My name is David Morrison, I am president of Involvement Systems…educated as an industrial engineer, I have a BS and Masters. Started my career with Proctor and Gamble, went on to Frito Lay, then started a company called Involvement Systems in 1990 and we’ve worked with mainly Fortune 500 companies helping them be more productive, and to really tap the thinking skills of their employees.

08:01:31:12

08:02:08:02

[Would you define creativity?]

Creativity for me, what my favorite definition of creativity is an equation. Being an engineer I love equations. And it’s this simple: Creativity is knowledge times imagination times evaluation. And I say times because if either knowledge, imagination or evaluation is missing then there would be no creativity. Also look on to what innovation is, innovation is knowledge times imagination times evaluation times action. Because my belief is without action there is no innovation or no applied creativity.

08:02:14: 29

08:02:58:16

[How did you get involved in applied creativity?]

Early in my career at Proctor and Gamble I was introduced to creative problem solving. As a result of that particular course, I thought, ‘my God, I’m a creative illiterate.’ I saw the value, the need of having the skills of creativity, but as a result of getting my Master’s degree in engineering I felt like that I truly was not very creative. So, I took it upon myself personally to learn more about creativity and start applying it in my personal life. As a result started within two years after graduating from college, I started two businesses on the side while working full time for an organization.

08:03:23:14

08:04:22:00

[Could you define Soft Skills, and give examples of their use?]

Soft skills are those are those skills that aren’t easily measurable, that you can’t always identify when they’re working. It’s not so much right or wrong or black and white, but more those skills that have some grayness to them. For example, creativity is an obvious soft skill even though I believe being an engineer that you can measure the effects of creativity to a very high degree. Even though the skill itself is soft I think that a lot of the aspects of creativity can be measured and applied and sometimes looked at as more of a hard skill. Communication I think is a soft skill, some people are better communicators than others, but how much better?

08:04:39:07

08:05:12:08

[How do you train people to excel in these soft skills?]

First of all we’re strong believers in learning soft skills via applied learning. It’s not something that I think you think about intellectually and then go apply. So, being big believers in applied learning that’s how we go about teaching soft and hard skills. By practicing them, by using them in real world examples, by playing around with them, by ‘them’ I mean the soft skills, I think that’s how you help individuals start to apply soft skills.

08:05:22:00

08:05:52:04

[Do you believe everyone is creative?]

I very much believe that every individual is very creative, to the degree – Tony Buzan talks about his belief that we as human beings all use about one per cent of our mental capacities. Some of the research shows that individuals use only about 10 and 15 percent of their creative abilities. I think the potential for us to be so much more creative than we actually are is just unlimited.

08:07:03:20

08:08:13:25

[How do you integrate CPS into the enhancement of soft skills?]

I believe it is possible to integrate the soft skills into an organization or into making change a variety of ways. One is every organization has business problems. And I’m a believer that you help people learn a soft skill by applying them to real world problems. For example, if you’re teaching a group to learn divergent thinking, you can use divergent thinking to do good fact finding or to discover problems, just as you can use convergent thinking to narrow down and select key facts or key problems. The notion of applying soft skills, I think, in industry since most industry people are very concerned with moving quickly and getting applied results. For that reason, I think you have to help them learn the soft skills particularly in an applied environment. And without that I think you lose rapport with business people very quickly and I think they start to challenge you from the start.

08:08:21:09

08:08:58:25

[Would you define divergent and convergent thinking?]

Divergent thinking for me is where an individual says I am going to go for quantity, I am going to free wheel, I am going to use my imagination and the knowledge I have to get out on the table the information you’re seeking. For example, if you’re doing some fact finding on a given problem, divergent thinking aimed at fact finding is getting out on the table or saying, capturing, or writing everything you know or think of about that given issue that is factually based.

08:10:39:24

08:11:26:24

[How do you merge CPS and productivity?]

I have been fortunate to have many opportunities to help organizations use the creative problem solving process to get productivity changes and productivity improvements. One of my very first experiences was with Frito Lay where we saved $700,000,000 in a six-year period. And we did that using a lot of different strategies. First of all we had a corporate strategy, it was called “Offset,” where we were trying to offset the effects of inflation over the upcoming years. Our goal was to save $500,000,000 over five years and the actual results was $700,000,000 in six years. So we exceeded our expectations greatly.

