How to Be a More Creative Executive By JOSEPH G. MASON

New York Toronto London 1960
McGRAW-HILL BOOK COMPANY, INC.
This is a public domain work sponsored by
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HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
Copyright © 1960 by the McGraw -Hill Book Company, Inc. Printed
in the United States of America. All rights reserved. This book, or
parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission of
the publishers. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 60-8036
40683
To my wife, Ann whose
cheerful acceptance of
"typewriter widowhood"
made this book possible
Preface
This will not be the easiest book you have ever read. It is not
about an easy subject.
Nowhere in the book will you find any statement to the effect
that creative thinking—the active use of imagination—is an easy
task.
Nor will you find any secret formulas or magic phrases that can
produce million-dollar ideas for you. In fact, if the writer occa-
sionally makes a categorical statement that appears to be the
answer, it was not intended that way. By its nature, creativity is
infinite—there is always a better way and always a worse way.
Therefore, there are no real answers. There are preferred ways,
and apparently better ways. But not answers.
The book was planned to do several things:
To help you develop an increased sensitivity to problems, needs,
and opportunities in business
To build your knowledge of problem-solving procedures, and
the aids to thinking more creatively
By removing some of the "mystery" that has always clouded
the subject of creativity, to help you to gain self-confidence in
vii
viii PREFACE
applying principles and using techniques that have helped others
To explain some of the background that is necessary to create the
kind of "climate" that will encourage more creative kinds of
thinking on the part of associates and subordinates.
You will find some basic theories and psychological principles —
enough, it is hoped, to help you achieve understanding of the
"whys" behind certain recommendations. At the same time, how-
ever, this is primarily a "technician's" book, rather than a "scien-
tist's"—the emphasis is on how to do it. If, upon completion of
this book, you wish to delve more deeply into the subject, the
Appendix contains the Bibliography compiled by Dr. Sidney J.
Parnes and his staff at the University of Buffalo—certainly one of
the most comprehensive listings of material relevant to creativity so
far developed.
The Appendix also contains a chapter-by-chapter compilation of
review questions which you may use to check or increase your
understanding of the text. They were purposely put into a separate
appendix, rather than spread throughout the book, however, so that
you may, if you wish, just "read" the book. In other words, you may
make as much of this book as you like—or as little. In that respect,
the book is a great deal like your own imagination:
What you get out of it will depend upon what you put into
using it.
Acknowledgments
To attempt to acknowledge individually all the persons who have in
some way contributed to this book would involve a listing
verging on the edge of infinity.
It would, of necessity, have to include all members of the Uni-
versity of Buffalo's annual Creative Problem Solving Institutes. It
would include, very particularly, the students in creative problem-
solving courses, conferences, and workshops conducted by the
author. Even members of luncheon and dinner audiences who have
been subjected to experiments in dynamic techniques and
PREFACE ix
presentation methods would have to be singled out for their con-
tributions in spontaneous evaluation and criticism. And so, cer-
tainly, would dozens of talented and creative business as sociates
over the last fourteen years. To all these, a general, but never-
theless sincere, acknowledgment is made.
Certain individuals, however, must be mentioned for specific
contributions:
Paul Russell and Phil Kobbe, responsible for first encouraging
me into a serious study of this fascinating subject of creativity.
Alex Osborn and Bobb Chaney for their continuing support
and encouragement.
Don Mitchell, Herb True, and John Arnold—creative teachers
whose philosophies and methods undoubtedly find some reflection
in these pages.
Editors Paul McCrea, of Nation's Business, and Raymond
Fremed, of Chemical Engineering, who have not only published
this writer's articles in the past, but have also generously given
permission to adapt much material from those articles to this book.
Finally, my wife, Ann, for her contributions as a research as -
sistant.
To all of these, my special thanks.
Joseph G. Mason
Contents
Preface vii
1. Why Be Creative? 1
Life in a changing world • Old problems needing new solutions
• The need for leadership
2. What Is Creative? 15
Creativeness, talent, aptitudes, originality • Novelty, Discovery,
Chance • The arts, science, business • The dual nature of crea-
tivity
3. Characteristics of Creative People 31
Problem sensitivity • Idea fluency • Originality • Flexibility •
Drive • Other characteristics
4. Blocks to Creativeness 47
Perceptual • Cultural • Emotional • Habits—ways to overcome
them
5. The Nature of Creative Thought 68
Creative minds in action • Steps in the creative thinking process
6. The Nature of Problems 84
Commonness of problems • Where problems come from • How
to measure them • How to think about them
xii CONTENTS
7. Steps in Deliberate Problem Solving 100
History of deliberate creativity • The discipline of method •
Orientation • Getting facts • Getting ideas • Incubation • Eval-
uation
8. Help Yourself to More Ideas 125
Individual aids to idea production—what they are; how they work
• Notes • Times • Deadlines • Quotas • Checklists • Questions •
Other aids
9. When to Use Creative Groups 146
Objectives of the creative group • Characteristics of groups in
action • What to expect from a creative group ?
10. Creative Group Techniques 158
Groups as tools • The creative team • Buzz sessions • Brain-
storming • Operational creativity • Some practical combinations
11. How to Lead Creative Groups 186
The leader in a dynamic group • Methods, techniques, attitudes
for group leaders • How to run the meeting
12. The Importance of Follow-up 200
Where most ideas are wasted • The necessity to "sell" your ideas
• Ways to sell ideas • What to do after your idea is sold
13. Creating the Creative Climate 212
The necessity of a creative climate: Ways to go about getting it
• Pitfalls to avoid • The responsibility of management
14. How to Spot Creative Potential in Others 230
Difficulties • Formal and informal testing methods and proce-
dures • What to do with potential when you find it ?
15. The Creative Executive in Action 244
Leadership • The executive's role in planning, coordinating, eval-
uating, coa ching • Do's and don’ts for the creative leader
Appendix 254
Review questions and exercises
Bibliography 267
Index 275
1
Why Be Creative?
Late in 1957, a group of twenty-four working scientists were
asked to predict what they thought our world would be like in
twenty years. The scientists represented different industries and
came from different parts of the country. They were, for all
practical purposes, men who are actually shaping the "world of
tomorrow" for us. Here are some of the predictions they agreed
upon for the year 1977:
Any new house built will have an all-metal framing with a plas-
tic exterior. Interior lighting in houses will be full-wall or full-
ceiling. An interior color scheme will be changed by turning a
dial. The house will require practically no upkeep, because it will
be built and furnished with nearly indestructible materials. And
it will be heated by an atomic-reactor furnace.
People in 1977 will be wearing clothes much different from
what we are used to today. They will be either one -trip disposable
garments or, for a permanent wardrobe, temperature-controlled
year-round garments that can warm or cool the wearer as desired.
And these permanent garments will be soil proofed.
1
2 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE E X E C U T I V E
Automobiles, said the scientists, will be crash proof, automatic -
control models, powered by either wireless electricity or an exotic
fuel—a thankful of which will last all year. Roads will be snow-
proofed for year-round safer driving. Almost every family will
have a second car that converts to either an airplane or a helicop-
ter. However, if a person is really in a hurry to get somewhere, the
prediction was that he will be able to take an atomic -reactor air-
liner which will get him there at 2,500 miles an hour.
They predicted that by 1977 everyone will be making tele -
phone calls over private-line TV sets, and that the family TV
will have a screen covering one whole wall of the room and
be in both color and 3D.
On the questions of diet and health, these predictions were
made: individual diets will include fresh meat and vegetables
which will be stored in cupboards—no refrigerators or freezers
will be needed. A large portion of every person's diet will be made
up of synthetic foods, grown in the mass-production version of
test tubes. Every infant born will be vaccinated against the com-
mon cold. However, they also pointed out, there is a good possi-
bility that the atmosphere, at least in our cities, will be virus-free
in the first place, so a person's chances of catching a cold will be
greatly reduced. If anything goes wrong with an individual's
heart, kidneys, or other vital organ, the organ can be replaced.
Both heart disease and cancer will be eliminated as killers.
A few other predictions: a lawn will stay green even through
the driest part of the summer. Grass will grow to a height of about
1% inches and will never need mowing. The droughts in some
areas will no longer be problems, because we will be making fresh
water out of the ocean. The newest military weapon in 1977, they
predicted, will be a superray or disintegrating gun, and everyone
will have more time to worry about the Russians using it first,
because the thirty-hour work week will be universal.
It is important to remember that the men making these predic -
tions were not science-fiction writers, nor were they the publicity
men of giant corporations. They had all spent years acquiring
3
WHY BE CREATIVE?
knowledge and experience in research and product development
and were actively engaged in those pursuits at that time. This, of
course, made their predictions quite interesting. In retrospect,
however, those scientific guesses become even more interesting.
The predictions were all based on a future twenty years away.
But less than fifteen months later, the following things had hap-
pened:
A national magazine reported that four manufacturers were in
production with "electroluminescent" lamps—metal panels that
gave off light and could be made to glow "in any color of the rain-
bow." One company, Sylvania, was reported to have produced
over 300,000 of these panels for radio and telephone dials, bedside
clocks, house numbers, thermometers, light switches, and airplane
seat-belt signs.
Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company received na -
tional publicity for their development of a 5-pound atomic reactor
that could produce electricity directly from atomic energy, with
a companion "heat pump" that operated from the electrical power
so produced. The company admitted that they were probably ten
years away from having a "commercially usable" product, but
they had "high hopes" for their new development.
It was reported that a major airline had begun to treat all the
uniforms worn by their stewardesses with a new chemical stain
repellent and that, as a result, their monthly dry-cleaning bills
were running only a sixth of what they had been previously.
General Motors introduced their new experimental car, "Fire-
bird III," across the country, and made a great point of showing
the equipment that would permit the car to be guided automati-
cally on an "electronic highway" which was then being tested.
A large chemical-products company had a display board in
their research center with packages of meat and vegetables that
had been there for six months at room temperature without visible
deterioration, because they had been irradiated with the gamma
rays produced by spent nuclear materials.
And another chemical producer devoted a full summer to field-
4 HOW TO BE A MORE C R E A T I V E EXECUTIVE
testing a chemical grass inhibitor on one of our large Eastern
turnpikes.
One thing none of those twenty-four scientists predicted,
probably because they felt it would be too fantastic, was the re-
peal of the law of gravity. But in that same fifteen-month period,
it was announced that new advances in the development of a
unified field theory of physics now have scientists suspecting that
the earth's gravity is an electromagnetic force. If this proves to
be so, then the force can be shielded, neutralized, or utilized to
produce a counterforce. In other words, gravity could well be
"on the way out"—and in less than twenty years.
Where these educated and experienced technical specialists had
been led astray in their predictions was in underestimating one of
the most dynamic and powerful forces at work in the wor ld
today: the speeding up of our "rate of change." Today, we are
acquiring new knowledge and technological skills at such a rapidly
increasing rate that developments and discoveries which used to
take twenty years can now be accomplished in ten; events which
formerly took ten years to bring about now become realities in
two or three years. At the time those twenty-four scientists made
their predictions, the fastest man-made machine was an airplane
which traveled at about 750 miles an hour. Within two months,
man-made satellites were in orbit at 18,000 mph, and within the
fifteen-month period, a Russian rocket had escaped the earth's
gravitational field at 25,000 mph!
It has been estimated that we are currently advancing our tech-
nological knowledge at a rate of 22 per cent a year. This means
that we more than double our knowledge every four years.
Whether this estimate is accurate or not, it is safe to say that never
before in history has man's knowledge of his nature and environ-
ment increased so fast or in so many different directions. In fact,
so rapidly are we moving today that even man's oldest and most
useful invention, the wheel, can't keep up any more. The wheel
isn't going to disappear completely overnight, of course, and pos-
sibly not even in our lifetime. But it is significant that there are
5
WHY BE CREATIVE?
now at least two models of wheel less automobiles, both of which
depend on jets of air to propel them along above the road. And in
new electronic computers, the old wheel number counters are be-
ing replaced by electronic switches and tubes which are faster and
more dependable.
So what does this mean to you as a business executive? Aren't
these all signs of progress? And isn't progress inevitable?
These are all signs of progress, of course. They are also signs
of change and changes to come. But all changes are not progres-
sive. And progress isn't inevitable —only change is inevitable. We
just hope that, through the resourcefulness and decency of man,
the changes will also be progressive. Today, in the midst of our
looking into and anticipating the future, we can, simply by look-
ing at the "old" problems we have never adequately solved, see
definite proof that change doesn't have to be for the good. In fact,
many of these "old" problems are, if anything, going from bad
to so much worse that they could, in time, destroy our nation.
For example: By 1970, according to Dr. Arthur R. Upgren,
Director of the Bureau of Economic Studies, Macalester College,
our gross national product in the United States will be at the
phenomenally high figure of $700-billion a year. However, Dr.
Upgren reports the liquidity of our banks—the sum of cash and
reserves and United States government securities as a proportion
of percentage of deposits—has been declining since 1945 from a
high of 83 per cent. Says Dr. Upgren, "If we now make loans in
the next ten years to expand deposits by the growth we need, I
estimate that the liquidity ratio will be down to the danger point
again of 23 per cent... where we were in 1929." And, he points
out, "If this problem isn't solved, we will have a money shortage
too severe for our economy to withstand in 1970."
Our natural resources—metals, chemicals, fuels—are being ex-
hausted at fantastic rates to support the growth of our expanding
economy and standard of living. We are, in many fields, already
turning to substitute and synthetic materials to supply our basic
needs. But the big danger is that our children's children will have
6 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE E X E C U T I V E
to get along without even these if we continue to consume and
waste them at the present rate. Much of this exhaustion of re-
sources is preventable, that we do know. As an example, consider
the wasteful use of coal—for years one of our basic natural re-
sources. If we could solve the problems of efficient conversion of
coal into energy, just one kilogram—about two pounds—of coal
could yield us 25-billion kilowatt hours of electricity—as much as
all the power plants in the United States in 1958 could generate
by running steadily for two months!
Our growing labor force is caught in a squeeze between its
increase in size and the decrease in need. Industrial productivity
is such today that fewer workers are needed, and fewer still will
be needed in the future, to maintain our manufacturing output.
In view of this situation, one economist reported that unemploy-
ment may easily become our greatest national problem in future
years. As examples, he reported that between April and October
of 1958, our production went up 10 per cent, but production-
worker payrolls increased only 5 per cent. When General Motors
went into full production on their 1959 lines, their production
increase was 25 per cent. But they hired only 5 per cent more
workers.
On an international scale, broad-thinking authorities are point-
ing out signs in our relationship to Soviet Russia that could, if
they prove out, ultimately end in our defeat by Russia in world
economic battles. They are greatly concerned that we, in Amer-
ica, have adopted the attitude that the dangers do not exist: we
prefer to praise our country's power and look hopefully to its
glorious future. Yet the fact remains that in every corner of the
globe the United States is being outmaneuvered by Russia, both
economically and sociologically. And the story of history is a
repetitive story of the rise and fall of great nations. If America
is to survive, we have to face up to the fact that somehow we
must convince Americans in general of the necessity of paying
the price of survival. That price will include change of attitudes,
7
WHY BE CREATIVE?
removal of old prejudices and misconceptions, and certainly the
sacrifice of some of our much-guarded self-interests.
At lesser than national and international levels, we have dozens
of problems in every field of living that require new and different
solutions, and require those solutions soon, before they also as-
sume the proportions of national crisis. Most of these are old
problems that we have, for expediency or for the sake of personal
or political self-interests, let degenerate to the point where they
are now major problems. And by virtue of their severity, they
have assumed the aspect of new problems requiring new solutions.
As examples:
Every eight seconds a new American baby is born. Every
morning we have 7,000 more American mouths to feed. Every
year we add the equivalent of a new state of Maryland to our
population. These new people are all hungry—they've all got to
be fed. Problem: where is the food coming from?
By 1970, we will need more new college pla nts in this country
than we have built in the 300 years since the founding of Harvard.
In our elementary and secondary schools we are at least 75,000
classrooms short of our minimum needs today. By 1970, another
big jump in our school-age population will catch up with us. Prob-
lem: How do we get out from under, let alone get ahead?
