E. What is Creativity?

“Racing is the only time I feel whole” — James Dean

“Many gamers would rather keep playing than win — thereby ending the game.” — Jane McGonigal, Reality Is Broken

This is the second article in the triplet “why”, “what” and “how” of creativity series.

In the previous article we made the overall case for creativity, covering the “why”.

That is, in addition to the still significant benefits of applying creative approaches and tools at the organizational, professional and personal levels, the systematic application of creative approaches and tools also enables you, and the organization, to do and be things you couldn’t or wouldn’t otherwise. And/or to do so better, faster, cheaper, with lest risk, and in a more agile manner than otherwise.

In this article we discuss the “what” of creativity, in a large part by also covering examples of where you’d practically apply creativity to not only generate creative ideas, but to use those ideas to drive value and positive outcomes.

Introduction

The “What” of creativity forms the bridge between “why” and “how.”

Without this bridge and foundation, we run the risk that our understanding of creativity will remain too broad and abstract rather than concrete and actionable. Or it could remain too narrow, focused only on the product innovation process, for example.

If we don’t provide a solid stepping-off point, it might not be clear where to start (and thus we likely won’t). And, without proper context and direction, any actions that we take won’t necessarily translate into the valuable outcomes that we seek.

Or worse, those actions turn out to be counterproductive, not only not delivering value, but somehow tarnishing the whole concept of creativity and bringing in new thinking, meaning we’ll be more likely to delay or not take future actions, and potentially stagnate as a result.

To share the punchline at the start, I’m still of the conviction, through experience and practice, that we can most productively think of creativity as a capability. A Creative Capability.

That is, we can think of creativity as a combination of mindset, processes, skills tools, technologies and so on, that enables us to repeatably drive valuable outcomes via the discovery and generation of new and useful ideas, and selectively putting those ideas into practice.

I first wrote about Creative Capability back in May 2021 on LinkedIn.

While I’ve been using the idea in formal and informal coaching with leaders and entrepreneurs since then, I had also taken on other creative projects including a second, leadership, book Ascending Growth (2022) written with co-authors Eve Chen, and Ljubica Radoicic, and several modest filmmaking and music production projects. Since then, I’ve also slowly been rebranding and slightly refocusing my business Total Life Complete, aimed at leaders and professionals, as a creative one-stop-shop for taking work and life up to the next level.

That whole process has brought me full circle back to the question of how do you use creativity to drive valuable outcomes at work and in life (including living the life you want to), and enable the organization, and yourself as a leader and individual, to do and be things you couldn’t have or wouldn’t have otherwise.

The answers are in this three-part article series (D-F), and its three part prequel (A-C), which together represent a springboard for future content, courses and advisory.

You’ll get to see the current version of the Creative Capability model, plus the generic 10 step Creative Process (“where do ideas come from, and how are they transformed into products”) in Part 3 of this article, and I’ve also dropped the links to the original articles in the comments below.

Feel free to flick to Part 3 if you’re itching for a picture of creativity, but please come back here since the article has been structured intentionally so that one part builds on the previous one.

Rather than jump into solution mode, updating the Creative Capability model and carrying on, coming back to the topic I saw the need to lay a more substantive framework and context for creativity in the organizational, professional and personal contexts.

Specifically, this was around the scope and type of creativity we’re talking about and why, and enabling you to think and talk about creativity in a more holistic and cohesive way. That’s what I’ll help you do in Parts 1 & 2 of this article.

By helping provide a solid starting point, and bringing clarity to the path ahead, I want to get you excited about applying creative approaches and tools to generate valuable outcomes, and make it more likely that you’ll walk that path making small steps and then giant leaps.

The next article in this series, and a program of ongoing content, will build on this foundation, and we’ll talk about “how” to use creative approaches and tools to generate benefits at the organizational, professional and personal levels.

While all of this material is planned to make it eventually into a future book, I’m keen to do much of the upcoming how part “in public” in terms of podcast episodes, video content, interviews, future articles and issuing “homework.” And in other ways I haven’t even thought about yet. I’ll be guided by the help you say that you need, and questions you have, once you get started. The best way to become more creative remains to experience and do creativity, and we’ll always try to do that in a deliberate way at the start, setting you up for future exploration, and improvisation, and success.

Although I already have a solid amount of experience in the how of creativity from my personal and professional work, through research, and in coaching leaders, “success” in this overall endeavor is about bringing you along on the journey. This is why I’ve approached the topic in this way.

Success is about getting the message out to a broader public, and for that message to be acted upon to generate positive outcomes, not only for participants, but for society, in a much more widespread way that I can through 1-on-1 coaching and face to face corporate sessions alone.

Creative leaders make more creative leaders. Creativity and Leadership are required now more than ever to tackle the biggest pressing, and sometime existential, problems we face in business and society.

My vision for where this creative development path might lead us, is towards a convergence of creativity as a topic with my other various creative focus areas: filmmaking, music/audio production, education, immersive experiences either in person or virtually aimed at improving leadership and lifestyle, games/gamification and so on. The easier and more engaging the process is, the more people will go through it. The impact will be larger.

We should be able to, even more quickly, enable improved creativity and results (including organizational, personal and professional growth), through immersive experiences in Virtual/Augmented reality (inc. Spatial Computing) that can be tailored by Artificial Intelligence, for example, rather than only relying on traditional text-based instruction.

This article series, I hope, will still remain a valuable resource for those wanting a springboard into action before this future vision becomes a reality, since creativity allows you to see more possibilities, even from where you sit today. Plus, I’m keen to get your feedback and input and help, in shaping this vision, and in making the future a reality.

Key Takeaways:

1. Applied creativity is the deliberate application of one or more processes to support the discovery or generation of new and useful ideas, including new ways of looking at things, and selectively putting those ideas into practice in the organizational, professional, personal and/or social context, to realize valuable outcomes. Creativity overlaps with leadership, and change
2. Applied creativity, is about the things that creativity enables or equips us to do, the outcomes, not creativity for its own sake per se. We start with the end in mind, and discover where creativity can be applied to drive the desired outcomes, remaining aware that new possibilities will likely emerge
3. While everyone is already creative to some degree, treating creativity as capability, that can and should be developed systematically, is the recommended approach to getting the full benefits from it

Let’s now look at each of these in turn.

Part 1. Applied creativity is…the discovery or generation of new and useful ideas…and ways of looking at things…

Towards a working definition of creativity.

First, imagine creativity is a so-called “black box”, we see what it does, but not what’s inside. In that case we define creativity by what it does, gives us, or enables us to do or be, which was the purpose of the last article.

Creativity lets you, and the organization, do and be things that you couldn’t or wouldn’t otherwise. Creativity is a thing or a process to drive increased positive and/or different outcomes.

If I asked you to look around and describe the hallmarks of those organizations, leaders and people who are creative, I bet you’d have no trouble in doing so. We’d have a familiar list: Jobs, Musk, Bezos, Apple, Google, Tesla, and so on. These are not only creative organizations, but in the group of the largest global organizations by market capitalization. The hallmarks of these organizations are words and phrases like: disruptive, innovative, well-marketed, proactive, always seeming one step ahead, plus any others that came to your mind, that these organizations share.

Let’s next describe creativity by its opposite. It’s not: inertia, conformity, routine, uninspired, stale. Doing the same old things in the same way…even though those things are no longer getting us where we want and need to go.

We begin to see that creativity is a path from the ordinary to the extraordinary. Whether for the organization, your career, or your life.

There’s a saying, which many of you will have heard, that “the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting different results.” As per the previous article we come to creativity most often because the old ways aren’t working, or we want to move higher.

Also, you are ambitious. You are an ambitious group, and even the most proactive and successful of us necessarily seek the newest information and techniques to get the edge we crave, and to be all we can be.

Leaders I speak with regularly lament the fact that they wish they were or had been more creative, often with a tone of regret, despite their success. They somehow feel that they’d be in a different or better place if they’d taken more chances, and perhaps diverged from the path they’d been on.

As I mentioned in the last article, despite significant benefits there are also persistent blockers to realizing the value from creativity, so it’s no surprise that organizations and individuals continue to grapple with creativity, despite the fact that creativity/innovation has been on the corporate agenda, for example, for decades.

Those blockers include getting a clear handle on what creativity is, including the linkages or levers between creativity and desirable benefits AND the “how” of getting there in the real world.

This article aims to address the what and the linkages I just described.

For a field that has been around for so long, and with creativity ostensibly being a top executive and organizational priority for so long, it still feels that we’re at the tip of the creative iceberg, in terms of common understanding and actioning of creativity.

This is particularly with new tools emerging such as Artificial Intelligence, given creatives are often the first to exploit new technologies (they already are), leading the way for business and social adoption.

Creativity is multi-faceted, and requires a multi-disciplinary approach to offer an integrated perspective of what it is in practice. Given my broad interests and they different hats I wear of artist, entrepreneur, management consultant, leader, parent/racing dad, and so on, this multi-disciplinary approach is what I have tried to bring, since I haven’t seen it completely elsewhere.

I’ve assembled material from a range of sources, and tried to unify this in terms of the “Payoff” creativity gives us at the organizational, professional and personal levels.

Although lengthy, this article series is meant to represent a current state of play or checkpoint, something that gives a detailed enough explanation of the whats and wheres of creativity so that we can point to that pile of stuff and say “that’s creativity”. Then we can move on to how to realize the full benefits of creativity in the real world.

Another version of the “insanity” saying above, which I also find very true is that, “the real definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting the same results.”

Things change, a brilliant innovative product or strategy becomes outdated, and processes and systems are prone to entropy, we not only fail to advance or tread water, but begin to slip backwards. As change remains a constant yet somehow increasing in frequency and amplitude, creativity is what we’ll continue to rely on to bridge the gap.

Creativity means doing different things and things differently. We seek to inject fresh thinking into both what we do and how we do it. We even sometimes need to go back to basics and understand afresh who we are (as an individual or organization), what we want and why, and who we serve, how and where. Creativity is inevitably about asking the right questions and keeping an open mind on what comes back, and where to go next.

Now let’s talk about the importance of unit of analysis in any discussion of creativity.

Mel Rhodes in his seminal An Analysis of Creativity (1961), and it’s still today almost impossible to write this type of article without namechecking him and his article, expressed a combination of what I’d call optimism and frustration around the current state of the perception and understanding of creativity.

