Building Leadership:Stimulating Creativity Through C.U.R.I.O.S.I.T.Y.

Building Leadership:Stimulating Creativity Through C.U.R.I.O.S.I.T.Y.
“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” Albert Einstein Instructor: Suzanne Merritt An Infopeople Workshop Spring 2009

This workshop is brought to you by the Infopeople Project.
Infopeople is a federally-funded grant project supported by the California State Library. It provides a wide variety of training to California libraries. Infopeople workshops are offered around the state and are open registration on a first-come first-serve basis. For a complete list of workshops, and for other information about the project go to the Infopeople website at infopeople.org. 2

Workshop Overview CREATE CONNECT COLLECT Solutions Library Challenge
The three steps are collect stories of innovation from the world around you Learn how to connect the great ideas found in those stories to your own work challenges And finally, create a solution that meets the need you identified. This is a natural progression you may aready follow. Today we will dig in more deeply to each step so you can use it and teach it to others. COLLECT Stories

WELCOME Exercise #1 Short Stories
Hello! My name is... Introductions: Name Library Position Life Stories Break the room into groups of 5. Each group needs a volunteer time keeper. Introduce yourselves by giving your name, library, position and telling your life story. But you only have 30 seconds to tell it. (demonstrate by telling my life story) Re mix groups and give next story assignment risk or adventure story Repeat one more time love story, what you love most about your work. I’m Curious... Was there anything you heard in the short stories that sparked your curiosity? Small groups allow people to really get to know something about each other. Builds important leadership skill of getting to the point of your story very quickly. Requires risk taking. Demonstrates the importance of doing a physical warm up before starting any creativity program. Demonstrates one of the curiosity factors we will work with later, using the resources you have in a creative way. i.e. everything in the training is part of the training, even the introductions.

Overview Leaders are Curious About Creativity
Always curious about how to keep our creative edge. Fresh ways of looking for new opportunities to innovate. SAY I work with leaders in many industries, pharma, communications, manufacturing. The challenges are different but the need is the same. How to bring out the full creative potential of those you work with. The purpose of this workshop is to provide some fresh ways of looking at your work. The tools and practices we learn today can be used in teams or on your own. This method is designed to integrate into daily life as a stance. Think of this approach to innovation as a way to be, rather than another thing to do. Be curious about creativity today! Overview

Be Curious Today Your Leadership Challenge How can you use creativity to meet today’s needs and tomorrow’s challenges in order to provide the highest quality of library service to the people of California? Today we will focus specifically on how you can use creativity to meet challenges you face daily in your library. I will be introducing a simple three step process you can use again on your own or with others. Overview

From Curiosity to Creativity
Collect ideas from stories that attract your attention Make Connections others overlook through questions Create grounded growth opportunities and ideas SAY In addition to looking at our challenges from a fresh perspective by asking creative questions, there are three other strategies we can use to create innovation. We can become more observant and use the things that attract our attention as as inspiration. We can strengthen our connection making capacity, the ability to see how two things that seem unrelated can be connected to create a new product or service. Get good at seeing the potential of an idea that might otherwise be tossed aside. So to do all this we are going to follow a simple there step process that is designed to build all these skills. Overview

Benefits of This Approach
Efficiency: requires less time than traditional brainstorming Engagement: increases staff sense of meaning and participation Excellence: improves quality of ideas implemented The approach I am going to offer you today has three powerful advantages over other approaches. You can, however integrate other tools you may already be using into this process. Let’s get started Overview

1600’s Cabinets of Curiosity and Wonder: Collections of rarities from nature and man.
Simple Cabinet Entire Room Whole House Precursor of the Museum Shrine of Muses SAY Early passion for collecting dates back the the 1600’s perhaps you have heard of Curiosity Cabinets. These collections often began as a small display cabinet but quickly expanded to fill an entire room of a house and often over ran the house requiring the addition of new wings and extra rooms. These early curiosity cabinets were the precursor of our modern museums. Their purpose was to educate and inspire and most of all to induce as sense of wonder and awe at the marvels of this world, from nature or man. The collector was on a quest for knowledge, driven by curiosity. Overview