Our major cities are having problems that were never even
dreamed of by their founding fathers: they are riddled by slums,
strangled-by traffic, and, in common with their parent states,
starved for income. And yet our growing population puts ever-
growing demands for more services, supplies, protection, and
health needs upon these cities. Problem: Unless something is done
to reverse the trend, we face the complete deterioration of our
cities as centers of culture, commerce, and living over the next
ten to twenty years.
And what about our people? America's greatest resource has
always been the ingenuity and resourcefulness of its people.
Won't these come through in our times of trouble to help us out
8 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
of our difficulties? At present, there seems little indication of it.
In May, 1958, Charles H. Brower, President of Batten, Barton,
Durstine & Osborn, Inc., the national advertising agency, gave a
talk before the National Sales Executives Convention in Wash-
ington, D.C. Included in his talk was this statement:
This, in America, is the high tide of mediocrity, the great era of
the goof-off, the age of the half-done job. The land from coast-to-
coast has been enjoying a stampede away from responsibility. It is
populated with laundrymen who won't iron shirts, with waiters who
won't serve, with carpenters who will come around some day maybe,
with executives whose minds are on the golf course, with teachers
who demand a single salary schedule so that achievement cannot be
rewarded nor poor work punished, with students who take cinch
courses because the hard ones make them think, with spiritual de-
linquents of all kinds who have been triumphantly determined to en-
joy what was known until the present crisis as "the new leisure."
And the salesman who won't sell is only a part of this over-all mess.
A few months later, a Trendex poll was taken across the coun-
try to find out if Americans, as a whole, agreed with Mr. Brower.
Here are the findings: Forty-eight per cent of those interviewed
agreed that the statement was true. Ten per cent had no opinion.
Forty-two per cent disagreed. As Mr. Brower later pointed out,
"To have almost half of the people polled agree with such a
statement is a phenomenal thing. Any candidate who went to the
polls with that many of the people behind him would be almost
certain of election!"
"Apparently," said Mr. Brower, "we recognize our national
illness."
But recognizing a problem and being willing to do something
about it are two different things. Thought leaders in this country
are becoming increasingly disturbed by the deterioration of the
traditional American "will to win." They are disturbed by the
complacency, conformity, and want for security. Our people
now have to relearn an old maxim if we are to muster the mental
drive and creative support the country needs today: Happiness
9
WHY BE C R E A T I V E ?
is an idea—not a condition of living. This problem is going to as-
sume even greater importance in our national mental well-being
in the years immediately ahead.
By 1975, according to most predictions, and even by 1965,
according to others, most Americans will be working at their
primary jobs only about thirty hours a week. Some authorities
predict that annual four-week vacations will be universal. If such
predictions come true, and there is every indication that they
will, then the average American worker will find himself with up
to 25 per cent more leisure time on his hands. The big question is,
how will people use that time? The way the trend is right now,
we are doomed to become a nation devoted to escapist recreation.
And what about the problems of doing business today? High
taxes, high wages, and high materials costs, as well as the necessity
of coping with the complications of ever-increasing technologies,
are putting a real drain on the resources and resourcefulness of
business executives. In many industries, profit margins are counted
in pennies. And the pressures for more sales are tremendous, as
are the pressures generated by competition.
Thirty-one per cent of America's top-brand consumer products
in 1940 had lost their leadership by 1956. Roughly 23 per cent
of this group lost their place because of competition from radi-
cally new products; 31 per cent because of improved competitive
products; 25 per cent because competing products were able to
provide new developments of enough interest to the consumer
to cause a brand change; and 23 per cent were just out advertised
and out promoted. So important has competitive selling become
to our business picture that Dun & Bradstreet reports that of the
9,324 business failures in the United States in the first part of
1958, "Inadequate Sales" was the most frequent reason for failure
(more than twice as much as any other cause), and "Competitive
Weakness" was the strong second reason. Some of the problems
that a business faces in selling at a profit in our economy today
are these:
Leadership. We are short of the trained and experienced execu-
10 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE E X E C U T I V E
tives we need to cope with the complexities of modern marketing.
This has been caused, at least in part, by overemphasis on speciali-
zation in the past. We find now that what we need are "general-
ists"—executives who can take a broad view of the business as a
whole and who have the ability to handle a wide variety of prob-
lems and problem aspects.
Training. It is almost axiomatic in business operation that to
increase profits, you must increase manpower efficiency. Execu-
tives and selling personnel must learn to make their business hours
more productive. They must learn to study and analyze their
operations and responsibilities in order to achieve greater effi-
ciency. This takes education, and if a company wants the benefits
of that education, it will have to assume the responsibility for
providing it.
Marketing. The way a product was advertised and sold yester-
day may be completely outmoded today. Just the change from
urban to suburban living has greatly upset many traditional con-
cepts of selling and distribution and will continue to do so as our
pattern of population change keeps changing.
New Products. Here lies one of the greatest challenges of all
for a business seeking sales. If products are practically identical
to those of a competitor, a company's potential for profits may be
nearly nonexistent today. And the company is in a dangerous way
so far as the future is concerned.
One national marketing magazine made the editorial prediction
that any company that didn't come out with a new product within
the next ten years would be out of business by 1970. And they
spelled this out: they said this couldn't be an old product with a
new handle or an old product with a new style of trim on it; it
would have to be a completely new product. And, to further
compound the worries of their readers, they mentioned the fact
that the chances of successfully introducing a new product these
days are less than one in four!
Actually, when you study any report of new products or prod-
ucts under development, it is easy to see why businesses in all
11
WHY BE C R E A T I V E ?
fields are under the gun to produce more new products.
Many one -line or limited-line companies are faced with
extinction by new—and, in some cases, as yet
undeveloped—products that will be coming onto the market
in the years ahead. As a cross-check on the predictions
made by the twenty-four scientists reported earlier in this
chapter, another group of twenty such men were asked this
question: "What businesses in existence today do you think
are likely to disappear within the next twenty years because
of competitive innovations?"
Here are the replies from this group:
Wooden office furniture (replaced by metal, plastic)
Ordinary fountain pen and liquid ink (replaced by ball
points and yet-to-be-developed permanent writing
instruments)
Laundry starch (will be replaced by built-in plastics)
Laundry and hand soaps (replaced by detergents or to-
be-developed electrostatic dirt precipitators)
Metal pipe (to be replaced by reinforced plastics)
Wool for fabrics (replaced by synthetics)
Dry cleaning (replaced by chemical pretreatment with dirt
repellent)
Freezers and refrigerators and frozen foods (replaced by
irradiated foods *)
Woven textiles (replaced by new "felted" or pressure-made
fabrics)
Piloted military aircraft (replaced by missiles)
Solvent-base paints (replaced by rubber and other water-
soluble products)
Lawnmowers (replaced by chemical grass inhibitors)
Piston engines (replaced by turbine or solar-powered
electrical)
* Since this prediction was made, it was subsequently announced
that irradiated foods which were already in distribution (mostly to
the armed forces) were being withdrawn because it was found that
present methods of irradiation also destroyed many important
nutrients. This, however, is only a delay—not a prohibition of future
development. The same type of situation existed when the milling
industry first began to bleach flour to make it white. The solution
in this case was to restore the vitamins and other nutrients lost in
the bleaching process by means of chemical additives to the white
flour.
12 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
All those predictions, of course, affect companies which make
products. But they will also affect companies which service, dis-
tribute, advise, and finance. These predictions add up to a com-
pletely new and changing character for American business. It
will not only be the manufacturers themselves who will be affected
and have to make changes, but their attendant suppliers. And the
successful adaptation to the changes will be in the hands of busi-
ness executives. Right there, we have still another problem: al-
though our total population is expected to grow by 25,000,000
by 1965, the best estimates indicate that our "future executive
group"—men in the twenty-five- to forty-five-year age bracket—
will decrease by 600,000. With expanding businesses to care for,
the caretakers are going to be extremely shorthanded. And this
will mean still more new problems in all areas of management:
human relations, processing, marketing, labor relations, research
and development, and personnel.
What all this adds up to is a crying need for more creativity
from our business and government management. We need more
men at executive and management le vels who, instead of trying
to "go by the book," have learned to use their imaginations to
solve our problems. "The book" for the dynamic change years
just ahead of us hasn't been written yet!
Now there has been, in recent years, an increasing amount of
talk about the need for more creativity to help us cope with and
solve the problems we have. Business, science, and government
today need all the ideas they can get. This is usually admitted by
even the most conservative managers. But very little observation
of business is necessary to conclude that business, as yet, has done
relatively little about getting anywhere near the full potential of
creativity from either its leaders or its workers. As a matter of
record, in the midst of the 1958 recession, when business was bad
and businessmen should have been looking for new ideas and
imaginative problem solutions, two major national conferences
on creative thinking—aimed at the production of ideas—had to
be canceled for lack of registrants. A third just barely made the
13
WHY BE CREATIVE?
minimum registration needed to break even! It seems to be a case
of "After you, my dear Alphonse."
But in any business or other type organization, the creativity
must come from the top. Top- and middle-management men must
set the example. Or, if an executive does not have the inclination
or the ability to become a top "idea man," he must at least acquire
enough knowledge and understanding of the creative processes
so that he can keep minds around him open to the rewards of crea-
tivity, and will not, himself, inadvertently block or discourage
fresh or different kinds of thinking within his organization.
Creative thinking, in any circumstance, should be encouraged
to the extent that it is a means to an end. It is never the end itself.
No business executive should be expected to be interested in ideas
for the sake of having ideas—not when he is trying to show a
profit! The reason an executive should invest time and effort in
improving his own creativity and in encouraging or assisting
others to develop theirs is, from a strictly business point of view,
that he will be able to solve more problems in more and better
ways.
But no executive can inspire creativity if his own attitude
toward it is skeptical. The first requirement for a creative leader is
that he himself really wants new ideas and that he himself will
have the capacity to change with the changes that new ideas re-
quire. This, in itself, means that an executive must at least familiar-
ize himself with the creative processes, with the nature of ideas,
with the techniques and methods of idea production. And he must
also approach the subject with a certain attitude. He must have
more than a little amount of faith.
After all, if we could learn creative thinking from a book or
by listening to someone talk about it, we'd have no trouble at all
in raising the nation's creative power. But creative thinking de-
mands real application—and a positive attitude. You've got to be -
lieve in the power of ideas. You've got to believe in what you are
trying to do. You've got to believe in yourself. And, in creativity,
it isn't always easy, because often we are speculating about the
14 HOW TO BE A CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
unknown. No one knows with scientific accuracy just what cre-
ative thinking really is. We can point out symptoms and methods.
But what really makes it, we don't know. Yet, if there is any one
thing that today's business executive needs, it is a supreme confi-
dence in the power of man to alter the events and circumstances
of his environment through the application of his imagination.
2
What Is Creative?
Although there has been a growing awareness over the last few
years that "this creative thinking bit" might be worth looking
into by a company, actual knowledge of just what makes thinking
"creative" lags somewhat behind. This is true not only in business,
but in science, education, and even the arts that have always
prided themselves on being "creative."
Because most people aren't too sure just what creativity really
is, they use such terms as "original," "talented," and "imagina-
tive" almost interchangeably with "creative." Of these, the most
misused term is "creative."
We speak of a woman hobbyist who turns out copies of her
evening-school art teacher's ceramic ash tray designs as "creative."
Likewise, the husband who uses his basement workshop to make
tables from mail-order patterns. Or the skilled cabinetmaker who
faithfully reproduces exact copies of Chippendale or Sheraton
pieces. We call "creative" the child prodigy who can play a
Mozart piano sonata at ten years of age, and the television comic
whose sense of timing lets him read his script-writer's gags with
15
16 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE E X E C U T I V E
rib-splitting results. We call such people "creative" when what
we really mean is "talented."
Now if our woman hobbyist eventually acquires the confidence
to develop her own ceramic designs; or if the husband switches
to planning his own furniture and using his own plans or begins
to make original adaptations and changes from the mail-order
plans; or if our cabinetmaker uses his years of skill and disciplined
taste to develop a new family of fine furniture; or if the child
prodigy begins to compose pleasing little tunes of his own; or if
the comic assumes the leadership of his gag-writer's efforts—if
any of these changes come about, then these people start to earn
the right to be called "creative." But creativity is more than just
talent.
We sometimes call a writer "creative" when what we mean
is "clever" or even "perceptive." There has been a rash of what
we now refer to as "social critics" writing of late. These people
are highly skilled at pointing out the flaws and problems of what-
ever their field of the moment happens to be, and at presenting
their discoveries in sharp and cutting and often amusing fashions.
But merely pointing out problems does not complete the creative
cycle—it only starts it. And much more of the credit for creative-
ness should go to the person who picks up the problem, develops
the ideas to solve it, and puts the idea into action to effect the
solution.
Please don't, at this point, begin to "write off" talent, original
-
ity, or imagination as requirements for creativity. As we shall see
later, each of these attributes has a definite contribution to make
to the creative process. But none of them alone earns a person the
right to be called "creative."
Creativeness, in the best sense of the word, requires two things:
an original concept, or "idea," and a benefit to someone. Now
many people think up original concepts but fail to follow through
on them, so that no benefit ever results. And many people think
up original concepts that are more harmful than good (there
17
WHAT IS CREATIVE?
have been many highly imaginative people on the FBI's "Ten
Most Wanted" listings!). So to simplify the definition even more,
we can say that creativeness requires new and beneficial ideas put
into action.
(There are some people who feel very strongly that the word
"creative" should never be applied to any efforts of man. It is a
term they would rather have reserved to the works of God. To
these, we can only point out that their Bible will tell them that
man was created in the "image of God." It does not say that this
"image" referred only to man's outward appearance to the exclu-
sion of his mental abilities. In fact, it is doubtful whether even the
most erudite Biblical scholar can say that the only God-image
involved in man isn’t his mind!)
What we will be concerned about in this book are the methods,
techniques, and princip les involved in developing new and dif-
ferent concepts and in putting those concepts into action. For the
sake of familiarity, concepts will from now on be referred to as
ideas.
Just what is an idea, anyway? It may be a discovery—the per-
ception for the first time of something that has been in existence
but not previously known. An idea may be an innovation—some-
thing new or novel applied to an existing way of doing something.
An idea may be a new synthesis—a different mixture of known
elements or parts to make a new whole. Or an idea may be a
mutation—an alteration in the form or the qualities of an existing
entity or concept. An idea may be any of these or a combination
of any of them. Probably the quickest way to compare them is to
look at a few ideas and analyze the differences.
A discovery, we said, usually involves the perception of some-
thing that no one has ever perceived before. Discoveries may
come about as the result of an accident. Such an example that has
become famous is Charles Goodyear's experience of accidentally
dropping a ball of gum rubber he was experimenting with onto
a hot stove. In scraping it off, he suddenly discovered that the gum
18 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
had changed character; it had, in fact, become almost a new
substance. This was one of the key points in his eventual develop-
ment of rubber as we know it today.
Most worthwhile or important discoveries, however, are the
result of long, careful, and painstaking study of cause and effect
by a patient searcher. One of the most significant recent discov-
eries of our time involved the "repeal" of the "law of parity" in
physics. This concerns the behavior of submicroscopic particles.
Two Chinese-born physicists, Dr. T. D. Lee and Professor C. N.
Yang of Columbia University, were conducting studies of such
particles when they discovered that some of them weren't doing
what the "natural laws" of physics said they should be doing.
They then suggested some experiments to find out what was going
on. Other experimenters followed through and found that,
indeed, the two physicists had hit upon a discovery that opened
new possibilities for the development of theories on subatomic
particles.
Back before World War I, a similar observation of the defiance
of generally accepted theories resulted in the discovery of the
nucleus of the atom by Ernest Rutherford. At the time, he was
experimenting with the newly developed "X rays," and found
that alpha particles produced by the rays weren't behaving as
they "should" when fired into a cloud chamber. His subsequent
observations and deductions led him to the discovery that an atom
was not, as was then thought, the smallest particle in existence
—that the atom had within itself a still smaller particle that made
its nucleus.
Before leaving the subject of discovery, we should probably
take a look at two closely related factors, chance and serendipity.
