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TAPE # and
time code
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Audio
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B6
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06:00:58:01
06:01:22:09
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[Could you begin by
introducing yourself…]
I’m Kate Connor and I’m a social psychologist and
my work is with organizations. I
do a lot with assessing the capabilities that people have and help form
them into teams and help the team become effective by using various
processes to marshal their resources.
So, that’s pretty much my focus.
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[Could you
define creativity?]
For me creativity is the ability to create the new. I
would kind of distinguish from mass production, reutilization.
It’s taking something and even changing the structure of it.
So, whatever is new and unique that’s the creative as I see it.
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06:02:32:15
06:03:25:25
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[How
did you first get involved with creativity and creativity training?]
The way I first got exposed to creativity and
creativity training was, one of the threads in that was that I was
teaching college English and creative writing.
And so I became exposed to the works of Alex Osborn and Sid Parnes
and some their work and how to teach people to be creative.
I was on a program with Sid Parnes at a conference and he had to
sit through my session and after the session he asked me if I would come
and be a trainer. So that’s
how I got involved with the Creative Problem Solving Institute and that
was almost 20 years ago. That’s
my formal connection but I had been reading the journal and reading some
of the materials way before I had incorporated that into my training.
And now I’ve moved with applying it to business and other
organizations.
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06:03:39:12
06:04:22:05
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[Could you tell us
about an, ‘aha’ moments]
You know a lot of my “aha!” moments I have had
have been right here at CPSI. I
was trying to figure out what to do about a particular course structure I
was trying to set up when I was developing the management program at one
of the colleges. Just working
in one of the sessions and seeing ways to stretch ideas and to build them
in a different way helped me see a whole new view on how to do that.
I didn’t have to depend on the resources I thought I had to
depend on, but that there was a whole new array of resources I could
depend on. It was just that
process that helped me see that.
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06:04:29:17
06:05:03:26
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[Could you
elaborate on some of that process?]
Well, that particular one was idea generation, which
is only one piece of the problem solving process. It’s the one people tend to focus on, but it’s not the
most important, they’re all important pieces. But that one is how to
build new ideas out of other ideas you have.
So you can kind of look at the same idea in a way that shrinks it
or that makes it larger or that turns it inside out those kinds of
techniques. There’s another
fuller process of which idea generation is just one piece.
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06:05:07:11
06:06:12:12
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[Could you
describe that fuller process?]
The process itself, if I were to describe it,
basically there are five steps in the Osborn-Parnes model. The first step
would be fact finding - once
I have a problem, it’s important to stop and see what I’ve got.
And then there would be problem finding which is defining what it
is I want to do and only then do I have idea finding. But, what most of us
do is jump right to idea finding, right to the solutions. But after I do the idea finding, I still have to figure out
someway to boil it down to a really good solution. We call that solution finding.
And then after that I have acceptance finding.
I can have a good solution, but if I don’t have a good action
plan that takes into account resistance and obstacles and things like that
it’s not going to do me much good. What I find in business a lot of
people will move right to solutions and then when they want to get
creative they’ll start brainstorming. And that’s what I find to be the
mistake.
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06:06:24:03
06:06:59:14
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[Can you
give us examples of action planning in business?]
Action planning.
I think action planning is used all the time.
But my read on it is that a lot of times that’s the piece they
are most familiar with is action planning. But I don’t know that their
actions are always solutions to the right problem and I think that’s why
we have a lot of people in business that have to revisit their action
plans. Either the people did
not really feel they owned the actions in there, they weren’t convinced
it was really going to solve the problem or they were in disagreement over
what the problem was.
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06:07:03:02
06:08:06:21
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[Who owns the
solution?]
That would be hard to say
- it depends on what the problem is - who owns the solution.
It’s an interesting question ‘who owns any solution?’ It
would probably be the person who would have to take responsibility for
getting the result involved. So we even have what we call owners when we deal with
problem solving. That person
is the one who is going to take the responsibility for carrying it out.
For instance, one of the projects I just finished working on was to
take a particular product one of my clients has and bring that product in
at a certain cost reduction and the owner of that is a joint situation
R&D and Operations. Because
R&D has to get in there and reformulate it and Operations had to make
sure that they could process it with their equipment.
So that’s an example of where you’re going to have joint
owners.
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06:08:14:13
06:08:42:28
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[You have
talked about teams…is that an example of joint ownership?]
It could be. Your
team can also be more than owners. You
see somebody on the team
could be an owner, especially cross-functional teams.
Like for the formulation of the new product, R&D would be the
direct owner of that. But, operations people on that team would have information
that would help R&D create the product mix that was going to be the
most conducive to being well run.
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06:08:47:17
06:08:54:24
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[Could you define –
what a team is?]
Team basically, if you’re looking at a definition
of teams, is a group of people focused on a common goal.
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06:09:04:26
06:09:44:07
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[Expanding
that…how is it beneficial to an organization?]
The nice thing about a team and the value of having a
team do something instead of an individual is you get the different
perspectives and you get the different resources.
People think differently, some people think in terms of models,
other people think from their gut, other people think from evidence and
data. And you need a mix of those kind of people because if I’m a data
person, I’m not going to sense something that the data doesn’t show
me. It may be deeper than the
data, I need those gut people around.
