The secret to solving the tough challenges ahead

In this interview, Gerard Puccio and Pam Szalay—authors of Cultivating Creative Thinking for the Future of Work—share how creative thinking builds resilience, fuels innovation, and strengthens leadership. They reveal evidence-based strategies and cognitive tools, including FourSight, that help organizations develop people's core capacity for navigating constant change. Register for the webinar below.

You just wrote a guide to creative thinking. Why is cultivating creative thinking a hot topic in talent development now?

Pam: There’s a lot of anxiety out there. People see big changes ahead — AI and other unpredictable changes. Most organizations haven’t trained their people to solve problems like that. We tend to teach practical, procedural skills, like how to do a customer service call, not thinking skills. But people are starting to recognize a need. I facilitate online courses at eCornell, where I've met hundreds of students from line workers to executives. They are scrambling. There's an urgency. Some will say, “I have to learn how to do this better, because my boss is waiting for me to solve this problem.” You sense their pressures and their stress.

Gerard: Creativity is often viewed as the fuel to innovation. That’s certainly true, but creative thinking is also an enabler when it comes to building up our tolerance for uncertainty and change. Research showed that during the pandemic, employees who expressed the highest level of creative capacity were more able to cope with the stress. Change affects everyone. Learning about creative thinking is a way to speed up our own mental evolution. It builds both individual and organizational resilience.

How do you define creativity?

Gerard: In the simplest terms, creativity is the ability to produce new, valuable outcomes. 
Pam: In the guide, we also use the definition developed by mathematician Ruth Noler, which shows that creativity is the interaction between knowledge, imagination, evaluation, and attitude. It’s written as a mathematical formula, which helps engineers and other analytical thinkers feel more comfortable with the fact that they, too, are creative.

What 3 things do you wish talent development professionals knew about creative thinking?

Pam: First, it’s trainable!

Gerard: (laughing) I agree! Second, it applies to so many things like solving complex problems, job satisfaction, absenteeism, engagement at work, sense of motivation at work. It’s remarkable how many things connect to creative thinking. And third, for organizations to be successful, they need leaders who are trained to think creatively. I'd recommend that training in creative thinking be mandatory for leaders. 

How do we know that training in creative thinking works?

Gerard: There are quality research studies that compare groups who received creativity training with groups that did not. It's been unequivocally demonstrated that well-designed training programs can enhance problem solving and creative performance.

Interestingly, the area most significantly impacted was problem clarification. That surprises people, who think, “Oh, creativity training is all about ideas.” But as we know, how you frame the problem has a dramatic impact on how you tackle the problem. Training people to clarify helps them solve the right problem. Another, perhaps less surprising, finding was that creativity training improved both the quantity of ideas generated—and the quality of those ideas.

In your research, you identified 4 types of thinking that go into creative problem solving. Can you describe them?

Gerard: Our research shows that when people tackle a problem creatively, there are four discreet stages of thought they engage in. Clarify, ideate, develop, and implement. Together, they form a universal creative process, also known as the FourSight framework. When you clarify the problem, you understand the issues that need to be resolved. Once you define the problem, you can move into idea generation, playing with possibilities, thinking laterally, exploring all the options. That's where a lot of people believe the creative process ends, but it’s not. You need to move ideas from concept to reality. That’s the develop stage, where you move from good ideas to great solutions. In the develop stage we apply analytical and critical thinking, which actually complement creative thinking. They are necessary partners, and when used effectively within the creative process, they really have a symbiotic relationship. Finally, we move from the develop stage to the final step: Implement is all about taking action, bringing a new, novel, shiny solution into the world. So those are the four stages: clarify, ideate, develop and implement.

Why do you take a scientific approach to creative thinking? 

Gerard: Because it works. More than 70 research studies show that the most effective creativity training programs are based in cognitive models and have these three attributes: First, they are rooted in cognitive models that describe the kind of thinking that happens within the creative process. Second, they give learners a chance to apply creative thinking strategies immediately after introduction. So you're taught, you do it, and you reflect on it. Third, people practice with others and begin to use creative thinking strategies to solve real challenges. The FourSight curriculum is a good example of that.

How does creative thinking show up on a typical workday?

Gerard:  One place it shows up is in meetings. Think how dysfunctional problem-solving meetings can be. One factor is not having a deliberate problem-solving process. That's where a cognitive framework is useful. Because when there's no deliberate process, people will follow their own thinking preferences, and that often works in counterproductive ways. While one person is clarifying, another person is ideating, someone else is developing, and someone else is running out the door to implement. Everyone wants to tackle the elephant from their own way of thinking. It creates conflict, confusion, and poor results. In every meeting, there's content and process. People tend to focus on content, but process is the way to align people’s thinking. When you start a meeting by letting people know, “This meeting is about clarifying” or “This meeting is about ideating,” you telegraph the rules of engagement.

I was surprised to see a lot of AI tips in your guide. How do creative thinking and AI go together?

Gerard: If you don't have a deliberate creative process when you use AI, you’re likely to get pretty sloppy results. We’re learning to think of AI as a thinking assistant, not as a source of solutions. Having a cognitive structure with a deliberate creative problem-solving process makes you better at facilitating AI. That puts you way ahead of an individual who doesn't have that understanding.

Pam: You can use AI with creativity. We took an educational approach in the guide. AI is not the magic thing where you can press the lever and get outcomes. You have to guide AI through every stage. As we say in the guide, “The human mind is most open to creative insight after fully engaging with a problem.” So, don't farm out your thinking to AI. It’s not going to get you a good outcome if you don’t facilitate a good thinking process. You have to stay in the driver’s seat.

How long does it take to learn creative thinking?

Gerard: You have to get a Master of Science degree from the graduate program I chair at Buffalo State University. I’m kidding. In truth, learning something as simple as the distinction between divergent and convergent thinking can have an immediate effect. Of course, deeper training helps you internalize it, but the research is pretty clear. A single course is enough to move the needle on the things like divergent thinking, problem solving, creative performance, and attitude.

How can you tell if your organization needs this?

Gerard: All organizations need it. We’re facing change at a pace we’ve never seen before. Building this skill set is necessary if you want a resilient, responsive, healthy workforce. It’s like asking, Do I need to eat a healthy diet? Yes, if you want to be healthy! The same is true for organizations. Increasingly, we're seeing how creativity contributes to well-being. People who engage in creative thinking are happier. They've got more hope, more optimism, greater life satisfaction, and more resilience. When you equip employees with these creative thinking skills, you enhance the health of the whole organization.

Pam: Organizations succeed when their people have the skills to navigate change on a small level as well as a large level. When every person in every position can apply creative thinking to the challenges they face, the organization can thrive.

It's easy to solve the problems we have. It’s harder to cultivate the skills to solve problems more effectively. I hope your guide makes that easier. 

Gerard: Pam and I are excited to bring this guide to creative thinking to the talent development space.

Register for a special webinar about Creative Thinking @ Work

Discover how creative thinking can fuel the future of work.

Join us for an inspiring conversation with Gerard Puccio and Pam Szalay, coauthors of the latest guide from the Talent Development at Work series. They'll reveal how cultivating creative thinking unlocks resilience, innovation, and confidence in times of change.

Date: Wednesday, October 29th
Time: 1:00-2:00 pm Central Time (Chicago)

Register Here!

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