The Secret to Creative Solutions - Talk 3 of 25
Topic: The Secret to Creative Solutions
Theme: Creative Problem Solving
Author: Barry Sweet
Date: January 7, 2018
Video Production by Tim & Karen Morse. Morsephotography.com
Music Courtesy of Jake Almanrode www.harbouredm.com
One of my heroes is Roger Van Oech. Roger Van Oech did the developmental model on creativity and creative problem solving and creative solutions. Like the great developmentalists, like Jean Piaget, Erick Erickson, Lawrence Kohlberg, Carol Gilligan… his developmental models just simply looked at life and find out how the most creative people solved problems and he identified them by four stages. The Explorer, the Artist, the Judge and the Warrior. As in all of these solutions finding models, the most important thing you begin with is again Albert Einstein's quote that says “If you define your problem, you've got 51% of the solution. And so you define your problem… and then you kick into the Explorer stage… during the Explorer stage, you look for all the solutions you can… the good ones, the bad ones, the genius ones, the stupid ones, the inane ones, the ones that will work, the ones that won't work, the fantastic ones, the ones that have no chance of even surviving.
But it's important to at this stage to remain neutral and impartial and temporarily suspend judgment.
OK. First some background… Research says and science says that by age 2… 98% of the population is rated as highly creative. By age 4… that drops to 40% of the population as being rated as highly creative. By adulthood, they say that only 2% of the population is rated as highly creative. And I was teaching a creative writing class one time and I asked the group what they attributed that to and they said “Oh that's really clear. It's just simply standardization in uniformity”. We start out with these wide boundaries where anything goes and then we learn this is green… This is blue. This is the way to do it… This is the way not to do it. This is right…. This is wrong. Until finally we all think down this same little narrow channel, and the only people that think outside that channel, are the inventors because they'll zing one out there and we'll go “Wow. How did you come up with that?” Or the comedians… they’ll zing one out there and we go “Bwaa!”. And so during the first stage… in the Explorer stage we gather all the ideas. The good ones, the bad ones, remaining neutral and impartial and temporarily suspending judgment because the minute we say “Oh that's a good idea…!” We start to narrow our thinking.
The minute we say “Oh that's a bad idea…” We start to narrow our thinking. So in the Explore stage, we don't do any of that narrowing.
We just keep our boundaries completely wide open like a child.
So when Sierra, my daughter was 3 years old, he got her first pair of black patent leather shoes, the kind that every little girl gets, that are so shiny you can see yourself reflected in them and they usually have taps on the bottom. Back at home she came in the front door and just ran through the whole townhouse and ran around everywhere and she came out with those shoes on into the kitchen and it made this horrendous noise.
The guy downstairs yelled, “Hey, knock it off up there!”
And I said “Sierra, sweetheart you can run anywhere in the house with your new shoes, but just not on the kitchen because it's not carpeted” and she said, “Okay Daddy!”
She ran all the way around the house and then she ran right back out on the kitchen floor. The guy downstairs yelled, “Cut that noise out up there!”.
And I said “Sierra sweetheart I said you could run anywhere in the house but just not on the kitchen floor because it's making too much noise for the guy downstairs.
And she said “Okay Daddy…” she ran all the way around the house and came right back out on the kitchen floor and… he must have grabbed a broom handle and “Bam! Bam! Bam!” and knocked the ceiling and yelled “Bark! Bark! Bark!” and I got down on my knees put my hands on Sierra’s shoulders and I said sweetheart I told you that you could run anywhere in the house just not out on the kitchen floor… and she said “But Daddy… I just wanted to hear the voice of my shoes”. Because you see, for a 3-year-old who was so creative… shoes have voices. When we get older… shoes sort of lose their voices.
But this is an example of how at age two… 98% of the population is highly creative and by the time you turn four only 40% of the population is highly creative and by adulthood, only 2% is rated as highly creative.
Next in creative solutions finding we move to the Artist stage. That's where we take all of the ideas that we've gathered, and remember… we built this enormous resource pool not just a little resource pool of three, but an enormous resource pool. There's been a premium on collecting all the ideas and then in the Artist stage, we take those ideas and put them together like an Artist does splashing things on canvas and you put things together that you may have never normally put together before. Like the avocado with the gear… but in doing that, again in this stage we have to remain neutral and impartial and temporarily suspend judgment because the minute we say “Oh that's beautiful..!“ We start to narrow our thinking or the minute we say “Ooo ugly“ we start to narrow our thinking.