If I don’t know what to do with that and the relationship of one
thing to another, I’m going to be in trouble and that’s where you need
the model people.
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06:09:57:26
06:11:13:12
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[Who should use
the CPS process?]
This process that we’re using here is useful for
just about anything. I see a
problem as being the difference between what I have and what I want, where
I am and where I want to be – and that’s life – constantly. If you can think of a problem like a rubber band that
you’re stretching. And anytime we have a stretch, if we say that
that’s a problem, then having a good process to solve that problem is
going to be very beneficial. It
occurs personally, it occurs interpersonally, whether I’m with one other
person or with a group. It
occurs in terms of the processes I use to deal with my environment, it
even involves systems and stuff. So
I would see this process as being useful for just about anything. And you
don’t always have to bring a group together to use it. I found myself
going through it in my head making sure I was diverging, do I have enough
options, have I selected enough possibilities before I honed in on one,
have I really defined what problem I need to solve, do I really have all
the information on this that I want.
And maybe my problem is to find more information.
So I can do it individually as well as with a team.
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06:11:18:04
06:11:58:05
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[Could
you define divergent and convergent thinking?]
Divergent thinking is, I often think of it as having
this little relationship here with these two lines, this angle.
Divergent thinking opens up to all kinds of possibilities.
But, at some point I can’t be left with just all these
possibilities, so at some point I have to narrow it, that’s my
convergent, where I make my selection of one or more items.
So divergent thinking gives me the broad array.
Convergent thinking forces me to come in and select. And you need
both. That’s been one of the problems with a lot of
brainstorming experiences people have had.
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06:12:05:07
06:13:11:14
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[Expand on
examples of “bad” process]
For example, one of the executives I was talking to
once did not want to have a lot of time spent on creative problem solving.
And when I tried to find out why, it was because he had sat through
a brainstorming session that one of his vice presidents had done and it
was a lot of wonderful, wild ideas all over the place but, they didn’t
know what to do with them. And that, in fact, is a good example of what’s wrong when
you don’t use a good process because they started with the idea
generation stage, at idea finding. They
brainstormed some wonderful ideas, but they weren’t brainstorming on the
same problem. They never went
thru the problem finding stage. And
not only that, they would start arguing about the items because they
didn’t agree on the fact finding stage.
So, that can create a lot of problems but, the other problem they
have, even if they were at the right stage they didn’t have a good
convergent process. They didn’t know how to pick from this mess of wonderful,
wild ideas.
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06:13:15:28
06:13:48:27
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[What
suggestions would you give to improve that?]
I think it’s very important, and here you can use
diverging again, to diverge on your criteria. Alright now, we have a wonderful basket full of these
goodies called great wild ideas. How
are we going to select? Let’s
think of all the possible criteria that we could use to select some of
these ideas. OK, those are
the possible criteria we could use, which ones are going to be the most
important for us right now. So
you diverge, then you converge again.
Same process.
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06:14:11:28 06:15:30:23
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[Could
you define the Hartman profile?]
The Hartman profile is a profile that we use in a
number of organizations that measures how people actually think.
It’s different from assessments like the Meyers-Briggs or the
DISC because in those we usually have to tell about ourselves.
This one actually has me do a mental task and then it measures how
I actually think. Hartman who
developed it got the Nobel Peace nomination for his work.
Because of his ability to measure actual uniqueness in people and
how that actually think. It
has been developed into an assessment that will measure your ability to
think in terms of models, to use your intuition, to observe the world
around you and combinations of those.
And so, it helps us when we’re building teams, it helps us to be
sure that we have enough people who are real clear about modeling or
people that have a real good sense of being in touch with the world right
now, or people that have a real good ability to tie into the core of
things, in the uniqueness, in the holistic part of things.
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[So its
not about role types…social roles…]
It’s interesting, one thing about this profile is
it doesn’t measure the content of a persons thinking, it measures the
process they use. So whether
I’m a democrat or a republican this tells how I will be a democrat or a
republican in my thinking. As
far as roles go, there will be certain roles that will be helped by
certain profiles. For
instance, if my role is to work alone by myself all day, doing conceptual
work, then I will probably find it easier if I’m a person who focuses on
the conceptual piece. Whereas,
if I were somebody who is very pragmatic and in touch with my environment,
I might not be as satisfied in that kind of a job.
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But that’s why the value of a team is that you want
different people. In fact we
hire for that at one of the companies that I work with. We will hire for differences.
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06:16:50:19 06:17:31:22
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[Can you
give an example of that…]
Definitely. I
thing it is in the fact finding stage. There are different kinds of facts.
There are gut level facts, like opinions, that we can’t really
support with evidence. There
are pragmatic facts where I see the measurable evidence.
And there are judgmental facts, or conceptual facts, where we make
an evaluation. And some people will pick up some of it better than others. But you have a more thorough consideration of the facts if
you can have people in that group who can think all those different ways.
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06:17:49:22
06:18:53:06
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[Who
has most influenced you in the creative process?]