Those same optimisms and frustrations remain valid today.

On one hand he had optimism that in the decade prior to writing his article there had been flourishing of research and writing on creativity, which had cleared up, for those who cared to look and educate themselves, many of the myths surrounding the creative domain.

Even still, many of those myths are strong and still persist today, such as the one that you’re either born creative or not. In fact, we’re all creative (to varying degrees), and all of us can improve our creative abilities from where they are today, and reap the rewards of doing so.

The writings and progress Rhodes saw included the publication in 1953 of Alex Osborn’s (the “father” of brainstorming a.k.a. “Think Up” first coined in 1938) book Applied Imagination, which he mentions in the article.

That book in itself can be seen in tradition that includes The Art of Thought by Graham Wallas, published a few decades earlier. It’s amazing to me that almost a century on from that second book we’re still tip-toeing around the idea of creativity as a process.

If I ask you to name a creative thinking technique, it’s probably brainstorming that comes first to mind, since we all have been and will be part of brainstorming sessions despite the known limitations of the technique (you’ll hear why later).

De Bono’s idea of lateral thinking by the way appeared around 1967. Since then, what creative tools and techniques have emerged, Design Thinking, the innovation funnel? There have been many more but that still doesn’t mean that they’ve penetrated the popular imagination or are regularly applied in a widespread way in organizations. There remains work to do to recognize and bring attention to what we already have, and yet the creativity development field continues to fragment and micro-specialize, and there’s still room to develop and share simple and convergent concepts and knowledge that are broadly applicable, if not yet completely perfect.

For Rhodes, in contrast the optimism, there remained popular “fuzziness” and even derision about the idea of creativity as it was being interpreted (e.g. critics asked how could a child’s fingerpainting be called creative when it’s not in the same league as Rembrandt!?), and Rhodes’ own attempt to find a definitive definition of creativity had turned up many candidates but no single all-encompassing definition.

His response at the time was to say, paraphrasing, that creativity was not one thing, but was composed of four “strands” i.e., Person, Process, Product and Press (Environment), which he referred to as the 4P’s of creativity.

The creative Product, the creative idea articulated in tangible form, was a different strand or unit of analysis from the mental Processes followed by the person coming up with the idea, which was yet another different strand from the traits and mindset of the Person coming up with the idea, who was inevitably influenced by a fourth strand, the Press, meaning the environment or context that the person lived, worked and operated in.

The original article is a still a great read for those with a broader interest in the landscape of creative study, and to explain the 4P’s in more detail.

A broad takeaway, still applicable today, is that we must be clear on the unit of analysis and the context in which we’re discussing creativity.

Creativity can be discussed meaningfully at any scale from the brain patterns of an individual, up to national or even global creativity. There are similarities, many differences, and a few important interconnections, so we need to be clear what we’re talking about.

For the purposes of this discussion, I’ve chosen three primary levels to discuss creativity: the organization, the individual leader’s professional career, and the personal domain of that same leader.

Quite simply I’ve done this because all of those levels are relevant to you, the audience.

These three levels are also interconnected, so that learning and improvements in one can ripple through the others. You work on your personal creativity and this makes you a better leader, and the organization benefits too (I’ll explain how later). The organization invests in creative development, and being part of those experiences helps your own creativity and the cycle continues.

If there is a single thing that I’d add to the 4P’s to support our discussion it would be 5th “P” for Payoff or the ultimate outcomes you seek from engaging in (applied) creativity in the first place.

To explain more, many of you might well be familiar with difference between project management and program(me) management. The former is focused on outputs (e.g. deliverables), and the latter on overall outcomes (e.g. business change and benefits).

The scope of creativity for this discussion is any “stuff” in creativity that is related to generating and/or delivering the types of financial and non-financial benefits I described in the previous article. It’s everything to do with fresh ideas and generating the desired outcomes, the Payoff of creativity.

Importantly, this means that we don’t stop our analysis at the creative Product itself, as Rhodes did. A brilliant genius creative new business strategy (Product), for example, isn’t worth anything if it lays in a locked draw unactioned.

A heartfelt moving ballad won’t touch people’s emotions even if it is recorded but undistributed, or even simply poorly marketed.

The inconvenient truth about creativity, whether you’re an actuary, an achieving leader, or an artist, is that marketing is critical to reaching the Payoff from almost any creative effort.

Whether that’s internal marketing, often called change management and communications, or externally.

Whether that’s to users, employees, other leaders, the market, shareholders, governments or other stakeholders.

Marketing, in the broadest sense, is a critical link between Product and Payoff. This is why we are drawing the boundary of the scope of our discussion of creativity at Payoff (for example, including Value Actualization or “banked’ ROI of the creative idea or innovation), rather than stopping at product.

If this distinction sounds minor, the trillions of dollars of wasted R&D spend (and M&A spend for that matter) would suggest otherwise.

We get the creative idea, but we also need to creatively implement it, and creatively problem-solve getting the benefits too.

Eventually, we also need to potentially reflect on our ability to execute, and which types of ideas will likely succeed or fail for us, then we need to change ourselves or change the criteria for the types of ideas we take forward. Also recognizing that our execution capabilities can be systematically developed and will naturally improve over time with experience.

This brings me to a rather wordy working definition of creativity, which builds on the one I shared in the last article:

Applied creativity is the deliberate application of one or more processes to support the discovery or generation of new and useful ideas, including new ways of looking at things, and selectively putting those ideas into practice in the organizational, professional, personal and/or social context, to realize valuable outcomes.

We’ll dissect this definition in a second, but let’s first cover a few foundational words.

The root of the word idea is the Greek idein, meaning “to see.” Ideas are about seeing a concept, a possible course of action, or an overall aim. A related word inspiration (inspire) comes from Latin, meaning to “breathe life into.” The root of the word analysis is to “loosen up” in terms of getting to the root of something (unlocking a problem, finding an insight), to discover or understand a basic truth about a complex situation. All of these are about seeing and bringing something to life, as is creativity.

An idea (or collection of them) can be embedded in a product, service or experience. People say that New York is an idea as well as a place, and even company culture is an idea that drives behaviors in individuals.

Ideas in physical form are often called artefacts: a painting, pottery, architecture/buildings, a strategy document.

It is sometimes said that archeology is about reverse engineering the priorities (predominant ideas) of a society at a moment in time. An organization’s purpose and mission statements are artefacts. Thus, future archeologists might be puzzled that on paper all of business in this century was about making the world a better place… I digress…

Definitions can be tedious, and we’ve already heard about Rhodes’ catalog of definitions of creativity, which have only exploded in number since that time.

Rather than aim for a universal and yet convergent definition of creativity. Rather than trying to win some secret and ongoing worldwide creativity definition competition between academics and the advertising industry, I’m aiming for something more modest.

That is clear communication about the scope, approach and distinctions involved the type of creative “stuff” we’ll cover relating to getting that Payoff.

So, with that said, let’s now dig into that working definition above a little more.

“new ways of looking at things”

Paradigms and frameworks are ideas, whether Porter’s Five Forces, “plant based”, “working to live”, “climate change”, “experiences with a purpose” (that drive a lot of what I do), the paradigm of Complete, and so on. They are a lens that lets us see problems and opportunities in a new way.

This is why I’ve re-added the phrase “ways of looking…” also building on Scarborough’s textbook definition of creativity in Essentials of Entrepreneurship “Creativity is the ability to develop new ideas and to discover new ways of looking at problems and opportunities.”

For me, I’ve seen how a new paradigm, can have cascading positive benefits, rippling outward and creating a series of new ideas and actions.

Rhodes too described a hierarchy of creativity with new theories (including paradigms) at the top, which in turn set the context for a range of inventions, at the bottom of that pyramid are innovations which incrementally advance the source invention and are relatively larger in number.

We’ve seen, again and again, how technologies whether the example of portable pre-mixed paint tubes at the dawn of Impressionist painting, or the personal computer, have been the foundation of a multitude of innovations. It’s often said that artists/creatives are the first to fully exploit new technologies, then business catches up.

In a sense, and because of the several limiting perceptions of creativity, I’m also perhaps trying to reframe creativity itself as a paradigm for you.

For example, let’s call it and use the lens of an “engine”, “superpower”, and “way of working and living.” We can talk about creativity as “finding another gear”.

As you’ll hear, the use of metaphors is a creative technique to help see problems and opportunities in a new light. I’ve subtly and not-so-subtly tried to move away from the “everything is a mountain” school of business metaphors to dabbling in motorsport ones, given its focus on person and technology, the creativity that goes into the design and engineering process, and the focus on results. Small improvements matter too. I can see that with my own eyes as I watch my son Jack, a budding go kart racer, go around the track hundreds of times a week. “We” try new things and analyze the data, work on fitness to be able to execute better, and try different scenarios and lines to get ahead of others that have largely the same equipment, and build that library of experiences to pull from on race day. It’s creativity of sorts, but creativity still.

Incidentally, on metaphors, neuroscience has found that creativity is not purely a right or left brain, but a whole brain activity. One research example that I found insightful, is that beginning jazz musicians use their right brains when improvising solos, while experienced jazz musicians used predominantly their left brains, the reason being experienced musicians already have an extensive library of past improvisations that they can tap into and synthesize.

As we cover the so called end-to-end creative process later in the article, you’ll see that the creative steps or sub-processes are in no way homogeneous in nature.

It’s almost absurd to cling on to the idea that creativity is in its entirety some spontaneous emotional thing about feelings, when many of the steps of getting an idea and putting it into practice are things involving financing, science, engineering, project management, planning, ROI calculations, pipeline analysis, supply chain and distribution, and so on.

Sure, some of creativity is definitely about feelings, and that’s a good thing, but it’s time for a more nuanced and truer representation about what creativity is from “end-to-end.”

I think it’s both true and good branding to think about “whole brain” creativity. It also for me ties in nicely with the way I see things in my creative work life paradigm Complete. Creativity helps you to become a complete organization, a complete leader, a complete human, and to reach both higher and deeper.

“Applied creativity…” “…realizing valuable outcomes.”

I wanted to make it clear that we’re talking about applied creativity here rather than so called “pure” creativity for its own sake. In the applied sense, creativity is a means to an end to realize (get) valuable outcomes. I’m leading with applied since I want tackle the persistent myth that creativity isn’t about real business or profits.