Too many people are apt to write off the effects of "chance"
on the development of an idea as just "good luck." They over-
look the fact that the only people such "luck" seems to happen
to with any regularity are those who have been searching for
just such a break. For example, Charles Goodyear, mentioned
earlier, had spent five years and every cent he could lay his hands
19
W A IS CREATIVE?
HT
on, even to the neglect of his family, experimenting with the
crude rubber then available, trying to make it into a permanent
substance. Without the benefit of the work and study he had
put into the material before that stroke of "luck," it is doubtful
that he would even have recognized the discovery of the new
substance which resulted from the accidental burning on the
stove. It is simply the old story that the best-coached team gets
the breaks.
Serendipity is quite another matter. This is, basically, the
discovery of one thing while you are looking for something else.
For example, in attempting to perfect a new type of carbon
copying paper, researchers of the National Cash Register
Company developed a method of encapsulating microscopic
droplets of ink in a gelatin solution. They suddenly discovered
that their microscopic encapsulating process had literally thou-
sands of other possibilities in fields quite far from typewriters
and business machines. In fact, there is every possibility that some
of the other uses—in photography, medicine, electronics, and
even cosmetics—may prove to be more profitable than the
original carbon-paper business.
Probably the chief distinction between "chance" and serendip-
ity is that the "serendipist" is usually looking for "something."
He may not be sure just what that "something" is, therefore
he is alert to almost anything that comes along. In fact, he may
even be hyper sensitized to the appearance of anything new or
different. Therefore, while his discovery may also appear to be
"luck," in the sense that this wasn't what he was really searching
for, it is not so much luck when you consider that he was really
searching for anything new. As the Greek philosopher, Heraclitus,
said, "You will never find the unexpected unless you are looking
for it."
Serendipity also explains another phenomenon that has vexed
inventors in many fields throughout history: simultaneous dis-
covery. At any given time, there is always a great body of un-
resolved knowledge to contend with—bits and pieces that only
20 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
wait for some mind somewhere to pull them together. There is
also a unity in scientific thinking that overrides any tendencies
to isolate those bits and pieces into special fields or separate
spheres. The refore, no matter what field the scientist or specialist
is working in—no matter what country he lives in or what
language he speaks—if he has sufficient background in his field,
he will be cognizant of this body of knowledge and will ap-
proach it in the same ways that his contemporaries in other fields
and even other parts of the world will. The bits and pieces he is
working with are truths (else they would not be knowledge),
and if he asks the same questions that others are asking, he is
bound to come up with the same answers. This has often, in
history, led to the simultaneous discovery of new truths by
different scientists in different fields. As examples:
Newton and Hooke independently arrived at theories of
gravity at the same time.
Henry and Faraday both hit on the principle of magnetic
induction of electric current at practically the same time.
Darwin and Wallace both proposed theories of natural selection
within a short period of time—so short that neither could have
"stolen" from the other in time to formulate and propose his
independent theory.
Unfortunately, history is apt to deal harshly with such coinci-
dental discoveries: usually one man is given the full credit and
the other is accused of being an idea thief. But both men were
working from the same body of unresolved truths; both asked
the same questions; both could only get the same answers; and,
logically, both should be credited with the new discovery.
Today, of course, that cloud of unresolved knowledge hangs
heavier than ever. Somewhere, among the bits and pieces, are
the answers we need to get us to outer space and back again—
or to permanent world peace—or to economic security—or to
wherever we want to go. These answers can take Russia or any
other country in the world to all those places also. The big
question confronting us today is not who is going to pull the
21
WHATIS CREATIVE?
answers together, but who is going to pull them together first.
Innovation, another form of idea production, is less complex
in its definition and application. In fact, almost any product you
can buy that has been on the market for more than two or three
years is probably the result of progressive innovations in its
design. Innovation is simply the introduction of change by
adding something new or changing something in a new way. Just
by considering the ordinary automobile we get a quick listing
of innovations:
The introduction of the gasoline engine; the self-starter;
hydraulic brakes and four-wheel brakes; automatic transmissions;
power brakes and power steering; curved windshields for greater
visibility; torsion-bar suspension. Each of these new features, the
first time it was applied, was an innovation. And, not to complicate
the explanation, it should probably be noted that each of these
particular in novations undoubtedly called for the development
of hundreds of separate ideas, and many of these ideas were
probably innovations in themselves!
Synthesis, the bringing together of apparently unrelated items
to make a new whole, is one of the most common idea-producing
methods. Charles Duryea, the automotive engineer, was watching
his wife spray perfume on herself with an atomizer. At that time,
he was looking for a way to "break up" gasoline so it would burn
better in the automobile engine he was developing. His imagina-
tion enabled him to synthesize the two ideas, and he developed
the first practical carburetor. Cyrus McCormick became interested
in the action of the barber's clippers while having his hair cut
one day. He realized that this particular cutting action could be
used in more ways than just on hair, and from that realization
eventually came his idea for the farm reaper. A more recent
example of commercial synthesis was made by the Corning Glass
Works when it combined the famous "Pyrex" brand cooking
utensils with the material used in the Pyroceram nose cones the
company had developed for guided missiles. The result was a
set of glass cooking ware that looks like china, but can go from
22 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE E X E C U T I V E
the freezer to a red-hot burner without cracking. Another
example of a modern-day synthesis is the plastic "squeeze"
bottles which have become so popular for toothpaste. They
resulted from an observation of a mustard dispenser bottle at
a Coney Island hot dog stand!
Closely allied to synthesis is the idea-producing technique of
mutation. This is usually a simple alteration in the form or
quality of a material to adapt it to a new use, the way Eberhard
Faber got the idea of putting an eraser on his pencils after
watching a servant clean wallpaper with a piece of sponge rubber.
Or the army man who simply switched the principle of the
repeating rifle to make a new cartridge-loading razor for shaving.
A more exotic example of a mutation is the use of powdered metal,
pressed under weight and baked in an oven, to make gears and
other intricately shaped metal parts. This was first used by the
Egyptians before the time of Christ. The mutation consists only
in adapting the method to modern-day production methods.
These have all been examples of ways in which ideas can come
into being. But, as mentioned, for an idea to be considered
creative, it must also be of benefit to someone. All of the ideas
mentioned, of course, pass that test because, if nothing else, they
contributed to the basic knowledge of our world. But, at the
same time, they also destroyed. And this brings up a new
characteristic of creativity that must be understood, for it is
basic to the entire development of your own ability to create.
Creativeness, or an idea, has a dual nature: it is both construc -
tive and destructive. An idea can give us a new way of doing
something or a new approach to thinking—but only at the
expense of giving up an old way of doing something or an old
way of thinking. And we are not, remember, referring to the
ideas which have destruction as their only objective. We are
concerned solely with that creativity which does meet our test
of bringing a benefit with its change.
It has been said that the creativeness of American business is
almost wholly responsible for the tremendous growth and
23
WHAT IS CREATIVE?
industrial strength of our country today. But, at the same time,
this beneficial creativeness is one of the most destructive forces
an industrial era has ever known. Just consider:
Any new product introduced on the market can win ac-
ceptance only if the public at large is willing to abandon an
old way of satisfying the same need. Every new production
method adopted means the end of a former way of doing some-
thing. Every new material designed into a product means that
a former material has lost a use.
One of the relatively unknown great dramas of American
industry centered around the progressiveness of a new idea battling
the old established way: In 1882, a young man named Nikola
Tesla invented an electric generator for producing alternating
current—the type of current that supplies the electrical needs
of most of the world today. But in 1882, the only electric power
in general use was direct current produced by the generators
invented by Thomas A. Edison. This system was costly to install
—requiring an expensive generator for about every 2 square
miles. And it was costly to operate. But it was also highly profit-
able. And the people who were realizing those profits weren't
about to give them up easily. So Tesla found that none of the
established companies in the field would handle his new system.
It was not until several years later, when Tesla was discovered by
George Westinghouse, that he was able to get the financial and
production backing to put his alternating current generators into
use. The rest, of course, is electrical history.
An example of how a creative insight can destroy years of
preconceived notions is observed in the discovery back in 1910,
by Dr. Francis Peyton Rous of the Rockefeller Institute for
Medical Research, that a certain type of animal cancer was
caused by a filterable virus. This challenged the one basic thing
that all medical researchers knew—or thought they knew—about
cancer: it was not an infectious disease, which it would have to
be if it were caused by a virus. Many respected researchers of
the day flatly refused to believe that Rous was right, even after
24 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
he went on to find other types of animal cancers that were also
caused by viruses. Today, of course, no line of investigation
into the origins of cancer is being pursued more vigorously
than the one aimed at finding virus causes. But several generations
of thinking had to be changed before this hopeful situation came
about.
So it is a natural condition of all creative advances—all worth-
while new ideas—that they will have to overcome previous
thought patterns, habits, and accepted ways before they can
enjoy the success of their own acceptance. Some ideas are so
obviously good that they win acceptance easily. But even many
ideas which are obviously good to many people do not win
general acceptance purely because of the natural resistance
people have to giving up a familiar or understood way of doing
things in favor of a somewhat uncertain new way. The job of
winning acceptance for a new idea may require more creativeness
than did getting the original idea.
Once acceptance is gained, however, it may be the beginning
of a period of rapid advancement in commercial adaptation and
refinement of the new idea. The history of ideas shows that
most long-term developments and expansions occur in "spurts"
—rapid progress, followed by "breath-catching" slower periods
when we search out weaknesses which indicate new directions
to research. Following these new directions can, in turn, result
in our discovery of still another new fundamental which, in its
turn, will touch off another spurt.
After all, human knowledge is just an accumulation of small
facts and assumed facts. As the experience of generation after
generation successively confirms or denies those facts, we build
them into our knowledge. And it is the same with ideas: one
leads to another, and the growth of human progress in every
field—the arts, business, science, medicine, or human relations
—is based on the progressive addition of one new idea to another,
or to another group of ideas, to form a new entity that is a
creative whole in itself. Two examples, one from science and
25
WHAT IS C R E A T I V E ?
one from industry, will serve to show this progression from one
idea to another and the pyramiding effects this progression can
have on humanity:
We have already mentioned the discovery of the nucleus of the
atom by Ernest Rutherford just before World War I. Rutherford
continued his experiments in bombarding substances with alpha
rays from radium. When he tried nitrogen, he found that it
broke down into hydrogen and oxygen. This, he realized, meant
he was actually breaking up the nucleus of the atom. The year
of this discovery was 1918—right in the midst of World War I.
This was a key discovery which unlocked a chain of subsequent
research and discoveries.
Two of Rutherford's co-workers, Mrs. Cockcroft and Wal
ton, were able to duplicate his results by using artificially acceler-
ated ions rather than the natural alpha particles of radium. Next,
James Chadwick found that when certain substances were hit by
alpha rays, a new kind of particle was emitted—the neutron. Then,
Enrico Fermi, working in Rome, found that if the target were
surrounded by paraffin, to slow down the neutrons, isotopes
could be produced. As a result of Fermi's experiments, other
scientists carried out further studies that resulted in the discovery
that the uranium nucleus could be split into parts—the first
proof of the possibility of uranium fission.
Meanwhile, Fermi had moved to the United States and was
working at Columbia University. In his experiments there, he
discovered that neutrons are emitted when the uranium nucleus
breaks apart. This was another major breakthrough in knowledge.
At that stage physicists all over the world knew that a chain
reaction could be set up. The only questions from then on were
when and under what conditions.
The basic research then went into a relatively fallow stage
until the beginning of World War II, when Ernest Lawrence
saw the possibility that this chain-reaction effect could be of
importance as a military development. Lawrence, while at the
University of California, had developed the first practical cyclo-
26 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
tron. It was suggested to Lawrence that this chain reaction might
be accomplished with uranium-235. Then, in Lawrence's labora-
tory, three assistants, Glen Seaburg, Joe Kennedy, and Arthur
Wall, found that a new element could be produced by bombard-
ing uranium with neutrons. This new element we now call
plutonium. And they discovered that plutonium would not only
undergo fission like uranium-235, but could also be separated
chemically from the U-235 to offer important production and
performance advantages. Lawrence then contacted Dr. James B.
Conant and Dr. Arthur Holly Compton in Chicago to propose
the use of uranium-235 to get the chemical plutonium for making
an atomic bomb. Out of this meeting came the real start of the
atomic project as a war program.
It is clear from this history that the building up of discoveries,
with one leading to another, may go on for years before an
ultimate product or final theory can result. And, of course, the
atomic bomb was by no means the "ultimate" result of all this
research. We are just beginning to realize the commercial,
medical, and technological by-products of this early atomic
research, and there is no measuring at this time what the ultimate
results will be.
In his fascinating book, Machines That Built America, Roger
Burlingame traces the effects that one idea had on the industrial
course of the United States and the world. The idea itself was
for a pneumatic tire patented in 1888 by John Boyd Dunlop, an
Irish veterinary.
When the tire was applied to bicycles, which had been invented
eighteen years before, the bicycle changed its shape and became a
world-wide fad. Until then, bicycles had been trick machines, with
one wheel over 4 feet high and a very small wheel in the rear. But
with the possibilities in the pneumatic tire, inventive minds began to
move quickly:
They equalized the diameters of the wheels; devised a chain-and-
sprocket mechanism to put the driving force into the rear wheel, and,
by a proper ratio of diameters and sprockets, reduced the rider's
27
WHAT IS CREATIVE?
effort. These things were not, of themselves, new. Gearing
was ancient. Rear-wheel drive had been used on locomotives.
The really new idea was that of making contact with the
earth's surface by means of the new substance of rubber. And
the bicycle, in America, became a twenty-year fad. Before the
fad had run its course, it had completely changed our private
and industrial outlook. Here are some of the results of that
particular combination of ideas:
Women changed to shorter skirts—from the cumbersome
dust-gathering dress of that late Victorian era.
Repair shops sprang up all over the country. But no shop
could be expected to carry different pedals, handle bars,
sprockets, etc. for the different makes of bicycles, so the idea
that machined parts must be standardized and interchangeable
began to spread.
Workers in small-town machine shops, small bicycle
factories, even tiny village repair shops learned skills and
techniques which would make the more complex adjustments
on still-to-come automobile motors and transmissions easier.
(Two such small-town bicycle mechanics later used their skills
to invent the airplane!)
Steel formulas had to be improved because new steels were
needed for a light machine that would stand hard usage. New
steel alloys for durable moving parts came in with the bicycle.
Sheet steel and steel die presses were needed for mudguards
and chain housings. Small accessories like lamps, bells, brakes,
tool kits, and pumps helped spur new arts in gadgetry. And
the movement to get better roads on which people could ride
their bikes advanced to the point where the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology introduced a course in road
engineering. This movement gained enough momentum to
carry on when the mass production of motor cars made it a
necessity.*
Thus one simple combination of ideas was enough to completely
change dozens of industrial fates through the multiplying effects
of its benefits. Is it any wonder then that there should be such
a growing realization of the power of ideas? And such a demand
for new and different ideas to meet the compounding problems
• Condensed from Machines That Built America,
copyright, 1953 by Roger Burlingame. Used by permission of
Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc., New York.
28 HOW TO BE A MORE CRE AT I V E E X E C U T I V E
that business, humanity, and the world itself all face today? With
this realization of the power and need of ideas has come the
growing interest in a new art: that of deliberate creativity—the
utilization of the principles, methods, and techniques we learn
from studying highly creative people to try to develop new ideas
almost "to order."
Probably the person who should be credited most with stirring
up interest in this new art is advertising man Alex F. Osborn.
Others had also realized that there were similarities in creative
processes and that our highly creative people seem to exhibit
some personal characteristics in common. But when Mr. Osborn
became interested in the subject, he had the promotional ex-
perience and ability to interest others in what has since become
a rapidly growing movement throughout business, industry,
education, government, and social organizations.
A prime example of how creativity is deliberately being
fostered in more progressive organizations is the "Value Analysis"
service of the General Electric Company. The aim of Value
Analysis at G.E. is to relate the cost of any item to the function,
service, or operation purchased by that cost. The value analysts
are engineers trained in deliberate problem-solving methods. They
are taught, for instance, to challenge systematically anything that
"seems" to be obvious. For example, one department recorded
all important changes made in the major components of a product.
If it developed that a component had not had a major change in
five years or more, value analysts were put to work with the
object of removing 50 per cent of the cost from that component.