Quest for Knowledge Motivated Collectors
Curiosity Cabinets Princes, popes, merchants and scholars, hunted for curious treasures as they traveled the world. SAY All sorts of people created Curiosity Cabinets. As people began to travel to exotic lands they began to collect objects, artifacts and rarities. At first these collections were kept quite private but in time that changed. When they would return from their travels to distant lands they would put on a special exhibition to allow others to view their discoveries. No doubt they aimed to inspire others with what they had found. In the same way, today you will be creating your own curiosity cabinet and filling it with stories of innovation, meant to inspire others Overview

Your C.U.R.I.O.S.I.T.Y. Cabinet Your notebook as portable cabinet.
Collect inspiring stories. Microcosm of your own life and work experiences. See something in the world with fresh eyes daily. Do any of you keep an idea journal or notebook? SAY Since you are the adventurer today you will need your own Curiosity Cabinet to collect what you find. Keeping a Curiosity Cabinet is a central element of this approach. This Cabinet becomes a microcosm of your life experiences. When something attracts your attention or stirs your interest add it to the Cabinet. We are going to have plenty of time today to get this started. The key is to add a little something to your collection every day. Overview

is a favorite tool of artist and scientists.
Keeping a VISUAL JOURNAL is a favorite tool of artist and scientists. Get in the habit and see how fast ideas come to you too! Show example note book pages from da Vinci Overview

What’s the difference? Visual Journal words images colors metaphor
shapes sketches Say: Common placing was a term used in 1600’s the for keeping all sorts of thoughts, quotes, sketches in one place. It creates your own personal source of inspiration. This is very different from a typical idea journal. Experiment with it today and find your own way to capture your ideas. (background notes not for group) By the 1600s, common-placing had become a recognized practice that was formally taught to college students in such institutions as Oxford. The commonplace tradition in which Francis Bacon and John Milton were educated had its roots in the pedagogy of classical rhetoric, and “common-placing” persisted as a popular study technique until the early twentieth century. Both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were taught to keep commonplace books at Harvard University (their commonplace books survive in published form). Commonplacing was particularly attractive to authors. Some, such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Mark Twain, kept messy reading notes that were intermixed with other quite various material; others, such as Thomas Hardy, followed a more formal reading-notes method that mirrored the original Renaissance practice more closely. The older, "clearinghouse" function of the commonplace book, to condense and centralize useful and even "model" ideas and expressions, became less popular over time. Overview

Collect Use your C. U. R. I. O. S. I. T. Y
Collect Use your C.U.R.I.O.S.I.T.Y. CABINET everyday and great ideas will come your way. Collect your stories and observations so you can use them as a source of inspiration. Sketch, doodle or clip Collect your questions Add inspiring quotes Capture beginning ideas So now we are the adventurous collectors in search of ideas and observations to add to our collection. What we collect will be driven by our curiosity, not so much by traveling to exotic new lands, rather by finding ways to look at familiar things with a curious eye. Inspiring ideas are all around us if we learn how to see them. Overview

Why Bother? Source of inspiration for brainstorming sessions
Collecting moves you from passive to active Connects your inner and outer experience Adding notes and images is very important step in the process. Writing down questions and comments anchors the idea in your mind. Process feels satisfying. We rarely get t o finish anything we often work on bits of things. The Curiosity Cabinet is old fashioned cut and paste. Show my examples and how it works for me. How I have used this to come up with breakthrough ideas. Overview

Exercise #2 Set up your Cabinet.
Choose an image for the cover as a metaphor for creativity. Write your definition of creativity in your journal. Write down your creative work challenge and sketch it out. Activity at tables. Table top kits include glue sticks and magazine images. (provided by instructor) This is a first exercise in visual/verbal journaling. Overview

