E098: Creativity & Innovation (Cognitive Process)

This is the world of work podcast with James. I'm James, hi. This is

James. Just before we start, I wanted to remind you that you can read our articles, explore more podcasts, and learn about our online personal and management development programs and workshops by visiting our website, www, dot, World of work.io. All right, onto the podcast. Hello, Mr. James. And this is Jane, and

here we are again with another episode of a world of work podcast, summer 2020. What are we speaking about today? Jane, well,

today we are talking to our special guest, Ronnie writer Pullman. She is a lecturer and course leader in industrial and organizational psychology at the University of Nebraska, and she spent most of her career researching innovation and creativity. So it's going to be pretty exciting episode. It's one of three that we've recorded with her, and today we're talking about things like cognitive processes and also a little bit of myth busting. Sounds good. I can't wait to get into it.

Okay, so here you are in the main body of this podcast, and today we are on the third of our summer 2020, podcasts exploring innovation. And today, what we're really going to be focusing on is the role of cognitive process in innovation and creativity, and we might be busting a few myths in here as well. We'll just have to see. As with the first two episodes, we've got next on guest, we've got Ronnie Ryder paulman, and before we get into the conversation, Ronnie, would you be able to introduce yourself and say a bit about yourself and your background to the audience? Sure

thing. I'm a professor of Organizational Psychology at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. I'm also the Director We of our organizational psychology graduate program. We have both a master's and a PhD, and I've been studying creativity and innovation for about 30 years.

Great. Well, it sounds like you'll have some good insight for us today. Um, before we get into exploring the role of, I guess, cognitive process in all of this, what? What exactly is innovation and creativity and how are they related? Sure?

So we have agreement on what creativity is. We've had this agreement for about 40 years or so, and we define creativity as an idea or a product or a process that is both original or novel as well as useful or effective meaning that both need to exist for something to be creative, it has to be new, but it also has to fulfill a particular need or address a problem. The discussion about creativity and innovation is a little more in conflict, but sort of the semi consensus that has emerged relatively recently is that we talked about creativity as the early part of the process where we develop ideas. So those early cognitive processes of problem framing and idea generation and implementation are the later processes of IDEA evaluation and selection and implementation,

right? Okay, well, that's given us a bit of a journey throughout the creativity process, through the innovation process and stuff as a sort of a follow up question, right? When, when I think about innovation, I've got a couple of things popping into my mind. So I've got, I guess, apple falling on my head, and suddenly I know about gravity, or I've got, you know, I sit in the bath and I know how to weigh gold, or I have snapshots from my education of moments of pure insight and light bulb light bulb creativity. Is that roughly what we're getting at with innovation? Or how does that fit within the gamut of innovation?

So we actually what we view as these aha moments that actually doesn't quite happen. It feels like it sometimes, or it feels like it from the outside sometimes, but when we look at what is going on, we find that these individuals worked on this problem for a period of time, and they may put it aside for a while, and they may go do other things, but they've been thinking about this, and eventually they come up with a solution. And it might feel like it's all of a sudden, but in fact, there's a lot of work that happens during that time period until the solution is manifested. And it's not this light bulb moment that's

interesting. One of the phrases that I grew up with in the house that I grew up in was every overnight success has 15 years of hard work behind it, yep, and it feels like there's kind of something in that that fits with this absolutely so then, if we think about it. Because in these environments, or in these instances, we don't necessarily have those instant moments. We've got the sort of processing in the background and we've been thinking and, you know, exploring concepts over time. In your opinion, if we think about the sort of creativity and innovation process, is there an actual process? I mean, can we do things? Can we reflect or modify the way that we think or the way that we approach things, in such a way that it increases our creativity or increases our ability to actually innovate

Absolutely. So there are a number of different models of creative processes, but what we find that is common to all of them is that there are three core processes. There's this problem framing, or problem construction, Problem identification, where you actually identify what the problem is. You decide what you're trying to solve for, and so on. That's kind of the beginning part. Then you have the idea generation phase, where you are coming up with multiple ideas. You may combine different ideas from that come up to come up with a more complete solution, and then you have idea valuation and idea selection. We tend to present them sequentially, but the reality is that we go back and forth between these processes, so especially if we're not successful. So if we generate ideas, and once we get to the idea valuation phase, we go, you know, none of these ideas are great. We may go back and generate more ideas. We may even go back further and rethink about how we're thinking about the problem

is that something that we do in groups, or we do individually, or does it work in both sort of environment? So

there's very limited research on on these processes and teams, but my research suggests that it those things happen in teams as well.

