riding the creative rollercoaster: how leaders can evoke greater levels of creativity, productivity...
TRANSCRIPT
Riding the Creative Rollercoaster How leaders can evoke greater levels
of creativity, productivity and innovation
Dr Nick Udall
HYPOTHESIS
Innovation emerges from a co-creative frequency, not a process.
The way we think, relate, learn and organise
either moves us towards this frequency or away from it.
The leadership challenge of our time is to evoke ‘the music of innovation’ – to tune the frequency at which our teams and organisations operate,
by design.
Innovation is the fuel of economic growth, and the Holy Grail for companies and countries around the globe.
Wall Street Journal
The only real strategic differentiator left is a company’s ability to innovate, sustainably
Gary Hamel, What Matters Now
The lack of creativity is a problem. A 2010 IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the number one leadership competency of the future.
Forbes
The future will continue to get more Volatile, Uncertain, Complex & Ambiguous
(V.U.C.A world) Bob Johansen, Institute for the Future
Technology is now part and parcel of every problem and every solution
Jared Cohen, Director of Google Ideas
We live by the myth that stress is the enemy in our lives. The real enemy is our failure to balance stress with intermittent rest
Tony Schwartz, The Energy Project
Meritocracy Camaraderie
Non-Traditional Integration of Work and Personal Life
Fierce Independence The values of Generation Y, Knoll
Business has become, in this last half century, the most powerful institution on the planet.
The dominant institution in any society needs to take responsibility for the whole
Willis Harman, World Business Academy
The elements that make up a truly innovative company are many: a focused innovation strategy, a winning overall business strategy,
a deep customer insight, great talent, and the right set of capabilities to achieve successful execution. More important than these
individual elements, however, is the role played by corporate culture – the organisation’s self-sustaining patterns of behaving, feeling,
thinking, and believing – in tying them all together. Booz & Co
STEPPING INTO THE FOURTH REALM
EVOLUTION OF CULTURES EVOLUTION OF TEAMS
Based on William Torbert and David Rooke et al
Innovator / Shaper
Achiever
Expert
Opportunist
EVOLUTION OF LEADERS
Based on Gregory Bateson and Roger Benson et al
Creative
Strategic
Operational
Ad hoc
Evocative
Proactive
Responsive
Reactive
INNOVATION AS A CO-CREATIVE DANCE
TANGIBLE
INVISIBLE
UNCONSCIOUS
UNKNOWN
INTANGIBLE
VISIBLE CONSCIOUS
KNOWN
Flatlining
4 th
Realm
CREATIVE INSIGHT • COLLECTIVE BREAKTHROUGH • FLOW • COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE • PEAK PERFORMANCE
BUILDING BLOCKS OF THE FOURTH REALM
CREATIVE INSIGHT
!!
PEOPLE FEEL DIFFERENT ON THE OTHER SIDE OF INSIGHT stronger, more confident, more capable
!!
COLLECTIVE BREAKTHROUGH
!!
WHEN WE SHARE A COLLECTIVE BREAKTHROUGH, IT BINDS US TOGETHER These moments often leave their mark, forever seared into memory
!!
FLOW
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!WE THEN YEARN TO STEP INTO THIS STATE MORE FREQUENTLY AND FOR EXTENDED PERIODS OF TIME
continuing to tune our physical, mental, psychological, social, creative and decision-making capacities
!!!!!!!!!!
COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE
!!!!
!!!!!! !!!!
!!!!!!
!!!!!!
!! !!!!
!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!! !!!! !!
!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!
WE THEN DISCOVER A WIDER INTELLIGENCE as we communal learn to see pattern, blend egos, bind insights and chunk (store patterns as wholes)
!!
PEAK PERFORMANCE
!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!
TAPPING INTO CREATIVE INSIGHTS, FLOW STATES AND COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE amplifies our creativity, productivity, innovation, collaboration and communication skills
THE MAGIC TRIUMVIRATE
Innovation BRINGING THE NEW TO THE WORLD
Creativity BRINGING THE NEW TO MIND
Consciousness STATES & QUALITIES OF MIND
The two advantages of the Implicit System are speed and efficiency (the benefit of systemic pattern-based decision-making)
WE HAVE TWO DISTINCT SYSTEMS FOR PROCESSING INFORMATION
THE EXPLICIT SYSTEM • Rules, analysis and data based • Expressed verbally • Conscious accessible (tied to PFC) • Located more in the shorter, closer and
more ordered neural networks of the left hemisphere – good for linear connections and logical deductions and all the other keystones for standard reasoning
THE IMPLICIT SYSTEM • Skills, experience, creativity and intuition based • Expressed non-verbally • Not consciously accessible • Located more in the meandering and broader
dendrites in the right hemisphere – enabling far-flung corners of the brain to talk to one another, increasing the likelihood that novel stimuli combine (or ‘bind’) with random thoughts and obscure memories to create new thoughts in moments of CREATIVE INSIGHT.
THE CHALLENGE IS TO BUILD FOURTH REALM CULTURES
Most conventional organisations are…
Built around the Explicit System: linear, fragmented & slow
Risk averse and tolerant of mediocrity
Dominated by the interplay between Beta & Alpha
Fact-based decision-makers
Victims of time and therefore time poor
Ego-centric: valuing similarities
Only able to work the parts (unable to work ‘wholes’)
Driven by high performance norms (same old same old)
Fear-driven, holding on too tight to the past and present
Emotionless, hierarchical and compensation based
More comfortable avoiding conflict and tension
Obsessed with accountability and execution
We design post-conventional cultures around
The Implicit System: systemic, efficient and fast
How risk heightens focus, and flow follows focus
Low Alpha / High Theta with Gamma Spikes
Pattern-based decision-making
Masters of time and therefore time rich
Eco-centric: valuing novelty and difference
Patterning, binding, blending and chunking
Insights, flow, collective intelligence & peak performance
Purpose-driven, creatively escaping forward step-by-step
Emotional, passionate and intrinsically rewarding
Working intentionally with creative tension and struggle
Freedom, shared responsibility, candid feedback and trust
!! !!
!! !!
!!
COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE INTERSECTION DIFFERENCE
!!CREATIVE INSIGHT
& COLLECTIVE BREAKTHROUGH
+ + + =
THE ‘SECRET SAUCE’
BY DESIGN
CREATIVE TENSION
‘Meetings’ are the stage upon which leaders perform.
The way leaders run their meetings… reflects both the levels of consciousness of the leader and the level of consciousness of the organisational
culture of which they are a part.
MEETING FORMS (1)
STRATEGIC meetings
Finding the most elegant movement forward through
TIME and SPACE How best to get from here to there?
!!
CREATIVE meetings
Stepping into the UNKNOWN
What quest-ions do we need to breakthrough?
Managing the KNOWN
What’s working and what’s not?
OPERATIONAL meetings
In these meeting forms, the only way of generating new patterns of (collective) action is by first
generating new patterns of (collective) thought.
The trap is repeating and defending old patterns of thought and action, over and over again.
BENEFITS OF THE FOURTH REALM
Our physical, mental, psychological, social, creative and decision-making capacities all become magnified
Our creativity, productivity, innovation, collaboration and communication skills all go through the roof
A whole new world of conscious, creative and commercial possibilities open up
We are able to literally lean into and co-create the emerging future
We evoke the best possible version of ourselves and others – also becoming happier
We acquire new skills e.g., our pattern recognition faculties expand
We move from high performance to peak performance
We become up to 5x more productive