Even though it was apparently satisfactory and still a good
design, the engineers knew that changes in methods, materials,
and production alone take place so rapidly that in five years'
time it is quite possible that a 50 per cent cost reduction could
be obtained. Another G.E. example: a new industrial X-ray instal-
lation was being contemplated. The drawings called for a ring of
concrete 12 feet high and 7 feet thick around the installation to stop
the X-rays. A value analyst began to ask questions: A wall so large!
29
WHAT IS CREATIVE
What would they do with it after they were through with the
X-rays? Was there another material that would also stop X-rays?
He was told that lead would do it, but would cost even more
than the concrete. "Well," he asked, "how about dirt? Won't
dirt stop X-rays?" This was one the experts hadn't thought of
—they had to look it up. "Yes," they reported, "two feet of
dirt is equivalent to one foot of concrete when it comes to
stopping X-rays." This resulted in a wall made of $5,000 worth
of dirt instead of $50,000 worth of concrete—all because a
man had been trained to ask questions and look for alternatives.
There are some people who still doubt that the ability to
generate creative ideas at will can really be "learned." Or they
wonder if ideas produced through such "forced" methods can
be as good as ideas produced through inspiration or some other
occult and unknown method. "Primary creativeness," they say,
"comes out of the unconscious—it involves a leap into the dark.
Anything conscious, logical, sensible, realistic, or learned could
only be secondary creativity."
However, recent research tends to demonstrate that if people
will practice—diligently—the "secondary" techniques, they will,
in time, begin to develop signs of the "primary" techniques.
Furthermore, even the ideas produced by the so-called "sec-
ondary" creativity can be of far more value to a businessman
than no ideas at all.
No one seriously claims that creative thinking is becoming a
science or that there is any intention of making it a science.
There are far too many human variables involved for anyone
to be able to locate a specific "imagination button" which can
be pushed to turn on the creativity. By the same token, however,
no one has yet found the "music button" that makes a musician,
or the "painting button" that makes an artist, or the "write button"
that makes a novelist. And yet we do have trained musicians,
schooled artists, and taught writers. And some of these trained,
schooled, and taught people, once they acquired the basic founda-
tions of their arts, have gone on to creativeness in its true sense.
30 HOW TO BE A CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
And no one has as yet produced any evidence that a businessman,
seeking to cope with his problems and improve his creative output
of ideas, cannot, by grounding himself in basic principles and
techniques that have worked for other people, go on to become
a more creative force in his company or industry.
Now the use of words like "principles," "techniques," or
"methods" requires a further caution: creative thinking is not
a gimmick. It is not a stunt. It is something that can encompass
your whole range of living—from your job and company needs,
on out to the kind of parent you are. But sticking strictly to
business, we should remember that we are interested in getting
ideas, not just for the sake of ideas, but for solving problems.
This cannot be overemphasized. And we should begin early in
our study of ideas to learn the difference between an idea that is
important and an idea that is just an idea.
Only by setting our standards high and insisting on meeting
them will we be able to reach up to true creativity—deliberately!
3
Characteristics of
Creative People
What makes a man creative? Is it something in his education, or
his upbringing, or his physical make-up? Was it where he went
to school? Or the b ooks he read while growing up? Is it his
intelligence? Is it the kind of job he has? Or the problems he has
had to overcome merely to stay alive?
Actually, all of these factors may have some bearing on any
individual's creativeness. But not necessarily. In studying the
great creative thinkers of the past, we find that they came from
all walks of life; were in all kinds of businesses. They had varied
interests, beliefs, educations, and temperaments. And the same
thing holds true for the creative people we have been able to
study in our own time.
Current studies of what makes a person creative are far from
complete. But preliminary findings, from independently con-
ducted studies, are so closely in agreement that we think we can
now predict what characteristics will indicate at least a potential
31
32 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
for creativeness. The most comprehensive research effort in this
field is probably that of Dr. J. P. Guilford at the University of
Southern California. A similar type of study, with almost identical
preliminary findings, has been initiated at Penn State College,
Pennsylvania, by Dr. Viktor Lowenfeld. Industrial companies
have also been studying their personnel assigned to creative
activities with similar confirming results. Among the leaders in
this are such firms as the AC Spark Plug Division of General
Motors; the General Electric Company; and RCA-Victor's Tele -
vision Engineering Department. We shall expand on the findings
of these business concerns in Chapter 14. For now, however, it is
important only to note that their researching has, to a large extent,
given some practical, dollars-and-cents support to the more aca-
demic and scientific studies made by Drs. Guilford and Lowenfeld.
There are at least five primary characteristics common to
highly creative people: problem sensitivity; idea fluency; origi-
nality; flexibility; and drive. There are a few other secondary
characteristics which, though they may be subdivisions of the
first four, are in other ways unique to the point of meriting
special mention: redefinition skill; abstracting ability; synthesiz-
ing ability; and organizational ability.
Before going into these characteristics in detail, a few qualifica-
tions should be made. The first is that no one of these characte r-
istics, by itself, necessarily makes a person creative. All of them
together indicate only a potential for creativeness. Next, probably
no one person would ever possess all of these characteristics to
the same degree. They are parts of a whole, however, and though
a person may be stronger in one than in the others, he will
probably possess at least some ability to manifest the others in
his thinking. Finally, it is possible for a person to strengthen
his ability in any of these specific areas. This means that it is
also possible for a person to effect an over-all improvement in all
of them through conscious effort to cultivate these characteristics.
33
CHARACTERISTICS O CREATIVEPEOPLE
F
1 • Problem Sensitivity
Basically, problem sensitivity is the ability to recognize that a
problem exists. It is also the ability to cut through misunderstand-
ings, misconceptions, lack of facts, or other obscuring handicaps,
to recognize the real problem in an apparent situation. Prob-
lem sensitivity is vital to creativity, because you can't solve a
problem until you know what the problem is, or at least know
that you have a problem.
Problem sensitivity, in an individual, manifests itself in many
ways. For example, a person seems to be highly aware of the
difficult ies, needs, and feelings of other people. He is quick to
catch anything out of the ordinary or odd or unusual in any
situation in which he may find himself. He has the ability to
see possibilities that other people miss in situations, people, or
materials. As examples:
Howard W. Sams, sales manager of an electronics firm in
Indianapolis, quit his job in 1946 to go into business for himself
producing service manuals for radio-TV repairmen. There were
manuals on the market at that time, but they were poorly
organized, non-standardized hodgepodges of information—highly
unsatisfactory to use. Sams also sensed that the TV industry,
which was just coming into being, was going to mushroom. And
with the industry growth, would come a growing need for more
servicemen who would have to absorb thousands of new facts
and bits of electronic information in far too little time, if the
repair business were to keep pace with the demand. Out of all
this came the idea for his simplified servicing manuals which he
called "Photo fact Folders" for radio-TV repairmen. These
folders include complete measurements of every TV model;
photographs of the models inside and out; and, where necessary,
"explosion" diagrams showing how every part is assembled.
Almost overnight, Howard Sams' repair manuals became the
"bibles" of servicemen across the country. In less than eight
34 HOW TO BE A CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
years, Sams' sales soared from $430,000 to well over $3-million!
Donald Brann, of Pleasantville, New York, exhibited problem
sensitivity when he related his previous experience selling dress
patterns to some carpentry work he was doing in a new home at
the request of his wife. His idea was to sell woodworking patterns
to the growing army of do-it-yourself homeowners. Selling the
patterns was difficult, at first, until Brann realized that his best
outlet would be lumberyards and hardware stores. He was able
to get his "Easi-Bild" Patterns into these outlets through the
simple approach of convincing these dealers that his patterns
would help their sales on other products. Today his gross sales
are in excess of $1-million a year.
One of the largest and most important corporations in the
United States today is General Dynamics. This giant of defense-
production industries came into bein g largely as the result of
the problem sensitivity of one man: John Jay Hopkins. In 1945,
at the end of World War II, General Dynamics consisted of only
the small, but financially sound, Electric Boat Company, which
had produced, under Hopkins' leadership, seventy-two submarines
for the Navy during the war. By 1945 the company had plenty
of cash, but very few orders for future business. It was a time
when everyone else was talking disarmament and "get the boys
home." Hopkins, however, with his far-reaching mind, was able
to foresee the problems ahead for the world and realize that the
United States was in for a cold war on a more or less permanent
basis. Furthermore, he was able to see that the United States
was going to need a new kind of defense company to bolster its
position in this war: a company capable of producing complete
weapons systems, rather than isolated specialties like tanks, guns,
planes, or boats. Using his Electric Boat Company as the nucleus,
he was able to plan a careful program of acquisition of other
companies and to integrate them into a well-managed, soundly
financed whole. John Jay Hopkins' death in 1957 robbed American
industry of one of its most powerful future-oriented minds.
It is highly significant that in each of these examples the person
35
CHARACTERISTICS OF CREATIVE PEOPLE
who anticipated a growing "problem" did not regard it as a
problem at all. In each case, his approach was to capitalize on
an opportunity. This attitude toward problems is probably the
chief distinguishing attribute which differentiates the problem-
sensitive person from what, for lack of any better term, we could
call the "career critic." The world often seems to be filled with
people who are only too happy to tell you what is wrong with
the world or you or your ideas or your environment or anything
else. Some of these are also very brilliant people. And, in a sense,
they serve a purpose. They do point out our faults. And, oc-
casionally, with hindsight, they tell us how we could have done
better. But strangely enough, these people contribute very little
to making the world a better place. It may be that they are so
busy waiting for other people to make mistakes that can be
pounced on and loudly denounced that they just don't have time
to contribute anything constructive themselves.
But the creative person—one who exhibits true problem
sensitivity—is more positively oriented. He looks upon a problem
as an opportunity. And his deep conviction is that any problem
can be solved if the right idea can be found to unlock it. Creative
people are positive people. Creative people are confident people.
They know that nothing is ever done finally and that everything
that has been done in our world can be done over and done better.
And they use their sensitivity to people, situations, environment,
and the future to find opportunities for contributing their own
ideas and effort.
In this basic attitude of a creative person lies your best op-
portunity to strengthen or develop your own faculty for problem
identification. Keep in mind that nothing is ever as well done
as it could be. Every man-made article, every business operation,,
every human-relations technique can be improved and someday
will be. In every situation you encounter as an executive, no
matter how many times you have met and handled it before, there
exists an opportunity to find a better way.
And, as the eminent business statesman, Bruce Barton,, once
36 HOW TO BE A CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
said, "Don't complain about your troubles. They're responsible
for 90 per cent of your income!"
2 • Idea Fluency
The term idea fluency simply means that a person has the
ability to think up quantities of ideas against a given problem.
The value of fluency lies in the fact that the more ideas you have
for solving a problem, the greater will be the chances that you
will find a really new idea, or at least an idea that is better than
anything now in existence.
This, in a way, is just common sense. The human mind, even
an ambitious one, is apt to be lazy at times. When it works out
one solution to a problem, it is tempted to slip into neutral. That
particular problem is "solved." But the best that can be said, ordi-
narily, is that one solution has been found. It is not necessarily the
best solution, or even the "right" one. If you can think of two
ways in which the problem might possibly be solved, then the
chances are that one of them will be better than the other. If you
start out with ten or twenty or a hundred possible ideas, you may
easily find that your biggest problem is how to pick the best one.
In the strict sense of the word, fluency means that a person not
only produces a quantity of ideas, but he also produces them
rapidly. You probably know someone among your acquaintances
who does this at the drop of a question: you mention some prob-
lem you have, and he immediately begins to throw out ideas—
all kinds of ideas. Not all of them are good, of course, but at
least he is turning his imagination loose to think up possibilities.
And this is the key to developing your own fluency: you learn
to shift your mental gears into "free-wheeling"—you give your
own mind the freedom it needs to produce a chain reaction of
thoughts on your problem. In Chapter 8, you'll get some specific
tips and devices that should help you improve your own ability
to be fluent in ideas.
37
C H A R A C T E R I S T I C S OF C R E A T I V E P E O P L E
3 • Originality
Originality is the ability to find a new or different way of
solving a problem. It is a measure of uniqueness. And, in creative
problem-solving, it comes in all shapes and sizes and degrees.
Ideas can range in value from the completely new abstract
mathematical theory, which will affect the thinking of scientists
for generations, down to a way to save 10 cents a day in your
mailroom. In practical, everyday business problem-solving, com-
plete newness, or pure originality, is usually not what is needed.
In fact, it may not even be wanted! The originality required
of the business executive is more apt to be that of finding
new ways to vary existing conditions, or new ways to adapt
existing ideas to new conditions, or a new modification of some-
thing that will fit in with an existing condition. And the difference
between a great business executive and an ordinary one is often
the ability to produce these "original" variations to meet new or -
existing conditions.
The 1958-1959 "nervous period" in American business pro-
duced several examples of the type of original thinking that can
pay off in everyday problem-solving for an executive:
Sylvania Electric demonstrated a new approach to an existing
condition this way: One of their lighting products had 15 per
cent of the national market. The company wasn't trying to get
more than this, because there were just too many competitors
scrambling for that particular business. But when their sales in
other lines began to decline, they took a new look at the problem.
They finally decided to mechanize the whole production of that
product. This resulted in their being able to cut costs and increase
production to the point where they went way ahead of compe-
tition and actually cornered 60 per cent of the market in the
midst of the bad business times.
Reynolds Metals decided to adapt some of their existing ideas
to the new conditions of selling caused by the recession. They
38 HOW TO BE A MORE C R E A T I V E EXECUTIVE
began a rapid diversification into new markets with aluminum
swimming pools, auto parts, boats, and cans. A vice president of
the company, John Blomquist, said at the time, "We had all
these programs before, but now that business is tough, we're
moving a lot faster in these development areas."
California's Consolidated Electrodynamics showed real origi-
nality by coming up with a new modification of the duties of their
top-management personnel to fit the existing conditions of tougher
business: their president stepped down to become an operating
man again as senior vice president in charge of four of their fast-
growing, but troublesome, divisions; their chairman of the board
took over the president's duties.
These, of course, sound like obvious solutions to such problems.
And, like most original solutions, they are obvious—once someone
else has used them. But the first time they were used, they were
original.
Of course some degrees of originality rate higher than others:
that which rates highest calls for throwing out all the "accepted"
or "ordinary" concepts and striking out in a bold new direction.
For many of our national and social and civic problems, this
type of originality seems to offer the only hope of permanent
solutions. Fortunately, on some of these problems, some original
thinking is being done—or at least started. Because it does strike
at the very roots of traditional ways, it is meeting the resistance
that all such bold new concepts meet when they are first launc hed.
Nevertheless, in at least two fields, enough progress has been
made to provide hope that new solutions will be forthcoming.
Those two fields are education and medicine.
The new experiment in education is that of "tape teaching."
The first electronics school has been established in the St. Scholas-
tica Convent School in Covington, Louisiana. This school origi-
nated the idea and later received assistance and support from the
Fund for the Advancement of Education. St. Scholastica, by an im-
aginative use of audio-visual devices, has actually managed to
reintroduce to its classrooms both individual attention to students
39
CHARACTERISTICS O C E TV PEOPLE
F RAIE
in oversize classes, and the demand that the student develop the
capacity to think for himself. You can expect to see national at-
tention focused on this technique in the future. It is original it
—
is different—and, best of all, it seems to work.
In medicine, one of the critical problems today is a constantly-
growing shortage of hospital beds due to the rapid expansion
of our population. Expenditures on new hospital "plants" and new
patient treatment facilities have not been able to keep up. Mean-
while, the daily cost of patient care has kept rising. Where an
occasional community, in a burst of civic consciousness, has
gathered together support for hospital expansion and improve-
ment, the inclination has been to follow tradition in the new
facades and floor plans, and thus to perpetuate the mistakes of the
past without ever challenging the old ideas of hospital design and
patient care to see if they are still the best ways. By the time the
funds are raised and the new buildings are put up and equipped,
the community usually finds that it is still short of hospital beds,
and that the costs of hospital operations have risen to the point
where the hospital still can't afford to finance itself.