Nevertheless, the distinction between “applied” and “pure” creativity becomes shaky, with even the slightest prodding, if not false altogether.

A frequently mentioned example of pure creativity is an artist creating a painting. In that spontaneous moment, intentions are pure!

Or are they. What if the artist relies on repeatedly sells their paintings to pay the rent? What about commissions? What about when innovations from pure creativity make it into paid art?

There has always been a tension between “money and heart” (as the Kelley’s put it in their book Creative Confidence), I feel it, and I’ve heard it described countless times by others since it’s largely a fact of life.

I think it’s better to recognize the tension rather than to arbitrarily separate things into two camps. You don’t have to pick a side; it’s a continuum and I feel that this “picking a side” notion is one of the inhibitors to leaders in the professional and personal lives exploring what creativity can bring them.

Artists have long been, and continue to become brands, businesses, and often organizations.

As another perspective on pure creativity, famed director Tarkovsky opined in Sculpting in Time that, paraphrasing, even the most resolute of artists are not solely pursuing self-expression. They, if they’re honest with themselves, want their work to impact other people. There is an outcome beyond the finished piece. This brings us back to the marketing and distribution point above. The scope line of creativity ends at the Payoff not only the Product, whether that payoff is at its heart non-financial and/or financial.

I also, in my drive to get leaders to accept creativity as real business, don’t want to put off those leaders who are looking to creativity for a respite, escape or boredom reliever from the structured world of work, and as a means of personal expression.

“How about just doing something because you enjoy it, and it is meaningful to you, not everything has to drive goals and money!?” you might be thinking. And that’s right.

While the “headlines” of this article series are all about driving outcomes, there is more than enough space to explore your personal creativity. I certainly have, and although I’ve done many creative projects without money being the driver (and some of these have been the highlights of my life so far), I’ve found that as well as delivering lasting satisfaction, they have also helped developed my creative capability, and “bankable” skills and experiences that can feed in to monetary terms.

You’ll hear how since different types and levels of creativity are interrelated, working on your personal creativity might be the fastest way to also improve your leadership and business results, but much more of that later.

‘New and useful”

The academic definition of creativity centers around this concept of “new and useful.” Naturally this begs the questions of “how do you define new and useful?” and “new and useful to whom?” I don’t propose, thankfully, to engage in an academic treatise on this point, other to say the answer is, for the purposes of this discussion, “to you.”

Characteristic of the creative process as we’re framing it is that it brings in new ideas, to you and/or your organization, the type of fresh thinking and new ways of seeing things (problems and opportunities), that lead to the type of Payoff you’re pursuing.

Occasionally I use the following diagram to illustrate some key points about new/useful:

Creativity vs Value — Brett Cowell

Sometimes we’re scared of the “new” aspects of creativity, but instead doing nothing actually doesn’t equate to staying where you are. It often means going backwards (i.e., negative value/utility) because of competitor’s actions, and disruptions in the market. This situation is represented by the backwards and downwards arrow in the diagram.

So, the question is often not “if” creativity but “how?” and “which kind?”

Just because something is creative it doesn’t mean that it’s good, that’s where “new and useful” comes in.

In the diagram this situation is represented by the “Reinvent” box named for the expression “Reinventing the Wheel.” There are countless examples of where an organization has reinvented an app or product, at great expense, only to deliver no perceived value to customers, or in fact they make it worse. Part of the discipline of creativity (even for artists) is working out where to invest your time and energy, and not only getting caught up in the moment, or the fact that something is new and shiny.

In comparison, just because something is low creativity doesn’t make it bad. A strategy of low-cost incremental improvements (Increment in the diagram) can add up to a winning margin, as per Team Sky historically in cycling with their “aggregation of marginal gains” approach.

Looking at the top left square we have “Adopt/Adapt”, in which we search for ideas externally (or from other departments internally, for example). The work is still creative in the sense that while we don’t invent the idea, there is effort to tailor and enhance it for your situation, and it can deliver significant value (more of this next)!

The final, upper right, box covers the situation where there is often a great investment in time and resources in creativity, with the aim of then delivering significant utility.

Nevertheless, it is possible to be really creative without significant resources too, depending on the characteristics of the situation. The “high” level of creativity, instead of effort and investment, might relate to the vigorous challenging of assumptions, constraints, “sacred cows” (and other animals), and the novelty of ideas generated, thus the overall value of the resulting solution.

“Discovery or generation”

When we generate something, we “cause it to come about.” This is perhaps the purest definition of creativity, akin to the ability to create “something from nothing”, starting with the so called “blank page.” Even then, generators need fuel.

Even though a physical blank page might be real at a moment in time, the idea of “from nothing” in the common imagination is a fallacy. This is because creativity is in part based on (synthesizing) past knowledge and experiences, as well as taking in new inputs, and the creator themselves existing within a “pressing” environment or context that is also providing inputs and stimuli and is evolving.

Nevertheless I also don’t want to downplay the value and skill in filling the blank page well, not everyone can do it without developing the right level of proficiency/capability.

The word discover recognizes that inspiration and fresh thinking often comes through a process of (re)search and curiosity, and rewards looking and going “out there” in order to find and bring back something valuable here.

Creative individuals and organizations are typically curious and are learners, and we can learn to, and make a habit of being more curious and learning from a deeper and broader range of sources and resources.

The word discover also allows for the field of scientific research, and the like, to be included in the domain of creativity as we’re discussing it here. Newton didn’t invent gravity, but the problem was in his mind (what we’ll call Framing and Ingestion in the discussion of the creative process) when he saw the apple fall.

Likewise, you and your organization will become primed to see opportunities where others don’t and thus be more creative. Apple didn’t invent the idea of a portable music player, yet the iPod, for example, was generally seen as creative/innovative and, again, marketed well.

Really the creative process, certainly in the pragmatic sense we’ll discuss it, is about getting a suitable (the best) idea that drives our desired objectives, whether we generate that idea, or find it through a process of discovery, which could be as simple as talking to customers and a cross-section of employees, or looking around to see which good practices others are applying. Then tailoring/synthesizing that for yourself.

Again, The Rolling Stones didn’t invent rhythm and blues, but they certainly popularized it by putting their own stamp on it. Creativity has long resulted from the act of being inspired by, or trying to copy something else, and by filtering it through you (or your organization), transforming that thing into something new.

This is a nice segue to a well-established model of creativity from Teresa Amabile’s (Harvard Business School) called the componential model:

Teresa Amabile — Componential Model of Creativity

In the componential model creativity is driven by domain expertise (relevant knowledge), creative thinking skills, and (intrinsic or internal) motivation, and happens in the context of an environment.

One reason that experienced CEOs are paid so much is not only their proven skills for doing the job in a particular environment, but the broad domain experience which presumably gives them the raw materials to be creative around novel situations too, although this is not always the case.

In Amabile’s model, paraphrasing, if you want rocket science ideas, then better have someone with rocket science domain knowledge. My son’s ideas about propulsion in contrast, at least prior to starting go kart racing, seemed mainly limited to shaking up a bottle of fizzy drinks.

If a person or team don’t have knowledge in that domain, as the model goes, then it’s less likely that any ideas that come out of the creative process will be useful.

From practical experience, this doesn’t mean that everyone has to have knowledge in the same micro domain, some of the most productive strategy and/or design sessions I’ve facilitated or been part of, have been with personnel that have different perspectives or are from different functions within the business, same principle. Related to this is the tension of bringing in a new hire to generate new perspectives (and be unconstrained by the past) and existing employees who contest that that person doesn’t have the context (domain knowledge) of that organization to make those ideas credible (“it won’t work, here”).

Adrian Newey, hugely successful Formula One car designer, talks about in his book How To Build A Car, about how he’s been inspired during what was ostensibly “down time”, on vacation, by looking out the aircraft window at the wing or engine of the plane. That led him to bring a fresh idea to car design.

I was about to joke that it might have been more poetic if a bird or a mysterious object washing up on a sandy shore inspired him on his vacation, rather than a product of something he literally studied, aeronautical engineering, but applied to cars.

However, a truth is that we’re often painfully myopic in looking for inspiration, not even to looking to what different departments, or the same department in a different place are doing, never mind looking to adjacent industries, or more broadly externally.

Also in the opposite sense, there are many well publicized scenarios where domain experts have missed disruptive change as an industry redefines itself, perhaps with the entrance of a new competitor. It’s a lazy example, but Tesla vs established car companies.

Part of creativity is being able to reframe domain knowledge and understand what is still relevant and what is limiting. I recall a leader presenting at a conference sharing a sentiment, which I’ve now heard in several forms, along the lines that success in leadership was periodically relearning 50% of what you think you know, and wisdom is knowing which half.

Creative thinking skills give us the ability to challenge assumptions and constrains and reframe the problem in new ways. Those skills also let us transfer and transform ideas from outside and tailor them to our specific environment, and to adjust them when the environment itself changes.

I think that the motivation aspect of Amabile’s model is interesting since the motivation Amabile is talking about here is intrinsic or internal motivation, rather than external motivation such as money or other external rewards. The more motivated you (the team, organization) are, the more creative you’ll be, all other things being equal.

Needless to say this is why an organization’s vision, mission and purpose, and the leader’s values, actions and words, are really important in activating creative motivation in personnel and other levels of leadership, beyond simply expecting people to be creative because you are paying their salary.

We can also envisage how corporate culture could represent part of the environment in the model. Performance measures and even the leadership’s attitude, as well as the vision etc. I just talked about, too.

All of these things can help or hinder creative efforts.

As well as being a consultant, I’ve trained a lot of consultants in problem solving. While on the job they’re/we’re strictly business much of the time, in the training room it’s possible to create a different (safe) environment and I’m constantly surprised how creative and expressive that can help let people be, seemingly pulling that creativity out of nowhere like flicking a switch. I know that the same dynamic applies to leaders and the organization more generally.

The same people in a different environment might be an order of magnitude more creative and expressive. I’ve also seen, and enabled, peer pressure, a type of social comparison, to help people come out of their creative shells and begin to push the limits of how creative they think they can be. That helps them not only in the moment (doing the exercises at hand) but in an ongoing way since they add that “win” to their personal data banks around creativity and it helps build their confidence.