08:11:26:24

08:12:32:04

We taught creative problem solving to over 5000 people. We formed small multifunctional teams to go focus on some very specific business problems. We encouraged the different manufacturing plants to learn creative problem solving to use it to hit their plant goals, and to even re-apply many of the ideas that other plants had come up with. When you’ve got an organization that has many different subgroups doing the same kind of work, a $10,000 idea in one place can become a $1,000,000 idea if it’s reapplied in many other locations. So, it’s sometimes very easy to get large dollar savings, sometimes it hard because you have overcome sometimes corporate barriers, spending money barriers, and just people’s attitudinal barriers to get process skills used on a day to day basis in a large organization.

08:12:47:18

08:13:15:06

[Take #2]

I have had lots of experience implementing the use of creative problem solving to help organizations get very high productive results. For example, at Frito Lay we got $700,000,000 in bottom line savings in a six year period. We did that by forming small multifunctional groups, teaching them creative problem solving and having them focus on key business problems that needed changing and needed improvement.

08:13:26:15

08:14:07:07

[Can you give another example?]

One in particular that I remember, we had a group called the ‘common carrier task force.’ This organization was spending about $320,000,000 a year using common carriers. We formed a multifunctional group…worked in the first six months we saved $3,000,000 using creative problem solving to first of all do a lot of good fact finding to understand where the money was going, where we could save money. So the first $3,000,000 was very easy, we got it in six months; within another six months we saved another $3,000,000. So, in just the first year, just with that one small group we had $6,000,000 in savings.

08:14:52:16

08:15:48:24

[Can you give an example were tolerance of ambiguity was used successfully?]

I’ve had a variety of situations where when using creative problem solving people in the problem-solving group had a very difficult time deferring judgment. They came into the problem certainly having some knowledge about the problem and more often than not also having some preconceived solutions or notions as far as what actions should be taken to resolve the issue. Sometimes these people have a hard time letting go of that solution or preconceived notion to just be open to understanding the facts in greater details, to seeing different perspectives. Sometimes the salespeople would have a hard time hearing the manufacturing people. Not only a hard time hearing them, but a hard time letting go of their preconceived answer…to hear another functions’ perspective on a situation.

08:16:06:23

08:16:52:23

[Who and what has most influenced you?]

The one situation that most influenced me was when early in my career at Proctor and Gamble, when I attended a creative problem solving class. And when going through that class I realized that I didn’t defer judgment very well, that I wasn’t good at divergent thinking and that I didn’t use a very structured problem solving approach. Using some discipline and starting to apply that process in my personal life first because it was less risky was very beneficial to me. Then, when I got comfortable using it in my personal life then it was easier for me to use that same process in the business world, my confidence level was higher.

08:17:03:00

08:17:41:29

[Was there one person who turned you on to CPS?]

Dr. Min Basadur at the time was working at Proctor and Gamble, he was a full time employee and so was I. He was teaching creative problem solving at Proctor and Gamble when I was there. He was the first person to introduce me to creative problem solving. Then about three years after I was first introduced to creative problem solving I started coming to the Creative Problem Solving Institute. At which I realized there was an entire world of people who had interest in the topic of creativity and was interested in organizations and people be more creative.

08:17:44:00

08:17:49:29

[How long have you been coming?]

I think this is my 16^th year I have been attending the Creative Problem Solving Institute.

08:18:02:00

08:18:51:02

[How are plans of action incorporated in CPS?]

First of all, one trend I see in the industry is that, particularly manufacturing groups they sometimes have a ready, aim, fire mentality. They are very quick to jump to an action plan without doing what I call good diagnostic work. A quote I like to use is ‘prescription without diagnosis is malpractice.’ And, many times I see manufacturing groups, because of their high need to take action, jump straight to action planning before doing any good diagnostic work. The power of creative problem solving is that it causes you to do good diagnostic work; to use your creativity in every step of the process, so that, when it comes time to take action you have thought out a neat action plan that people buy into.

08:19:02:16

08:19:33:16

[Do you find there are certain places or people who get in the way of implementing?]

I think it’s only natural in organizations that when it comes time to implement your plan some people not only get in the way of implementing, but also some people have to be the key to make sure that change does happen. When I work with groups I usually like to identify the main client, meaning the person who owns the problem. Because if they are not willing to take responsibility and step up to the plate when it comes time for action planning, then why should other members of the problem solving team.

08:19:44:21

08:20:20:06

[Does a particular person own a solution or plan of action?]

I think it’s nice when only one person owns the specific solution or a specific plan of action only because it is that person who knows that they are ultimately responsible. And the organization knows they’re ultimately responsible. But that’s not always the real world. Many times multiple clients or multiple people will own a given action plan or a given solution. And sometimes that is necessary because it takes multiple people to implement or make the change happen.

08:20:33:07

08:21:18:25

[How do you get people to accept a plan of action?]

