Riding the creative rollercoaster: How leaders can evoke greater levels of creativity, productivity and innovation

1. Riding the Creative Rollercoaster
How leaders can evoke greater levels
of creativity, productivity and innovation
Dr Nick Udall

2. HYPOTHESIS
Innovation emerges from a co-creative frequency,
not a process.
The way we think, relate, learn and organise
either moves us towards this frequency or away from it.
The leadership challenge of our time is to evoke ‘the music of innovation’
– to tune the frequency at which our teams and organisations operate,
by design.

3. Innovation is the fuel of economic growth, and the Holy Grail
for companies and countries around the globe.
Wall Street Journal

4. The only real strategic differentiator left is
a company’s ability to innovate, sustainably
Gary Hamel, What Matters Now

5. The lack of creativity is a problem. A 2010 IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identified
creativity as the number one leadership competency of the future.
Forbes

6. The future will continue to get more
Volatile, Uncertain, Complex & Ambiguous
(V.U.C.A world)
Bob Johansen, Institute for the Future

7. Technology is now part and parcel of
every problem and every solution
Jared Cohen, Director of Google Ideas

8. We live by the myth that stress is the enemy in our lives.
The real enemy is our failure to balance stress with intermittent rest
Tony Schwartz, The Energy Project

9. Meritocracy
Camaraderie
Non-Traditional
Integration of Work and Personal Life
Fierce Independence
The values of Generation Y, Knoll

10. Business has become, in this last half century,
the most powerful institution on the planet.
The dominant institution in any society needs
to take responsibility for the whole
Willis Harman, World Business Academy

11. The elements that make up a truly innovative company are many:
a focused innovation strategy, a winning overall business strategy,
a deep customer insight, great talent, and the right set of capabilities
to achieve successful execution. More important than these
individual elements, however, is the role played by corporate culture
– the organisation’s self-sustaining patterns of behaving, feeling,
thinking, and believing – in tying them all together.
Booz & Co

12. There is a quantum leap in context
Leaders are reaching a ceiling of capability

13. WHAT IS BEING CALLED FORTH IS
A MOVEMENT OVER A SUBTLE THRESHOLD

14. And it starts with culture….
for culture eats strategy for breakfast every time

15. STEPPING INTO THE FOURTH REALM
Innovator / Shaper
Achiever
Expert
Opportunist
EVOLUTION OF CULTURES EVOLUTION OF TEAMS
Based on William Torbert and David Rooke et al
EVOLUTION OF LEADERS
Based on Gregory Bateson and Roger Benson et al
Creative
Strategic
Operational
Ad hoc
Evocative
Proactive
Responsive
Reactive

16. INNOVATION AS A CO-CREATIVE DANCE
TANGIBLE
INVISIBLE
UNCONSCIOUS
UNKNOWN
INTANGIBLE
CONSCIOUS VISIBLE
KNOWN
Flatlining

17. RIDING THE CREATIVE-ROLLERCOASTER
!!
?
!!
KNOWN
UNKNOWN

18. BUILDING BLOCKS OF THE FOURTH REALM
4 th
Realm
CREATIVE INSIGHT • COLLECTIVE BREAKTHROUGH • FLOW •
COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE • PEAK PERFORMANCE

19. CREATIVE INSIGHT
!!
PEOPLE FEEL DIFFERENT ON THE OTHER SIDE OF INSIGHT
stronger, more confident, more capable

20. COLLECTIVE BREAKTHROUGH
!!
!!
WHEN WE SHARE A COLLECTIVE BREAKTHROUGH, IT BINDS US TOGETHER
These moments often leave their mark, forever seared into memory

21. FLOW
!!!!!!!! !!
!!!!!!!!
WE THEN YEARN TO STEP INTO THIS STATE MORE FREQUENTLY AND FOR EXTENDED PERIODS OF TIME
continuing to tune our physical, mental, psychological, social, creative and decision-making capacities

22. COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE
!!!! !!!!!!!!!! !! !! WE THEN DISCOVER A WIDER INTELLIGENCE
!!
!!
!!
!!!!
!!!
!!
!!!! !! !!
!!
!!
!!!!
!! !!
!!
!!!! !!!!!!!!!!
!!!!
!!
!!
!!!!
!!!! !!
!!
!! !!
as we communal learn to see pattern, blend egos, bind insights and chunk (store patterns as wholes) !!

23. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
PEAK PERFORMANCE
TAPPING INTO CREATIVE INSIGHTS, FLOW STATES AND COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE
amplifies our creativity, productivity, innovation, collaboration and communication skills

24. THE MAGIC TRIUMVIRATE
Innovation
BRINGING THE NEW TO THE WORLD
Creativity
BRINGING THE NEW TO MIND
Consciousness
STATES & QUALITIES OF MIND

25. WE HAVE TWO DISTINCT SYSTEMS FOR PROCESSING INFORMATION
THE EXPLICIT SYSTEM
• Rules, analysis and data based
• Expressed verbally
• Conscious accessible (tied to PFC)
• Located more in the shorter, closer and
more ordered neural networks of the left
hemisphere – good for linear connections
and logical deductions and all the other
keystones for standard reasoning
THE IMPLICIT SYSTEM
• Skills, experience, creativity and intuition based
• Expressed non-verbally
• Not consciously accessible
• Located more in the meandering and broader
dendrites in the right hemisphere – enabling far-flung
corners of the brain to talk to one another,
increasing the likelihood that novel stimuli
combine (or ‘bind’) with random thoughts and
obscure memories to create new thoughts in
moments of CREATIVE INSIGHT.
The two advantages of the Implicit System are speed and efficiency
(the benefit of systemic pattern-based decision-making)

26. THE CHALLENGE IS TO BUILD FOURTH REALM CULTURES
Most conventional organisations are…
Built around the Explicit System: linear, fragmented & slow
Risk averse and tolerant of mediocrity
Dominated by the interplay between Beta & Alpha
Fact-based decision-makers
Victims of time and therefore time poor
Ego-centric: valuing similarities
Only able to work the parts (unable to work ‘wholes’)
Driven by high performance norms (same old same old)
Fear-driven, holding on too tight to the past and present
Emotionless, hierarchical and compensation based
More comfortable avoiding conflict and tension
Obsessed with accountability and execution
We design post-conventional cultures around
The Implicit System: systemic, efficient and fast
How risk heightens focus, and flow follows focus
Low Alpha / High Theta with Gamma Spikes
Pattern-based decision-making
Masters of time and therefore time rich
Eco-centric: valuing novelty and difference
Patterning, binding, blending and chunking
Insights, flow, collective intelligence & peak performance
Purpose-driven, creatively escaping forward step-by-step
Emotional, passionate and intrinsically rewarding
Working intentionally with creative tension and struggle
Freedom, shared responsibility, candid feedback and trust

27. IN ESSENCE, LEADERS…
Think Talk Hold space

28. !!
THE ‘SECRET SAUCE’
!!
!!
!!
!!
COLLECTIVE
DIFFERENCE INTERSECTION INTELLIGENCE
!!
CREATIVE INSIGHT
& COLLECTIVE
BREAKTHROUGH + + + =
BY DESIGN
CREATIVE TENSION

29. ‘Meetings’ are the stage upon which leaders perform.
The way leaders run their meetings…
reflects both the levels of consciousness of the leader
and the level of consciousness of the organisational
culture of which they are a part.

30. MEETING FORMS (1)
STRATEGIC
meetings
Finding the most elegant
movement forward through
TIME and SPACE
How best to get from here to there?
!!
CREATIVE
meetings
Stepping into the
UNKNOWN
What quest-ions do we
need to breakthrough?
OPERATIONAL
meetings
Managing the
KNOWN
What’s working
and what’s not?

31. In these meeting forms, the only way of generating
new patterns of (collective) action is by first
generating new patterns of (collective) thought.
The trap is repeating and defending old patterns of
thought and action, over and over again.

32. THE LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE OF OUR TIME
IS TO EVOKE “THE MUSIC OF INNOVATION”

33. BENEFITS OF THE FOURTH REALM
Our physical, mental, psychological, social, creative and decision-making capacities all become magnified
Our creativity, productivity, innovation, collaboration and communication skills all go through the roof
A whole new world of conscious, creative and commercial possibilities open up
We are able to literally lean into and co-create the emerging future
We evoke the best possible version of ourselves and others – also becoming happier
We acquire new skills e.g., our pattern recognition faculties expand
We move from high performance to peak performance
We become up to 5x more productive

34. THANK YOU

35. STRICTLY PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL
Not to be shared with any third parties
© nowheregroup ltd 2014