Selling Creativity Afters Years of Logic Based Education
When I first started teaching leadership I did a lot of research on what employers want for our graduates. How can I best enable my students to be successful in the marketplace and also be happy in their careers. I read everything I could find on leadership. Some things, I will admit, I dismissed rather quickly, and others have become worn with love, but nothing affected my strategy, my mindset more than Daniel Pink’s book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future.
He sold me with his argument that our future leaders needed to nurture their creative side. (His argument is rooted in the fact that we live in a society where we have products in abundance — only their design makes them unique, computers that can do logical tasks almost as well as humans can, and many logic based tasks being outsourced). After doing a lot other research to see if other experts agree with Pink and why, I decided to have the last unit of my students’ foundation leadership course focus on innovation, and innovation is in the title of this new course for which my students are blogging under the title “Ruminations on Leadership.”
I typically start with a premise from Ken Robinson. Robinson believes that our education system does not nurture creativity, but it should. Robinson says that while most Kindergarteners think of themselves as creative, most adults do not. What happens to us as we grown up? We don’t lose the ability to be creative. We just don’t get to practice it. In fact, logic based thinking in schools is rewarded and funded. So, I ask my students the same question that Robinson asked, and I find it is true. Most of my students remember thinking of themselves as creative when they were little, but don’t think of themselves as creative anymore and don’t associate with words closely aligned to creativity, like innovation.
The first task is to break down barriers (like the ones that are artificially set when people don’t understand the word “leadership” and therefore, don’t associate with it). In order to design anything, you must have a level of creativity. And, design is not just for penthouse apartments, vacation properties on the beach and the latest fashion trends seen on the runway. Anything can be designed — from lesson plans, to workout routines, to environmental solutions.
I have tried various techniques to have students break down the wall that says I am not creative; I am logical. While I have many mini-lessons that all have varied results, the two methods that I focus on most often are appreciative inquiry and empathy based designed loosely modeled off of D-Design out of the Stanford Design School.
Appreciative inquiry asks you to look at what is good instead of what is bad when you are problem-solving. Look at what is working both in your current situation, but also in analogous situations. Students have come up with some very interesting, thoughtful and practical solutions from this inquiry. In looking for ways to get people involved and committed to a certain endeavor on campus, they check out best methods to motivate people to exercise (another endeavors which it can be hard to motivate people to do). They find that things like fitness clubs, club discounts, competitions among friends, etc. seem to work reasonably well. Then can then see how this situation and its possible solutions is similar to the problem they are trying to solve.
However, I have found that if what you are looking for is to truly unleash the mega-brainstorm, to get students to realize just how crazy creative they can be — empathy based design is the answer. In empathy based (or-D-Design) students are asked to start with a basic inquiry, such as what kind of back pack do you wish you could have? Then they ask their audience — one student — in a series of interviews to really express what they want. The back pack is just a way to start the inquiry. Soon you find that you are no longer talking back packs. When you listen to your audience, you find they want things that are only marginally related to the initial inquiry. Some people wish they had a personal assistant that tells them where they need to be and when and with what materials. Or, they wish they could bring everything they needed with them all the time, but, in reality this would be ridiculously heavy. Once the true needs are expressed, students prototype based on empathy — understanding their audience’s needs. From there I let them create anything to fulfill those needs, even if it isn’t feasible. At the end of the exercise, the creator has, indeed, created and typically, in a truly unique and exciting way (What I thought you weren’t creative?), and the person it was created for feels listened to and connected with. This is clearly a win-win. Students who feel they cannot create, can create when you give them someone (or something) they can truly connect with. In fact, they are quite good at it. The best answer to inspiring creativity is ensure the creator feels really connected to the audience they are creating for.
Pink, D. H. (2006). A Whole New Mind: Why right-brainers will rule the future. New York: Riverhead Books. Chicago.
Robinson, Ken. (2006). Sir Ken Robinson: do schools kill creativity?, TEDIdeas Worth Spreading. https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity Retrieved at April 21, 2017
Stanford University, dschool. “The Wallet Project.” https://dschool-old.stanford.edu/groups/designresources/wiki/4dbb2/the_wallet_project.html Retrieved April 21, 2017