Yeah, interesting, and I've got a question for you in my old role, one of the things that I used to do was to go around and do sort of team coaching type work and talk about problem solving. And we'd deliver, I guess it was Toyota's a three problem solving model, and get teams to work through stuff like that. And everything that we did was framed around problems. But then later on, people started talking about opportunities. In your view, what is the difference between a problem and an opportunity? Or how do you see the connection

between those things and that's an interesting issue. So I think in terms of the framing, when you talk about a problem, you're looking for a solution. When you're talking about an opportunity, you're thinking about, how can I capitalize on it? I tend to use the word problem from a more cognitive perspective, so it's not viewed sort of as negatively as as we typically frame it in in a business sense, right? But a problem can be an opportunity, right? If so, if something is not working, you could view it as something that I need to find a quick fix for, or something that I can capitalize on and build a better product. For example, we typically don't try to solve when we don't have problems, if things are going great, why mess around with them? So, so the notion is that a problem does present an opportunity in that respect. Okay,

so if we think about your process, then if we go back to what you talked about, is the first of those three core stages you talked about problem for problem framing and sort of problem identification. What exactly is a problem framing and why is it important to have a process around our problem framing?

Sure, so a lot of problems or situations that allow for creativity tend to be what we call ill defined, or really they're ambiguous, right? There's no one solution that is correct. So if I say two plus two, we all know it's four. If I tell you it's five, it's not because I'm creative. I'm just not correct. Um, problems that are more ambiguous allow for creative ideas, and the more complex the problem is, the more likely we are to come up with creative solutions. But also, there are multiple pieces and complexities involved with that. Just think about the pandemic right now, right so we have multiple aspects of it, and if we sit together and try to find a solution to this problem of the pandemic, expertise is going to play a role

and in terms of how we think about the problem. So you know, the medical doctor is going to think about how to treat this, the immunologist is going to think about a vaccine. Right? As a psychologist, I might think about, how do we get get work done when we're at home and can't go to work? So there are different perspectives, and the more of these perspectives we could take into account when we think about the problem, the more likely we are to come up with a solution that is is more comprehensive, but it's also more creative.

And within this, are you trying to kind of find a root cause, a root problem behind all of this? Are you just trying to find a variety or what's the sort of end state that we're aiming for?

So really, the issue is, what is the goal or purpose? What are we trying to solve for, and what are constraints that we have right any time there's a problem, there's also restrictions or constraints. Typical ones include a timeline or a budget. Most businesses don't have infinite budget or infinite time. So what can we do with the time that we have, with the budget that we have, and we're trying to put all of this together, to try to structure this very ambiguous situation that we're in, to help us direct us to potential solutions. What is interesting, though, is that if we the way we structure the problem and the way we define it will lead us towards certain solutions and lead us away from other solutions, we won't even entertain

them. So the way, effectively, the way that we we choose or set out to navigate the problem solving process, effectively creates a limitation on the ways and the solutions that we might come up with. Is that, is that right? Absolutely.

So a great example that I use is, so the problem statement is, there mice in my basement. I can think about it as, how do I catch the mice? So now I'm thinking about mice, a mouse trap, or I can think about it. How do I prevent the mice from coming in? A mouse trap is not going to help me to prevent the mice from coming into my basement in the first place. I need to think about sealing the basement bug. So you could see how the way I frame the problem directed me towards a certain solution, but away from others. Now, if I start thinking about this as I need to trap the mice that are here, but also prevent the ones, the other ones, from coming in. Now I'm thinking in a more comprehensive way,

and that makes total sense when you when you think about it in in the real world, like the minute that you start to draw boxes around your solutions, you're effectively there's a load of stuff that's not going to get into the box. I just want to come back to me. I had while you were talking earlier. I was just something struck me, and I wanted to follow up a little bit on it. You mentioned this idea of the way that we sort of flex, how our brains work when we're navigating problems and thinking about it. And I kind of made me think, do we get out of practice of that? Does this something that is helpful and useful for to be doing regularly so that we are used to it? Do we get better at it if we're doing it more frequently, or is it? Is it just as simple as trying to pick a process every so often and following it well?