If I were to think about who influenced me most, as
far as creativity goes, it would probably be a number of people.
Sid Parnes, obviously. I
can remember coming to CPSI way back in the late 70’s, early 80’s and
having his session where he kind of walked us through the process and
having real wonderful ‘ahas’ come through because of that process.
I can go back even further to my family, because we were a large
family and we amused ourselves. We
all developed a lot of creativity. So,
I can go back that far. There
were articles in the journal, when it first came out that I remember,
really got me excited about the fact that they could actually measure
creativity, they could actually teach people how to be creative.
I think some of the work of people that have applied this to
business have been very helpful to me.
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06:18:56:00
06:19:52:09
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[How do you
teach people to be creative?]
I firmly believe that if I’m going to be pragmatic,
I tend to be pragmatic and I want to use creativity to get results.
And I think with results, it’s very important to have knowledge.
That’s great, I want to know about the frozen food industry or my
product or whatever it is. And
I need a good process for getting those results.
But it’s not enough, I think having skill in the process.
So what I try to do is teach people a process that they can use and
help them use the process, facilitate them to use the process so that they
can move from just knowing the process to being able to carry it out.
It’s not an automatic thing.
The creative problem solving process is more deliberate.
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06:20:02:21
06:21:14:12
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[Could you
share some personal examples from business?]
There some wonderful examples I think when I think
when I think of using this process in business.
And some of them unfortunately are examples of what happens because
people don’t understand that the whole process is important.
I use what I call a pre-consult to sit with the owner and find out,
before we bring the team together, exactly what the issue is.
And I can remember doing this pre-consult with one of our marketing
people about a product problem they were having.
And I did such a good job with the pre-consult, where we laid out
he initial facts and then laid out the problem he saw in those facts and
then we got interrupted before we got a chance set up a time to bring the
team together. So, when I
went back to him to continue that pre-consult, he had already decided he
had solved his problem. We
did such a good job in the pre-consult that he had begun to sort out some
of the issues and began to see what some of his problems were.
As it turned out, they did have to go back and re-do that a little
bit because we had not finished the whole process.
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06:21:15:14 06:22:10:05
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But, there was an example, for instance, one of the
lines with one of the plants I work with had very severe problems with
neatness. If you’re in a
food plant that can be a very strong issue.
And this one team that used the creative problem solving process
was able to find out that the actual problem was very different from what
they thought it was. They
thought it was a matter of associate motivation and that wasn’t it at
all. So they could have worked until they were blue in the face
to try to bribe the associates to be motivated.
That wasn’t the issue at all.
It was a matter of measuring.
The associates didn’t know how bad the housekeeping was because
they never saw the reports on the spill rates and things like that.
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06:22:27:19
06:23:26:10
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[Can you
explain the importance of finishing the process?]
If you do a piece of the process, you’re probably
further ahead than if you didn’t do anything at all. But there’s a
danger in not finishing the process, because you could get a wonderful
look at the facts and define your problem and then really not do a good
job of idea generation. Or
you do a good job of idea generation, but don’t select really the best
solution. Or you don’t
bother to do you action plan. And so you have this great solution that sits in a drawer
somewhere. So that whole
process is really, really important right from the beginning. Finding out what the facts are, what are the challenges in
those facts, what are some of the ways you can respond to those challenges
and then carrying it right through. In
fact I use a wheel now to symbolize where, that simplex wheel that has the
same steps as the Osborn-Parnes Model.
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06:23:37:15 06:24:37:25
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[Can
you define and give examples of deferral of judgment?]
To me it seems that deferral of judgment is probably
the most difficult and ironically the one people think they know the best.
I’ll get into a group that may not be well trained with the
process, unfortunately that’s what we’re going to find more often than
not until we get more people trained, but when people don’t understand
deferral of judgment you’ll find them critiquing things right away even
themselves. They will give a
suggestion and then immediately comment on it or laugh or something like
that to discount it. And that’s the danger.
Also, they don’t defer judgment as to knowing what the problem
is. They’re sure they know
what the problem is and by the way they have the solution ready. So, you
have a lot of meetings that people come in with that agenda to convince
me, the other person, of their definition of the problem and their
solution. So it’s really
nonproductive not to have deferral of judgment.
And yet, it is very difficult.
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06:24:45:04
06:25:37:13
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[Could you
tell us more about the Hartman Profile?]
When you have a team that is trying to build an
organization or solve a problem or move something forward to a goal
diversity is really important. I
had a client that was a wonderful client, wonderfully creative people but
they were all unconventional pragmatic types with great intuition.
As a result their organization did not see a big shift in their
industry and they weren’t ready for it. It’s because they all thought
alike. But, they were the
most participative organization in that industry that there was.
They had participative management before anybody else in their
industry. But, because they didn’t have diversity on their team there
was nobody there that was conceptual enough and focused on strategic
thinking enough to see what was coming.
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06:25:38:22 06:26:04:26
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Therefore I think it’s important that we have a way
of finding out how people actually think, not how they say they think.
Not how they think they should think, how they actually think.
Hartman profile is the only one I know that does that.
All the others ask you to describe yourself. They don’t describe you and how you do it.
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06:26:32:09
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