But in February, 1958, a new look at the job of the medical
profession and the hospitals was taken at a special symposium
held at the Air University, Montgomery, Alabama. This new
look consisted of a completely original approach to the problem:
medicine and hospitals should be more than a means to repair
damaged health; they should be considered a means to preserve
good health in the first place. Out of this approach came a recom-
mendation for a completely new type of hospital one con-
—
structed, equipped, and staffed to take advantage of every tech-
nical, material, and communications advance of this atomic age.
It is called the "Atomedic Hospital." This new idea incorporates
sweeping changes in every phase of hospital design, operation,
and administration. Such a hospital could provide far better
patient care, at much lower cost, for a greater number of people
than any conventional hospital. Fortunately, the representatives
attending the symposium are practical enough to realize the
40 HOW TO BE A MORE C R E A T I V E EXECUTIVE
resistance they are up against in winning acceptance for this new
idea, and they are moving in carefully planned steps to overcome
it. But this highly unique and original idea may be the answer to
medical-care problems Americans will face fifty years from now
—which is more than the present methods of constructing and
building hospitals can even hope to promise!
Needless to say, the greater the degree of originality called for
to solve a particular problem, the more difficult it is to get that
originality. Only through extra effort can you hope to break the
boundaries of routine, ordinary, everyday thinking patterns and
come up with ideas that are not only usable, but also unique and
different.
4 • Flexibility
Creative flexibility is a willingness to consider a wide variety of
approaches to a problem. Instead of obstinately freezing onto one
particular idea or approach, the flexible person starts out by
remembering that if his first solution won't work, he can always
back off and approach the problem from another angle.
Flexibility also helps the creative person "roll with the punches'*
in the development of his idea. In this sense, it has been compared
to the "change of pace" used by an athlete. A businessman may
be doing a good business on a particular line, with his production,
selling, and costs all in a neat ratio, when a sudden shift in public
tastes causes an increased demand for the product. A nonfle xible
mind might hit the panic button in attempts to cope with the upset
in the nicely balanced and controlled ratio. A flexible person
moves swiftly to switch his thinking into a new gear to ac-
commodate the changes.
Flexibility is also what gives researchers and others that ability
to capitalize on the "accidents" we considered in Chapter 2.
Since they are flexible in their thinking, they are able to switch
their efforts to a more promising discovery if what they are
actually looking for continues to be elusive.
41
CHARACTERISTICS OF CREATIVE P E O P L E
Flexibility, of course, is invaluable to the businessman. The
administrative executive is not a scientist working in a laboratory
with precisely controlled ingredients which he can vary at will
in exactly the desired quantities. The businessman is dealing always
with people—either the people in his plant, or the people he is
dependent upon to sell his product or service, or the people he
is counting on to buy his product. And people are not precisely
measurable and predictable quantities. Nor are the economic
conditions under which he must operate his business or his depart-
ment. Therefore, the business executive lives in an unpredictable
world, where his best-laid plans may be upset by a newspaper
headline, a sudden change in the weather, or a line foreman who
lost his temper and caused a wildcat strike on the production
line.
The symptoms of flexibility are usually easy to observe in
others. The quality may be difficult to acquire in your own think-
ing. The man who sits in a conference or meeting, listening to
others "kick a problem around" and sell themselves on what was
perhaps the only idea to be produced, and then upsets all the
thinking by asking, "Well, what else could we do?" is at least
manifesting an inclination toward flexibility.
On the other hand, the person who early in a problem or meet-
ing proposes one idea and one idea alone, and then "fights for it"
right down the line, without giving an inch—sometimes, even
after it has been conclusively demonstrated that his idea won't
work!—is manifesting an unfortunate lack of flexibility.
The person who can seriously consider several possible ap-
proaches to a problem solution, each probably being "sold" by its
originator, and then, and seemingly out of the blue, propose still
another approach that none of the others had even thought of, is
exhibiting flexibility.
Actually, flexibility may be closely related to fluency of ideas,
in so far as the ability to think up different approaches is con-
cerned. It is certain that the person who contributes twenty or
thirty ideas as possibilities will have a better chance of having at
42 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE E X E C U T I V E
least two or three basic approaches in his list than will the person
who produces only two or three ideas in the first place. In trying
to develop or improve your own flexibility, this fact may give
you some help. By deliberately searching out different directions
or approaches to your problem solution, and setting some sort
of quantity goal for each, chances are you will be able to acquire
the habit of starting to think "around" any problem when it first
presents itself.
5 • Drive
Drive is possibly the most important characteristic of all for
anyone who wants to make himself more creative. If there is
enough drive—enough ambition—present, it will go a long way
toward overcoming even major deficiencies in some of the other
characteristics.
After all, everyone has imagination to some degree—they were
born with it. The average person has more imagination than he
would ever need to solve any problems he meets up with in his
entire lifetime. But when a problem that calls for extra thinking
effort presents itself, it is easier to pass it by ignoring it, or to
mentally disqualify yourself on the ground that you don't
know enough about it, or to hope the problem just goes away
by refusing to think about it. But if you would be a creative
person, then you need drive—and the ability to channel that
drive into carrying your ideas through to tangible results in spite
of the disappointments, frustrations, obstructions, and blind alleys
that are normal, everyday occurrences to the person who in-
novates and creates.
It is an attitude that has been described as ivant to. If a man
wants to be creative badly enough, he will find a way. We know
from observation that the really creative people, in any field,
feel an intense and driving interest in the work they are doing.
They have a single -minded approach that other people just do
43
C H A R A C T E R I S T I C S OF CREATIVE PEOPLE
not have. It makes little difference what the creative person is
working on; his basic motivation is this driving desire to ex-
perience the excitement and pleasure of developing his own ideas.
There is nothing "eager" or "put on" about this attitude. The
creative man is not driving for his own glorification or power. It
is an honest, sincere approach. It is the love of the work itself.
This characteristic of drive shows itself in many ways. For
example, it makes the person who has it seem able to accomplish
much more with his talents or abilities than another person,
equally gifted, who does not have this spark. This is because the
driving person has learned to concentrate and channel his
abilities toward a specific goal: the solution of a problem.
Drive increases the efficiency and productivity of a person.
He is not distracted by "little" things or unimportant details. He
is, psychologically speaking, a much "healthier" person because
unimportant irritations do not have a chance to build up and
multiply in his mind—his mind is busy with more important
things. The driving person is not afraid to express himself—he
doesn't worry about ridicule. He is in a way much less dependent
upon other people. In fact, he may frequently feel that other
people hamper and handicap him in his efforts. He will probably
be much closer to the real world of nature; he will not be too
patient with abstract thoughts and fuzzy concepts; he would
rather do than talk about. He will probably be a relatively happy
person because one of his motivating forces is the feeling of ac-
complishment—the knowledge that he is making progressive
contributions and using his natural abilities and talents to the
utmost. And, because he does not exercise his drive without di-
rection, he will probably be much more interested in the future
than in the past or even the present.
The president of one of our major companies summed up his
feelings about people with drive this way: "If I am trying to
decide between two men of fairly equal ability, I know that the
one with the more enthusiasm will go further than the other
44 HOW TO BE A MORE C R E A T I V E EXECUTIVE
because enthusiasm acts as a self-releasing power and helps focus
the entire force of personality on any matter at hand. Enthusiasm
is infectious; it carries all before it."
Now how do you develop this drive? This, unfortunately, is
a question no one is really prepared to answer or even give very
firm opinions on. We do know that there seems to be a correla -
tion between general creativeness and drive. People who have
taken courses in creative methods and who, according to tests,
have shown an increase in their abilities to produce ideas have
also shown an increase in what the psychologists call "dominance"
—a manifestation, at least, of drive.
It may only be that it was the exercise of will power to com-
plete the course that improved the drive. After all, will power
can be developed by practice. Every time you exert your will
to make yourself complete a difficult, complicated, or unpleasant
task, you make it that much easier to do that same type of task
the next time. Your self-confidence gets a boost. And will power,
we know, is an important part of drive.
Will power, for instance, helped a young lawyer, Fidel Castro,
overthrow a powerful dictator and become the master of Cuba.
When Castro first began his revolution, he had only a few
followers, and no one paid any attention to him or gave him any
chance to win.
Will power carried Dr. Wilder Penfield to world honors as
a neurosurgeon in the field of epilepsy. In his trail-blazing days
in this exceptionally difficult specialty he was, at times, regarded
with actual pity by his contemporaries. A famous British surgeon,
commenting on Penfield's accomplishments, said: "Penfield de-
voted his life to epilepsy research at a time when the subject was
regarded by the medical profession as fruitless. He persevered for
twenty years in a medical desert, in the face of every kind of dis-
couragement."
And it was sheer will power that kept the brilliant mathemati-
cian, Dr. John Von Neumann, going when he knew beyond a
doubt that he was dying of cancer. Even when his illness was
45
CHARACTERISTICS OF C R E A T I V E PEOPLE
far advanced, he continued to serve as a member of the Atomic
Energy Commission. U.S. Cabinet members and Air Force and
other top military officials consulted with him almost daily up to
the time of his death. And Von Neumann insisted that it be this
way.
Perhaps we can sum up the importance of drive to a creative
person with this quotation, author unknown: "Nothing in the
world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing
is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will
not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not;
the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determina-
tion are omnipotent."
6 • Other Characteristics
In addition to the five basic qualities, researchers have also
been able to define a few secondary characteristics that are
significant to business executives:
Redefinition Skill. This is the ability to shift ideas, conceptions,
objects, or people —to use them in new ways. It is important
because all creativity does not call for the invention of new or
original problem solutions. Much of it, particularly in business,
calls for an imaginative use of old ideas or things in a new
setting or situation.
Abstracting Ability. This is an analytical ability, which shows
up in the capacity to break down complex or difficult problems
into their more easily handled components, while, at the same time,
keeping track of the interrelationships of the parts. The presence
of this ability may, by itself, be a strong indicator of creative
potential. When a noncreative person is given a complicated
problem, he tends to become bewildered or confused by the whole
big mess—he often wastes a great deal of time just trying to
figure out where to start. But a more creative person will start
wherever he can by biting off any convenient-size chunk and go-
ing to work on it.
46 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE E X E C U T I V E
Synthesizing Ability. This characteristic is the ability to pull
seemingly unrelated ideas or objects into a working whole. As we
have already seen, synthesized ideas may make up the bulk of
the ideas used and needed in business. And this ability to see
through the appearances of ideas or objects, which simply confuse
or mislead less creative minds, and to see true relationships and
possibilities for combinations, is invaluable to an idea man.
Organizational Ability. The popular conception of highly
creative people is that they are, if anything, slightly ^organized
in their thinking. Actually, while this may be true in relation to
their personal lives, modes of dress, eating habits, and other
surface signs, which the person intent upon more important
things may not even be conscious of, it is not true in their
thinking patterns on the problems they are trying to solve. This
ability shows itself strongly in the way such people can organize
a problem; find the place to start; drive themselves into idea
production; and then follow through completely and without
waste motion to a successful conclusion of their efforts.
So these, in broadly generalized descriptions, are the things
we know about creative people. These are the qualities you
should strive to develop or improve in your own thinking if you
really want to improve your own imaginative output. But re-
member that possession of these traits alone cannot make you a
creative person. They will merely give you the capabilities
toward that end.
You can draw an analogy by considering an automobile driver.
The good driver knows that for safe driving he needs good tires,
good brakes, good eyesight, a steering wheel, and a knowledge
of driving laws. But he also knows that all these things will not
necessarily make him a safe driver. He also needs a proper attitude
—a way of driving to make himself a careful driver. And it is
the same with creativity. Mere knowledge of the principles
underlying creative thought or creative personalities, and a
familiarity with techniques and methods used by other idea men,
will not make you a creative person. You also need the attitude.
4
Blocks to Creativeness
The positive characteristics covered in the preceding chapter
represent the potential any person has to be creative. But there
are also negative forces at work within any personality which can
inhibit new or novel ideas. These we can term mental blocks.
They are, in a way, mental short circuits which literally block
off parts of our memory or imagination to keep them from coming
into play when we need them. As a corollary effect, they often
cause our thinking to be sidetracked into completely unproductive
directions so far as solving the problem at hand is concerned.
If not subdued, controlled, or otherwise compensated for, these
blocks can win out over our positive characteristics and prevent
us from fully utilizing our imaginative powers. Like the positive
characteristics, these deterring factors will probably never occur
to the same degree throughout the mental make-up of any one
individual (he would certainly be a most unpleasant person if they
did!). It is, therefore, possible for a person to have a strong mental
block, or "set," in one category or direction, and be completely
free of inhibitions in others. The average person, and also those
who have demonstrated themselves to be highly creative, may
47
48 H WT B AM R CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
O OE OE
suffer from all the different types of blocks in greater and
lesser degrees. How well they can control or outwit them
determines their final and total creative potential.
Although psychologists can give us many mental "set" de-
scriptions, for all practical purposes they can be generalized and
grouped into three major types: Perceptual blocks—the way we
see things; Cultural blocks—the way we think we should think
about things; and Emotional blocks—the way we feel about
things. There is a fourth category that is probably just a combina-
tion of the first three, but for purposes of examination we shall set
it out as a separate type: Habits—the automatic thinking processes
that govern so much of what we do.
1 • Perceptual Blocks
A perceptual block is caused by the mind's tendency to short-
circuit and jump to a conclusion too rapidly. We look at some-
thing, and what we see appears to be all there is. (The way the
human male can look at a well-endowed young female, and im-
mediately overestimate all her other attributes.) However, per-
ception, as we are using it here, is not limited to the physical act
of seeing. It also includes the mental act of synthesizing facts or
observations into a whole. This manifests itself frequently when
we are given a new problem to work on, with an incomplete
background of facts. We jump to a conclusion on the basis of
the facts we have, and then put our minds to work trying to
justify that conclusion. Actually we frequently block ourselves
from ever solving the problem satisfactorily because the jump
carried us to the wrong conclusion.
A glance at the drawing on the next page will probably give you
a firsthand demonstration of a perceptual block in action. What
did you see when you first looked at it?—a wineglass?—or two
faces looking at each other?
If you saw the wineglass, you saw a white object in front of
a black background. If you first saw the faces, you saw black
49
BLOCKS TO C R E A T I V E N E S S
objects in front of a white background. By now, of course, you
should be able to see both pictures—but only one at a time.
Although it is possible to make an instantaneous mental shift
back and forth, you cannot see both pictures at one and the same
time. Therefore, if, when you first looked at the drawing, your
mind stopped with a single impression—either the wineglass or
the faces—and did not go on to see the other, you were being
restricted by a perceptual block.
Fig. 1
Now let's translate that into a very common business problem
with a salesman as an example: This salesman is on his way into
a plant to call on the purchasing agent. In his hand is a briefcase
containing a catalogue describing a whole line of products his
company has to sell. But this salesman is calling on that purchas-
ing agent to sell him one item he thinks the man might be interested
in buying. He either makes the sale or he doesn't, and then he
leaves. On the way in, and on the way out, he passed right by
a dozen opportunities to sell other products he had right in
that catalogue right in the briefcase, right in his hand. But he
50 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
never even saw these opportunities because his perception was
limited to that one opportunity he had in mind when he entered
the plant. This is the kind of perceptual block that hurts—it costs
money!
Another example: we watch a fellow-executive or co-worker
who seems to be the most industrious man in the company. He
works nearly every night and at least one day every weekend,
in addition to his daily schedule on the job. Everyone is impressed
with his industriousness, and everyone is worried about his "killing
pace," because he is obviously suffering from overwork. It is easy
and all too common to "pin medals" on this man. Chances are
his management wishes they had a dozen more like him so they
could take life easier themselves. But with what we know about
efficient working habits and methods today, such a work schedule
for any man cannot possibly be justified. If a man has to work
long hours of overtime and extra days a week to handle his job,
then there is either something wrong with the man or something
wrong with the job. In either case, a change is called for.