So what we know is that creative people engage in these processes naturally, and they're more effective at them. We can train people to engage in these processes, and we've done it, and the research shows that it works, but I think for many people, it's just not as natural, and they kind of have to remind themselves to do

this, yeah, and that that makes really good sense, okay? And the other thing I kind of wanted to ask about is I've come across, with varying degrees of confidence, lots of different tools or approaches or ways of,

solving problems. So there's like, there's there's different systems that you can use, or there's different methodologies. Does do Is there research about which ones work? Does it matter? Is it just about picking any process, or are there some that help more?

So I'm not going to pretend I'm an expert on every single tool, and part of the issue is that there are a lot of tools out there that there's no research. And if we start to look at them, we can connect them to engage to some research, but maybe sometimes we can't. So there is research to suggest that engaging at the Creative Problem Solving processes and training people on them. So for example, is helpful. So for example, for looking at that first process of problem framing, it is. If we tell people before you solve the problem, just take a little bit of time. Think about what you're trying to solve for. What are the different goals? What really is the problem? Restate it from multiple perspectives. Write that helps people be more creative.

So there's all these like tools and things that managers can access or buy, that they can bring in to think about how they how they address solving problems and innovating, how what advice, if any, would you have for them when they're thinking about what might be the best approach for their team?

I think it's important to see what the research supports. So there's a lot of stuff out there that's just, you know, somebody's ideas or based on their experience. Now, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're wrong, but it's not necessarily connected to research. So if somebody could show you research that shows that it actually works, and it goes beyond just anecdotal evidence and word of mouth and you know, actual scientific research that shows that the process works great, the other thing you could do is just check and see we have a lot of published research that shows that these processes of problem definition, framing, problem construction, idea generation, idea evaluation and choice are helpful and supported. And if you could tie what they're proposing to to that research, then you know that it's it's of good quality.

So there you go. Listeners, if you are thinking about which tools to access, just ask some pointed questions about the academic literature that or the research that upholds some of the some of the way, the ways the tools been built, or the effectiveness of the tool. Okay, so we've gone through this problem solving process, right? We've come up with a way of framing it, and we have had a really creative few sessions with our team, and we've got some solutions. How? How do we go about deciding what's right? Because certainly in my experience, quite often, it's just the opinion of the most senior or the most influential person in the room. Is there a better way, absolutely.

So first of all, one of the most frustrating sort of experiences that I've seen, and I get this if brainstorming doesn't work, well, brainstorming doesn't work when you leave the people with 100 ideas and no way of narrowing it down, you really do need to engage in this idea valuation and idea selection process. So for IDEA valuation, you really want to think about what go back to your original conception, what was the goal, what was the purpose, what are you trying to solve for? And then start looking at those ideas or solutions with that in mind. Do they solve the problem? Is it something that can be implemented? This is where practicality comes into place. You know, sometimes we have a great novel idea, but you can't do anything with it. We don't have the technology. We don't have the resources, whatever you have, to put it aside. It. Can we tweak a solution? Do we have a solution that's close but maybe not where we need it to be? Or there are some hurdles that we can think of. How can we make it better? So you don't just take an idea and go, Oh, yes, this is what we want to do. You might have great ideas that need a little bit more work before you can implement them and and then, based on those evaluations, you can make decisions about which ideas to implement. And

just aside to that, when you work in a team that's come up with a solution that gets selected, and you've been part of that process, do you think it's important that the people who've been through that process are also kept close to the execution of that idea, if they're not part of the core team, so that they can give context? Or is it sometimes better that the production team go away and then take that idea and just they themselves, you know, approach it creatively. What what's the best? Is it what's the best with multidisciplinary teams? Is it best that they work all the way through the process?