Exercise #3 I see what you mean. What are your creative challenges?
Appreciative Curiosity. Learning to listen to ideas of others. Quick whip around the table to hear the the challenges and definitions looking for similarities. Then we will hear a few from each table What is creativity ? Overview

CREATE Solutions FAMILIAR FRESH FIT Grounded Growth©
For an idea to succeed it must be provoking enough to attract and sustain attention, familiar enough to relate to past experience and new enough to add value now. FAMILIAR FRESH FIT SAY Offer a working definition as a guideline for innovative ideas. For an innovation to succeed it must be provoking enough to attract and sustain attention, familiar enough to relate to past experience and new enough to add value now. In other words it must feel familiar, fresh, and fit in the current context. Give examples of ideas that were not adopted because they were to risky and others that did not catch on because they were not new enough. KNOW This ratio can be applied to an individual idea or an entire organization. This whirl may look familiar. It is call the Golden Mean in some circles and the Fibonacci Additive Series in others. It is how nautilus shells grow and has served as a model for the worlds most powerful and lasting architectural structures. For further reading check out Power of Limits by Gyorgy Doczi Overview

What do you think? What factors encourage creativity? Overview
Ask for just a few ideas from the group based on their experience. This sets up the findings on the next slide. What factors encourage creativity? Overview

Creativity and Innovation!
Over 37,840 books on how to be more innovative. Get good at Connection Making. creative questions Shift attention to Creative Seeing. see hidden opportunities Say: Thousands of book have been written trying to answer the question of how to be more creative. Innovators are basically good at doing two things. They are good at making connections and at seeing creatively. As an example of seeing creatively, I am going to show you the next slide and ask you to answer the question what do you see. Ready? DO show slide of old woman young woman now. Overview

Creative Seeing What do you see? Overview
SAY How many see the old woman? How many see the young woman? How many of you have seen this slide before? How many said old woman young woman doesn't s/he have any new slides? Look again, there are a dozen images imbedded in this sketch like a tear drop, a banana, porcupine, but we don’t see those because we stop looking as soon as we think we have seen this all before. More difficult to see creatively when we are looking at something we have seen before. We continually need new tools to help us see creatively because we naturally disregard the familiar. The longer you do your job the more difficult it becomes to see with fresh eyes. Have you ever had the feeling that the creative challenges you work on every day evoke the same response as the old woman young woman, we’ve seen it many times before. There are no new challenges, only new ways of seeing the challenge. One tool we can use our CURIOSITY. What do you see? Overview

Put the Quest in your Questions.
Connection Making Put the Quest in your Questions. Questions direct curiosity. Ask new questions if you want new answers. Creative questions invite imaginative thinking. SAY Creative questions provoke fresh directions of thought and force us to think about the problem from a new angle. Powerful questions,invite imaginative thinking. When we ask the same questions we get the same answer. 5 minutes DO Take a moment right now to look at the creative challenge you came in with. See if you can reframe/ restate it in a few different ways. Play with it as if it is the old woman young woman slide, see if you can state it in a reversed way or look for sub problems imbedded in the original challenge statement. What else do you see? Ask for one or two examples. If some one does not get it, ask the group for suggestions. Hold on to these creative questions we will use them later. Overview

Inspiring Questions... Ask not... Overview

First Step CREATE CONNECT COLLECT Ideas Library Challenge Stories
The three steps we will follow: Collect stories of innovation from the world around you Learn how to connect the great ideas found in those stories to your own library challenges And finally, create a solution that meets the need you identified. This is a natural progression you may aready follow. Today we will dig in more deeply to each step so you can use it and teach it to others. COLLECT Stories