Another way in which we can be perceptually blocked is in our
inability to carry over, or "transfer," the creative abilities we
already have. As examples: an engineer who solves problems
wholesale on his job every day—but who has to use brute force
to get his ten-year-old son to turn off the TV and go to bed at
ten o'clock. Or a highly talented designer who can't solve simple
problems of personal finance and money management and so has
to spend his time both in and out of the office dodging collection
agencies. Or the do-it-yourself home hobbyist who spends every
spare hour creating beautiful pieces of furniture—starting with
orange crates—but who treats his job as a dull routine, to be
gotten through with in the easiest possible way every day, when
actually any job presents the same kind of creative challenge he
enjoys in his basement workshop. All these people are blocked
from using their imaginations because they do not see, or do not
realize, that the same methods, the same attitudes, and the same
approaches that they use so successfully in one field can also be
51
B O K T CREATIVENESS
LCSO
applied to solving their personal problems or job problems of
other types.
Perceptual blocks, then, are all those factors that prevent us
from getting a complete, accurate, and pertinent picture of the
world around us. If you do not know with accuracy what your
world or your problems really consist of, you will find it ex-
tremely difficult, and perhaps impossible, to be creative.
2 • Cultural Blocks
Cultural blocks represent all the effects of society on the indi-
vidual. These are the forces that tear down our individuality—
that shove us into accepted grooves in our thinking. Cultural
blocks make us conformists. And the pressures to conform in our
society today often seem so overwhelming that they may also
seem irresistible. A great part of this pressure comes from our
natural election to live, work, and participate in groups. By elect-
ing to be a member of a group, we feel that in one way or another
we should change. We find ourselves beginning to behave in
a group as though certain things were expected of us, even
though the other members of the group would probably deny
that they had ever attempted to "set us straight." Even a group
with the attitude of do-nothing and care-nothing tends to exert
an influence on a member. As an example, the so-called "beat"
set. Whether we like it or not, a group tends to make its members
over into a group image. And whether we like it or not, a
company or business organization is a group, and unless we want
to leave civilization and become beachcombers or hermits, we
have to learn to live with groups. But we do not have to become
blind conformists to any group's ways of thinking, acting, or
behaving.
Let's examine a few of the reasons why we feel we are under
pressure to conform to a group image:
To start with, inclinations to conform begin early in childhood.
The child learns to conform to family standards, because when he
52 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
tries to ignore those standards, he is punished for it—or, when
he is older, he runs the risk of being criticized for his actions and,
according to the standards, criticism is bad. Now when this child
grows to be a man and joins a business organization, his first in-
clination is to look for the standards. Every organization which
has been in existence for any time at all will have certain traditions,
values, and standards which have become "accepted" as the way
things are done. The newcomer, just joining such an organiza-
tion, quickly learns that certain kinds of behavior are approved,
while others are definitely frowned upon.
Some of these standards and values are never written into
company policy. They are sometimes never even talked about.
And yet they seem to exist—"seem" because often no one has
ever had the courage to challenge them and find out if they
really do exist! Not all of these standards are based on the best
of motives, and some may, in actuality, be bad for the welfare
of a company. Some such standards are relative to the various
levels of a company. For instance, an ambitious and talented
young man may find that other employees of his age group or
position have set up an implied restriction which requires him to
limit his ambition and the use of his talent. The motive behind
this may be nothing more than pure envy. If he does not conform
and if, in spite of the group's disapproval, he continues to exercise
his ambition and display his resourcefulness to the point where
he attracts management's attention and support, he will find him-
self becoming a lonely person. His group, and its individual
members, will tend to expel him. If his character is strong and his
perception great enough to realize what is happening, the indi-
vidual will stand up to the group and continue to go his own
way. But "no man is an island," and few individuals can stand
to be ostracized by their fellows. Therefore, the odds are probably
greater that the ambitious young man will take the edge off his
ambitions and slow down his efforts in order to stay in the good
graces of his group.
(This type of group pressure is certainly not confined to the
53
BLOCKS TO C R E A T I V E N E S S
business world. It is demonstrated in every group in one way
or another: community, social, civic, church, or educational
classroom. In fact, some of these may affect an individual's outlook
and approach to life to a far greater extent than does his
business or work group.)
Actually, a certain amount of conformity is a very necessary
thing. Without it, we'd have no civilization. And the lifetime
conformists in our population are, in one way, society's stabilizing
elements. The conformists are the ones who remind us to "Take
it easy—Rome wasn't built in a day" (ignoring, of course, the
fact that it was destroyed in a night!). The conformists say,
"Understand your neighbor—be tolerant of him" (without under-
standing that tolerance is no virtue at all unless what you are
tolerating is worthwhile). But when conformity assumes such
importance that it begins to interfere with free and original and
different thinking, it begins to stifle individual initiative. And
this is where the danger lies.
The person who goes out of his way to refuse to conform, how-
ever, is, in his way, just as much a conformist as any "group-
think" advocate. If he is taking a negative attitude toward every-
thing, just to avoid conformity or just to oppose the group, he
has also surrendered his freedom of thought and action. He just
says "no" to everything, and you can depend on it.
Fortunately it is not necessary to adopt such an extreme in
order to retain or regain your own freedom of thought. Many
of the social or implied pressures to conform are not really
pressures at all. They don't exist anywhere except in the minds
of the individuals who think they exist. To take just one fairly
common business situation, let's consider the age-old institutions
of the office party and the company picnic.
There are four types of people who attend such company
gatherings: The boss, who feels he should at least put in an
appearance, since it is an opportunity for him to demonstrate his
interest in his workers. This may be the only time in the year
that he does demonstrate an interest in his workers, or it may not.
54 HOW TO BE A MORE C R E A T I V E E X E C U T I V E
But since he is really responsible for the whole thing in the first
place, he feels he should be there. And he probably should. The
second type are those who honestly enjoy such affairs, and
they certainly should not be reproached for attending. Then
there are those who are "on the fence"—when they go, they have
a good time, but they wouldn't feel any great loss if the whole
benevolent practice were discontinued. But there is a fourth
type who attend and shouldn't. These are the people who dislike
such affairs from beginning to end, but who attend purely out of
fear. They are afraid that if they do not show up, the group will
censure them. Or they are afraid the boss will take it as a sign
of disloyalty or disinterest if they do not support the regimented
"fun" the company is supplying. Both of these fears are usually
groundless, and giving in to them means a sacrifice of integrity
and moral values for the person who gives in. And just as you can
build up your mental abilities and character by practicing them,
so you can tear down your individuality by chipping it away.
Let's examine those two fears to see how much real danger there
is if a person refuses to "go along with the crowd":
First, the fear that he will be censured by his co-workers if he
does not show up at the party or picnic: He may receive a few
snide remarks from other members of his group—but they will
be in the fourth class of people. Their remarks will probably be
made out of envy that they themselves didn't have the courage
to avoid what they also considered an unpleasant "duty." The
majority of his co-workers—if they even noticed his absence—
probably won't say anything at all or have their feelings about
this individual changed one bit. On the contrary, those who really
enjoyed themselves at the outing or whatever may feel rather
sympathetic toward the person who didn't attend because "He
missed such a good time!"
And what about the boss? How will he take it if the man is
truant? That will depend, to a large extent, on the man. In this
day of penny-profits and cut-throat competition, no manager is
ever going to fire a good worker or able executive simply because
55
B O K T CREATIVENESS
LCSO
this person felt he had better things to do than attend a picnic.
If a man has consistently demonstrated his ability to think for
himself and act on his own values, chances are he is enjoying
whatever job or position he has because of those attributes, and
the boss could even expect him to be independent in deciding his
amusements.
So, generally, what all these fears of nonconformity come down
to is a fear of being "different." We have been taught, since
childhood, that to be different is to be wrong. Unfortunately, we
weren't given any scales to measure the degrees of difference. We
have learned only that to be different at all is to be wrong. But
today, in business or any other field you choose to examine, the
need is for individualists—people who can be above average in
their thinking and in their job performance and who are, just by
virtue of being above average, different.
Any fear of being different can quickly disappear if you take
a cold, objective look at it and the possible outcomes of practicing
it. We should realize and admit at the outset that much of the
fear is simply ego involvement—we are so wrapped up in our-
selves, and in preserving what we think other people think about
ourselves, that we don't realize that these people are just as
wrapped up in themselves and probably won't even notice if
we begin to exercise some independence and individuality in our
thinking and actions.
Of course, one must use caution in being different. You have no
right to let your differing interfere with the rights of others.
People won't mind your being independent and freethinking
as long as you don't adopt an attitude of superiority about it.
Chances are that if you can just learn to tolerate other people
and their differences—granting them, in your own mind, the
right to be different—you will have made a better start on
individuality than most people accomplish in their entire lifetime!
Now we have said that some conformity is good and even
necessary. So to put a proper perspective on when you should
and when you shouldn't, and when you need to and when you
56 HOW TO BE A MORE C R E A T I V E E X E C U T I V E
don't, let's take a look at the "big" picture of a modern man in
his total environment.
Imagine a large circle. In the very center of the circle, put a
small dot. This dot is a modern man and the circle is the environ-
ment in which he lives. By a "modern" man we mean you—or
any other person you care to think of. This is not a cave man
wresting a bare existence out of his prowess as a hunter; it is
not a medieval serf working in lifetime servitude for his lord
and master; it is not a pioneer American carving a new country
out of the wilderness. It is you and the way you live today.
Now divide that mental circle into three parts. One part we
label "WORK." The second we label "OTHERS." The third,
we label "SELF." Together, they make up the three basic relation-
ships a man has to consider in his living. The lines between the
segments represent opportunities to compartmentalize your think-
ing. Let's start by considering the thinking needed for the part
of your life reserved for WORK:
We use the term WORK, rather than job, to make it as all-
inclusive as possible. After all, the job you have today may not
be the job you will have tomorrow. But the same mental approach
will have to be used. Now any kind of work demands a certain
amount of standardization just for efficiency and quality. This is
why we have organizational charts and job descriptions in busi-
ness. Even a medical doctor, who may consider himself the most
free of men, will follow certain procedures in an operating room
and insist on certain standards of purity in the medicines he
prescribes. And, to carry out this standardization in our work,
it may even be necessary for us to learn to think in terms of
standardization and set patterns. But carrying on our day-to-day
standardized routines does not require us to standardize our
thinking toward the larger pattern of our WORK. Nor does it
mean that we have to carry production-type thinking over the
boundary on either side of WORK so that it creeps into our
relationships with either OTHERS or SELF.
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BLOCKS TO C R E A T I V E N E S S
In deciding just how much "creep-over" we will allow in our
three areas, we have to exercise some judgment. We have to
decide just what kind of life it is we want to lead.
If our social life—away from our official WORK area—
includes mostly people and friends with whom we work all day,
then we have removed, or at least punctured, the barrier between
the areas of WORK and OTHERS.
If we become so dependent upon a group to think or decide
for us that we cannot think or make a simple decision contrary
to the group opinion, then we have destroyed the barrier between
OTHERS and SELF.
Actually these barriers do exist, or can exist, for any man. In
exercising independence of thought and action, it is completely
possible for a man to move freely and without harming others
if he just remembers that the barriers are there, and that it is
on his own volition that he crosses them. There is no social
pressure that can force a man to lower or destroy the barrier
between his inner SELF and the outside world of OTHERS.
There is no job or business pressure that can force a man to
sacrifice the integrity felt by his inner SELF for the expediencies
of WORK. If any such sacrifices, or giving in to conformity, do
occur, they will only happen if the individual himself decides to
allow them to happen.
Conformity, then, is a voluntary thing. And it can be voluntary
to almost any degree in different areas of environment. The
important thing is to make certain that you do not let conforming
to someone else's way of doing something rob you of your own
initiative to think independently wherever and whenever you
are in control of the situation. The big danger in conforming
to a pattern is that we don't question why the accepted pattern
is accepted, or by whom it was accepted in the first place, or
whether the original conditions of acceptance still prevail. It is
not a crime, or even morally wrong, to conform—but to sacrifice
your independence to decide whether or not you will conform is.
58 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
3 • Emotional Blocks
Emotional blocks to creativity are those caused by anger, envy,
fear, dread, hate, greed, love, lust, and so forth. They are,
principally, divided into two major types: the transient blocks
which come and go from day to day or week to week, and the
permanent ones which were built into our personalities early in
life and which probably underlie nearly everything we do for
the rest of our lives. Both types interfere with our thinking
because they rob us of our concentration, mental energy, and
initiative by making us squander ourselves on worries, anxieties,
and fantasies over what might occur should our worries and
anxieties be realized.
Transient blocks are the lesser of the two types so far as per-
manently hampering the imaginative abilities. These can be
caused by temporary financial difficulties, problems with chil-
dren, an argument with your wife, a lack of recognition at
work, worry about the outcome of a decision, and so forth.
Finding yourself forced to work with an incompatible personality
on your job may cause you to suffer from a temporary overload-
ing of your emotional resources.
When you are suffering from a temporary emotional block,
your mental efficiency and freedom are impaired. It can happen
as simply as this:
Every morning when the boss comes in, he greets you with
"Hi, Bill, how're tricks?" But one morning he comes in, and as
he passes by your desk he says, "Hello, Bill, what are you up
to today?"
Immediately your mind short-circuits: "What does he mean,
what am I up to? Do you suppose someone has been talking
to him about me? I haven't done anything to make anyone
suspicious... who do you suppose has been in there lying to
him?"
And from there on, your train of thought leads you to suspect
59
BLOCKS TO C R E A T I V E N E S S
everyone in the office of trying to "get" you, and your mind is
completely lost so far as productive thinking is concerned. Worry
and fear take over, and frustration at an imagined situation
simply freezes the gears for any normal thinking. It isn't until
you can invent an excuse to get in to see the boss and make sure
that your relationship is still "safe," or until the next morning
when he comes by again and says, "Hi, Bill, how're tricks?" that
your mind will calm down and permit you to think normally
once more. And, chances are, during this period of mental anguish,
you yourself may never have realized that you weren't thinking
in your usual normal productive way.
Pressure, in the sense of a very real pressure originating outside
yourself, is something else that can emotionally block you from
finding creative solutions to problems. There are people who
believe that pressure is the key to getting more work out of
others; there are whole businesses where fear is the prod to
production. Like the manager who brags, "My men don't give
me ulcers—/ give them ulcers!"
What actually happens is that under pressure your mind sets
up a feedback effect: your thoughts begin to go round and round
in a tight, closed circuit—nothing new or different can get in;
nothing unusual or original can get out. What you do then is to
strike blindly for the easy way out: the simplest, most logical
solution to the problem you can find—one that is safe, tried, and
true, and that you will be able to defend against all challenges.
In a pressure situation, there will be challenges—you know that
before you start. And it is almost certain that any answer or
idea that is safe, tried, and true will not be original, creative, or
even worth the time it took you to get it!
Other causes of temporary emotional blocks can be laid to such
factors as health and personal habits. If you are overly tired, or
have to put up with the prolonged mental drain of a serious
family illness, or are physically ill yourself, your own mental
nervous system begins to feel the drain of the static. Your ability
to organize thoughts and problem parts into logical patterns or
60 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
theories begins to be affected. This, in turn, may cause a sub-
conscious frustration which, in its turn, adds still more confusion
to the nervous system. Finding the cure for this type of emotional
upset, of course, requires getting at the causes. Physical and
emotional health and well-being are prerequisites to maximum
mental efficiency.
Of the more permanent types of emotional blocks, the kind
we acquire early in life and carry with us ever after, probably the
two most important are the fear of failure and the fear of ridicule.
We manage to learn early in life that "nothing succeeds like
success" and, its companion adage, "nothing fails like failure."
And so we go through life doing everything we can to avoid
making mistakes—"it's better to be safe than sorry."
One of the dangers of this attitude is that we can rationalize
it to ourselves so that we don't even realize this is our
governing attitude. For instance, on our jobs, we tell ourselves
that the reason we don't openly disagree with some idea of
management, or try to promote an idea of our own that would be
contrary to current management thinking, is that this would be
"disloyal"—and we are very loyal to our boss and our company!
So we avoid the disagreement. Not to belittle loyalty in any way,
but a very sharp manager once remarked that "When two men
in an organization think exactly alike, you can usually fire one
of them—and maybe both of them!"
One of the things we forget in "playing it safe" is that one can
usually learn more from a mistake than from a success. Failure
teaches us what we don't know and what we need to know about
ourselves. And this is the key to your own progress and develop-
ment.