So again we have got this enormous resource pool and then we configure new combinations together to see what we can see and that's where we start to discover things we've never imagined discovering before. Then during the third stage that's the Judgment stage… in both of the first two, stages, you don't do any Judgement, you just gather ideas and make an enormous resource pool. In the Judgment stage, that's when we say “OK good… We're going to keep this idea for A, B & C reasons. We're going to keep this idea for D, E & F reasons, but we're going to get rid of this idea for Q, R & S reasons and we're going to get rid of this idea for X, Y and Z reasons. And then finally we come to the last stage which is the Warrior stage (and forgive the war language) This is basically just the implementation stage.
And we say “This is the idea that we're actually going to begin with”. That's the simple Van Oech model for creative solutions. So I'll give you an example of how we've used this in our own lives. When Landon, my son hit fifth grade, he did the Marble Run… and the Marble Run… all fifth graders in Estes Park Elementary do it. You take a board that's one meter tall by half a meter wide you prop it up at a 45-degree angle (because every fifth grader needs to know what a 45-degree angle is…) and then using ramps or feathers or sandpaper, whatever you wish… the point is, is to keep your marble moving down that board for the longest possible time. The school record was a minute and 45 seconds and Landon and his best friend Michael were paired up and it was time to get ready to do the Marble Run.
We went to Landon's room and I had a piece of paper and pencil and I said “Okay you guys. Einstein says if you define your problem you've got 51% of your solution. What is your problem? And they said “Our problem is we need to find things that move slow. And I said, “Great you've got 51% of your solution”. I said let me tell you a secret of life…
Every problem has a hundred solutions and most people just choose the top three because they're laying on top of the ground and they're there for everybody to see. They're all going to use ramps and feathers and sandpaper to try to slow down the marble… but that means that there are ninety-seven other solutions hiding underground and buried treasure is buried for a reason it's because it's valuable…they don't leave buried treasure out on the ground where everybody can see it because it's not as valuable. So you're going to now mine the 97 other ideas that are underground and you're gonna say them out loud and I'm going to write them down and we'll stop when you hit 100… Are you're Ready? Set. Go.
And they started listing the ideas. Now it's important to know that there are two things that are illegal in the Marble Run. One of them is you can't use liquid and the other is that the marble can't stop moving or you're disqualified. So with that in mind, they started listing their 100 things… they listed… they were going to use a snail or a turtle and just tape it to its back and have it start making its way down the board.
And one of them said, “We can't use a snail or a turtle because if it stops we'll be disqualified!” And the other one said “Oh yes we can. We're in the Explorer stage. We can do anything we want to the ExplorerStage…” And the other kid said, “Yep, absolutely, you're right!” So then they went on and listed other things… they listed molasses and the other kid said, “Hey we can't use molasses because that's a liquid and we’ll be disqualified”. And the other kid said “Yeah we can use molasses… because we're on the ExplorerStage you can use anything you want to in the Explorer stage because we must remain neutral and impartial and temporarily suspend judgment”.
So they listed everything, you know, they even list “Time when you're in school…” and I thought “Alright… abstract operations in fifth grade… way to go.” When they got to idea number 100... I stopped… put a period at the end of the list and then they decided that they wanted to start with idea number 33. Idea number 33 was flour going through a funnel. So we all traipsed upstairs got flour, stuck it in the funnel and it instantly clogged up.
So what you don't know is that in every grade school gymnasium there is a clear plastic tube that goes over the fluorescent light bulb so that when the basketball goes up there it doesn't, ya know, hit the light bulb, explode the glass and make glass rain down on all the kids. So they put the fluorescent light bulb in that tube and then if it does get hit, it just explodes “poof” and all the glass is captured inside of that tube. And so they decided that we would go to Ace Hardware, buy one of those tubes, we came back home. And the interesting part of the story is they actually never used one of the original 100 ideas. They actually did a spin-off on idea number 33 which was sugar going through a funnel. Because the sugar is granular, it moved and kept moving. What they did is they took the funnel shoved the tube in it, filled the tube and the funnel with sugar, propped the tube straight up and down out from the board so that it was like this… made a little ramp from the top…
And then one kid held the marble at the top of the ramp. The other kid held his finger at the bottom of the tube filled with sugar and “one-two-three”…they both let go… sugar started coming out down at the bottom.
The marble rolled down the ramp, fell into the top of the tube filled with sugar and took a 12 and a half minute ride down to the bottom and they won the marble run.