Collect Curiosities in the form of stories of innovation
Collect Curiosities in the form of stories of innovation. Inspiration & Exasperation World Industry Street SAY Curiosities can be a source of inspiration or exasperation. They are the things that attract our attention because they stand out from ordinary experience for some reason. Get in the habit of collecting both interesting solutions and problems. We can find things to add to our collection on three levels. Street= daily life experiences, having coffee, walking the dog, driving to work. Industry= watching trends and actions of competitors (book stores) World = what’s going on in other industries such as fashion, travel, etc. Ideas are everywhere but how to foucs our attention so we see them. We use stories as a way to begin collecting ideas that attract our attention. Collect

Why Stories? Research shows we learn 7.4% from presentations and 92.6% from narrative We can connect to the story, learn from it, and apply it to our own situation Creativity flourishes where leaders tell inspiring stories of innovation and possibility Telling inspiring stories is a leadership skill that brings out bold thinking. You should always have a story ready to tell when the opportunity arises. Kennedy example of going to the moon. Collect

Story Line/Plot In literature 7 basic plots like mystery, romance, hero…. In innovation 9 basic plots C.U.R.I.O.S.I.T.Y. Today learn to recognize these in the stories you have collected, and how to use this as a source of ideas. After collecting thousands of stories of innovation, discovered they fall into 9 basic plots understanding the plot makes it easier to connect to the heart of the story that can be transferred to your own situation. Collect

create new connections.
C.U.R.I.O.S.I.T.Y. Distinctions that help organize stories in a fresh way so we can create new connections. It is to vague to say be more be more observant. More useful to have some distinctions that give us something specific to be on the look out for. This list comes form observing what attracts our attention. Curiosity is a form of response to the world around us that leads to innovation. I will quickly go through the plots and define them for you and give some examples. Then we will work with the stories you brought in and see which curiosity factor is present. You might want to think about that as you listen to the examples I offer. Collect

C.U.R.I.O.S.I.T.Y. C contradictions U universals R rules
I intersections O ordinary S surprises I invisible T transformations Y your resources You have this list on a hand out so you can follow along. Can also cut it out an past in your curiosity cabinet. SAY Some of these will be easier for you to see than others since we all have our own natural point of view. Value of this method is to focus on the distinctions that are not your normal way of seeing. These will spark new questions. Collect

Contradictions Recognize the rub
Every great invention is the result of resolving a contradiction. G.S. Altschuller Paradox Conflict Impossibility Clash The first attractor is contradictions. Everything I say is a lie. In science contradiction offers the greatest opportunity for innovation. quick exercise to help your brain get familiar with the feeling contradiction. Collect

Universals See what stays the same.
Applicable to all situations or purposes. Continuity Interchangeable Entity that remains unchanged Archetypes Balance One size fits all Bar code universal joint universal blood type o universal time Collect-Universals

Rules Break the rules Challenge all assumptions to change the game.
Expectations Beliefs How we operate To provoke a new line of thinking challenge the rules. First make them visible and then play what if… and reverse it. Collect-Rules

Intersections Where two things meet.
Look at the relationships in time, space, function… Overlaps Combinations Alliances/Partnership In between Interactions Gaps/Hand offs Intersections is a rich area of opportunity. Look carefully at every intersection, hand off and connection. great opportunities to innovate Collect-Intersections

Ordinary Take a second look.
Extraordinary ideas can come from ordinary sources. Habits Familiar Plain view Details Routine One of my favorite attractors has great power because it draws on things that everyone has seen but not in this way. Collect-Ordinary

Surprises Expect the unexpected.
Watch for things that seem slightly off, odd, or out of place. Anomalies Disruptions Unexpected Sudden changes Positive deviance Collect-Surprise

Invisible See the unseen.
Make the invisible visible so you can act on it. Time Energy Attitudes Barriers Future Takes more skill to see the invisible but very powerful source of ideas once you get the hang of it. Collect-Invisible