These points are more than idle musings, when we design for creative capability, environments (cultural and physical) and forums (meetings, working sessions), even meeting agendas themselves, are near the top of the agenda of what to change to get better results.

“Deliberate”

Like the word “applied”, the sense of Deliberate is that the sort of creativity we’re talking about here is something systematic and structured, and also therefore something that can be learned. Measured, managed, and so on.

Mentally, I’m linking deliberate creativity to the idea of “Deliberate Practice” e.g. in Anders Ericsson’s book Peak. We set out learning and applying creativity in a purposeful and even an intentional way, rather than purely putting in unstructured hours throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. This is not to say we don’t use play and gamification, for example, to get the right creative outcomes. You can be deliberate without being somber.

Neuropsychologist Arne Dietrich made the distinction between “Deliberate” and “Spontaneous” creativity, and also “Cognitive” and “Emotional” creativity, and placed these onto a 2 x 2 matrix.

Inventor Thomas Edison typifies Deliberate Cognitive creativity (systematically trying out alternatives), for example, while our stereotype of an artist is the opposite, that is Spontaneous Emotional creativity.

In Dietrich’s research, the four different creativity types were linked to different parts of the brain. While I’ve seen some interpretations of this research that link the creativity types to a kind of personality type (think Myers Briggs/Jungian archetypes), and there is an element of “horses for courses” (different people will be relatively stronger or weaker in different types of creativity), I see the types more as a case of different modes, or of selecting the right tools for a specific job, and making time and room in the creative initiative for different styles.

Some of the criticisms of the brainstorming technique are that the quantity of ideas gives a false sense of also having quality or the right ideas, and coverage gaps are papered over in the frenzy, such as the right people not being in the room or the people with the best ideas not speaking up.

Also, when we’re put on the spot, we tend to come up with familiar solutions rather than necessarily the most original or best solutions. A truism of creativity is that the first idea is usually not the best, and we take this insight into various techniques to push on and challenge ourselves to come up with “100” ideas, for example, which forces us towards novelty.

Also brainstorming often takes the problem as a given, and it’s the exception rather than the rule that left-field solutions cause us to see the problem in a new light, although that can happen if you’re sensitive to that possibility.

Almost all creative endeavors can benefit from allowing some time between starting to work on the problem, and the Ideation stage. Thus, some creativity improvement suggestions might initially seem banal or weak because they are so simple e.g., issue a pre-read to a working session that contains some homework. Rearrange the schedule so that defining the problem and solving the problem are not back-to-back, but are separated by other sessions or even end-of-day, allowing time for reflective thinking.

Often a whole (short) consulting project or phase will be about defining the problem well, including gathering some data and performing root cause analysis to validate that we’re on the right track.

While some high-level directional solutions might be identified as part of such an effort, we don’t proceed into detailed solutioning until the necessary stakeholders agree on the problems and root causes.

Often there’s a desire or at least a tendency to jump into solution mode, and that risks both solving the wrong problem, or solving yesterday’s problem rather than building a solution for the future.

An aspect of creative problem solving is designing and building for the future, what we’re “really trying to achieve” in terms of (business) objectives, rather than being constrained by the limitations of today.

“selectively putting those ideas into practice”

Being creative doesn’t mean that you’ll reflexively put every idea you come up with into practice. People often fear that creativity is opening “Pandora’s Box” or throwing some kind of intellectual hand grenade into the organization.

Creativity is about selecting, assessing and iterating/strengthening ideas for implementation, and ideas will often be subject to an increasingly strict funnel or stage gate process as they progress. We want broad thinking at the start, which then converges on the “best” implementable solution over time.

The latter stages of the creative process are where traditional, your existing, leadership skills come to the fore, in pressure testing ideas before releasing them into escalating levels of commitment, detailed design, build, implement into production and so on. Sometimes, as I’m describing, creative ideas will follow a traditional path to market, at other times a whole new path or creative implementation approach or distribution mechanism will be required.

One of the ongoing challenges of creative leadership is finding the right balance of creativity and challenge, of imagination and rigor.

Too much challenging early on in the process can shut down creativity entirely, and slightly undeveloped ideas can be swept aside and, ironically, new and unfamiliar ideas can be the first to be rejected!

Creative leaders will need to learn to listen and interact differently, at least at the early stages of the project.

Even as a budding creative myself I think back to times where I’ve taken someone else’s seed of an idea that they were beginning to articulate and put my own frame on it and run with it (“we’re ideas people after all, right?”), without fully understanding the nuances of what they were trying to communicate or get to, which might eventually have been stronger than what I half-came-up with. Let the ideas emerge and marinate.

This is common. Yet it can come across as not listening or, worse, taking credit for someone else’s idea, and it doesn’t leave the space for truly creative ideas to emerge, and thus is something we work on with leaders, for example, to improve their leadership of creativity. Ask questions and listen!

I’ve purposely used the term put “into practice” rather than implement because the latter idea has specific associations. Putting a new idea into practice whether a movie script, or a new product feature can encompass whole other creative, engineering and production processes.

In some cases, the new idea will follow the traditional process for implementation and remain largely as it was conceived, in other cases, putting the idea into practice will require other or different steps including prototyping, iteration and adaptation. The idea may be built upon, changed or completely transformed in all but its essence, in the process of putting it into practice.

“in the organizational, professional, personal and/or social context.”

I wanted to highlight here that creativity exists in different contexts. Our discussion will in fact, given the audience of leaders, cover the first three of organizational, professional and personal. These levels and contexts are connected, and I’m trying to reinforce to leaders that the application of creative approaches and tools in one area often leads to benefits across all three areas.

Creativity can and does benefit the social context too, and part of the overarching why of creativity is to solve mega problems such as climate change, inequality, and so on. The tools and approaches we’ll discuss are applicable to social issues and social change, but I’ve chosen to leave that emphasis to one side for the moment. I want us to focus initially on outcome areas that are largely within your control and direct influence, such that you can get started and build your creative competence, confidence, and capability.

Then we can broaden the circle, and shoot for the starts later on.

“Creativity overlaps leadership and change.”

As I discussed in the last article, I’ve followed the lead of academics Puccio, Mance and Murdock in their book Creative Leadership, of relating the ideas of creativity, leadership and change, as shown in the diagram below:

Creativity overlaps Leadership and Change to drive Value and Outcomes

In this way, creativity IS leadership, leadership IS creativity. Creativity helps leadership respond to and incite change to drive value and outcomes.

Pinning creativity to leadership (and change) I think gives us some useful intuition in how creativity translates into value and outcomes. We can also see how creativity (the learning of creative approaches and tools) could be a valuable form of leadership development, and help us answer the perennial question of how do we develop the right leaders for the current environment and era.

To add to this, I went through an exercise of mapping elements of creativity onto leadership, as shown in the diagram below (I’ll explain the green parts shortly):

Leadership is Creativity. Overview Mapping — Brett Cowell

In the rows I’ve extracted a list of core leadership skills. This list is divided into two groups, “Evergreen” skills that have always, post WWII at least, been associated with leadership.

The second group of leadership skills are what I’ve called “Present” skills since these are ones that often come up in articles, research and discussions of leadership in the recent era, including post-pandemic. Although the second list might look at first glance more like traits, these are all learnable skills that can be systematically developed.

Which brings us to the columns across the bottom.

In 2019, and again in 2021, I conducted some broad research on the creative process, and also reflection on my own creative experiences including podcasting/interviews, video, fiction and non-fiction writing, narrative screenplays, original music (songwriting, performance, music production), running an entrepreneurial business, and so on.

I published an extract from that research and reflection on LinkedIn in 2021, including an overview of the creative process model that we’ll also look at in the third section of this article. The process I outlined included 10 sub processes.

For this article series I grouped those 10 creative subprocesses into three process groups: Inspiration, Problem solving, and Actualization (IPA) as follows:

a) Inspiration (Discovering and Generating): 1. Framing, 2. Ingestion, 3. Synthesis, 4. Incubation, 5. Ideation

b) Problem Solving (Designing and Iterating): 6. Structuring, 7. Verification, 8. Refinement

c) Actualization (Putting into Practice): 9. Prototyping, 10. Production (inc. Marketing)

You’ll notice that these three groups broadly align with the working definition of creativity I described above.

An overview of the IPA groups:

1. Inspiration — planning, aligning around what “success” is, scanning the environment, attuning your personal and organizational antennae, knowledge gathering efforts, learning, imagination to provide the material for new ideas, and bubbling up those ideas, ability to work with the “blank page”
2. Problem Solving — productively defining and reframing the objective/problem and generating, designing, prototyping and assessing candidate solutions in the context of a particular environment or environments, and based on insights from the Inspiration stage
3. Actualization — making change, testing and launching new ideas into the live environment, positioning and marketing, building the creative “engine”: the right people, process, technology and strategy to enable creativity to make a lasting and sustainable impact

I then mapped the three IPA groups and some of the constituent skills onto the list of leadership skills, which looked something like this (illustrative):

Mapping constituent creative skills to core leadership competencies — Brett Cowell

If we’re to formally link creativity with leadership then I wanted to have some “meat” and evidence behind the assertion, i.e., that leadership is creativity.

This is not only from a credibility point of view, but later when we come to the question of how to improve outcomes through improved leadership and creativity, we already have the levers that can input into formalizing the leadership development syllabus for training and coaching, and also have the ability to offer bespoke improvement in specific skills and sub skills.

For example, communication cuts across many of the IPA areas, and we can work on framing, listening, structuring, problem solving and so on. The AIM (Audience, Intent, Message) model that I first discovered in Guide to Presentations (4th Ed) by Mary Munter and Lynn Russell also neatly illustrates a creative approach. We start with the end in mind, the audience and our intent (what we want them to do, decide, think or feel as a result of our message) then we problem solve and look for inspiration about what to say and how to say it (two separate but related creative processes).

Strategy is another core leadership skill that leans heavily on the Inspiration and Problem solving sub-processes, while execution is more about Actualization, while also naturally relying on problem solving too.

Part 2. Creativity is about the things that creativity enables or equips us to do…

The reason we spent a whole (long) article last time, on the why of creativity, is that it’s critical to always keep the end (the Payoff) in mind in any practical discussion of creativity.

