TAPE # and time code

Audio

B21

Anthony LeSorti

21:00:53:19

21:01:09:

[Would you just start off by introducing yourself …?] 

My name is Anthony LeSorti and I’m the executive consultant for Ideatext, which is a consulting firm, which deals with thinking skill development, human dynamics and leadership.

21:01:10:34 –21:01:23:11

[Would you define creativity for me?]

Creativity is about a search for solution but what that really means is a search for insight.

21:01:24:06- 21:01:40:04

[What exactly do you mean by insight?]

Insight can either be a matter of invention or discovery but it is that moment in which the creative, new innovative pattern appears.

(Discussion between interviewer and camera man)

21:02:33:01-21:03:00:25

[What happens at the moment of insight?]

A lot happens at the moment of insight, some of what happens is really effective, there is this great feeling of either relief, because psychological tension has been done away with or exhilaration, but what really happens is in effect a solution appears and the problem or situation is completely redefined and it happens instantaneously.

21:03:01:00-21:03:45:15

[Do you have an example you can give us of when that’s happened…personal experience. professional experience?]

I think that insight often happens when people realize they have been working on the wrong problem because very often people think that they know what they are looking for, and that is not to say that they don’t, but there’s a sense in which they’re looking for something more traditional, more in line with their current thinking. The moment of insight is very often about some new thinking, a new breakthrough even for them so I think at the moment of insight, what happens is they start to realize that in effect they have been working on the wrong problem or a different problem.

21:03:46:01-21:04:41:24

[When you lead groups or teach about creativity, how do you approach the creative process?]

In leading groups or teaching about creativity, developing a groups creativity, it’s very important just to lay down some basic principles and there are relatively few of these, as a matter of fact, because creativity is a very natural human power. It’s a matter of making people a little bit aware of what they have to do and by a basic principle I mean when you are being creative you should be very clear and controlling of your own mind in the sense of generate answers when you are generating, judge them later. Don’t mix those modes of operation. A lot of what we do then is to lay down some of these principles, get people to become aware that they are already creative, they just need to tap it and then we teach them some techniques which can be very productive in terms of either coming up with different approaches to the problem, or generating lots of answers to the problem.

21:04:42:00-21:05:01:24

[So you would go against the conventional wisdom that only certain people are creative? You believe everyone is creative?]

I believe it’s an inherent power of the human mind - unless we have had a difficulty in the sense that something traumatic happens to the brain. People are creatively creative.

21:05:04:23-21:05:59:15

[Why are some businesses reluctant do you think to institute creativity or these innovation programs?]

Businesses can be reluctant to institute creativity or an innovation program for a number of reasons, I think. I think one of the things they have to deal with is their own apprehension about some sort of new investment of resources. I also think a lot of it comes out of, frankly an old-fashioned but understandable, manner of thinking. Most businesses operate on a 17^th century approach to thinking. They are very analytical. They’ll look at the data. They’ll take it apart but if you think of it, analysis is about studying what you already have. Creativity or synthesis is about coming up with something new. I think businesses also want a guarantee up front want to kind of guarantee this is gonna work, kind of on demand.

21:05:05:59:

21:07:01:27

[What’s wrong with wanting that guarantee?]

Well there’s nothing inherently wrong with it, except that it really represents a kind of substantial misunderstanding of how the human mind operates. In terms of analysis, the subject is there. It can be examined. There’s a lot of prediction and control about that process and that’s a major mode of thinking for human beings but synthesis and creativity requires a different approach. It’s much more probabilistic, so the techniques we teach are referred to as heuristics which means they are more about, helping someone, aiding someone to gain the probability of a great answer. So heuristics are about increasing the probability of getting that breakthrough answer and businesses, don’t want to take that chance but as a matter of fact that’s how the human mind operates and it’s how nature operates.

Nature doesn’t do the one thing right the first time. Nature tries a lot of things, learns a lot of little mistakes, from a lot of little mistakes and goes on to create.

21:07:01:28-21:07:50:25

[So when a group is involved with this creative process, what exactly are they doing, what happens in the group?]

A group that’s trying to be very creative will take some radical approaches to their processes. For example, I was working with a college task force recently and the first thing that they did was surface all of their assumptions to say what is it that we thing about higher education because their goal was to kind of reinvent their college to make it very agile for the next century. So the very first thing was to say what are our assumptions about higher education and having generated those assumptions, the very next thing they did was to through them all out. They reversed them, they challenged it, and this was going to allow them, and it did allow them to come up with some very strong new strategies for how they will approach their higher education curriculum.

