Stimulating Creative Flow... with Toys

It may sound ironic that participants comprising of senior managment from various organisations expecting to glean some applications on how to improve organisational innovation in my recent China's 创新与创造力研讨会, ended up having most fun and learnings from playing with the toys.

Feedback to the seminar included the following:

- 通过发散性思维进行关联创新 Through brainstorming to make new connections

- Through experiential learning the success of seminar lies in "value creation"

- Creative association and case study

- 通过互动性的交流，能调动大家积极性 Able to dynamically stimulate and engage everyone

- 互动环节 (Interactive components) helps to market futurised concept game

With such a diverse group all with different learning needs, I thought that a good way to trigger creative thoughts would be through the use of simple stimulus so that everyone can share their varied experiences all leading to the same understanding of making new connections as a creative strategy. What I observed, however, was that through the function of the learning content, the context of such an event, the activity of the learners, and perhaps most importantly, the goals of individual learners, I noted that somehow, cognition was distributed.

Interestingly, the group's interaction with the toys led to a sort of "puzzlement" as being the stimulus for learning and this somewhat readily suggests both intellectual and pragmatic goals for learning for all. In a collaborative manner, the activity served as a mechanism for enriching, interweaving and expanding everyone's understanding of the particular issue I posed as the challenge. Just as Lebrow (1993) talked about shift in values when one takes a constructivist perspective, he noted that "the seven primary constructivist values of collaboration, personal autonomy, generativity, reflectivity, active engagement, personal relevance and pluralism (1993,p.5)."

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi questions the how creativity the place of creativity and highlighted that "creativity does not happen inside people's heads, but in the interaction between a person's thoughts and a sociocultural context (1996, p.23). " He also proposes that "centers of creativity tend to be at the intersection of different cultures, where beliefs, lifestyles, and knowledge mingle and allow individuals to see new combinations of ideas with a greater ease", the activity was in my view effective to arouse this creative cognitive distribution. Further, just as there was time to allow individuals to work on their problems by toying with the stimulus, the 'aha' was more visible after a period of immersing into "me and my toy" quiet moments. This was apparent as most participants settled down after the first few minutes of elation and puzzlement before their little creative exploration with their selected toys.

What was then observed was the 'flow' in which Csikszentmihalyi describes as the state of absorption in the creative process. He defines flow as “an automatic, effortless, yet highly focused state of consciousness”, which results from stretching our abilities in the pursuit of a meaningful challenge. The elements of creative flow include: clear goals; a balance between challenges and skills; total absorption in the task; a distorted sense of time; and an absence of distractions, worry and selfconsciousness.

When the participants were invited to share on their new creative ideas, many spoke eloquently and spontaneously about their improved solutions. Almost effortlessly I must say, others around could easily sense the intrinsic rewards of their experience. If one of the objectives of the seminar was to achieve the following- 为了加强个人适合的创新和变革的能力，在实际业务挑战上学习，应用工具和流程；为了个人和组织的成功变革，学习如何灵活运用, I think the participants will agree with me that at least for the seminar most were able to revisit the simple joys and fun of playing with creativity.

Csikszenmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity: Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. New York: Harper Perennial.

Lebrow, D. (1993). Constructivist values for systems design: Five principles toward a new mindset. Educational Technology Research and Development, 41, 4-16.

From Whose Perspective?

I recently conducted a series of Innovation & Creativity Seminar in Hong Kong & China as part of a joint effort between TUV Rheinland (China) & Centre of Organisational Excellence (Singapore).

One of the most intriguing and insightful feebacks I gained was from Mr Wong Kin Hung, Sky Technology Co. Ltd (Hong Kong). Although throughout the workshop, he appeared passively uninvolved with the group activities, after the workshop he came forward to thank me for triggering a mindset shift as well as a list of possible solutions that may help him to resolve a critical challenge he faced in his company. All simply done through the use of a YO-YO.

Mr Wong highlighted two very useful insights of his yo-yo learning experience:

1) Power of Mindfulness

Although he appeared very detached during the seminar, he explained that it was because he was actually deeply thinking or 'mindfully' focussed. He further explained that although he was first introduced to the 'mindful' concept by Dr Langer of Harvard University years back, this was the first time he experienced this state of mindfulness so powerfully that he was completely engaged mentally in the process and highly alert to the new learnings. Yet, as he was simultaneously looking at his challenge intensively, he noted that he was intuitively and cognitively very open to the new information that was disseminated during the workshop as well as the multiple perspectives from the conversation of the other group members at his desk.

2) Using Visual Connections to Radically Shift Mindset

What was most exciting was how the Yo-Yo through the activity of Visual Connections got him all started in his 'mindful' experience. When I first asked the participants to write down a challenge that needed some new breakthrough, he was initially reluctant to pen down his thoughts. However, I am thankful he shared this comment with me- "If a strategy really works, then it should be able to deliver the intended outcomes if implemented properly." After which, he wrote down the following- "How to get my clients back?" As he gave the Visual Connection Tool a chance, he simply grabbed the most colorful object on his table- the Yo Yo. As he listed the attributes of the Yo-Yo, he noted adjectives like- smiley face, retractable, colorful, produce clicking sound, etc, he found it easy to immediately connect each of the attributes to some new ideas. He also highlighted that it was initially not easy to observe the divergent ground rule of deferring judgment, he found the act of playing with the object easier to circumvent the mental barrier of not judging the silliness of the activity. However, the experience not only allowed him to deepen his thoughts on pulling out some ideas from each of the attributes but stretched his thinking further when he saw all the attributes as a whole. Excitedly, he shared that a mysterious shift of how he viewed the challenge occurred. With the clicking sound and his shaking motion, he was 'jolted' to a realisation that the past months of working on the problem was from HIS perspective, rather then that of his clients. Just as he felt that he and his team had some futile attempts to regain his clients, the activity led me to a realisation that their vision of the problem is very different from that of his clients. He further explained that some of the solutions that were offered were short term gains that other external factors such as competitors' offering could easily under-cut his discounts. However, the clicking sound led him to think of how to sustain a resonating relationship and how the smiley face got him to go back to the fundamentals of communication- looking at customers' satisfaction. Further, while he was playing with the yo-yo, he realised how inflexible their system was how there need to have an urgent review of their own sales cycle.

To conclude, Mr Wong's sharing led me to realise the common connection between business and learning- the essence of humility. He was humble and open to a new learning experience, even by playing with a simple toy. With mindful attention, even such a simple activity allowed him to re-perceive from his clients' point of view and deepen his own insights into a precious lesson on being more customer-centric. His sharing also showed me how Thinking Tools are great to evoke 'mindful playing'- with discovery of the joy of learning in a thoughtful and focused way.

Quoting from wikipedia (http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/Mindfulness)- "Langer defines her version of mindfulness as a "heightened sense of situational awareness and a conscious control over ones thoughts and behavior relative to the situation" (Marzano 2003, p. 65). She explains that mindfulness is not about just paying attention. It is making a conscious effort to be "in the moment" and to not ignore the environment."

Personally, I gained a huge dose of humility and reminded me that I really do have a lot to learn about mindfully improving my craft.