This focus on outcomes helps us to start, and helps us to keep going and to course-correct on our path to reach those outcomes.

Keeping outcomes in mind also helps us think through, and get creative around, where to apply creativity to generate those outcomes (and not get hung up on producing certain creative products in a certain way). For example, we think about specifically which levers we can creatively pull or mechanisms we can creatively use to generate the outcomes.

There are also so many cool and interesting diversions that can be taken, on the path of creative understanding and development that it’s vital to always have tangible value and outcomes in mind, and to regularly ask ourselves “is this relevant to getting the benefits of creativity?”

Of course, diversions can sometimes be immensely valuable, and one we’ve established the basic applied creative path for you, you’ll naturally want to elaborate upon that knowledge base further, following your own curiosity too. The Creative Capability model that I will summarize again in Part 3 is a great too to help triage and organize knowledge about creativity going forward.

There are limiting beliefs that creativity is only about product and service innovation, or artistry for that matter, which are not only not true, but constrain the potential benefits we can get from the application of creative tools and approaches in the organizational, professional and personal contexts.

Therefore, in this section we’ll step through a broader list of different ways to see creativity in those organizational, professional and personal contexts, and to identify value drivers that can be creatively affected or reconfigured to drive positive financial and non-financial outcomes in each.

Creativity in the Organizational Context.

Creativity in the organizational context is most often geared towards financial benefits such as revenue, profit, growth, market share and so on. We’re also interested in indirect benefits such as risk mitigation, reputation, employee engagement and retention and so on.

Given this scope of benefits, we can look to at the organization in different ways by:

A. Value driver (Revenue, Cost …)

B. End to End Business Process (Customer Acquisition, Retention, Expansion …)

C. Business Function (Leadership, Marketing, Operations, Finance …)

D. Value Chain/Operating Model Element (Strategy, People, Process, Technology…)

E. Technique of how to generate and capture incremental value (Benchmarking/Maturity/Process Improvement, Innovation, Strategy/Direction/Fit, Customer Experience, Risk Mitigation …)

A. Value Driver

If we are looking for where best to apply new ideas that generate value in a for-profit organization then value drivers are a great place to start, since we “follow the money” linked to the key Profit and Loss measures. Note: it’s also possible to develop value drive type models for not-for-profit and social organizations too.

I’ve used value driver models similar to the one below, a slightly modified version of the one I shared in Ascending Growth, for years to help stimulate thinking with clients, and discussion on how to improve business:

Value Chain example — Creatively identify and pull levers to generate value

You can see in the model above that Prod/Service Design Portfolio is but one of the value drivers of revenue. Although in a sense it’s a critical one and a focus is justified, we can get fixated on product innovation being the entirety of creativity within an organization, and miss other/easier/better value creation opportunities.

Brand/Reputation and Pricing are other levers, as well as the number of customers, which itself is driven by the effectiveness of the Customer Acquisition and Customer Retention processes.

And, what about taking a strategic or creative approach to pricing? A classic example of the latter is moving from single-purchase to SaaS (a subscription model) for software. Surge pricing and revenue optimization of airline seats are other examples, as are segmented approaches to pricing at places such as Disney that let groups skip the lines by paying additional fees.

So, the question is which levers should we creatively pull, and when?

This value driver model is tailored to Sales and Marketing since it is adapted from the one that appeared in the Ascending Growth book, but I think that it clearly shows how looking at the business in different, and creative, ways can help the organization to see problems and opportunities in a new light, and to focus where to put efforts and investments to drive improved results.

Coming up with the right value driver model for your organization is creative undertaking, an example of where analysis and creativity work hand in hand.

Creativity is the visibility of, understanding interdependencies between, and creatively pulling value drivers. It is challenging commonly held assumptions about customers and how the business should operate.

Why should you have the same prices and rates for everyone? Why should the price be determined by the cost or hours put in? Are incremental features more important, or is better service more important? What ideas does considering our product or service as an overall experience generate? Sometimes these questions can be answered through analysis, and at other times you simply need to talk to customers, or to try things through a pilot or prototype, A/B testing, and so on.

Another related way of looking at the business is via the business model, or using a framework such as the business model canvas.

Although these are most often associated with startups, it is existing/legacy firms that often come most strongly to look for creative help because their markets have plateaued or are in decline. As with Rhodes’ “theories” being the top of the creative pyramid, strategy and business model creativity can have a profound and cascading positive impact throughout the organization, and set the scene for further inventions and innovations.

Given the rate of market change it pays to periodically ask and creatively answer questions such as “who are we?”, “who do/should we serve?”, “what value do and could we add to existing and future customers?” and so on.

B. End to End Processes

Another way of looking at an organization is in terms of end-to-end processes that cut across the business.

Examples of these include:

• Forecast to Fulfil
• Order to Cash
• Hire to Retire
• Record to Report
• Acquire to Retire
• Idea to Offering
• Issue to Resolution

…and others.

These processes are end-to-end since they connect customers, the business, and suppliers/partners and cut across traditional business functions and “silos.”

I’d argue that simply looking at the business in terms of end-to-end processes is creative in itself, like any helpful paradigm or different way of “seeing”, for many organizations. As is also the case with thinking and seeing in terms of value chains/webs, value streams, and so on.

End-to-end processes are a new way, particularly for functional leaders and employees, of seeing activities, work and value. The process of documenting these processes also inevitably uncovers some easy creative wins in terms of highlighting disconnects and efficiency opportunities, and new ways of seeing and doing things. The documenting and reviewing process also helps the organization to get creative and optimize for various factors including cost, speed, flexibility and so on.

Once processes are documented there is the opportunity to search within and outside the organization for new and different ways to design and operate those processes. In management consulting we often call this external search, looking for “leading practices”, or simply benchmarking.

How do other firms do things better, faster, cheaper, more responsively and with lower risk?

Benchmarking is creative, in our definition, because it’s about the deliberate and/or intentional search for and discovery of new ideas within and outside the organization.

That we look, take in knowledge, and synthesize and adapt in order to create value is creative, since rarely can an external solution be cut and pasted directly into an organization, and in the process of adaptation we might find that new possibilities and ideas emerge.

This also brings up the idea of a “fast follower” strategy, where a firm’s strategic positioning is not to innovate, but to quickly copy and adapt innovations, potentially at lower cost, and with an elaboration of features.

That firm is creative in adapting its end-to-end processes for reverse engineering and speed.

More than once I’ve heard an executive lament that although their firm was seen as a market leader and innovator, it took them “18 months to launch a new product, while it took their competitors 3 months to copy it” effectively diluting or neutralizing the value of the innovation.

In Ascending Growth, we introduced the ideas of GX (Growth Experience) as the successor to CX (Customer Experience) and Orbits, instead of the traditional sales funnel view.

Even though we sometimes tend to think that there is “nothing new under the sun” in Sales and Marketing, for example, much has changed with the ongoing sweep of digital transformation, particularly during and since the pandemic and in B2B.

It is exactly these traditional tasks of Customer Acquisition, Retention and Expansion that can be the source of creative differentiation. Please check out Ascending Growth for much more on that topic!

Creativity is seeing the firm as end-to-end processes, and bringing new ideas to bear on how to do them better, faster, cheaper, in a more responsive and lower risk way given the ever-changing customer and market contexts. Creativity is also looking to selectively differentiate where it makes sense and create an enhanced overall experience for a range of stakeholders including customers, users, employees, and so on.

C. Business Function

Another way to look at the business and answer “what is creativity” is to look from the perspective of the various business functions: Sales, Marketing, Finance, Operations, HR, IT, Legal, Executive, and so on.

Creativity can be examined by looking at where each function focuses, what it does, and why and how it does it, and better linking this across functions, and to drive overall organizational value and desired outcomes!

Often firms try to upgrade their business functions by simply appending the word “Strategic” to the front, strategic HR, strategic IT and so on. This can be little more than a superficial change unless the firm creatively and holistically looks at how to dial up value adding aspects of the function and to align them with other functions and to the overall business strategy. This is rather than each function pulling “strategically” in different directions, and having competing objectives.

In a case study from Ascending Growth, the Marketing function was transformed by an incoming leader, based on leading practices and their past experience (Creative step #1).

It then the Marketing function also recognized that it needed to market itself effectively (Creative step #2) if it wanted the changes to stick and generate value.

Many organizations, particularly in B2B, have become used to Marketing as being purely a cost center, and the “events and brochures” department. The team in the case study (based on several real cases) needed to reposition and promote the new and more strategic Marketing department. One which legitimately focused on “winning together” and business value, instead of marketing geek speak, and the same old events done in the same way.

So, creativity is finding and dialing up the genuinely strategic elements of each function, better aligning functions together, and aligning overall with how the business generates value.

Those strategic elements could be top-tier talent management to meet the creative agenda (Strategic HR), or in providing an agile and integrated technology platform (Strategic IT) that enables the firm to deliver a better customer experiences, enhanced communications and creativity, and better alignment, for example.

D. Value Chain/Operating Model Element

Another way of looking at where new and useful ideas can be generated and applied, and their flow is by looking at the value chain or what we in consulting often call the operating model.

As an example of what this can look like, here is the Revenue generation Value Chain model (RVC) model that we shared in Ascending Growth:

Revenue generation Value Chain (RVC) from Ascending Growth

In these types of models, it is typical to start with the customer (generally a good business practice too), shown on the right-hand side of the model.

The organization creates value for the customers, which is then captured and translated into organizational value, including revenue, of course.

In a sense the right side of the model is the “prime time” for creativity, since it asks and gives the space to creatively answer the most fundamental of questions for a business “who are we?”, “who are our customers?” and “how do we add value to them?”. Noting, of course, that the answer will change over time as the customer base and market evolves, so this is not a case of “set and forget” but rather necessitates the development of a capability or capabilities to do this on an ongoing basis. In the above diagram those capabilities include 1. Strategic Orientation, and 2. Customer Knowledge.

The RVC then helps structure the answer to how do we (re)configure our operating model to not only optimize the outcomes delivered from the current customer and market situation, but how to we configure for growth, and also for agility.

Let’s pick out a couple of the chevrons in the diagram.

Skills

If we look at the World Economic Forum’s reports on the future of work, creativity is often at or near the top. But which creativity are they talking about? From what I’ve read, they are talking about the need to design new products and services, and about employees needing to being flexible and adaptable to change.