And when we understand that every problem has 100 solutions….you're not bound anymore by just choosing the easy answer. You can actually say the crazy thing and do the wild thing and move with the wild idea. The example that Van Oech gives in the book is there was a battleship sailing through high seas, they hit a minefield the kind with the mines that are suspended from the bottom of the ocean with those little jagged points on them. And the Admiral had trained all of the crew on the principles of creative solutions finding that Van Oech had put forth and he said “OK we only have time now to go through this minefield. We don't have time to go around. We've got to go through.
And I want all of you to engage in the Explorer stage and just throw out all your ideas, the good ones, the bad ones, the ones that will work, the ones that won't work, the ridiculous ones, the fantastic ones… all of them. But remember… remain neutral and impartial and temporarily suspend judgment because we don't want to jump to the Judge stage right now, we're just in the ideas generation stage”. And so the first guy said “I know I know… we'll weave the ship through the mines”. And the next guy said “I know, we'll all line up on one side of the ship, we'll take a deep breath, we’ll blow, we’ll blow the mines away to the left , we’ll all move to the other side of the ship, take a deep breath, blow the mines away to the right and then make a pathway and sail through”.
And the next person said “I know, we'll use sticks… we'll get on one side of the ship and we'll use the long sticks and move the mines away to the left, move to the other side move the mines away to the right make a pathway and sail through”. And the next guy said “I know what we'll do… we'll use the firehoses.” And ultimately that's what they did. They used the pressure and water from the firehoses and it aimed down toward the mines and moved them away to the left and right and were able to sail through. But if the first guy would not have had the courage to say “I know, I know we'll weave through the mines….”
It wouldn't have given the second person the courage to say “I know, we'll all line up on one side of the ship and take a deep breath and blow…” And these are how the ideas work… we upspin ideas from each other… and one idea might be not good at all, but it opens a little avenue for people to be able to spin their idea from it ... and that's how the great solutions of life come.
The important piece is not to jump to the Judge stage too soon. And this is where we usually all blow it. We're so busy trying to come to the solution because we are trying to be solutions oriented but yet there is a time where we have to fully, fully remain neutral and impartial and temporarily suspend judgment. You'll be able to kick into the Judge stage later. It's OK. Relax during this stage enjoy just wandering around with the ideas We call this “Freedom to Wander.”
We also call it “Permission to Wander.” And one of the best things we do for each other when we're looking for creative solutions is to grant permission to wander. So the important piece is that there is freedom to wander and there is the permission to wander and even more so the gift that we give one another when we grant the permission to wander.
And so what we've been doing is calling it the power of wandering and knowing that during that stage when we are neutral, impartial and temporarily suspending judgment that's when we do our best work…
Because we're not so goal-directed to get to a decision. We're not jumping to the Judge stage too soon that we can actually upspin these ideas that we're learning from each other and then see these hidden gems that are just waiting to be discovered because those are the other 97 solutions that are hiding underground. And what we're doing is talking about the time of suspension. Everything's suspended. We’re not jumping to the Judge stage. It's OK… we'll get there. And when we get there it'll be great not just good. Sometimes we call this the Wanderingstage, the Explorer stage, the Artist stage, sometimes we call it rough draft and not final copy, because we're not jumping the final copy yet. We're in rough draft stage. So go ahead be creative. Look for new solutions that are not common. This is what we sometimes call the “Just thinking about it stage.”
“Oh… We're in the just thinking about it stage, we're not in the deciding stage it's ok… we can all relax now and then that lets everybody loosen up again and become creative once again. This is the information gathering stage. It's not the deciding stage. It's not the deciding stage. And then finally when we get to the Judgment stage that's when you get to do your judgment. Actually knowing that it's coming… is one of the best things that can happen because you think “Oh yeah we'll get to judge later. Let's be creative now…” This is the greatest time when the amazing answers can come and the amazing solutions can begin to appear. And then finally the implementation stage is the Warrior stage and we decide “This is the one idea that's the best. This is the one we're going to gamble on. This is the one we're going to first try.”
But remember, sometimes that first try is a Ptolemean solution. It's not a Copernican solution… but that's OK because sometimes we just need a start… any start. It doesn't even matter what that start is… and it's OK if we start with a Ptolemean beginning because we can do a Copernican upspin later That's when the power comes… solutions by stages.