I personally believe so. Because, again, I think, as you mentioned, context matters. So understanding why a particular solution was chosen is important. Otherwise, what we sometimes find is that the the neck, the next team starts to reinvent the wheel, right? They go, they go, Well, we don't understand this solution. Maybe there's a better one out there. And they go through the entire process of trying to come up with solutions and and you. Spend time doing something that was already done. If they understand why this particular solution was selected, if they understand the other solutions that were proposed and why they weren't chosen, it has a better chance of being implemented. You

know, that's something that working in organizational change. And a large organization I would see all the time. We'd have somebody pop into a new team or move and say, Well, clearly, this is the obvious solution. Why don't we do this and the rest of it? People would sort of nod and smile for a second and then say, well, actually, we did. We did think about Thank you, and we went through all these reasons and and the sort of wasted energy around that is quite interesting. Um, if we, if we go back a little bit in the process, we've talked about some about selection and implementation. We haven't really yet, though, touched on the ideation process. Have you got any any tips around ideation, or idea generation, or whatever we want to call this process of coming up with with ideas? What is that process like? And how can we make sure that we generate a great variety of thoughts at the stage, sure.

So the important thing is to kind of let yourself go and come up with all kinds of ideas, and remember that just because it's it's a silly idea or not necessarily one that can be implemented. That does not necessarily mean that that it can't lead you to a better one, or it can't be developed into a better one. And this is where the synergy of the team, I think, can really matter. I'll give you an example. I was working with, with a large organization, trying to come up with solutions for a problem they presented. And one of and again, we we told them, Don't, don't overthink things. Just write down whatever you you have in mind. And and, you know, one of the solutions was, we have too much work. We don't have enough experts. We need to clone people. Well, obviously, cloning is not a solution, right? That's not going to happen. However, it led to a discussion about how we can ensure that the work continues around the clock, and the solution that they came up with was to have a different team of developers working in a different location. And in this particular case, you know us versus somewhere in Asia. So when you finish the work in the US, you hand it off to the team in Asia. They work on it while we sleep, and you come back in the morning and the work has continued, but it got them there, right? And I don't know that they would have come up with that idea

without it. Yeah, that's a great example. And, and when you're in those sort of, like open spaces and trying to create this, this variety of ideas and to make sure that it's safe. How do you stop teams from anchoring on maybe the first suggestion, or how do you stop some of the loudest voices in those rooms or environments dominating that conversation?

So one of the things that I find that is helpful is to have a facilitator that is not part of the team. The leader can sometimes do it, but it helps if you have somebody that's not part of the team that takes the role of making sure that everybody is heard because they're not part of the team, they could tell the dominant person to be quiet, right, without ruffling too many feathers, and to ensure that that multiple ideas are brought forth.

Yeah, certainly, in the past, various points, we've, um, when we've done things that were sort of idea driven, we've, we've identified people in advance and said, Would you mind maybe playing a slightly different role here, or trying to do something like that to to enable that? Okay, cool. So it's about some stuff we can do with the ideation process itself. If we think about, then, if we just step back and think about, I guess again, you know a usual, usual framing somebody leading a small organization, or somebody that is leading a team in a larger organization who would like to get a bit better at this sort of cognitive process within their team. What do you think some of the key messages for them would be? What can they take away as key things that they should do differently to to be creative and innovative in their team in this way? Sure.