21:07:50:29 – 21:08:29:07

[So if you can get a group to …get away from the tried and true, you’re into the creative process?] 

I think one of the biggest obstacles to creativity is staying with the tried and true. What has worked, what is traditional, what we know a lot about. That’s very secure and we human beings like to be secure but again that’s not life. We have to be changing, especially now, the year that we live in requires change and more change in a very accelerated fashion. So I think one of the keys to creativity is break through the tried and true and imagine the world differently.

21:08:29:00-21:10:09:02

[Are their any other barriers we need to be aware of in the creative process?]

Among the chief barriers to creativity is actually the power of the human mind itself. Our mind is so strong at forming patterns and recognizing patterns and I think this is evolutionary, I think we need this to survive. But what happens is this process can become, somewhat self-insulating, self-reinforcing. I have a lot of knowledge, we all have a lot of learning, you see, and so I bring that to my work. What I don’t realize is that my mental models, my current knowledge is actually going to effect, significantly, what new data I’ll take in and what new meaning I’ll form and that’s the trick. Most people think we take in meaning. In fact, we construct meaning but this self-reinforcing loop keeps us thinking along very similar fashions. An example I would give you is that early railroad cars were actually stagecoaches on rails and early automobiles were really horseless carriages. They basically looked like carriages except they got rid of the horse. And this goes up to modern days when we have Sony, a leader in electronic innovation coming up with the new laser technology for what we now call the compact disk, but their first versions where 12” LP’s because that was the picture they had in their mind. It was Phillips, of the Netherlands, that thought, well, we really only need to have a very small disc, and still have a lot of music. So our current thinking is actually one of the biggest obstacles to our creativity and our current success would be another one.

21:10:42:07-21:11:33:16

[Can you explain the difference between the creative process taught here and some of the other models of creativity?]

Well when we talk about the creativity, we use terms like the creative process and we use terms like models of creativity. The creative process is what the human mind does, and as I have indicated, it’s a natural process; it’s one that we are born with and it’s just a matter developing it, of enhancing it.

I think the models then enhance it, they give us cognitive strategies for achieving our goals which is that moment of insight, the moment of invention, or discovery. There are lots of models.

Some of them are rather well known and rather effective, there is the Osborne-Parnes’ model which works primarily on the basis of brainstorming as the driving engine and incorporates a really good principle of being divergent and then convergent.

21:11:33:17-21:11:51:06

There are other models like the Synectics model, and there are a couple of versions of this one, Synectics is generally known for using analogical thinking, leaving the current problem space, as we call it, to go visit another world or become another kind of person in order to get the moment of insight.

21:11:51:08-21:12:10:04

Lateral thinking by Edward de Bono is another process that uses provocation as the driver. There is movement for the sake of movement. The challenge is to come straight on against your current thinking and to be loose enough to see other possibilities.

21:11:12:10

21:12:23:24

Another model that is pretty well known is called Kepner and Tregoe and this is a model that is very analytical and very logical in its approach and so it tries to come at creativity from the idea of searching through data and understanding a lot.

21:12:24:25-21:12:47:26

The Ideatext model that we use is one that tries to reflect the working of the human mind so it is a little bit more curve-linear and it’s a matter of taking any tool that works and using it hopefully in the right spot, but all of these models are cognitive or, what we would refer to as metacognitive strategies, the mind looking at itself saying how do I get to the goal and in this case the goal is creativity. 

21:12:48:05-21:13:27:03

[Is there any one model, not to put you on the spot, is there any one model that you like the most or that you incorporate most often into your work?] 

I think the models that are out there that have established themselves are generally pretty strong. I think you will find that people have gotten very good or great results, with any of them. I tend to like the Ideatext model that I have been involved with simply because it’s a little bit more of a looping, flowchart, curve-linear model that seems a little bit more natural but frankly the models that are out there are great models especially the more famous ones.

21:13:28:00-21:14:15:13

[How do you…when you are out in the field - develop creativity, develop leadership and develop thinking skills?]

Once again, when we are talking about the development of thinking skills, or creativity specifically or leadership skills, we have to remember that there is a human potential here, in fact, I’m very careful to not say that I teach creativity. It’s more of a matter of developing creativity, as it is a matter of developing thinking skills in general, critical thinking or leadership skills. The approach is to understand the person’s ability or the group’s ability and their potential, for these things, and then to use research and to use the educational techniques that we can tap in order to enhance those abilities and to actualize their potential.

21:14:16:12-21:15:43:06

[I know you teach a course that is entitled ‘Random Stimulation’, what exactly is this and how does this play into the creative process?]

