TAPE # and time code

Audio

B28

Kathy Leydon-Conway

05:01:19:18

05:02:03:28

[Would you start out by introducing yourself?]

I’m Kathy Leydon-Conway, I live and work in Duxbury, Massachusetts. I’ve been coming to the Creative Education Foundation, coming to CPSI, for, I think maybe this is my 13^th years. I have been running my own business for 10 years doing training and consulting to small to midsize organizations. I work with business, industry, nonprofits, and more and more with Boards, I am also doing a lot of mediating lately, and I present -  I facilitate weekends for woman on the topic of nurturing yourselves.

05:02:06:00

05:02:26:25

[Could you define creativity?]

To me, creativity is simply looking at things differently. It’s reframing what’s already there. It’s taking what’s here and looking at it in a way that is new and different.

05:02:29:00

05:03:16:20

[How do you use creativity and the CPS process in your work?]

I sometimes use creativity and CPS process by training other people in it, by using it with a client with a client on a client’s issue or problem. I also use it, I think, its part of me at this point. It’s internalized. I don’t even think sometimes of Creative Problem Solving and I’m using it. I certainly use it in designing any kind of intervention that I would be using with a client or any kind of training I would be using with a client. I always expand or look for numbers of options as to what I might be doing and after that, cut back, and cut back, and cut back into its simplest forms.

05:04:34:15

05:04:58:22

[Connections, that’s a term that comes up often, define it for me.]

Connections, as a woman, connections are my life. It’s about everything I do, whether its connections with people, ideas, connections with things. I believe that the woman in me wants to see the world as a connecting world, as a collaborating world rather than as a competitive world.

05:05:00:29

05:07:26:05

[Can you give us an example of a data gathering success?]

A data gathering success, umm, Yes.

A few years back, there were a small group woman, who were not getting, these where businesswoman. And there were not getting what they needed from the local Chambers and other business organizations, the rotaries and all those things, there are a half dozen of them.

And I was not one of them, but they started a small business association, The South Shore Woman’s Business Network. Umm, When it grew to about 20 – 25 members, we had an organizational meeting, and we wanted a number of ideas about what we could do as far as getting people involved, we were talking about running a conference at the time, a number of different things. We had a meeting, and umm, maybe 25 – 30 women showed up, business women showed up, and um, we, um, brainstormed, I facilitated the meeting, and we brainstormed and um, I had toys on the table, and we really wanted to think about all the possibilities of things that we could do. And, To get people interested. Um, I have been on the Board of Directors for the last four years of this organization, we are now, in less then 5 years we went to over 600 members. And we run at least 50 events a year including breakfast’s and luncheons, and business after hours, and an expo, we collaborate with all the local other business organizations, the chambers, and they ummmmm, eh, rotaries, and all those things. We are collaborating all the time for running meetings. Its out of that first meeting, so many people have back and said, its because of that meeting that I got involved in this organization, and those 25 or so women are the base of that organization to this day. So it was from that meeting that this whole thing grew. And this is not just an organization of women, its called The South Shore Woman’s Business Network, and about 20% of our members are men.

05:07:29:00

05:08:14:12

[Take #2]

Okay…data gathering example I have is organizational meeting from , um, about 5 years ago when a small group of woman were getting together to decide what they wanted to do in forming an organization that they were forming. At this point there are over 600 members, both men and women in business who are apart of that organization, and it was from that initial meeting where we brainstormed all the possibilities.

05:08:15:00

05:09:39:28

[You mentioned brainstorming, let’s jump to that for a moment, can you define for me how you lead a brainstorming process?]

When I lead a brainstorming process, I will typically talk about what are the guidelines to brainstorming so I will talk about what it means to be nonjudgmental, to differ judgment. I will talk about how important it is to go for quantity, and from that quality will emerge. How important it is to hitchhike on other people’s ideas. I will give examples of those things and then I will stop the brainstorming process. One of the things, I really love to do with brainstorming is reverse brainstorming where if you are looking for, if your looking, oh lets, um, the best way to have incentives for a group of people, and I will say what’s the best way to de-motivate them, rather then to motivate them, and we will come up with all these crazy horrible things and from those, we then turn and say “Wow, we can do this, we can do this, .there are a lot of ‘Aha’s that come out of that.

05:09:40:00

05:10:17:20

[You talked about the importance of quantity over quality, how do you get that point across?]

How do I get that point across, I will brainstorm about usually about, some, some small little thing, it could be - what could we do with this cloths pin - kind of thing, a simple tool , and just have them go and go and go, until, and then come back and combine some of them and look at what we could come up with and people usually see pretty quickly the value in quantity in um getting to quality.

05:10:18:00

05:11:04:12

[Hitchhiking, how do you define it and how do you get people to do it?]

How do I define it and get..um, In hitchhiking – um - I will talk about something, it could be the elephant, and say, OK, it’s a pink elephant or it’s a purple elephant and you go off on colors or we could get to, someone will mention something about elephant, and it could be we go off on kangaroo’s and camels and chimpanzees, it could that because we are talking about animals, now we will talk about minerals or vegetables…so you can see how talking about one word can take you in a lot of different directions and that’s what hitchhiking is to me.

05:11:05:22

05:11:39:09

[The end of the CPS process talks about, call for action, first of all can you define a plan for action?]

A plan for action is really a plan for implementation and if you haven’t gotten the “buy in” along the way, you don’t have a plan, you need to have everyone involved that are going to be implementing otherwise it’s a nice exercise but…

05:11:40:00

05:12:08:01

[How have you gotten the involvement from the beginning of the process?] 

Somebody has to own the problem. You know, whose problem is it. Is it a particular persons problem is it a departments problem, is it a whole organizations problem. And get those people into the room. You may have other people in the room, as far ideators, but you need to have the person in the room, somebody who’s going to be making the decision, and it comes back to that client.

05:12:09:00

05:12:56:25

[Do you find that that is an easy step or a hard step to perform…the plan for action?]

The plan for action, oh lots of times, people just love to do, all this great brainstorming, and this is so much fun to do, this converging, and all that. And then they get to something and say yeah, yeah this is what we need to do and then, brbrbrbyeah - things just kind of fall off. I think really keeping them involved in getting commitment along the way and having them involved in the decision-making really helps and you have to have the people there, for one person to go and solve a problem and then go out and say – Ok, this is what I want you and you to do, is much less a “buy in” at that point.

05:12:58:00

05:14:49:01

[Can you give me a specific example from your business where this (CPS) has come to some bottom line positive result?]

I have used Creative Problem Solving…with a bank. They were looking at how things were working operationally…and they got to the end of the process…and then they were doing the solution step…and we ended up with two let’s go in this direction towards operation and let’s go in this direction towards customer service…so what I did…I said forget all of this go back and …pay attention to your gut and let your gut come up with the answer and 11 out of 12 people went in the same direction and it changed the course of the organization.

05:14:54:06

05:16:11:21

[…how do you get people to defer judgment?]

One of the things that I use for deferring judgment is to think about the tapes we have inside our heads where we are always thinking about what I want to say…it’s a listening skill basically where I want somebody to be hearing what is being said…so I encourage (using hand motions pointing to her head) people to think about this as a radio or tape going off in my head and shut that off…don’t judge myself, don’t judge anyone else, and I think the hardest part is to not judge myself…and we talk about it…examples of judging and how we don’t want to do those things…