Herb Kelleher from Southwest Airlines (just up the road from where I am here currently in Dallas) famously said “Hire for attitude, train for skill.” In a very real sense creativity requires a certain “attitude”, a certain mindset and mental flexibility.

Although creative ability can be further developed in all of us, people have different strengths and relatively more advanced staring points, that’s simply an unavoidable fact.

Just as with any transformation effort we need to consider how (and selectively if) to transition our existing workforce to new skills and ways of working, and also focus on hiring and promoting those with the right mindset to begin with, including leaders.

Culture

Culture, and whether creative interventions succeed or fail, is heavily influenced by leadership support, tone at the top, and leadership behaviors e.g. do they ask for new ideas but punish failure?

Developing a creative culture involves examining and changing behaviors at all levels within the organization. We need to take a prioritized and detailed look at the work done and identify key areas that must change to support creative, and ultimately business outcomes.

This can be as micro as looking at the objectives of meetings and how they’re run. Is there space on the agenda for new ideas, does the leader (or other gatekeeper) enable or shut down new thinking and how should this work instead?

Quite often when we’re talking about organization creativity we are also talking about improved communication and collaboration, so we need to look into information sharing and collaboration behaviors and forums, and how they must selectively change.

For example, a common creativity-limiting behavior is the hoarding of ideas and information. I worked for many years in developing cross-functional problem-solving approaches including Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) and Integrated Business Planning (IBP), where we intentionally bring information and decision making into an open and interactive forum. We allow the sharing of perspectives from different functions both in the information sharing and problem-solving processes, and in coming up with the ultimate recommended solutions/decisions.

E. Technique of how to generate and capture incremental value.

Finally, and a kind of summary to the section on organization, let’s look at the organizational “what” by considering the type leadership/creative interventions that also begin to suggest the “how”.

These include:

1. Leadership Development — training and experiences for leaders around the creative mindset, process, problem solving, communications, and interpersonal interactions
2. Benchmarking/Process Maturity Improvement of Creative and end-to-end processes — seeking and sharing internal and external leading practices. This might involve workshopping certain focus revenue generating processes including: Customer Acquisition, Retention, Expansion, also the pricing process, and so on
3. Strategic Refresh — at organizational and functional levels, looking at the fundamental questions of “who we are” and “how we add value”, looking at the transition from products to overall experiences, for example
4. Innovation ROI — focus on driving more value from product and service innovation
5. Creative Capability Development — understanding the existing level of creative capability, addressing proactive culture and the people, process, and technology aspects across the organization

Creativity — The Professional Context

In the last article I outlined that the “why” for creativity in the professional sense is around increased salary and benefits, different revenue/income streams, improved flexibility and working on your own terms, increased fulfilment, growth, teamwork, and contribution, and so on.

Broadly, this professional financial value is unlocked through the mechanism of delivering improved results, and/or moving “up, out, or across.” That is, through climbing the ladder, moving to another organization for a step up in pay, or moving across the line from employee, to consultant, or to business owner/entrepreneur, or in the other direction!

So, what is the overlap between how to move “up, out, or across” and creativity?

In terms of delivering improved results, and moving “up”, we’ve already linked creative development with leadership skills and outcomes. You develop your creative/leadership skills, deliver better outcomes, and all other things being equal are in the position to differentiate yourself, get promoted, have improved financial rewards, and so on.

The other aspect of the “what” of moving up is marketing. This includes personal branding, communications and content marketing, for example publishing books, articles, videos, podcasts, and so on.

As leaders and professionals, we often assume that everyone knows who we are and what we do, but this is typically not the case, particularly in larger firms. You can do every other piece of skills development well, but if nobody knows about it or about your new capabilities, then you’re less likely to be fully rewarded for that.

Even if you continue to deliver results that might not have been possible without the development efforts you’ve put in.

In a sense this might be seen as basic “managing up, and across”, but here we’re taking it into the creative domain since unlike what could be a fairly cynical effort, we have the right intent and ongoing ability to communicate better about benefits for other functions and the broader organization, for example.

There may be many leadership candidates for bonus/promotion who also have strong results, good execution and ability to hold people accountable, for example. The ones who can differentiate themselves are more likely to get the rewards and/or move up. Again, differentiating is not just about “spin” but branding and communicating in a way that demonstrates knowledge of what value is across the organization, and what’s important, and what’s relevantly different about your approach and point of view. Note: when I say communicate here, I’m not just talking about sending a memo! Working creatively in the way I’ve just described makes you act, work, talk and be different. Actions speak louder than words to colleagues and others who’ll notice the change.

Another part of the financial benefits of creativity in the professional sense include developing new revenue/income streams such as: royalties, licensing or subscription services.

A path to that is through the creation of intellectual property, which might include books, training courses, other content, and even patents. Creativity not only helps you to do and market these things, but also to value your ideas more, and to actually get started down the path of getting value from that intellectual capital.

This creation of intellectual property and content also applies to the case of moving out to another firm, or setting up shop as a consultant, for example. Content marketing, such as writing articles or a book are a great way to credentialize yourself as an expert in the field or industry, beyond only the firm you work at right now. Needless to say, this can also be very fulfilling as well, part of becoming a more complete leader and/or professional, and giving back.

In the case of entrepreneurship, there are many touchpoints to creativity, in developing a foundational customer insight or innovation, in iterating to find a solid product and market fit, and in developing the growth/scaling strategy. I don’t think that you need more convincing that entrepreneurship in a large part IS creativity, and many books have already been written on the topic.

To talk more about how to actually get started on developing your plan to move up, out or across there are two tools called DREAMS and MEANS that I’ve developed as part of my Complete framework for professional and personal development (and have also detailed in previous articles linked below).

I hope it doesn’t come across as a trivial or even patronizing point but many of us, for various reasons, don’t know exactly where we want to go in our careers, or we aim too low, or we aim for something that is only in a straight line from where we are now, instead of thinking more broadly.

This is where creativity comes in. Firstly, practice in applying creative tools and techniques can help you to connect with and understand yourself at a deeper level, and engage your imagination in coming up with a compelling vision for the future.

DREAMS is an acronym for:

• Destination (Direction) — starting with the end in mind, understanding the direction towards a desirable end point or milestone, in the form of goal, objective, vision, primary aim and so on.
• Right Now — understanding where you are now and the gap to the destination
• Explore — engage in the field of play, understand the destination and potential directions and courses of action in more detail
• Articulate — form and tell the story of the journey from where you are to where you’re going: the whys, whats and hows, different levels of planning, the case for change in some level of detail. Use also to explain to and engage others
• Momentum — take actions, get quick wins, iterate, track progress, celebrate success
• Sustain — make the change stick, develop the basic working processes, habits and so on to maintain progress towards your destination and sustain the benefits

Creativity comes in here again because often we only actually find the right goals (Destination) after we’ve done some work and started engaging with the problem and trying some things (Explore, Articulate).

I’ve encountered so many people trying to think their way to change without otherwise engaging or taking action in any other way. I have been one of those people too, and joining a writer’s group, of all things, helped me launch my business because I got used to taking more steps, in a safe environment, and gradually built the confidence that I’d be able to figure out what I didn’t know, and actually couldn’t know without actually getting started. This community is something I’ve already worked on building with various meetup and creative events (mainly in Dallas), and it is a priority for me to try to establish a virtual creative community for you to participate in as part of the next steps of my creativity “rollout.” Stay tuned for more information.

This mechanism for small changes leading to bigger ones has been formalized in the idea of “Creative Confidence” popularized by Tom and David Kelley in their book by the same name, and based on the work on self-efficacy by American psychologist Albert Bandura.

Taking small steps and building up to bigger challenges not only helps you get the big thing done that you’re aiming for but it becomes a transferrable and generalized confidence to take on bigger challenges in other arenas.

Starting that train rolling initially can involve virtually any set of tasks that help build self-efficacy, the sort of tasks a coach might have you do, or you could kickstart in a creative session. For me joining that writer’s group catalyzed a leap in creative confidence, and before that a level of creative confidence was driven by trying to get (and getting) better snapshots when I was out and about while living in London, and even before that that creative confidence outside of what I was doing for a job was writing down some out of the extraordinary experiences as I travelled for work and leisure, as the basis for future stories. Reaching a tangible milestone, ideally with documented proof to remind you, is a great, and tried-and-true, way to ratchet up your creative confidence and future output.

MEANS, another key tool as part of Complete, stands for:

• Mindset — confidence, mental flexibility, performance mindset, resilience etc.
• Experiences — a 360-degree perspective: your “store” of experiences and “experience stream” of new developmental experiences, how you experience work and life, and the experiences “user experience” you create for others, personal branding and marketing
• Activity — bang for the buck in terms of how you allocate your time and energy to value creating activity
• Network — of various types of relationships: business, collaborative, mentor/mentee
• Skills — hard and soft skills

If DREAMS is about where to go, then MEANS as about marshaling a range of resources so that you can there go faster. As I noted, I’ve already documented MEANS in a previous article, so I’ll just pick up a few points.

Leaders sometimes worry that developing their creative Skills will somehow compromise their analytical, financial or execution skills that got them this far in their careers to date.

Instead, I often say that creativity feels like finding another gear on top of your existing skills, which you switch seamlessly into and out of. You become a more Complete Leader because you can deal with different types of situations and opportunities.

Likewise, as someone who hates networking generally (don’t most of us?), I’ve found that creativity opens new and better ways build your network. For me that has mostly been through interviewing and/or collaborating with people, and through joining groups and forums where people are interested in the same stuff that I am and want to get better at, everything from the Blender tool, to Virtual Reality, to music production, and writing. Creativity somehow flicks a switch with networking that leads to a virtuous cycle of people helping each other, and new possibilities and opportunities being generated.

Leadership/Creative — Personal

The final part of this section deals with the what of creativity from a personal perspective.

Again, let’s return to what you hope that creativity will help deliver to you.

Why do you want to be more creative, at a personal level?

In the last article about “why creativity?” we talked about how creativity helps you to do and be things that you couldn’t or wouldn’t do otherwise. Part of this is having a broader imagination, and finding a direction or project that is deeply meaningful to you, reaching for higher or different things.