Random stimulation is an interesting approach to creativity. If you think about creativity as a breakout of your normal thinking and if you consider that the mind is usually involved heavily in working with patterns that it already understands, reinforcing those patterns, then one, actually fairly quick way of getting that moment of insight is to somehow pull the mind out of its normal pattern of thinking and one of the ways we can do this is to use random stimuli, now this can be anything from showing a slide that has nothing to do with the problem, having people open a magazine to see what product is on the page or taking a word out of a dictionary, whatever it is, we can have people just look out the window, and see the first thing that they kind of cognitively latch onto. Then what we require them to do is to make an association with that stimulus and their problem and while that is a stretch and I would say this is an advanced technique the human mind is capable of that association and usually the effect is of pulling the mind away from the normal thinking to say wait a minute I now have to connect this problem with my sister in law with Disney World, you see, and I have bring them together to get my insight, my creative idea.

21:15:44:17-21:17:01:06

[How do you use analogy in this process?]

Analogy is a strong approach to developing creative answers. If you were to consider that we work in worlds, so if I am nurse I work in the world of nursing, if I am a dentist, likewise, an accountant, etc. whether we realize it or not these worlds have boundaries, they have traditions, there’s a body of knowledge here and that’s why they are wonderful, because there is a body of knowledge about accounting, there is a body of knowledge around engineering, but the body of knowledge is also a limit in itself. Many of the kinds of problems I have, the ones that don’t require a lot of creativity, I’ll find the answers within my world. But for the problems that require new thinking, require creativity, in effect - analogy tells me to leave my world. There’s a mental leap here and in effect what we do is we say let me stop thinking like a nurse or stop thinking like an engineer, let me start thinking like a kid running a lemonade stand or let me start thinking like a football player, or an astronaut and by leaving, conceptually, leaving my current world to see what I can learn in a new world I may get a moment of insight. Now analogy sometimes requires a translation back to my world but it very often jars my thinking and helps me see my problem in a very different fashion and that promotes creativity.

21:17:01:25-21:18:10:20

 […can you give me a good example of deferral of judgment?]

Deferral of judgment, I think is a key principle, that’s involved in being creative and what I think it really means, the way I would phrase it, it is a manner of turning off the evaluative mode of the brain, one of the major modes of the brain, the critical thinking mode, in order to do a number of things either to make something happen in terms of generating new ideas or to let something happen by being open to new ideas. I think the key here with deferral of judgment is to not interfere with the generative ability of the human mind by having all sorts of ideas already but to be open minded and to let something happen.

21:18:11:05-21:19:03:04

[What about convergent and divergent thinking? What exactly is that?]

Convergent and divergent thinking are two approaches, modes, phases, of thinking.

Basically a divergent mode is a mode in which a person or group makes themselves open to new ideas. Generally speaking, they are working with, what we might call, an open ended problem, a problem for which there is, there may be, many creative possible solutions, so the divergent thinking process is one in which we are open to all those ideas and as a matter of fact, we use those techniques and we generate lots of those new ideas.

Convergent thinking in effect, is the flip side of it, that’s the search for the idea or the best ideas, so it’s a critical thinking mode and so it’s a mode in which you kind of narrow your search down to the one or ones that seem to be the most promising ideas.

21:20:36:01-21:20:23:18

[When a group is being very creative, what do they do?]

I think there are levels of creativity so I think a group that is seeking to be creativity could stay at a level where they are just tweaking or just manipulating their current situation trying to achieve incremental creativity, something that is going to be a little bit better, and that is creative. It’s not breakthrough. It’s a matter of doing the same thing a little bit better and that can be very valuable and it may be the appropriate thing to be doing at any one time. But when the excitement happens, and when a group gets the moment of insight and becomes exhilarated is when they realize they have to work on a different kind of problem. They have to see their situation very differently and at this stage they either challenge their assumptions or they have gotten out of their current business.

21:20:23:19- 21:21:20:14

[Example]

I worked very recently with a newspaper and what was happening there they generated literally hundreds of answers in one day. I think they came up with, something like 94 answers to just improve their Saturday edition. That’s great and it will probably be very profitable for them. But as a matter of fact, what they also did, they came up with even many more answers for how to get out of the newspaper business. In another words they were challenging their very business. Instead of just being a newspaper, what other services could they render, how could they jump on the technology wave, how could they serve the community in different fashion. This kind of reinvention is when you have the breakthrough creativity but that requires both an atmosphere of courage and encouragement and also the willingness to challenge your current thinking.