You Lecture I Leave

One day last week I took off from a diversity workshop I had facilitated for suburban high school kids to attend to my own learning, first dropping in at an open-to-the-public talk at Northwestern University and then finishing the evening at a Chris Matthews-moderated political event downtown as part of a three-city 2009 speaker series.

The contrast was shocking. At my workshop, students talked in pairs and small groups, moved their bodies, grappled with exercises, reflected and shared, engaged and debated. The session and insights changed based on their participation.

At the two "adult" learning events, I sat on my ass and occasionally grunted.

Look, our changing times require that adults learn more--and more effectively--than ever, and technology is giving us more at-home and powerful options to do that. So I don't care if it's called a "talk" or a "speaker": I no longer can accept showing up to an event and finding the primary advantage to being there live is that I can tell people I was there. Our current model of adult learning--someone lectures/reads/talks for 80% of the time and then a few audience members ask a question for the remaining 20% time--needs some serious innovation.

At Northwestern, the only difference in the professor's presentation from 50 or 100 years ago was the occasional powerpoint slide of words and bullet points. At the political event, my favorite part was watching the libertarian Tucker Carlson--particularly the amusing way he sat and stared almost obliviously out into space while others were talking. I liked the conversation, and know that some entertainment issues were at hand. But still, I kept thinking, I could just watch these talking heads on video at another time.

We all learn best by doing, by engaging, by actively caring about the theme at hand, and while our K-12 education still needs to change in many ways, good teachers at least know that the old model of teacher-centered classrooms with students as passive receptacles in rows of desks does not work. But we still accept the lecture at universities and conferences. We still mostly have work meetings that just go from one person talking at you to another, as opposed to active collaboration and debate (below).
I'm in front of a computer right now, as you probably are. Technology has enabled us to get more of our social and educational needs met this way, on our own time, without having to dress up for the occasion. There are so many resources online to engage, entertain and teach us, with more video than ever before. So if we're going to take on the hassle, travel and expense to learn live and to be with others while doing so, we need to demand that our "speakers" learn how to involve us more, tap into the knowledge in the room, bring alive the bodies and hearts and imagination that finds themselves together at that one moment of possibility.

Do you know CPS?

This week I spent a day with a group of IT leaders from one of America's great companies (whose meals have made billions happy). With our goal being to make strategy recommendations to improve a technology process, I conducted a Creative Problem Solving (CPS) session to collectively harness creative thinking to address a complex challenge.

Most of the problems we face in our culture, business and lives need creativity, but few of us know about CPS, a valuable process that has been discussed, tested and evaluated for more than 50 years. Originating from the brainstorming work of advertising pioneer Alex Osborn (whose book Applied Imagination is still the bible on brainstorming), each year hundreds of educators, researchers and businessfolks gather to discuss and learn CPS at CPSI--the Creative Problem Solving Institute--held in Boston this June.

Historically, the creative process was seen in some ways as mysterious, and included "incubation," or time away from a problem, before "illumination" or an "Aha moment" hit you (perhaps in the shower). CPS, sometimes called "deliberate creativity," has taken a little mystery out by identifying and separating practical steps, captured in the graphic above, that are universal and that lead to the most creative solutions. We all need to learn CPS.

Two quick observations to point out about my session:
1. The first phase, Clarifying, was a key part of our work--the more time we spent understanding what the real challenge and real goals were, the more effective the solution-finding.
2. As with any creativity session, separating diverging from converging is essential, but was, as is often the case with very smart adults, not easy for this group. Pure diverging time is needed to explore as many alternatives as possible and spark unusual connections, but no matter how vocally I insisted on "no judging" and "just keep generating and posting" ideas, I often found the participants surreptitiously evaluating, debating and denying. More divergence training needed for all of us!

The power of a CPS session depends on leveraging the diversity of the group and shifting thinking styles from one phase to another. You probably don't realize that your creative problem solving preferences are quite different from others. You can learn more by taking the FourSight assessment, which I use with teams and is available online.

A Creative Nudge and a Sunday Poem

While these days the Kreativity Network is the name I use for my business--primarily designing and facilitating events, meetings and retreats that spark innovation and creative collaboration in organizations--it was once a thriving network in the San Francisco Bay area supporting individuals to express personal creativity. The operative question then was this: How do we, as adults in a consumerist culture that often wants us to be a spectator more than a creator, actively engage and communicate our unique talent, voice, story, art? Our original name was the Multi-Arts Creativity Network--as I believed then, as I do now, that creativity takes many forms and it is our birthright and obligation to discover and explore our own means of expression, whatever it might be.

At Kreative Evenings, we got to witness and experience multiple ways people were called to create, from the more typical "arts"--writing, acting, music, singing, performing, visual art--to cooking, speaking, sharing a game, a healthy practice, a joke, a technique, a project, a dream. The type of "art" doesn't matter--it's the doing, the trying, the exploring your imagination that does.