Who are the creative people in your work and life? What are their hallmarks? What do you wish you “had” or could do, to make you more creative?

The creative people I’ve seen up closest, are proactive and, contrary to the popular imagination, seem to be quite organized in their own ways, despite having several projects on the go at one time.

They seem to be able to move things forward and get things done. And these are not standard cookie-cutter things, but projects involving inventing new tools and ways of working to get the job done.

They have a distinct point of view, and in talking with them they’re able to communicate and articulate passionately what they’re doing and why, the big picture and context, and the list of problems and detailed craft/technical issues that they’re working through.

It’s a bit like a peek into Leonardo Da Vinci’s diary, if you’ve seen that.

The unknowns in what they’re trying to achieve seem motivating rather than the opposite.

Over time, I’ve come to know that self-actualization (reaching your full potential) and big “S” Self-realization (connection to the universe, or whatever you call it) are totally related.

The realm of personal creativity inevitably involves first digging deeper to know yourself, and then even deeper through practices such as meditation and even flow and STEs (Self Transcending Experiences), to unblock the stream of big ideas within you.

These big, often original and certainly personal, ideas are the sort of ones that help propel you towards your potential, not a generic one, because by definition these ideas and the direction implied by them are authentic, congruent with your values and so on.

The first article “A.” in this series described a framework called The Well, which is about really understanding the different types of success, and what success is and could/should be for you. Digging deeper into who you are and what you want is actually a very pragmatic way to approach your potential, as I’ve just stated, since you start with the end in mind, and get the right goals, rather than using creativity to go faster down the wrong track.

The second article in this series described The Wheel, which is another tool in the overarching paradigm of Complete, you begin to design your life in a holistic way, one that is also deeply authentic. You go through a creative process to define how each part of your life will work and how the parts fit together. For example, you select how you’ll work to enable to overall type of life you want to live, rather than always tailoring life to what you’re currently doing for work.

I think that most of us recognize that maximization and optimization are different things. Sure, creativity can help you maximize certain outcomes by bringing fresh thinking and perspectives to the table when you find yourself plateauing or stuck, or by helping you to meaningfully differentiate yourself, or outperform others. But often by taking the maximizer approach we neglect other important things.

In our personal lives we’re most often trying to optimize instead, that is to get the best outcome across a number of dimensions: work, relationships, health and so on. Whether we call that “work-life balance”, we think of it in terms of life design, “getting the most out of our time on the planet”, or simply minimizing regrets.

Following on from that, we often want to have our “cake and eat it” as the expression goes, for example we want the money AND the flexibility AND the personal life. To do that requires fresh ways of looking at things, challenging our assumptions and false constraints, and a degree of imagination and problem solving. It is very doable, however.

These are exactly the things that developing our capability to use creative approaches and tools helps us to achieve. We might look to change the rules of the game, or to begin to play a different game entirely. Instead of feeling like a victim of work and life, we might reframe both as a game, something we willingly engage, fully and creatively immerse in, such that winning becomes less important that continuing to play at ever more different and challenging levels.

As regular readers know, I set out to work with flexibility and location independence (before that was the cool thing to do), and to build an asset (something that paid out even if I wasn’t directly working on it), to explore my creativity in business, music and film, and to work with the best and brightest of passionate and creative people.

I saw creativity as more than a set of tools and techniques, but an intrinsic and still underdeveloped part of who I was. I didn’t just want to dabble. I was ready to “Turn Pro” as Steven Pressfield says in his books. You might be different, but rest assured creativity is something you can ease into or leap into. You might begin and continue for a while using creativity to enhance what you do and who you are now, then eventually use creativity to redefine yourself and what’s possible in this lifetime for you.

Your next creative step might be to want to write a fictional book, create a fashion line, start a YouTube channel or an entrepreneurial business. All of these use the three groups of creative skills we’ve been discussing: Inspiration, Problem Solving and Actualization.

You unlock your personal creativity often by looking inside first. Then you take small steps, iterate and move up. Really, this is how almost everything at work and in life gets done.

Creativity is no different then, in that respect, even though we often perceive it is being a big-bang, risky proposition, rather than a step-by-step process.

As I’ve been alluding to, a common misconception is that all the new ideas that we’ve been talking about so far are “out there” when the source of your creative flow often begins internally, then we begin to pick up on information in the external environment differently and new ideas emerge.

In the third article, I described The Wellspring framework to help explain the concept of ideas emerging from within:

The Wellspring — Brett Cowell

Another way of describing creativity is in terms of learning to pay attention differently. Imagine a commute to work by car, and I ask you when you arrive at the office how many blue cars you’ve seen.

You might scratch your head and perhaps be unable to recall any, even though you know statistically that blue is not an uncommon color for a car. If I ask you to count the blue cars before your commute, you’ll begin to see them everywhere.

In a similar way, your personal creativity will really kick into gear when you begin to issue your brain a felt problem to work on. Ask yourself quality questions such as: How could you earn your current salary without having to work a specific number of hours in a week?

You ask yourself a question that you’re intrinsically motivated to solve, and ideas begin to emerge. What would your podcast be about, if you started one, and why, why you, and why now?

When I’d started attending that weekly poetry open mic I began to see “blue cars” everywhere, in terms of creative ideas for a written piece, for example sitting at a restaurant in New York where I was often working at the time. And just to reinforce I’m talking poetry here in the broadest and least highbrow context, observations and explorations about life and ideas and situations. Really, I’m describing something common to much of creativity, the ability to see differently, to pay attention differently.

“What makes an artist great is the ability to access the inner world we all have but that most others can’t access” — Rick Rubin

The more you experience the need to be inspired, the more attuned you get to the ideas constantly bubbling away in your own mind. You are walking down the street and an idea pops up.

You can be trained to be able to do this, and get better at it. We can help you turn on your creative flow, and part of this is just getting familiar with the creative process that I’ll describe in Part 3 of this article, and that applies to individuals and actually to organizations as well.

Creativity is a combination of art (idea) and craft (the ability to that idea into a finished “product”. Ways to develop the craft aspects have never been more accessible given YouTube (“how to” explainer videos) no matter what the topic, also through meetups and online learning, for example. The better your skills the more creative you can be, and the greater the impact your ideas will have.

If you want to learn to write fiction there are many good and accessible guides, and plenty of stuff online. Same applies to film, music production and, literally, crafting, Craft doesn’t exist in a vacuum though it’s tied to action and experience. You try to produce something, and the learning helps you get better outcomes next time. Engaging brings up new “felt” problems to solve. Learning to play the guitar well, involves playing the guitar.

And yet sometimes we get stuck in perfect inaction, rather than taking imperfect action.

Part 3. Treating creativity as capability…is the recommended approach to getting the full benefits from it

We’ve covered a lot of ground in this article so far, walking through creativity at the organizational, professional and personal levels, so how do we pull all of those valuable perspectives into a single unifying construct (if that’s possible at all)?

We need try to do so such that we can crystallize and consolidate our view of what creativity is, but more importantly to answer the question of how we develop creativity in a way that enables us to drive increased valuable outcomes.

Creativity is an ability, something that we all have but that can be further learned and developed so that we become productively proficient in it, and able to repeatably apply creativity in different situations and at different times, to generate value, thus turning creativity into a capability. A creative capability.

A capability is more than a skill, it also encompasses knowledge and experience, (mental) processes, tools, mindset and so on.

When we seek to develop an organizational creative capability, we need to, in a shorthand sense and like any other capability, put a “people, process, technology” layer on top of it.

Or what I might more completely describe in consulting speak, we need to develop an operating model for creativity to make it into a creative capability.

An operating model is simply a representation of how an organization delivers value (in an area) and typically consists of building blocks such as: Strategy, Governance, Policy, KPIs, Processes, People, Technology, Reporting, and might also include Culture, Brand/Reputation and others.

That line of thinking led me to develop a Version 1.0 Creative Capability model in 2021 that you can see in the linked article. I’ve since updated the Creative Capability model to version 1.1 as follows:

Creative Capability v1.1 — Brett Cowell

I initially developed and have used the original “stake in the ground” V1.0 model to guide discussions around how to develop creativity in Organizations and Individuals, and in seminars to teach creativity.

Based on that experience, and in the transition to the new version of the model I’ve grouped several concepts relating to the individual (habits, traits, mindset, mental emotional states, personal experiences / culture / context) under the heading of “Person”.

I’ve resisted grouping this under a broader heading of “People and Skills” to avoid losing the point about the importance of the individual’s specific knowledge and experiences and style, and what they bring to the table. I also want to reinforce in the model the importance of individuals, particularly leaders, and their personal experience and awareness of creative capability in setting the tone for the organization. The benefits of individual leaders making personal creative breakthroughs ripples positively throughout the organization.

In contrast, “People and Skills” refers to the broader and aggregate context of talent management, required abilities, skills, roles, and so on, across the organization. This allows us to ask and answer practical questions such as “how should we change our hiring/talent management for creativity?” and “how do we conduct a creative capability assessment to assess the gaps in people between where we are and where we need to be?” These are important “how” questions that we’ll deal with in due course.

You’ll get to see the Creative Capability framework much more in everything we do going forward, so I won’t take a lot more space explaining it here.

This article is the place however to (re)introduce the generic 10 step creative process that I also documented in a LinkedIn article in May 2021, based on earlier thinking and my initial rounds of creativity workshops in 2018 and 2019.

This process model was developed as a teaching and creative development tool. and sheds some light on such fundamental questions as “where do ideas come from?” that you’ve no doubt been wondering when we’d get to.

In the process article, I wanted to make the case that it was legitimate and useful to treat creativity as a process, with inputs and outputs, and composed of a series of sub processes that were generally applicable to a variety of creative applications.

Although no process can capture reality in its entirety, a good process diagram can enable discussion, enhanced understanding, and significant improvement in competence and confidence in applying creative approaches and tools to real world problems, and help you to capture the value of doing so.

Here is an overview of the creative process, which I outlined in the article:

The Creative Process — Brett Cowell

Firstly, as with any process there are inputs and outputs, and the inputs are transformed into outputs by a series of steps “in the box”, which are represented by the shades of blue boxes, and black box in the center of the diagram.

