Spending time with my nieces (ages 1 and 2) recently I was struck by how diverse and rich in possibility their way of playing is and how much fun!In the course of an hour we followed a butterfly’s trajectory until it flew over a wall, we spent time noticing the birds flying overhead and the colours of the flowers. We had races up and down the garden and we built a house (i.e blanket over two chairs).
My older niece had a conversation with some flowers and got dressed up in my sunglasses (worn upside down) while dragging her mother’s handbag after her. My younger niece was completely absorbed in the grass and rolling a ball around.
Facilitating Creative Brainstorming sessions at work I use different techniques to guide the group away from over focus on finding the “right answer” to a particular problem/opportunity and towards coming up with new mental connections to generate fresh thinking and perhaps novel and untapped solutions.
Seeing my nieces, as they effortlessly and playfully maintained a state of almost continuous discovery and creativity I thought of that well known Einstein quote: to stimulate creativity, one must develop the childlike inclination for play and the childlike desire for recognition.
In the book Breakpoint and Beyond written by George Land and Beth Jarman they refer to a survey (begun in 1968) they conducted which indicates that as children we are naturally creative. A test, designed to measure creativity and divergent thinking and used by NASA to select innovative engineers and scientists was distributed to 1,600 5-years olds; they were re-tested again at ten years of age and at 15 years of age. The results were as follows: the 5 year olds scored 98% or “Creative Genius” level; five years later, as ten year olds, they scored 30% and as 15 year olds 12%. The same test was also given to 280,000 adults who achieved a 2% score for their creativity.
The conclusion was that all children are innately creative and non-creative behaviour is learned. As we grow up and progress through the educational system and take on society and cultural norms and expectations, we’re more likely to focus on getting to the “right answer” and this in turn causes us to be increasingly uncreative.
So, how can we take some of that innate creativity and playfulness of the child’s world back to the adult world to elegantly uncover innovative solutions to challenges?
Below are some suggestions:
· Immerse yourself in the challenge, situation at hand-give it all your focus and see what fresh insights and possibilities arise.
· Ask open ended and speculative questions rather than questions that imply you already know what the answer should be.
· Be mindful and aware in the present moment rather than living in the past or worrying about the future.
· Find as many new/interesting/different connections between seemingly unrelated elements as you can.
· How would you consider a problem/opportunity if you had a completely different role or you were someone else? What perspective would you now have?
· Imagine your ideal outcome. What would that look like? What are the first steps you might now need to take?
· What are your limiting assumptions about yourself or about a particular situation? If you reversed or removed those assumptions (so that the opposite was true or they no longer existed) how would the situation be resolved?
· Sleep more or at least allow yourself 5 minute mental vacations.
· If you’re feeling a bit stuck or unclear about a situation try generating as many different ideas as possible; they don’t need to be feasible/sensible/appropriate (at this point); in fact, the more and the wilder the better!
· And finally have fun and regain your own sense of playfulness.
For a great TED talk on creativity and our own inner creative genius please click link to Elizabeth Gilbert’s (author of “Eat, Pray, Love”) talk on nurturing creativity.
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1 Comment
I love this idea about children and creativity. There is a great exercise I sometimes use on learning programmes called Talent Agents, it’s about only looking for the positive in people’s behaviour for a short period of time. There is a comment i like to share with the group at the end of the exercise. It is this.
Shinichi Suzuki, the eminent creator of the Suzuki method of music education, amazed the world by showing that 3 yr olds can play Mozart – largely by commenting only on the things these children do right. Suzuki believes that people naturally seek perfection and that leaders play a vital role in encouraging this drive to mastery. Ok, not quite the same point as creativity and innovation I know, but positive encouragement I think is part of that bigger picture.
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[...] Start acting like a child again (at least some of the time). Children are already using all those skills of asking questions, talking to anyone, observing intently and trying out new things to figure out their world. By beginning to ask why and why not you can boost the other skills. Try spending 15 minutes a day writing down ten new questions that challenge the everyday assumptions in your organisation or industry. [...]
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