There are some sort of additional thoughts here…
And one of them is what we call DATO which is Don't Attach To Outcomes. When you attach to outcomes you get all invested…. It's like doing a scientific research project and having it be loaded because you want to find a certain answer. No. We're going to find the best solution that we can, hoping we'll have great outcomes from our solutions. But don't attach to outcomes. DATO just reminds us to do that. Another one is… Darwin says “Adapt or die.” and we've all known that. In my job at work, we call it Adaptive Management. Down at our office, we just call it “Staying light on your feet”. And that is one of the things that helps us to be able to move in our decisions and not be so static but be able to be a little bit more fluid.
And that dynamism… that dynamic response allows for great solutions to come out. Another additional thought would be the idea of Pattern Recognition. Some of the smartest people that I have had the chance to meet on Earth know how to do Pattern Recognition. They can watch an event or a situation or a circumstance or an incident and they are able to distill out the patterns that are unfolding.
And usually, it takes two occurrences to identify a pattern. But the most astute people I know, have this mindset that sees one occurrence as a pattern… and then they can catch it faster than everybody else… and that's how you end up finding powerful solutions… is by Pattern Detection.
And the last thing I think to say on this topic is that I can stand whiners and I've hired them in the past and it and I'll never do it again.
It's just it can ruin a little office of thirteen people. If you invite whiners in… it poisons the group. And yeah… I would never put up the little International not symbol that says “No whining”… You know the red circle with this slash through it, because to me… that's a form of whining.
But if you forced me to put that on my wall, the only way I'd put it up there would be to put the International “Go” symbol right next to it (which is the green circle with no slash) and it would say “Suggest Three Solutions”. So it would say “No whining” “Suggest three solutions” and that's the sort of foundation that everybody in our office comes with. They wouldn't even think about whining that's just sort of like a quick waste of time or at least you can vent for a second, but then you quickly move on to “What are we going to do to fix this thing…?” And that's where creative and powerful solutions can come in because then your culture is positive and upbeat and solutions-driven which is in the end what we all hope to be.
The story goes like this. The neighbor came over and said to the farmer “Bad news… your horses have escaped from the barn and they're gone!”. And the farmer said “Bad news…? Good news. ..? We'll see…” The next day the neighbor came over and said “Good news…! Your horses have returned. And not only that, they’ve brought back five wild mares with them into the barn!” And the farmer said “Good news…? Bad news. ..? We'll see…” The next day the neighbor came over and said “Oh, bad news… Your son was breaking one of the wild mares and he was thrown from the horse and he's broken his leg!” And the farmer said “Bad news…? Good news…? We'll see…” And the next day the neighbor came over and said “Good news…! The army came to conscript young men for war and your son's leg was broken so he couldn't go!
And the farmer said “Good news…? Bad news…? We'll see…” and this story has always meant to me…
SNOY. The Story’s Not Over Yet.
Last year, I started to realize that we're always in the middle of the story… and we always hope that we are at the end, you know, and “…I've won! And it's all going to be good from now on”. But it seems that we're always in the middle of the story and this is another one of the tools that we use in our tool belt for suspension. It allows us to remain neutral and impartial and temporarily suspend judgment and just simply suspend for a little bit longer… which is allows us to stay in the world of objectivity and idea and info and solutions gathering.
OK, this is the Hallway of Life… The Hallway way of life… This is looking down from the top.
It looks like this…
As you're walking through the Hallway of Life… You can't discover what is here… until you've walked…. here. And you can't discover what is here…
Until you've walked…. Here.
And so the important piece about knowing this… is that there are solutions waiting in the Hallway of Life for you. But there's no way for you to get to those solutions until you've continued moving. If you ever stop… you lose the chance to find the solution that's just waiting up here, that’s absolutely outrageous. It's the one you really really want… but you got to keep moving and never stopping. That's the power of the whole way of life. And when you have walked here and you discover that solution if you keep moving from there and again doing a Copernican upspin, suddenly you can blow off this page and find solutions that are out there that are nowhere in the common view. That's what this is about.
Everything you want is off the page.
When we're doing solutions-finding. I've noticed a pattern in the universe that I wanted to share with you. I wrote a poem on it and I just simply called it The Glimmer.
The Glimmer
Searching endlessly for the long-awaited treasure out of the corner of her eye… she saw a glimmer… excitedly approaching it, she discovered it to be merely, a gum wrapper. Then turning her head to the left, he found the long-awaited treasure.
You're going to just sometimes get a glimmer. You're going to think “I've found it!” And it's not it at all. It's actually just a gum wrapper… but it puts you in view of the treasure and so… go for the glimmer.