.”  But do they know what they are asking for? Entrepreneurs, government officials, economists, and all sort of experts seem to agree in proposing “creativity” as the key competency to overcome the crisis. But is this a levelheaded proposition? Conceptually, no one in his/her right mind can be against proposition. “Boosting creativity” thus is becoming a mantra, or – if you will - the overarching strategic tool to trigger the transformation required. But do we understand what it takes to be more creative?

Potential vs. Realization

Creativity may be defined as the ability to think a clear and distinct new idea, including the ability to rethink new possibilities for an old idea (e.g., thinking a bold new application for an existing technology). As you put the new idea into practice, you are then innovating. We can all agree with the need to promote, throughout the whole organization, the generation and utilization of creative and innovative methodologies and products. Of course you may ask whether every person in the organization has truly the material required to think up new solutions to old challenges. From my perspective the answer is unmistakably: Yes, absolutely we all possess such resources that enable the making of new thoughts. And, by the way, it is equally true that not everyone has the same background, some having maybe benefited from more nurturing experiences than others. But in any case, having the material to be creative does not imply the realization of a creative act but rather the potential, the capability, of doing it.

And it is here where the crux of the issue lies. Why is it, if anyone can be creative, that only some stand out in the arena of creativity and innovation? Why, despite the fact that most organizations repeatedly urge their personnel to continuous improvement, only a few contributors respond effectively to this request?

Brain Locks

Different schools of thought dealing with human performance will establish that we all have the definite possibility to be creative, and that the reason why we don’t find new ideas flourishing in each and every person can be explained by so-called brain locks, traps of the human mind that prevent us from moving along. Some brain locks are benign (though embarrassing), as when you forget the thread of a conversation or can't think of a particular word. But some can take over the control of your life, interfering with your creative processes. Among these, let’s have a look at two that seem to prevail most, i.e.,

·       Fear to fail

·       Inability or refusal to deal with ambiguity

Regarding the first, we can take note that in every one of us operates that part of the psychic apparatus called the superego, whose main function is to pass judgment on whether or not we are attaining perfection. Hence the almost incomprehensible and constant fears to fail or err under the faultfinding look of others – or under a far more ruthless judgment, our own.  

We can say unequivocally that there is a latent creative personality within each of us. But actually being creative conveys taking risks. Being creative implies facing the possibility of things not occurring as we wanted, and consequently having to recognize that we are not perfect (ouch!) and can fail. In that sense, placing unduly high demands upon ourselves can hinder or inhibit our creativity. The lesson thus is to deliberately and astutely craft the demands and expectations you present to your organization. Dumping upon your people an audacious but carelessly defined challenge can be counterproductive if your goal is to foster innovation and creativity.

The second of our brain locks, the inability to accept ambiguities, is anchored in a long tradition of logical thinking created by the Greeks (Socrates, Plato and Aristotle) five centuries before Christ, and which was pivotal in the development and structuring of Western ideas. Herein resides the reason for the obstacles that overrun our mental processes when we are told that the Chinese word for "crisis" – wēi jī - consists of the characters for both "danger" and "opportunity." We cannot reconcile that danger and opportunity can be conveyed simultaneously. (By the way, there is a widespread controversy about whether this interpretation of wēi jī is correct or a fallacy, but the fact remains that the prospect of ambiguity or paradoxes can trigger brain locks in most of us.)

Our society revolves around the question of what is good and what is evil. We usually characterize humans as either malevolent or benevolent. An emotional equilibrium making a person both good and bad, a situation characterized by ambiguity, would tend to be rejected by most of us. We don’t know how to handle the concept of a person being both good and bad. It seems that we are configured to only see the negative sides of situations of uncertainty (such as the current global economic crisis), having an easier time understanding the losses than understanding the potential winnings.

Addressing Brain Locks

Accepting ambiguities means reframing our thinking to look at the current crisis as a source of multiple opportunities to generate innovative actions likely to help us learn and earn, grow and glow. And it requires accepting the notion that “illogical thinking” is not destructive as it association to Schizophrenia and Alzheimer suggests. On the contrary, its benefits are becoming increasingly accepted. Consider the following two approaches, generally regarded as novel and smart, and widely promoted by management consultants:

·       “Lateral thinking” (reasoning that is not immediately obvious; ideas that may not be obtainable through traditional step-by-step logic), and

·       “Out-of-the-box thinking” (thinking that moves away in diverging, not converging, directions; idea generation not constrained by conventional barriers – such as logic!).

As you can observe, these favored methodologies promote a good dosage of “illogical thinking”.

The fear of failure is perhaps the strongest force holding people below their potential. There are many strategies to help your people to put risk and reward in perspective so they can overcome the fear of failure. Among these we can highlight the following:

·       Help people understand the cost of missed opportunities, the potential rewards they are giving away.

·       Take the power out fear by understanding it. The major source of fear is the unknown. Encourage people to research the alternatives and their potential outcomes, and they will discover that the potential consequences of failing are not as bad as they seemed at first.

·       Help people appreciate the benefits of actual failure.  Reflect on the case of Thomas Edison, who held 1093 patents for inventions. He invented the light bulb after innumerable failed attempts, and when asked why he pursued his quest even after 10, 000 attempts, he simply replied, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." He saw each failure as an opportunity for improvement.

Business leaders need to make sure they are creating the right conditions for ideas to land in friendly territory. Some of the levers to use include the application of incentive systems; the formation of empowered project teams; coaching partnerships; and leadership development investments at various levels of the organization.

The Role of Situation & Context

Over the past several years social psychologists have discovered that the manifestation of creativity may change depending on the situation and context. The question then is what are those situations? What makes us more creative at times and less creative at others?

Psychology offers us some insights via the Construal Level Theory (CLT) and the concept of psychological distance.  According to this concept, anything that we do not experience as occurring now, here, and to ourselves falls into the “psychologically distant” category. Scientists have demonstrated that increasing psychological distance so that a problem feels farther away can actually increase creativity.

Why does this happen? According to CLT, psychological distance affects the way we mentally represent things, so that distant things are represented in a relatively abstract way while psychologically near things seem more concrete. Abstract thinking, where we work with far less restriction and far more possibilities, makes it easier for people to form surprising connections between seemingly unrelated concepts. Concrete thinking limits the connections and the possibilities.

CLT thus suggests that there are actions we can take to change the way we think about a particular problem and induce a state of “psychological distance”, our pathway to increased creativity. Consider the following strategies you can foster in your organization : thinking about faraway places, thinking about the distant future, attempting to take another person's perspective, thinking of the question as if it were unreal and unlikely, communicating with people who are dissimilar to us, and considering unlikely (even wild!) alternatives to reality.

Our contemporary environment, with its increased access to people, ideas, sights, music, and food from faraway places, cab be exploited to help us and our people become more creative - not only by exposing us to a variety of ways and styles, but also by allowing us to think more abstractly. So the next time you tell your team they must be “more creative” remember you will have to give them more than an order. You may have to give them a key to open some locks… and then give some distance, psychological distance, that is.