Transformations Now you see it, now you don’t.
Look for ways to change or modify an object or action . Conversions New use Reverse Make over Trashformation SAY Think of the power of all the TV shows that are successful because of the before and after dynamic. The power is in the moment of the reveal. Collect examples of this dynamic. Lottery ticket is good example of both, feeling of luck, and the fun part is scratching off the silver. Collect-Transformation

Yours What are YOUR resources?
Everything you can draw on from within the system to create opportunities or solve problems. Materials Space Functions Information Time Equipment Take a fresh look at resources you have. How might you use them in an unexpected way. Collect-Resources

C.U.R.I.O.S.I.T.Y. C contradictions U universals R rules
I intersections O ordinary S surprises I invisible T transformations Y your resources So that is the full set I have been working with. You may find others to add to your own list. But the value of the distinctions is to allow you to access the heart of the story more quickly as a connection point for new ideas. Some will be easier for you to see. Take a moment and think about the sample story your brought in today. Which plot do you think it fits? Is it an example of breaking the rules? Or perhaps of making the invisible visible. Make a note. Will discuss in small groups. Collect

Exercise #4 Story Exchange Prepare to tell your story succinctly.
Collect Exercise #4 Story Exchange Prepare to tell your story succinctly. Four Sentences.... 1. The situation 2. The action or creative solution 3. The result 4. The C.U.R.I.O.S.I.T.Y. connection. (For me, this was a story about Transformation…. because…) Small group Activity Leave this slide on screen. Hand out storytelling process guidelines. Collect

NOW CREATE Solutions CONNECT COLLECT Library Challenge Stories
Now that we have collected stories of innovation and creativity we can move on and focus on the next step. How to make a connection to our own work. COLLECT Stories

CONNECT Library Challenges
Virtually all discoveries & man-made creations come from our innate ability to make connections. Cortina Kent In this section of the workshop we will build up our connection making capacity. This capacity hinges on the ability to make fresh connections between two things that do not relate if looked at through our usual frame of reference. Of all the practices we can build into our daily life, the practice of deliberate looking for the connection between things that seem unrelated has the greatest potential for creating innovation. Connect

Exercise # 5 Ready-Set-Go
Hand out creative challenge Competitive which group can come up with the solution to this challenge first. All start together, ready, set, go. Small group activity Collect

Convergence Solution Research Findings
Group one creative challenge Group two creative challenge and fortress story with instruction to make a connection Group three creative challenge and fortress story without instruction to make a connection Report out from exercise % of connection making from each group Collect 94

Natural Connectors Collecting alone creates some new connections.
SAY Although we are natural connection seekers, we only get it a very small % of the time. We say creative people are wired differently and in a way they are. They have somehow managed to strengthen their connection making capacity. But for most of us we just don’t get the connection. The good news is we can get better at this. This seems to simple but just by asking your brain to make the connection, by being curious about how two dissimilar things are similar your connection making ability will increase. We have to exercise this ability on a daily basis. Look more deeply and assuming there is a connection. Start by assuming there is a connection and that you job is to find it. This sets up a completely different energy than starting with the assumption that there is nothing there for you to learn from. Again, we can use questions as a took to help us. Source: Glick and Holyoak Research Paper: The Construction of Similarity. Collecting alone creates some new connections. We only GET the connection 15% of the time. Questions Increase Connections Collect

To make the connection ask the question.
To Train your brain! 75% Innovation Stories Library Challenge To make the connection ask the question.

Put the Quest in Your Questions.
Questions direct curiosity. Ask new questions if you want new answers. Creative questions invite imaginative thinking. SAY Creative questions provoke fresh directions of thought and force us to think about the problem from a new angle. Powerful questions,invite imaginative thinking. When we ask the same questions we get the same answer. 5 minutes DO Take a moment right now to look at the creative challenge you came in with. See if you can reframe/ restate it in a few different ways. Play with it as if it is the old woman young woman slide, see if you can state it in a reversed way or look for sub problems imbedded in the original challenge statement. What else do you see? Ask for one or two examples. If some one does not get it, ask the group for suggestions. Hold on to these creative questions we will use them later.