When I’m working with a group or facilitating a problem solving session if we get to action planning and there is not a lot of momentum to take action and move ahead it is usually an indication that at some point previous in the process there hasn’t been ‘buy in.’ Maybe there are some facts that didn’t surface that they know are still out there. Maybe they didn’t fully understand the idea that was selected. So, one of my clues is if we get to action planning and there is a lot of energy and people are readily signing up to implement, then I know things have gone well and there is high ‘buy in.’ If that energy is not there it might mean that we’ve got to go back in process because we missed something.

08:21:31:29

08:21:54:16

[Can you go back in the process?]

My belief is that ‘yes’ you can go back in process and sometimes you have to. I think if we look at creative problem solving as a linear process, we miss a major opportunity, because the creative problems aren’t linear. And the way you get to a final action plan there are many different paths which you might take to get to that final action plan.

08:22:29:00

08:23:16:13

[Should an action plan be pre-tested?]

My rule of thumb about action plans is first of all they should be detailed and you should use a lot of common sense because you are getting ready to make change in an organization. Sometimes I think it does make sense to pretest or to try out the idea on a small scale because it gives you a chance to learn from it, to tweak it or adjust it before you roll it into the larger organization. So sometimes I feel it is very needed and very necessary. At the same time, when you are working with creative problems there is no one right answer so that doesn’t mean you should always pretest. I know some situations where maybe the best thing was to take it full scale immediately. So it is situationally dependent whether you should pretest or not.

08:23:24:15

08:23:50:16

[Please define strategic innovation?]

My definition of strategic innovation would be that there is a very well thought out plan that fits the organization and fits the organization’s need and is targeted at tapping and best utilizing the resources of the organization to achieve some productive organizational change.

08:23:58:25

08:24:46:06

[How does CPS work with strategic innovation?]

For an organization to achieve strategic or innovative change, creative problem solving is one tool that, first of all, can be used on a very day to day basis to make change, but it can also – the individual skills, such as deferring judgment or doing divergent thinking are absolutely required if you’re going to think in the future and create a vision for where the organization is going. The individual skills that make up creative problem solving are used to do planning and create strategic innovation as well as the entire creative problem solving process on a day to day or week to week basis as required.

08:24:51:23

08:25:25:24

[Can you define deferral of judgment?]

For me, deferral of judgment is the act of setting judgment aside to help you use your imagination more freely or more purely. I think it’s very hard for the brain to be able to both judge or to make decisions or to converge while at the same time trying to be open. Deferring judgment is simply setting judgment aside, giving yourself permission to free wheel, create and use imagination and knowledge.

08:25:45:10

08:26:06:05

[Can you define strategic innovative change, champion, tracking systems, and adaptability?]

From my Frito Lay experience, it takes more than just training in organizations to bring about strategic innovative change. That whole notion of having a vision of where you’re going, is an absolute must. It’s one way that you can use to communicate to the organization where you’re going and why.

08:26:06:05

08:26:31:14

Having a champion in the organization who will fund the change, protect it and even coach, I think is another must. I think usually as you’re making change in organizations, you’ve probably got to add to your skill sets. Probably the skills that have gotten you to where you are may help you to continue to grow, but you probably need to continue to add to your skill sets.

08:26:31:14

08:27:01:29

Tracking systems is another, I think, must to help you make strategic change. Most organizations have tracking systems, but sometimes only around cost or quality and when you’re making strategic innovative change I think you also have to track your adaptability efforts, which is your rate of change. So I think, at least from my experience, that it takes more than, it takes an entire strategic effort to get strategic change.

08:27:25:20

08:28:11:02

[How do you combine running and CPS?]

First of all, I believe there is a very strong link between being physically fit and being mentally fit. Because I think our body is a system and for me, personally, being physically fit makes it very easy for me to have lots of energy anytime I am working with groups of people or even trying to think creatively, so that’s one way. Secondly, I have found that when I run, I experience freedom both physically and mentally. So, when I’m out running, it is one of my most creative times; when I can not only run and feel free to breath and doing something for me personally, but it also lets my mind run and I let it go wherever it wants to go.

08:28:15:20

08:28:56:14

[Does that freedom occur when you sculpt?]

Sculpting for me is very much like the creative process because it takes both discipline, which means sometimes doing things you don’t like to do, like when I sculpt, there are certain things I like more than others. But I know that if I am going to finish the project, I have to do all phases of it. So, there’s some discipline involved but there‘s also some freedom. And I think the dichotomy or that paradox between the freedom that is required to be creative and discipline that is required to finish the job and to do the things you don’t like to do, very much parallels the creative process.