Sometimes we hold off taking any action because we are afraid
we don't know enough. But this can often be a help, rather than
a hindrance. Consider Henry Ford. There are many men in
business today who, had they been around at the time, would
have advised Henry Ford against going into production on his
B L O C K S TO C R E A T I V E N E S S 61
Model T. They would have suggested that he hold off until
marketing research could find out if there really was a market for
such a thing as an "automobile." They would have wanted to
test the "price structure" to see if people would pay $300 or $400
or $500 for such a thing. They would have wanted him to find out
if people would consider this automobile better than a horse,
streetcar, or bicycle. And they certainly would have insisted that
he find out what colors people preferred, instead of just going
ahead with black. But "poor" Henry Ford didn't have any of
these people around to advise him, and he didn't know the answers
himself, so all he could do was to take the risk of failure and go
ahead and make a few million dollars for himself!
Another strong emotional deterrent to creative thought, which
may usually be classed as a "permanent" type of block, is the
fear of ridicule. This is ingrained in most people through having
had their ideas laughed at or ignored at some time in the past. It
may have been an idea that the person was particularly proud of;
or it may have been a succession of criticisms which gradually
wore away his confidence and sense of daring.
Even in this day of scientific and social achievement, where
things that were only dreamed of yesterday are realities today,
it is still common for people to laugh at or criticize any unusual
or different ideas before they've taken the time to really think
them through and determine whether they have possibilities. It
may be of some comfort to you to realize that almost every great
idea was laughed at when it was first proposed—and usually,
the greater the idea, the louder the laughter.
There is actually a sound psychological expla nation of why
people, including yourself, are apt to laugh at a new or novel
idea: it is a natural reaction caused by your inborn instinct for
self-preservation.
A new idea sounds an alarm to your psyche of a "change"
coming. Immediately, your instinctive reaction is to come to full
nervous alert in response to a need for possible action. This is
62 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
pure instinct and you can no more prevent it than you can
prevent tensing up at a sudden strange or new noise until you
have identified the noise as friendly or unfriendly.
In the case of the new idea, however, your mind immediately
recognizes it for what it is, and the next psychological reaction,
again purely instinctive, is to seek a release of the nervous tension
that has been built up. Laughter is an automatic form of release
—it comes out spontaneously and often uncontrollably in response
to your nervous system's demand for relaxation.
In this respect, the act of laughing at a new idea is not bad.
The danger is in the effect that the laughter may have on the
confidence of the idea's creator, because fear of ridicule, in any
form, is a deterrent to creative effort.
The fear of ridicule is probably closely allied with the basic
fear of failure we carry with us. If an idea is so new or so novel
or so striking that it seems to go against "common sense," then
there is at least an implied danger of its failing. But common
sense is not always right—and it is not really so common or so
sensible as its advocates like to think. The late Albert Einstein,
who probably contributed as much as any other human being to
laying the groundwork for truth in science, once made the ob-
servation that "Common sense is nothing but a deposit of
prejudices laid down in the mind prior to the age of eighteen."
Timidity can also kill off creativity. The timid person lacks the
self-confidence to venture into new and daring directions. Fre-
quently, the cause of such timidity is merely lack of opportunity
or failure to recognize opportunity. Self-confidence comes from
repeated successes and the gradual realization of ability which the
truly confident person has. A confident person feels more daring
and thinks more daringly because he has the backing of previous
successes. This may be the basis of that old half-truth that "nothing
succeeds like success." On the other hand, the timid person might
want to consider for a moment that the person best able to take
a chance on a new or different venture is the person with the
least to lose.
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BLOCKS TO CREATIVENESS
Two other fairly common blocks to creativity are those of
self-satisfaction and superperfectionism. Self-satisfaction may, of
course, be the quality of self-confidence that has gone to a
person's head. But when we become so convinced of our innate
abilities that we become smug about them, we lose sight of op-
portunities for improvement. Everything that has been done
remains to be done over—even if we ourselves did it.
Super perfectionism has killed off many worthwhile ideas and
kept them from coming into being simply because the per-
fectionist kept searching for the ultimate—a point which is never
reached. If you have an idea, and your idea is better than anything
in existence at the time, then you should put it to work. You can
get rid of the "bugs" or drawbacks later on. But first, get your
idea going for the good of everyone concerned.
We cannot drop the subject of emotional blocks without some
attention to another phenomenon that seems peculiarly American:
the "happiness" seekers. People have begun to run from crises that
are only normal problems of living normally. It is not true that
a complete freedom from either fear or anxiety is a "healthy"
state of mind. Both fear and anxiety are normal attributes that
serve helpful purposes by keeping us at our best. Fear makes us
uncomfortable, certainly. But the reason we feel fear at all is
that it is basic to self-preservation. Anxiety tenses us and may
cause all sorts of minor physical side effects. But the fact that
it can tense you up makes it helpful. It keeps you doing your best
and it helps you anticipate problems well in advance. If you aren't
anxious, you will dull such anticipation. The act of swallowing
some pill to make fear and normal anxiety go away is a complete
chimera: when the effects of the pill have worn off, the causes of
anxiety and fear will still be there. And trouble has a way of get-
ting worse if left to its own devices even for the time it takes to
digest and assimilate a small pill.
So how do you live with fears, tensions, and anxieties? It may
sound oversimplified, but it is the truth: you take advantage of
them. Learn to make your tensions work for you.
64 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
Realize first that tension is normal. So is fear. So is anxiety.
Usually, if you face up to a fear, you can trace it in your own
mind to what is causing it. This may actually be the means of
sensitizing yourself to a problem. Once you have faced your
problem squarely, then you can reduce it to an academic problem:
work on ways to solve it. This is far different from worrying
about it. Worry, of course, is fruitless. It is much better to
imagine all the possible consequences of your trouble, even the
worst possible thing that could happen, and then figure out what
you will do if that does happen. In this way, you will gradually
begin to build your self-confidence to the point where it will
take more than a minor tension to upset you. Tension may spell
trouble —but trouble can spell opportunity.
4 • Habits
To a great extent, any person's personality consists of his own
individual pattern of actions, thoughts, and habits. And much of
what we do every day is determined by a carefully conditioned
and developed pattern of habits.
These habits are useful to us in many ways. They consist, of
course, of successful solutions to problems that we have met up
with and faced before. And, because so many of the "problems"
that we face every day are of a repetitious nature, we can use
these previously successful solutions over and over again. In one
way this is all to the good because it frees our minds to think
about more important things. The big danger of habitual living
is that our habit of using past problem solutions often prevents
us from seeing a better solution. And, of course, we eventually
lose the very worthwhile habit of actually looking for new solu-
tions to problems.
In our work, habits of certain kinds are a necessity. As business
becomes larger and more complex, companies must reduce more
and more of their operations to standardized procedures—or
habits. We are forced to accept certain "habits" in our day-to-day
65
B L O C K S TO C R E A T I V E N E S S
working. But here, too, it is easy to get the habit of accepting
habit without challenge. We do many things because someone
has said, "That's company policy." Habit may make us accept
this without questioning whether or not the whole thing makes
sense. But if something doesn't make sense, then the chances are
it is not company policy—unless the company is intentionally
heading into bankruptcy.
There are times when we do find something that doesn't make
sense, but does indeed seem to be company policy. Often this
will turn out to be a policy that started out as expediency. One
business consultant put it this way: "I often get the impression
that 'the "way we do things around here' developed back in the
early days of the company when some overworked executive was
tossed a problem. He made a snap decision as to how it could
be handled and, fortunately, it worked. Later, someone wrote
this into a manual and permanently froze the thinking on it.
Ever since, 'that is the way we do it.' No one else ever had the
guts to challenge the old way by proposing a new way. Con-
sequently, these 'standard procedures' are costing American
business millions of dollars a year!"
The difficulty with overcoming bad habits lies in the fact that
people are usually not aware of the extent to which habit has
taken over their thinking. Habits in our day-to-day living, and in
our daily working, can develop into a fixed pattern that seems
"normal." For this reason, we find it difficult to see that it is our
own complacency that has dug us deep into a habit groove. We
prefer to blame others or outside conditions: our boss, our wife,
our office location, our children—in fact, anyone or anything but
ourselves.
Furthermore, getting out of a mental rut requires real effort.
Creative thinking entails the hardest kind of mental discipline and
effort. Unless there is some great incentive, and money is often
not enough, people prefer the status quo. Life is so much simpler
that way. But before you can begin to overcome noncreative
habits, you must first face up to them in yourself. After all, the
66 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
devil you know is a lot friendlier than the devil you don't. But
first you have to recognize the devil for what he is!
Now it is obvious that if habits aren't actually caused by some
of the primary types of mental blocks, all blocks are, in a way,
also habits. The difficulty is that we have allowed ourselves to
become so absorbed in routine matters, routine ways of thinking,
and routine reactions to situations that we seldom use our senses
to help us break the routines. Routine seems normal—it is a self-
perpetuating circle. But the way to overcome mental-blocking
patterns is the same way you overcome bad habits. By changing
one set of creative inhibitors, you will also probably change the
other.
Now the best way to "change" any bad habit is to replace
it with a good habit. Sometimes, in the case of mental habits,
something as simple as dressing differently can help you. If you've
always worn dark blue suits, get a brown one. If you've always
worn four-in-hand ties, live a little —get a bow tie!
Deliberately vary your living routine. Try driving to work or
driving home a different way—even a different way every day
for a week. Try changing your meals around—try soup for break-
fast some morning. (It actually makes a very good breakfast!)
Give your mind some thinking to do that is different from what
it is normally called upon to do. Read books that make you think.
These don't have to be "great" literature—even a 25-cent detec-
tive story can do it: stick with the story until you've got all the
clues that Inspector Bloodstone has, then close the book; analyze
the case; and imagine an ending yourself.
Begin associating with people who make you think. These
won't necessarily be people who always agree with you—in fact,
you may find yourself disagreeing with them most of the time.
But make sure it is not blind disagreement. Really try to under-
stand them and why they think as they do. This will help you
understand yourself better.
A change of pace can help you avoid getting into a mental rut
on your job. If you've been sticking at one type of work for
67
BLOCKS TO CREATIVENESS
some time—say two or three hours—put it aside and do some-
thing else. Something completely different. One executive re-
ported that his formula is "to slip over into the park and just
relax. It's the quickest way I know to snap myself out of a mental
roadblock."
The key to getting out of a rut—or avoiding one in the first
place—seems to be to do something completely out of your regu-
lar routine, rather than to continue the fight to get ahead by
means of your regular routine.
And as you go after these new experiences, practice the art of
relating them to you, your job, and your problems. Learn to look
around you—at everything. And as you observe, ask questions
about what you see. Ask yourself: Why was this made this way?
Why was this done like this? Is this object really necessary? What
would happen to the whole if this detail were eliminated? How
can this be improved? Don't let your own habits or conformity
to other people's thinking stop you. There's a better way to do
anything, and if you ask enough questions you will begin to find
the better ways!
5
The Nature of
Creative Thought
There is not a great deal of difference in the mental processes of
creative minds, whether the minds belong to artists, writers,
scientists, musicians, medical researchers, or business executives.
Some individuals may take exception to this, feeling that their
problems are so "different" that their mental processes must also
be different. But their problems, as we shall see in the next chap-
ter, aren't really so different after all. And their mental processes
are really quite similar, as we shall try to demonstrate in this
chapter.
The difficulty is one of perception. It is difficult to see the simi-
larities because of the surface appearances. The artist, writer,
scientist, and business executive do move in different "thought
worlds" in that the words, or "symbols" of thought, are some-
what different. Then, too, very real differences in talents and
aptitudes are called for. And it is the exercise and domination
of these that determine whether a creative mind will initially
turn toward art, music, science, or business as an outlet.
68
69
THE NATURE OF CREATIVE THOUGHT
Ben Hecht, the successful author of many books, articles, and
short stories, in addition to more than seventy motion-picture
screen plays, pointed out the ways in which writers differ from
other types of creative workers in an article in the February,
1959, Esquire:
The writer is a definite human phenomenon. He is almost a type—
as pugilists are a type. He may be a bad writer—an insipid one or a
clumsy one—but there is a bug in him that keeps spinning yarns; and
that bulges his brow a bit, narrows his jaws, weakens his eyes, and
gives him girl children instead of boys. Nobody but a writer can
write. People who hang around writers for years ... who are much
smarter and have much better taste, never learn to write.
... The writer, put in any active group of men, will always collapse
as a dominant. He will be the least listened to in any mixed company.
Even other writers shy at hearing a writer sound off.
The reason is sort of biologic. A writer's ego goes into the game
of solitaire he plays with plot turns and speeches. He has, usually,
little left over for the domination of the realities around him. A long-
suffering wife or an aging concubine are usually the only human be-
ings before whom he can strut successfully.*
Similar descriptions of the surface changes brought about by
years of specialized thinking patterns can be, and have been, made
for artists, scientists, musicians, and other types of creative per-
sonalities. But these do not adequately picture the creative minds
in action. There are people who resist any attempts to paint such
basic pictures. They feel that creativity must have a certain "mys-
tery" to be truly creative. They use such words as aesthetic, phan -
tasy, intuition, fancy, and vision in trying to describe it themselves.
And they may be partly right.
But the fact that the great creative men of the past practiced
idea production by intuition, does not mean that the art or science
or procedures or whatever you choose to call them cannot be
learned. If a young man does not happen to have been born
with the intuitive sense of a Marconi, there is still no reason why
* © 1959 by Esquire, Inc.
70 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
he cannot study the science of ether waves and make himself
proficient in communications electronics. And the same holds
true of creative thought processes in general: it is possible to point
out similarities and generalizations in the way creative minds
work, and there is no reason why someone else cannot study
these and try to adapt or adopt them in solving his own prob-
lems.
As a generalization, we can say that almost any creative worker
will proceed through these stages in his idea production:
He starts with an interest, which may stem from talent or apti-
tude, or which may be acquired out of some form of "hero wor-
ship"—of a father, a teacher, uncle, friend. Whatever the source,
his interest causes him to become familiar with some particular
field. This is the learning period where he gets his fundamentals.
As he becomes more familiar with the field, he becomes aware
of specific needs and deficiencies of various kinds. And, the more
he learns about it, the more such problems he becomes aware of.
At some stage, one of these problems will become important
enough to stand out and present a personal challenge to a creative
mind. Then begins a struggle, because a creative mind will liter-
ally "force" itself to attack that particular problem. This is the
drive manifesting itself. The lack of this feeling of challenge and
determination to master the problem is largely what distinguishes
the noncreative person from the creative.
As the creative mind struggles with this problem, it will usually
alternate between the "battle" and a less-intensive "relaxation."
This activity usually ends with a sudden sense of illumination—
the person literally "sees the light."
At this point, his whole energy will begin to storm toward
a solution—he quickly throws all his mental powers into the
successful conclusion of all his previous struggling and effort.
The final stage is the perfecting of his idea—the careful polish-
ing and adjusting to "get the bugs out" and produce a finished
product from his imagination.
Now are these steps so intuitive, or instinctive, that the people
following them must be completely unaware of their existence?
71
THE NATURE OF CREATIVE THOUGHT
The answer seems to be a definite "No." Just as the machinist or
carpenter knows that for his best work he must develop skills
and techniques through practice and analysis, the really produc -
tive creative workers seem to realize that the only way to make
efficient use of their tools —mental skills and imagination —is
through awareness of them and a conscious effort to improve
their use.
At a special symposium on Creative Thinking, sponsored by
the Industrial Research Institute, three artists —a painter, a musi-
cian, and a poet —were asked to describe, as aptly as possible, what
they went through in producing a new piece of work.* Their
descriptions show not only great awareness of their own mental
patterns, but also great similarities —even though they work in
different fields, using different materials and thought symbols:
Mr. John Ferren, of New York, the painter, analyzed the
process this way:
Creative thinking, in my personal experience, divides into three
phases, of which the middle only contains the essential act of perceiv-
ing structure. The first phase, I would call the intellectual sensibility
phase. To the scientist it is the collection of data, the period of obser-
vation, of speculative thought, of curiosity, of prodding into weak
spots, and apparent dead ends. Ideally, all possible knowledge on the
particular subject should be covered and exhausted. With the artist,
the process is very much the same. The storehouse of visual memory
is racked over, the work of other artists is regarded, accepted, or
rejected. The errors of the artist's past work are considered and
meditated on. New visual experiences are catalogued and correlations
attempted in painting terms. Certainly some philosophical considera-
tions, ultimate goods, purposes, and so forth cross his mind—psycho-
logical ones too. In this phase, the modern artist has widely used
automatism, which is a deliberate playing with the brush with no
idea in mind, akin to the telephone doodle.