So while this blog aims to increase our understanding of creativity and its cultural importance, and our ability to think differently, I also want to urge you to create. It's easy not to, to distract ourselves, so find support and community: team up to encourage each others' efforts and, ideally, have a goal, performance or sharing opportunity so that your creative work is put out into the world.

Today, as part of National Poetry Month here in Chicago, I'm stirring up my own creativity as a featured poet during a live event. Let me leave you with a poem I will perform later:

Dreaming in Corners

I was dreaming in corners today
but the wall split
and I reached in
without looking
and felt your voice.
It was soft
like the lake
we almost fell into.

"When does the summer dream of us?" you asked.

You answered yourself by spreading
our blanket
on the damp ground
near the bare feet
I had grown out of.

Earlier you dropped a whisper
in my shoe
and I was afraid that when I stepped,
it would pop

as secrets often do.

More Evidence of a Creative Revolution

As we struggle together through this economic downturn, more forces are mobilizing to embrace the Innovation Imperative--the understanding that only through our creativity and innovation can we continue to thrive as a nation and as a culture. I'm seeing more evidence that we are indeed, as I've said before, becoming the United States of Creativity. Check out these contributors to the revolution:

<>Today I had the pleasure of sitting under the lights and camera being interviewed by Lisa Canning, founder of Entrepreneur the Arts (think of "entrepreneur" as a verb), a Chicago company and expanding online presence dedicated to helping artists become entrepreneurs and harnessing creativity in new ways. She's recently launched the Entrepreneur the Arts Blog, featuring groundbreaking artists and creative commentators (including me). She also is a leader in the movement to bring a new model for learning and innovation--called Renaissance Centers for Innovation, Learning and Leadership--which I'll write more about in the near future.

<>Tomorrow night, Thursday the 16th, there is a free downtown event for creatives hosted by Visionati, a new online community that is a one-stop showcase for photographers, artists, designers, filmmakers and writers--as well as a place to make connections, start collaborations, find work leads and creative happenings. Check out what they're doing live tomorrow or online--very cool site.

<>Also helping Chicago become a hub for creativity is Innovate Now, an initiative dedicated to business innovation and economic growth (and affiliated with the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce). Its 2009 Innovation Summit coming up on May 21 is focused on innovation, design and sustainability, and another example of government doing what it can to embrace the Innovation Imperative of our times. As part of its efforts, Jim Tyree, Chairman of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, is calling on Governor Pat Quinn to appoint the state's first innovation czar, responsible for transforming Illinois into a global center of innovation, entrepreneurship and creativity by 2018.

<>Finally, no discussion about creativity in Chicago would be complete without mentioning Catalyst Ranch, two floors of stimulating, colorful meeting space and a meeting place in the West Loop that not only plays host to events, speakers and travelling creative revolutionaries, but generates its own programs that nourish the mind and heart. Call for a visit.

The general rule of thumb in this country is that the midwest is years behind the left and right coasts--so if Chicago can generate all these new creative catalysts...

Diversity and Hybrids: Blacks-Jewish Seders and Muslim-Catholic Poets

Ever since being, at 10, the only white kid on an all-black little league team in Evanston, IL, I've been oriented toward finding connections between different cultures. America's diversity is one of its great competitive and creative advantages--we've had more experience than most cultures in exploring differences and leveraging the innovation that naturally emerges when we combine ideas and perspectives. Most great innovations are hybrids, and that goes for cars, new products and services, and Barack Obama.

I've been learning about a more-common-than-you-might realize hybrid--Black Jews--who have congregations near and on the South Side of Chicago. A few different groups, including those with connections to Ethiopian Jews and those affiliated with the Black Israelite movement, continue to thrive, and perhaps the most well-known is Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation, led by Rabbi Capers Funnye, a cousin of Michelle Obama just featured in the New York Times Magazine. I joined them for passover seder there this past week.

There are always creative benefits to new cultural experiences, but this one in particular helped me rethink some of my own Jewish assumptions and stretched me (quite a workout for my flexibility, in creativity terms) in new ways. There were many similarities--a roomful of Jews sharing the story of the Exodus from Egypt through song and food and ritual--but also differences that sparked many questions for me: Why don't we honor our elders and children more as I saw here? In what ways can we have more participatory communal experiences? Can special clothing have a powerful impact our spiritual experiences (see lovely white garb above)? How come I don't eat this delicious lamb more often? These only begin to touch on what was a very rich and complex experience.

My recent culture-combining has also included facilitating learning experiences for Poetry Pals, a nonprofit dedicated to bringing kids of different backgrounds together to celebrate diversity through words, art and music. Recently we spent time at a mosque in the western Chicago suburbs, where Muslim and Catholic children from neighboring schools met each other for the first time (see pic), learning about similarities and differences in ways that most of us, whatever age we are and open society that belong to, rarely get a chance to do.

What other hybrids are there that can open our eyes to new possibilities? How else can we bring cultures together both to create a society of more understanding and to spark new possibilities in how best to live our own lives?

Inspiration from Bucky

The Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) is now featuring an exhibit on Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983), the Architect-Designer-Inventor-Scientist-Alternative Energy Advocate-Visionary who was so far ahead of his time that it boggles the mind.