For individuals these inputs are things like environmental stimuli, sensory input, experiences, stories about experiences, the structured and unstructured assimilation of formal and informal knowledge, and so on, as well as the individual’s memories. As Rhodes noted (“Press”) and we’ve mentioned throughout, these inputs and the creative process itself happens in a context/environment which itself is an input affecting creativity.

Organizations also exist within an environment, and many of the drivers to need creativity, come from the need to respond to changes and opportunities in that environment (PESTEL changes, competitors etc.).

The other inputs for organizations will depend on the desired outputs and outcomes from the process, but could include: the results of benchmarking, customer surveys / interview / focus groups / VoC, the organization’s strategy, vision and so on, and other structured and unstructured information. The inputs to the Creative Capability model itself form an overall context to the creative process related to specific problems, for example, but the detailed process will often take in more detailed inputs specific to the particular problem or goal at hand.

It’s worth noting that in the organizational sense, inputs also include the memories and experiences of the people participating in the process, their cultural backgrounds, personal and work communities they’re part of, and other elements. This is a point I already made above in the context of the Capability discussion above, and is another reason why helping individuals unlock their own creative resources helps the organization when those same people are on creative teams. Diverse inputs lead to more original ideas. Makes sense!

It’s also worth noting that both individuals and organizations tend to have a “lens” or point of view in how they curate and filter inputs, how they see the world. This lens can help or hinder the effectiveness of the creative process. You can imagine how Apple or Microsoft, for example, might see the world differently and how that might shape their approach to developing a consumer device.

My lens, related to values too, if I had to take a stab at what that might be is around the sovereignty and self-determination of the individual, and the tension between individuality/freedom/loneliness/isolation/identity and community/conformity/socialization, and achievement vs happiness. Knowing this you (at least I) can see that lens throughout my business and creative works. Having a lens helps focus your antennae on certain inputs, and be productive in that sense, or of course it can also cause you to be blinkered or wearing “rose colored glasses” and restrict your potential creative output.

The outputs of the creative process as described above are ideas and artefacts (ideas embodied in physical form). Note that while this creative process includes the idea of Production (getting the idea into physical/intermediate/finished form), it doesn’t in itself encompass the Payoff as we’ve been discussing it in this article. Often that Payoff milestone is dependent on several processes including marketing, and processes called benefits realization or post project review, or something to do with ensuring ROI. When talking about overall creative capability, I often call this “Value Actualization”. Note also that like the lens, both individuals and organizations tend to develop a style, hallmark characteristics of their outputs.

For individuals, the creative process can happen automatically and to a large extent within their own brain, nervous system and so on, this is like the case of Spontaneous Creativity that we discussed earlier.

In the organizational context, the overarching “drumbeat” of creativity is Deliberate Creativity, arranged around initiatives, projects, programs, and periodic forums and processes.

Even though the macro process is Deliberate since in the context of a creative capability we want it to be systematic, dependable, repeatable and so on, at the micro level we still most often have individuals and teams involved, and thus a mix of spontaneous and deliberate creativity, cognitive and emotional creativity.

This also means that the creative process is not always completely synchronous stimulus → idea, happening in real time, rather the process goes through a series of steps and stop/starts, to allow time for reflection, incubation and inspiration, and iteration.

Perhaps the most important creative sub-process to work on (light blue boxes) at first is what I call Framing. Framing is about planning, understanding the desired Payoff and potential mechanism for getting there, laying the groundwork, finding the right problem to solve and validating that, and feeling that issue. Our brains are wired to solve problems that we feel and are motivated to solve, but they have to also be the right problems, which involves iteration, consultation/collaboration, and reframing.

An example of reframing, a workshop participant, a small business owner, said that he was stumped coming up with ideas to grow revenue. I asked if he’d already spoken to his customers and he hadn’t.

He was stuck in a cycle, because he was focusing internally rather than externally, facing into a dead end by trying to solve the wrong problem. Better reframe the problem and ask “what is my customers biggest unmet need that I can help solve?”, a better question/problem to lead him out of the dead end. He needed new inputs, whether speaking with the customers, putting himself in their shoes, or even looking at trends in his industry and others. Inevitably asking better questions leads on to more questions, and the process of questioning, searching/researching, and answering leads to positive forward progress.

We’re into the territory of “how” again now, so I’ll save further elaboration for future articles. Framing is a teachable/learnable skill that you can develop and be better at. We spend so much time and effort, in business and life, solving the wrong problems (and often in the wrong way too), so an investment in developing Framing pays off again and again.

Framing sets the context for the next several steps Ingestion, Synthesis, and Incubation where we take in new information, analyze and synthesize that (both formally and informally), and then ideally take time to reflect on the problem and what we’ve found so far. As we reflect and marinate on the problem during the Incubation period, an insight might pop up!

Part of the wisdom and learning about creativity is that sometimes not working on the problem (directly) is the best way of coming up with a strong idea — either a potential solution or seeing the problem itself in a new light.

Our brains work subconsciously on a felt problem, and one you’ve already done a bit of work on, and that automatic process frequently leads to a moment of inspiration, often while walking or driving or doing something else not related to the problem.

Knowing the truth of “Incubation”, is one reason creative people tend to work on several projects at the same time, which are at different stages in the creative process. Not only does this keep progress and productivity up, but keeps things fresh, and often allows for cross-fertilization of ideas. We’ll talk about tips and techniques for this, including how to translate this to the organizational environment, in upcoming articles.

The Ideation stage/subprocess is the deliberate process of coming up with ideas, either building on insights and inspirations you already have, or using one or more creative techniques, working sessions, and other processes to generate a list of candidate ideas.

Many of those new to the study of creativity tend to equate the whole of the creative process with what is only one stage of it, Ideation.

They repeatedly begin “cold” on the problem, halfway through what we now know is a more complete process, i.e., without Framing, Ingestion (Research), Synthesis and Incubation!

As a result, the creative effort is often reduced to a single creative technique such as brainstorming, and the quality and quantity of ideas is greatly reduced, and thus so are the outputs and outcomes from the creative process.

The next three stages of Structuring, Verification and Refinement are about getting ideas into a format where you can communicate and discuss them with others, get feedback and iterate/refine those ideas.

In the role of a leader, you won’t be (necessarily) doing all the steps in detail yourself. You’ll likely be involved in setting the context and objectives and at various checkpoints.

You’ll also be more heavily involved in communications in the broadest sense, including “translating” (a form of Structuring) the idea to various higher or different forums such as Executive Leadership, The Board, and broader groups of other stakeholders impacted by the idea/change.

The same steps of the creative process can also apply at the team or organizational level, and be put into a project plan (with a buffer for incubation and iteration), we’ll talk more about how to do this in future articles.

The steps of the process could consist of meetings and working sessions, with inputs and outputs and actions/”homework” between steps, and thus could be done collaboratively, virtually and often asynchronously, meaning different people do their parts at different times, and there are checkpoints and alignment processes to pull the work together.

Just to explicitly make the point, increasing skill and experience in the creative process, enables you to get more creative results in the same time you’d have spent getting uncreative ideas, and thus helps you to improve value and outcomes. Doing something creatively doesn’t necessarily have to always take longer, training in creative approaches and tools can mean the opposite is true.

Wrapping up

This has been a long article but it functions as a solid stepping off point to what’s next i.e., applying creativity to generate value in the real world.

I’ve hopefully helped dispel (again) some of the unhelpful myths about creativity, and you can see that creativity is something you can use in various modes but definitely in a deliberate way to bring fresh thinking and new ideas into what you do and how you do it both as an organization and as an individual.

We drive valuable outcomes at the organizational, professional and personal levels, by creatively identifying and pulling levers or mechanisms that translate new ideas into to value as we then selectively put those ideas into practice.

Creativity is more than product innovation, although that remains valuable, and we must be aware of the continuing overarching trend to package products/services, and service itself, up as experiences, even in B2B markets. The continuing sweep of digital transformation, and the ongoing convergence between physical and digital, plus new opportunities offered by technologies including Artificial Intelligence mean that creativity will not only continue to be required to respond to change, but also to explore and capitalize on the new possibilities brought about by that change.

Outside of the future, organizations and leadership (including you) have the ongoing opportunity today to apply creative thinking to vision, strategy, marketing and communications (external and internal), as well as the design of end-to-end processes and the organization itself. Creative approaches and techniques can be applied to what you do and how you lead today.

For organizations, even such fundamentals as Sales and Marketing still provide solid starting points for new thinking around the cycle of Customer Acquisition, Customer Expansion and Customer Retention, and how the organization, customers and employees can “win together” as part of a shared Growth Experience (GX). See also Ascending Growth (2022).

At the professional and personal levels, working on three broad creatives areas of Inspiration, Problem Solving and Actualization, enables us to work and live differently and at a “higher level”, to maximize and/or optimize how we do both.

Creativity is a learnable and trainable skill, for leaders and individuals, therefor also for organizations in the context of building a creative capability. Learning the approaches, tools and techniques of creativity will help you and the organization to discover or generate better ideas, then translate those in a repeatable way into value.

To facilitate that, I’ve developed a Creative Capability model that can be used systematically to assess and develop creative capability in leaders, individuals, teams and organizations. Although we’re all creative to some degree, the capability model and associated 10 step creative process provides improved certainty of outcomes from our investments in creative development.

At the personal level, creativity can help us to reflect and empathize, to be vulnerable, and to find and ask for what we really want, and to unlock the inner drive to pursue it, reaching for our authentic full potential, or simply feeling and experiencing life as being more Complete.

Apart from making us more complete as individuals these improvements naturally spill over in a positive way to the workplace and our role as leaders, making us more complete there too. This brings a fresh light to Drucker’s quote “You can not manage other people unless you manage yourself first.” The leader’s inner and outer worlds are connected, and creativity helps improve both.

Creativity is about the destination and the journey, and it can be an enabler to visit many more exotic “destinations” in life literally and figuratively, and to be more in control of your “itinerary.”

From a personal perspective, and from the reports of many many others, a creative journey is one of the most fulfilling aspects of life and, in aggregate, can span a whole career and life, as you follow ever expanding possibilities. If there are any regrets from leaders about creativity that I hear, it is that they didn’t begin to walk the path sooner.

In the next article and onwards we’ll focus on how to develop creativity at the organizational, professional and personal levels to generate the outcomes that you seek at work and in life.

Until then. like and comment and let me know what you think!