Questions are tools to help us make new connections.
Leaders ask inspiring questions. Questions expand possibility of making connections. The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a creative mind to spot wrong questions. Anthony Jay Hold on to the stories. Focus right now on looking at your creative challenge with fresh eyes. Use of new questions expands possibility for connection. crumple paper or fan metaphor spread it out so more places to connect Collect

Exercise #6 Tools and tips for putting the Quest in your Questions.
Four tools you can use as a leader to craft creative questions and stimulate new thinking for your self and others. Hand out work sheets and work in pairs on your creative challenge from this morning. I will review the 4 tools and then come around and help you. You don’t have to use all 4 choose the ones that seem most helpful to you. Flip It Hair of the Dog New Point of View Mind Map Quest work in pairs Collect

1. Flip It Reverse or flip your question to the complete opposite way of thinking. Example: How to find a publisher vs how to have a publisher find me. This activates an entirely new line of thinking. dog drowning story. doing the reverse saved her life. Collect

2. Hair of the Dog The problem is the solution.
Be fearless and go for the jugular. What is the tough question? Example to prevent the flu we get a flu shot which is in fact a flu virus. Use egg shell to get egg shell out of broken egg. Collect

3. Shift Point of View Your Question? Collect
Indian story who speaks for wolf. Move around the circle and look at your challenge from viewpoints of your stakeholders. Collect

4. Mind Map Quest As a way to brainstorm possible questions, use a mind map. I have generated some questions you can use as a starting point but be sure to modify them to fit your circumstances. Don’t answer the questions yet, just generate them. But if an idea comes to you write it down. Collect

Last step... CONNECT COLLECT Library Challenge Stories CREATE
Solutions CONNECT Library Challenge Now we have collected stories of innovation in our Curiosity Cabinets, and we have crafted new questions to help us make connections to our specific challenge. Final step is to create ideas. COLLECT Stories

CREATE Solutions Grounded Growth
For an idea to succeed it must be provoking enough to attract and sustain attention, familiar enough to relate to past experience and new enough to add value now. FAMILIAR FRESH FIT Criteria Recall this from this morning. Now time to create solutions that meet this criteria. Create

How? 1. Introduce a process 2. Select some creative challenges
3. Form small groups based on interest 4. Brainstorm using C.U.R.I.O.S.I.T.Y. stories 5. Report out to large group During this last segment we are going use what we have learned so far today to do some creative thinking about your creative challenges. This is a process you can easily use with others after today. Create

Generate then Judge Brainstorm with postits Divergent Thinking pause
One idea per Readable Call out pass in Divergent Thinking No judgment Build on ideas Go for quantity BASIC PROCESS HAS TWO STEPS. We have spent lots of time today creating questions and connections. Now we will put it all together. The key to brainstorming is to generate then judge ideas never do both at once. Like driving a car with one foot on the gas and one on the brake. pause Convergent Thinking Constructive Not personal Focused Grounded Growth Criteria will it... Create

Wow! That’s a Great Idea. Creative Challenge Collect beginning ideas
Brief Description Collect beginning ideas Connect to Story Brainstorm with postits Process overview walk through and give handout. Leave on screen as they follow worksheet. Brainstorm with Postits Apply Criteria Pick the hits Create a Solution Creative Solution Presentation Create

Connect to Create Stories of Innovation STORIES of introduction
in this presentation from groups Library Challenge Choose a challenge and make a creative contribution today. Create

Exercise # 7 Wow! That’s a great idea.

Exercise #8 Making it Happen
What is the biggest barrier to implementation? Flip it.. How to... We could... Instructor lead brainstorm session with whole group. Demonstrate how to convert obstacles into opportunities. Give time for everyone to apply this thinking to their own situation.

Evaluations Thank You!

Building Leadership:Stimulating Creativity Through C.U.R.I.O.S.I.T.Y.

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