While he was still active in the 1960s--building geodesic domes and spearheading education on global resource allocation--most of us post-baby boomers don't know much about this man who cared so deeply about helping this planet and the people on it.

Fuller's Dymaxion line of inventions, including aluminum, portable houses and 3-wheeled, energy-efficient cars, as well as a distortion-free world map and even enclosed, floating cities, all represented unmatched creative thinking and environmental foresight.

Bucky embodied innovation in two key ways:
1. As a comprehensivist with a broad range of skills and interests, able to combine ideas and domains in new ways. (Flexibility competency of creativity)
2. As a person so passionate about helping the world, he followed his unique vision despite naysayers and skeptics. (Originality competency of creativity)

Frankly, Bucky wasn't always easy to understand, and often made up words to describe ideas and products never before seen. This 21-line explanation (below) I snapped from an old exhibit catalogue reflected how his mind was able to turn on like a faucet (Fluency competency of creativity); it's all one sentence! You'll have to visit the exhibit to see if you can make sense of it, which isn't easy.

Nevertheless, Bucky somehow was able to translate his visionary ideas in ways that spoke to wide audiences and people with means and influence. Even though few of his prototypes led to commercialization or popular use today (though watch out for a future revival) he, like his more practical inventor/comprehensivist forebear Edison, was able to garner financial and commercial support from investors and companies, including Ford for his Dymaxion car, that in part empowered him to be so prolific and well known.

Clearly Bucky was a one-of-a-kind mind. He should be studied and celebrated. But I wonder: How likely would his futurist ideas (they are pretty outlandish even 50 years later) be supported and funded today? Would Bucky's truly exceptional persuasive personality and perserverance be enough for him to have accomplished and experimented as deeply as he did? Or would he be ignored by investors, pilloried by snarky journalists and cocooned as an under-funded and under-appreciated academic?

Listen to MCA podcasts about Buckminster Fuller and the current exhibit.

Trying on Different Coats...or a beard

One of the tricks to the creativity competency of flexibility is our openness to and practice of trying on different coats. It's the creative attitude to have when you're learning or experiencing something new: "Hey, just try it on, see how it feels, see if it fits, see how it feels if it doesn't quite fit. Then you can always take it off."

I needed a little shake up this week, so I decided to grow some facial hair. In just a few days I was a lot less recognizable to myself in the mirror and frankly a bit shocked at how old I looked with a new crop of white hair on my chin. As I went out into the world, I felt older and actually cared less about my appearance, had less of a need to be cool or in style. I was less disappointed than usual, for example, when attractive 20-something women ignored me. I accepted a slightly different role in the world, one that made it easier, I think, to get down to the business at hand.To think and see flexibly, we have to experiment with who were are, test out our many sides, alter ourselves often enough so that we don't get stuck in the trap of who-we-think-we're-supposed-to-be. Creative people are often putting on and taking off coats from many racks.

Even if you can't grow facial hair, can you try on an unusual coat, eat differently, read a different magazine, shake yourself up so that you're reminded that you are never staying the same? Not only is a great rut-breaker, it also helps you become a more active participant in the changes that are always happening--instead of simply being the passive recipient waking up to find they have happened to you.

Einstein Called it "Combinatorial Play"

Futurist Joel Barker calls it the "Verge." Writer and consultant Frans Johansson calls it the "Medici Effect" or more simply the "intersection." I like to call it "being multiparadigmatic" (I like big, combinatorial words).

Innovation (and creative thinking) results when you effectively combine two or more ideas, domains or mindsets that have not been combined in quite the same way before.

Given that researchers agree that the primary definition of creativity is to:
Generate something new/unusual that has value...
I would argue that the primary special quality that creative people have, enabling them to come up with these unusual ideas, is:
Being multiparadigmatic--i.e. flexibly moving between, combining and integrating diverse ideas, perspectives, intelligences and paradigms.

Developing your combinatorial or multiparadigmatic abilities is part of the Flexibility creativity competency. Okay, okay, enough of the academic speak!

Barker spoke yesterday in a teleseminar, explaining that "our greatest strengths are our differences” and that the world is waiting for people and companies who can "take things already developed and adapt and blend them in a new way." He gave a few practical innovation examples of this "verging":
>Fedex combined a forklift with a scale to accomplish two needed tasks quicker.
>Retail spaces like Walmart now offer Mini-Clinics to take care of health needs.
>Green Walls on buildings: growing plants on outside walls to cool buildings and improve air quality (with no painting costs)--keep your eyes out for this one.

I bet you can think of more, as almost all innovations in some way combine different ways of thinking not put together in quite that way before. Playing with paradoxes can result in surprising creative power.

You'll also find that effective humor does the same, combining ideas in a skewed way that we hadn't considered before. My date didn't show up at the coffeehouse so, you know what, I've been "Starbuckled." Comic Demetri Martin on Comedy Central recently explored a little known extinct species. Happy April Fools from a disgruntled single guy: