IT HAS BEEN my contention throughout this book that people can be trained in creative thinking skills in a deliberate manner. This disagrees with two traditional principles of creativity:
I do not intend to repeat here the reasons, both theoretical and practical, as to why those notions are out of date and inadequate. We can train in creative thinking just as we can train in mathematics, cooking, or playing tennis. It does not mean that everyone trained in creativity will become a genius. Everyone trained to play a good game of tennis does not become a Wimbledon champion. There is a huge amount of useful creativity to be done at all levels below the level of genius.
Training involves will, skill, and method.
Will. There has to be the will to train people in creative thinking skills. It is not just a matter of bringing out their own native creative talent. This is too weak. There has to be a determined attempt to teach certain techniques and procedures.
Skill. The teachers or trainers have to have the skill to train in creativity. This is not a complex subject, provided that the trainers have a clear idea of what they are doing. Just messing around and encouraging people to have “crazy” ideas is not good enough. The effect of that is very temporary. Learning the formal creative techniques is not unlike riding a bicycle for the first time. Everything seems very awkward and unnatural. You wonder how you are ever going to be able to master the skill. You wonder how other people could ever have learned. But after a while you get the “hang of it”. Later, when you are a competent cyclist, you look back and wonder why it ever seemed difficult. Anything that requires us to do things which go against our usual habits and even our natural tendencies, must seem awkward at first. When learning to ski, it seems totally unnatural to lean outwards around a corner instead of inwards.
Overcoming the natural inhibitions through “fun” and “craziness” is not the only approach nor the most effective one. Understanding the logic of creativity is more powerful (and is the only way with technical people).
Method. There are formal programmes for training in lateral thinking, which is a specific and deliberate approach to serious creativity. This book is not a “training book” as such. There are programmes for training trainers to be able to pass on the skills of lateral thinking to their students. Sometimes those responsible for creative training have the disastrous habit of picking a piece from this programme and a piece from another programme and believing that this must be better than any specific approach to the teaching of creativity. This is highly confusing to the students because some approaches contradict each other. Furthermore, there is not a uniform base to all programmes. Some have no base at all. Then there is a tendency for a trainer to want to rewrite an existing programme. Quite apart from the illegality of infringing copyright, this does no more than satisfy an ego. There is plenty of scope for amplifying existing programmes and adding to them with local examples without seeking to rewrite the programme. Where this is done to avoid the cost of the programme, it is intellectual piracy and legally dangerous.
The creative training needs can be separated into some well-defined areas. It is important for the trainer to have very clearly in mind the type of training that is being provided. This has nothing to do with the depth of training.
Any and every person who needs to think needs some creative skill. Anyone who has to deal with concepts, perceptions, and ideas needs some creative skill. Without creative skill you can only follow established routines or combinations of these.
Creative skill training of this sort should be part of education at all levels, from primary schools to universities. But it is not. So training in general creative skill needs to be provided within organizations that want to benefit from that skill.
This is the sort of creative skill that should be made available to every person within an organization – without exception. This does not mean that the same degree of creative skill is needed at all levels.
At the executive level there is a great need to understand the importance and logic of creativity. Creativity must be seen not as a peripheral luxury but as a central resource. The habits and techniques of lateral thinking should be made available. Some executives will proceed to use these methods thereafter, throughout their lives, and others will not. Techniques like the Six Hat technique and the Six Action Shoes technique (described in a book of mine of that name and dealing with types of action) should become established parts of thinking behaviour.
At other levels, it may not be feasible to go into so much depth (but it would be beneficial if it were feasible). It can be enough to give a firm understanding of the value of creativity and to provide some basic techniques so that a person who wants to be creative will have specific tools to use. The exhortation to “think” has only a limited practical value.
There are certain special areas where there is a constant high demand for new ideas. In a sense, “ideas” are the product of these areas. Most people believe that they are in these areas because they are already highly creative. To some extent this may be true. A natural talent (and motivation) for creativity can only be enhanced by learning systematic methods.
These special areas include research where creativity is not only needed to overcome problems but also to develop new lines of research and new concepts. Research should be driven more by concepts than by the natural momentum of technology. It should not be a matter of:
What can we do – now how can we use this?
but more a matter of:
It would be great if we could do that – now how can we do it?
The training of scientists and technologists does not sufficiently develop creative thinking skills. The emphasis is placed entirely on data collection and data analysis.
The research area also needs a lot of creativity to sense the practical applications of new developments.
Whole new areas of research may depend on the ability to develop new concepts.
New product departments may subsist on a diet of “me-too” with improvements. It is possible to let others develop the market and then to move in with an improved “me-too” product. Creative thinking may be needed for those modifications or to get around patents.
When there is the willingness to develop really new products, there is a huge need for conceptual creativity. New products are going to work only if they integrate fully into the complex values of the buyer.fn1 Being aware of these complex values and finding ways to integrate with them is a creative exercise. Once the concept is in place, there is the need to create ideas for the carrying out of that concept. Finally, creativity is needed to devise ways of pretesting the product.
Creativity is also needed to shorten production time and to reduce the cost of product development.
Some organizations have New Business departments, which are on the lookout for new growth areas. Sometimes this is a matter of acquisitions and takeovers and sometimes of new ventures.
There is a need for creativity in looking at possible future scenarios. There is a need to conceive of discontinuities that may provide problems or opportunities. There is a need to devise concepts that will be sufficiently adaptable to changing conditions or imperfect forecasts.
Information analysis may show trends, but how are these trends going to interact? The information analysis that shows you the trends will also show the same trends to everyone else.
What new concepts can you devise that will put you ahead? The building blocks may be the same but the building need not be the same.
Sometimes creativity is needed even in information analysis. The mind can only see what it is prepared to see. You may have to start an idea, hypothesis, speculation, or pattern in your mind in order to be able to spot this in the data before you.
The Concept R&D structure mentioned before is directly related to this area of new business.
Any competent organization has a powerful delivery capacity. That potential is wasted without good concepts.
Corporate strategy should be a heavy user of creativity because of the need to “design” concepts and alternatives. The many uncertainties (the future, competitive behaviour, ecological pressures, government behaviour) demand flexible designs and changes in direction. Some of these can be derived through logical analysis and the use of traditional concepts. Very often there is a need for a new concept. Can we be sure that traditional concepts give us the full value in any situation? How much should we invest in creative effort? If the rewards can be high – as they are at corporate strategy level – then it makes a lot of sense to invest heavily in creative possibilities. In the end all creative ideas will have to be subjected to black hat judgement so there is no danger in being trapped into an unworkable idea. Improve both the creative generating skills and the judgement/assessment skills. That is the best combination.
Any organization that prides itself on its assessment skills should be a heavy investor in creative effort.
Marketing is a mixture of analysis, tradition, me-too, and creative concepts. There is a huge scope for innovative concepts that have a powerful effect. As competitors catch up with your innovative concepts you have to keep moving forward. Established ways of doing things have to be used and challenged at the same time. New synergies need to be found and new routes to the consumer. Values are changing all the time and there is a need to keep up with value changes and to turn them to advantage. There is also a need to create new value changes. Traditional products need to be renewed and repositioned. Different market segments need to be discovered or created. Always there is the danger of being too clever and of overdoing things.
There is a special need for concept skills in marketing. There can never be too many new concepts. There can never be too many alternative ways of carrying through a concept. In some cases, like direct marketing, there is the possibility of testing ideas quite easily. This puts a premium on the generation of different ideas. There is always a temptation to do what others are doing and to stay with ideas that are known to work. At the same time, there is the fear that one day the old ideas will cease to work or that a competitor will render them obsolete.
Negotiation and deal making are not traditional “special areas” for creativity but both involve the design of new concepts and the suggestion of new values. With creative design it is possible for both parties to get things that make sense to them. Negotiation does not just have to involve a trading of power, pressure, and pain. There can be attempts to make the opposing values fit together.
In the negotiations and conflicts of labour relationships there is also scope for creativity. Again there is the need to create new values and to find acceptable ways of implementing these new values. The design of new alternatives goes beyond analysis and is a truly creative process. Advertising, public relations, packaging, design for manufacture, and process design are also special areas with a direct demand for creativity.
I have spelled out some of the needs in these special areas to indicate how central creativity is to them all. In each area there is a danger that tradition and copying gradually edge out creativity as there is a search for a comfortable life and reduced risk. Why stick your neck out if you can do a reasonable job without risk?
Creativity training in these special areas is not easy because the people in these areas already consider themselves to be highly creative and resent being “taught” creativity. Nevertheless, once they have learned the techniques they are quite happy to use them to achieve powerful results. There is a need to teach creativity in depth both as regards the “logic” of creativity and also as regards the specific formal techniques. Repeated practice must be provided. There is a need to emphasize the formality of the techniques because this may contrast with the usual freewheeling approach in these special areas. Lateral thinking should not be presented as being better than “natural creativity” but as a way of getting additional ideas through a different approach. In a sense, the formal techniques provide each person with a “creative assistant” who is really the same person operating in a different mode.
There are certain people who will be called upon to use creative skills deliberately and formally to generate new ideas. For example, the members of regular creative sessions will need the operating skills of lateral thinking because they will need to use them on a regular basis. The teams in the FAT/CAT™ programme will need to be equipped with this sort of creative skill.
Facilitators will need to be able to demonstrate the creative techniques and also to lead others in their performance.
People involved in these special creative groups or teams are people who may not normally be involved in creative thinking. So the creative skills have to be added to their existing expertise in different fields. These groups are much easier to train than the special area people mentioned before. This is because there is not an existing style of creativity and there are less ego problems. The emphasis of the training must be on practicality. There is less need to understand the logic of creativity but a greater need to be able to carry out with precision and formality the different creative techniques.