So I think one of the first things is take time to think about what the problem is, engage in that problem, identification, problem, construction process, we have robust evidence to show that it works, that it improves creativity, and it's a step that we do not naturally engage in. Our tendency is to skip that and jump right into solutions and. When and the evidence comes both from research on creative people, but also training for creativity. We find that if that process is trained and people engage in it, the the improvement in creativity is is fairly large, right? Um, when we look at the brainstorming or idea generation phase it, you know, don't censor both the self censoring, but also censoring others. You know, silly ideas can develop into good ideas, and you need to give people permission to be silly, and it's okay. You don't have to choose those ideas, but it's okay to put them out there. Think about how you can combine ideas together. So people throw out a lot of different ideas, and sometimes the best idea is one that's combination of multiple ideas, which we don't necessarily it's like when we were told, Oh, choose an idea we need to think. We tend to think that we need to choose one idea from the list of 10, not thinking that we could take idea number two, five and seven and put them together to come up with a better solution, right? And particularly when we have problems that have multiple causes, like the pandemic, it's those complex solutions that address those multiple causes, that combine multiple ideas that work best, and think about what it is that you're evaluating. Think about why you're choosing particular ideas, and it's okay, and set standards ahead of time. Why are we what will we evaluate those ideas on? And therefore what would lead to our choice? That's

great. There's, there's a lot to take away in there. Um, I guess one last question for me, around us again, thinking about somebody leading that sort of medium sized team or some other organization, what's the advantage of bringing the team together to go through these processes? How does it How does it help to have everybody together going through this, this sure processes.

There's not a lot of research on the initial process of problem identification, construction and idea valuation. There's a ton of research on idea generation or brainstorming. So I'm going to focus on on the beginning and the end piece. So when we talk about problem framing problem at construction, bringing in multiple perspectives help you, helps you think about the problem from perspectives you could not think about, right? So, you know, I tend to think about things from an organizational psychology perspective. Bringing in somebody from a different perspective, shakes me up a little bit. Gives a wider perspective and a more complex one, when we get to the idea valuation part, again, those multiple perspectives, when you start thinking about what is the best idea and how it can be implemented. Different people with different expertise will see different obstacles, concerns and so forth, you know? So a lot of times you see it in organizations. They implement new software, and all of a sudden, after the implementation, all these concerns bubble up. They never ask people that are going to use the software what their issues are, what their concerns are, and they only find out after they implemented the software. Now, if you put together the programmers and the consumers in the same room, you might be able to address those concerns on that earlier. Yeah,

that makes that makes perfect sense. And I think that's something that we we see in the real world all too often. Okay, well, I think we're going to wrap up this, this podcast now. I think we've talked fairly well about some some key bits there around the cognitive processes, around creativity, and we've talked about the early stage of problem framing or identification, the role of idea generation, and then that evaluation and selection process, and I think you've got some really practical hints and tips that people can take away just before we finish up. Is there any way people can learn more about you and the things that you do or get in touch? Absolutely

best way to get in touch with me is via email. You can also follow me on Twitter. I'm always happy to get questions and help you find the right solution. Great.

And we'll share those details when we release the podcast as well. So thank you very much for me. Thank you. Okay, so you're back in the room with us. That was our conversation with Ronnie, the third in our trilogy, summer 2020, trilogy, Blockbuster about innovation, and we focus very specifically on the cognitive process side of things to do with innovation and creativity. Any key takeaways for you from that conversation? Jane, yeah,

I think, well, there's not so much takeaways, but definitely a couple of things I think are really important. One is. I definitely don't think people spend enough time on understanding the problem or conceiving the problem, or constructing the problem or reframing the problem, and I think they should. And I'm delighted to know that she spent a significant amount of time researching that, because that frustrates me a lot. I think people jump to try and solve very quickly. And I think the other thing that I really liked is this idea that it can be learned, like you can get better at it if you're not great at it. And I know she talked about lots of people have it naturally, but she also talked about, with training, people get better, and I think that's a really important message, yeah,

and that's, that's where I was going to settle on this as well, was via the ability that we have to improve. And I love that sort of medicine. We can get better at our ability to get better at stuff but, but I think there's something really, really true about it, and that starting phase that she's mentioned in a few of his podcasts about developing an awareness being a key starting point. So if we learn about the different stages that we speak about here, if we learn about the fact that we can reframe problems, if we learn about the fact that we can get better at generating aiding ideas, and if we learn that we can get better at that evaluation and selection process, then that's such a great starting point, and gives us a little bit of control and ability to influence this individually and in our teams. So I think there's a lot of positivity and optimism in our in our ability to influence and improve this stuff. So, um, so I think that's that's really helpful.