It may not be practical to provide all team members with the full set of creative techniques. In such cases, the tool kit may be reduced but the tools that are taught must be taught to a high degree of readiness.
Operating creative skill is the most directly usable of all the types of creative skill. These are skills that are going to be constantly used. A person needs to be trained so that he or she can immediately apply the needed creative thinking technique. It is like training a surgeon not in the background medical knowledge that may be needed but directly in the “cutting” skills that are used in specified operations.
Training in creative thinking is skill training. This means the training of tools that are simple to use but powerful in their simplicity. There is a need to give plenty of examples to show how the tool works. There is a need to give plenty of practice. The practice should always be a mixture of “remote” items that are not the direct concern of those being trained. This is so that attention can remain on the thinking process itself and confidence can be built up in the use of the techniques. From time to time, directly relevant matters can be fed in to show that the tools are equally usable on such matters.
It is best to practise creativity on hardware subjects because with such subjects it is immediately possible to see the value of an idea. When soft subjects are chosen, the ensuing value may be a matter of opinion and so there is less sense of achievement and less consciousness of a “new idea”. For example, if you suggest paying people on random dates instead of the usual date it is very difficult to be sure what would happen. If, however, you were to suggest a drinking glass with a rounded bottom then it is very easy to “see” what would happen.
Skill training is always training “from the centre”. This is in marked contrast to normal subject teaching, which is teaching “from the edge”. In normal teaching there is emphasis on distinguishing one situation from another so that the designated action can be used. A lot of attention is paid to overlap areas and grey areas because decisions will still need to be made in such areas. The obvious cases are easy and obvious. A skilled judge spends all his or her time in these grey areas and seeks to clarify them. In “teaching from the centre” you simply ignore the grey areas because they do not matter. Instead you use good and direct examples to make your point. You demonstrate with these examples. If something is confusing you just drop it and pass along. Your intention is to leave your students with a very clear idea of what they are supposed to be doing. Confusion is the great enemy of skill development.
There are a number of training formats which I shall list here. These are merely suggestions.
Such seminars are useful for giving an understanding of creativity to large groups. They are very useful for sensitizing organizations to the importance of creativity. Some of the basic lateral thinking techniques are covered in this time but there is only a limited possibility of practising the techniques. There is a great deal to cover in this time. This type of seminar is also suitable for top level management. There is no limit to the numbers that may attend such a seminar. It is possible to deal with audiences of 500 or more.
The two-day seminar covers the same ground as the one-day seminar but includes some other material as well. The main difference is the much greater opportunity to practise the techniques and to get a feel for them. For this reason the number attending should be smaller (about 50). It is possible to run two-day seminars with larger numbers but there is less individual attention.
This type of training is specifically designed to equip trainers with the tools and methods to pass on to their students. The style is quite different from the one- or two-day seminars, which are designed for the personal use of the participants. There is a great emphasis on practice so that the tools are clearly understood in a practical sense and misunderstandings that might turn up in later training can be cleared up.
This type of training is designed for individuals who have a high personal need for the use of creative skills. This is not a trainers’ programme but a users’ programme. Some of the more advanced techniques of lateral thinking (such as “flowscapes”) are introduced. There is emphasis on individual practice and group work. There is personal attention in order to sort out individual problems. The number on these courses is limited to 20 persons.
There now follow different modules which are designed for use within an organization by that organization’s trained trainers:
This is an in-depth course designed for special area people who are going to need to use a great deal of creative thinking in their work.
This is intended for executives who do not have a special need for creativity but need creativity both in their own work and need to be able to encourage it in others.
This module would cover the basic lateral thinking techniques such as might be needed by creative operating groups. The emphasis is on the direct application of the techniques.
This module is the bare minimum and covers a selection of the tools. It is the sort of training that might be used with all personnel across an organization. If it is not feasible to provide fuller training, this module would suffice for the teams in the FAT/CAT™ programme.
Each of these modules can be shortened by cutting down on the practice time allowed. This is not advisable, since with skill training there is a need to experience the use of the skill. You can take someone and show that person a game of tennis. Within twenty minutes that person may understand the game of tennis. But that hardly makes the person a tennis player. To become a tennis player you have to get out onto the court and practise. That is why guided practice is such an important part of creativity training.
The modules may be split into segments of different lengths depending on the training style of different organizations. For example, the 20-hour module might be split into five 4-hour segments. As a general principle, the more segments, the more effective the training will be because the intervening time allows both for practice and for a “sinking in” of the methods. Teaching creativity at one stretch runs the risk of tiring participants and resulting in some processes being favoured at the expense of other (equally important) processes that get ignored.
fn1 See Sur/petition, HarperBusiness, New York, 1992.