... In sum, this period is that of the accumulation of source ma -
terial ... it may be plodding and passive, or playful and speculative
• A monograph titled "The Nature of Creative Thinking" reports this
symposium in its entirety. It is published by, and is available from, The
New York University Press, Washington Square, New York 3, N. Y.
72 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
or intense and anguished. Its essential character is complexity and
diffuseness.
The pinpointing comes with the creative act, and I believe that the
occasional intensity and drama of the first and last phases of creative
thinking have clouded the true nature of the moment of perception.
The effect of an insight may be that of the proverbial clap of thunder,
but the immediate cause of insight is to me calm and quiet.
... The moment of insight is nearly always brief, and cannot be
long sustained or cultivated, but passes rapidly into the third phase
where the insight releases the energy necessary to implement itself
and give it flesh. It is in this third period that occurs the conventional
white heat of inspiration which is, actually, the mad scramble to fit
all the little pieces together in their new order.
The musician was the composer, Mr. Ernst Krenek, of Los
Angeles. He agreed, almost without exception, with Ferren's re-
marks, and then added these specific observations on his own art:
The writing down of music, the creative act, is a very complicated
technical procedure. You can't improvise that. The man who wants
to write music has to learn a great deal, he also has to learn a whole
set of special symbols in order to produce musical form. I think it is
for this reason that the creation of music is really a very highly
intellectual activity.
... In fact, the professional composer is extremely doubtful of per-
sons who compose at the piano, which most amateurs do. They let
their fingers run over the keyboard and wait for something to hap-
pen. When they hear it, they think "Oh, that's perhaps it; no, let's
see what was it now," and try to write it down, and then reject it
again, and start playing around a little more. The real composer does
not believe in this kind of preparation because he feels that it entails
a great waste of energy and that the person rather confuses the cre-
ative intellect instead of stimulating it.
Richard Wilbur, of the Department of English, Harvard Uni-
versity, traced through the development of a piece of poetry:
A poem begins with a feeling of inadequacy. That's the preparation
stage, or part of it, anyway. The preparation for a poem may also
73
THE NATURE OF CREATIVE THOUGHT
include the development of some very slight notion as to what ele -
ments the coming poem may contain. But at this point, these elements
will be completely awash and unrelated in the mind. It's important
that they be unrelated. The incubation period of a poem may be
short or long, but for me it involves first a retreat from language, the
cultivation of a state of apparent stupidity.
... At this stage in the coming of a poem, I haven't any idea as to
what the paraphrasable content of the poem is going to be when it
comes—its prose meaning. I don't know what the poem is going to
"say." At most I'll have some ideas as to the mood of the poem, its
probable size, its probable scope, the extent to which it's going to
ramify. The poem doesn't begin with a meaning, it works towards
meaning—it finds out what it's about.
... The stage of creation called illumination seems to come at vari
ous points and in various ways __ For me, the poem is likely to start
with the recognition of some resemblance between ideas or fields of
experience __ You don't know where you're going, but you do know
you're going somewhere. In other words, you have an overriding
premonition that the poem is going to take shape. The writing of the
poem is a matter of making moment-by-moment choices among pos-
sibilities proposed by the unconscious.
John Ferren also made a remark that may point up the essential
differences between the approach to creativity of the artist and
that of the scientist. He said, "Traditionally, scientists speak con-
servatively from a sense that truth must not be betrayed, and
artists speak extravagantly from a sense that truth is a large affair
anyhow, and it is all right to snipe at it from any unsuspected
corner."
Many of the common characteristics of so-called "artistic
creativeness" may be observed among scientists. The basic vari-
ations all seem to stem from differences in individual personalities
Or from differences in major interests. For example, a member of
Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, who was privileged to
work with both Albert Einstein and his fellow mathematician,
John Von Neumann, compared them this way: "Einstein's mind
was slow and contemplative. He would think about something
74 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
for years. Johnny's mind was just the opposite. It was lightning
quick—stunningly fast. If you gave him a problem, he either
solved it right away or not at all. If he had to think about it a long
time and it bored him, his interest would begin to wander. And
Johnny's mind would not shine unless whatever he was working
on had his undivided attention." And yet both men made tre-
mendous accomplishments in the field of mathematics.
Princeton's Institute is, of course, a wonderful place to observe
the "scientific mind" at work. Its prime purpose is to give great
minds a place, time, and the atmosphere in which to think.
In discussing differences between the ways scientists work, Dr.
J. Robert Oppenheimer, Director of the Institute, said, "Physics
is a more gossipy field. When a problem gets hot, everyone talks
about it." This is so, reports another observer, because many of
the great minds frequently get stuck, even as you and I. They
work by fits and starts, by sweat, by torment, and by that beauti-
ful phenomenon called inspiration. They may spend many long
hours and days working at a problem and getting nowhere. Then,
one day at dinner, or while mowing the lawn, "Suddenly some-
thing occurs to you and there it is—beautiful, simple, elegant."
Another of the Princeton scientists said, "You try to let your
mind wander looking for correlations between elusive points.
Suddenly, while you're walking, or chopping wood, something
clicks. Things fall in place. Then you start scribbling, trying to
put something down on paper in mathematical form, working
out definitions and good statements of theorems and proofs. The
thrill lies in the discovery of the unknown and how it fits in. It's
almost as though you have discovered a new animal and how it
grows and how it relates to its environment."
And through all the analyzing of scientific minds runs the
intense striving for comprehension—the seeking for truth. So
intense is this drive that it can probably be said that a scientist
who would rather refute than comprehend has demonstrated
that he has chosen the wrong calling.
75
THE NATURE OF CREATIVE THOUGHT
There are many other examples of commonness in the mental
patterns of creativity in different fields. Writers, for example,
have been most generous in supplying directly, or indirectly,
evidences of their creative processes. The only field in which we
are shy of good examples is that of business. It is possible to trace
out the patterns and actions of business executives and demon-
strate that they do, indeed, follow the same patterns as those of
people we are more apt to think of as "professional" idea men.
But because executives themselves frequently do not have a full
appreciation of the creative processes that they employ, they have
not as yet analyzed themselves to the extent that creative workers
in other fields have.
This is unfortunate, because it also means that they have not
analyzed their weaknesses. And since even great leaders in busi-
ness (or any other field) may also have great weaknesses, these
tend to propagate along with the occasional strengths. In busi-
ness, more than in almost any other field, the "followers" tend
to ape their leader to a great degree—even to the point of blindly
adopting his weaknesses and bad habits. Therefore, these weak-
nesses can have a multiplying effect in an organization. Let an
executive be a poor communicator, and chances are his subordi-
nates will also be poor in communication. On the other hand, let
a manager show some dash and courage in his conduct of the
business, and his subordinates will also "catch the spirit."
This is one of the basic reasons why an executive should famil-
iarize himself as much as he can with what is known about crea-
tiveness in all fields. All through the ages, there have been individ-
uals who have stood apart from the mob by virtue of being
independent of spirit and independent of thought. If they were
also bold, curious, discontented, and imaginative, they were usu-
ally able to inspire others to follow them in their efforts to
improve the world and build a civilization. Today's business
executive, sometimes by virtue of some demonstrated ability,
sometimes by virtue of chance or circumstance, also stands apart
76 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
from the crowd. Whether he can muster the imagination to be a
creative leader is up to the man.
Now exactly what makes a creative person different? One im-
portant fact that emerges out of the welter of observations, analy-
ses, and critical examinations is that he usually has the ability to
relate two or more things that were not previously related. He
has the ability to see relationships that the noncreative person
misses.
As an example, a novelist may take a few traits of a personality
he has met, put them with some character traits of a second person,
put his composite personality into a set of circumstances he has
also met or just read about in a news story, and, through imagina-
tion, weave a completely new integrated and interrelated story.
Or a scientist learns of a new chemical, becomes familiar with
its properties, sees its possibilities for affecting or modifying some
other chemical he is also familiar with, and, by combining, creates
still a third chemical or even a new material. The same process
goes on for the business executive who is handed a sample of a
new material developed by his laboratory for, say, a floor cover-
ing. On noting its properties, he begins to see possibilities in it
for other uses: as a grip for tool handles; as a sound-deadening
material; as a decorative wall-covering, and so on. By the time he
is done relating it to other needs, the company may forget all
about going into the floor-covering business in order to concen-
trate on these other areas.
In exercising this facility to combine and recombine elements
into a new whole, there are several things that "go on" in the
creative mind. Some of them are individual steps in the thinking
process; others may be used in combination. Where they are in
combination, it usually is in an alternating or "oscillating" form.
There have been many attempts to assign specific words as names
for these steps, but, because of their nature, there are still some
questions about what, exactly, they should be called. In this
examination, we shall describe the characteristics in these terms:
Use of the Familiar; Ability to Hypothesize; Ability to Suspend;
77
THE NATURE OF CREATIVE THOUGHT
Involvement; Withdrawal; Recognition of Autonomy; Permis-
sion to Develop.
1 • Use of the Familiar
The familiar, the commonplace, and the mediocre are all im-
portant tools for the creative mind. A hissing teakettle was the
familiar that started the invention of a steam engine; a chunk of
soft rubber, used for cleaning wallpaper, was the commonplace
that led to the idea of attaching erasers to lead pencils; a barber's
clippers suggested to McCormick the idea for his mechanical
reaper. A baby's crying, a sound ignored for hundreds of years,
started Walter Hunt on experiments for a new way to bend wire
and produced the first "safety" pin. The sight of a wife acciden-
tally spilling paint on the floor, while trying to pour it from one
can into another, gave another inventor an idea for a clamp-on
pouring spout for paint cans.
Every new idea must have its beginnings in something familiar
—something old. The inventor or creator cannot start with noth-
ing—he must borrow his beginning somewhere. This is usually
something familiar, accepted, and often ignored by everyone else.
But it is something more to the creative mind: something that
bothers the individual so that he either wants to put an end to it
or wants to get away from it through a leap to a better "some-
thing." The creative "urge" comes from realizing this—then
realizing that the familiar must be changed.
For a business executive, this suggests that the more things he
can make familiar to himself, the more opportunities he will have
to materially improve both himself and his business. He should,
therefore, know and understand such commonplace business prob-
lems as the unions with which he must deal; the government that
regulates, taxes, or controls the business; the communities in
which his plants are located; the economy in which the ups and
downs of wages, prices, and interest rates are significant.
Good ideas come when a person is alert to conditions, has the
78 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
imagination to see opportunities and the common sense to follow
through. And it all begins with something so familiar that it is
easier to ignore it than challenge it.
2 • The Ability to Hypothesize and Suspend
Hypothesizing is making a statement of what may possibly
be true, and then using that statement to make assumptions and
to reason upon, just as if it were true beyond a shadow of a
doubt. The objective of hypothesizing is to enable you to reach
some truth that is not known with certainty at the time you begin.
Suspension, in the sense we use it here, means to stop, or cause
to stop temporarily, the act of hypothesizing. In this way, an
assumption which has carried you to a certain point may be tem-
porarily "frozen" for closer examination and analysis.
These are two mental processes that usually occur in combina-
tion. The creative mind will alternate or oscillate back and forth
between the two. This is necessary, because in the creative process
you must, to a large extent, speculate—you must assume that
what has not yet happened, or what is not yet known, is still
possible. However, the starting point, as we have seen, is the fa-
miliar. And the step from the familiar into the unknown is through
speculation. Therefore, the creative thinker must use hypotheses
of various kinds, because they are often the only bridge available
from where he is at the moment to where he thinks he wants
to go.
Often a speculative answer or theory will look good enough
to test and experiment with in an attempt to prove it out. Or there
may be a great temptation to capitalize on even a small step into
the future. This is where suspension comes in.
Rather than quit with an immediate profit, the creative thinker
will hold that first possibility in suspension—"put it on a mental
shelf"—where he can always come back to it if nothing better
turns up. He is then free to continue his speculation and try to
improve still more on his "suspended" theory, or he may go off
79
THE NATURE OF C R E A T I V E THOUGHT
into a completely new direction to see if he can find something
still better.
This process can readily be visualized by thinking of it as a
mental progression up a staircase, as in Figure 2. The "familiar"
used as a starting point is the "tread" marked No. 1. Now, through
hypothesizing, the creative mind rises to a new level—No. 2. At
this point, a new idea is in existence—possibly good, possibly bad.
Fig. 2
The creator may stop here and try to utilize this new idea, or he
may temporarily suspend his judgment and continue through
new speculation on up to tread No. 3. Here, again, he arrives at
a new hypothesis, now twic e removed from the familiar down at
No. 1 level. Now, at No. 3, he again has the choice of settling for
his new idea or of suspending, and going on to No. 4. And, once
at No. 4, the choice is again to go on or stop. If, at any of the steps,
further specula tion did not yield a new progression, he could then
go into experimentation with any of the ideas that had been
developed.
80 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
This may sound strange or involved in view of the more popu-
lar concept of an inventor or artist at work. Most people believe
that the way an inventor gets his start is by going into the labora-
tory or workshop and beginning to "try things out." But actual
experimentation is generally the last step—wherein ideas are
tested—rather than the first. It was said that Nikola Tesla, men-
tioned earlier as the inventor of the alternating current generator,
had the advantage of possessing a mental laboratory in which he
could build the most expensive equipment without cash outlay.
He was supposedly able to conceive not only the abstract ideas,
but the machines themselves down to the last details. He never
bothered to make blueprints of his machines, because he stored
these brilliant images in his mind.
In exercising these faculties of hypothesizing and suspending,
the creative worker is predatory in his search for ideas. He will
use every tool, fact, reasoning process, and probability to build
his hypothesis. If necessary, he will at times resort to pure fantasy.
This is because the mind can proceed only so far upon what it
knows and can prove. And this is not enough to raise the thinking
above the already familiar, commonplace, or mediocre. There
comes a point when the creative mind must take a leap—a jump
to a higher plane of theory or knowledge—even if it cannot then
prove or discover how it got there.
In this respect, of course, the creative process is a regenerating
one. It never ends. No sooner has one "familiar" been left behind
than the new speculation becomes a familiar. At this point, the
creative mind is ready for a new leap. It wasn't so very long ago
that we "knew" that the atom was the smallest unit of matter.
This was the familiar—the commonplace—belief. Then, through
speculation, our scientists theorized that the atom could be a
whole universe in itself. Experiments confirmed this. Today this
great new concept is a "familiar," taught even in high school
physics courses. What new scientific insights and leaps into the
future this new "familiar" will generate we can only guess. But
one thing we do know: the speculations have started.
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THE NATURE OF C R E A T I V E THOUGHT
An important point to realize about this dual procedure is that
it is a "fail-safe" method when you are looking for even just an
improvement on a present situation: if your speculations carry
you up to one promising possibility, and you suspend it at that
point while you go out looking for something still better, you
know you can always fall back on what you already have. There-
fore, there is no reason to stop with the first "better" idea that
comes along. You can always go back to it if further effort, or a
deadline, leaves you without a higher-level idea.
3 • Involvement and Withdrawal
Involvement, in the creative sense, means to become completely
absorbed in what is being done. Withdrawal, on the other hand,
means a voluntary stepping back, or retirement, that is temporary
in nature. These two mental processes are also alternating.
The creative mind must not only participate in the job of
creating, but it must also reserve at least a part of its attention to
being a spectator. Neither of these two acts can be allowed to
suffer at the expense of the other. What actually happens is that
the mind keeps shifting continually back and forth between the
two. An analogy is the way an artist puts a daub of paint on
his canvas, and then steps back to get a long-range view of the
effect of the daub on the canvas as a whole.
The value of this procedure is to make your traveling over
unknown paths easier: the "withdrawn" self steps out for a look
at the road ahead that the "involved" self will soon be following. In
this way, it tries to avoid bumps, ruts, blind alleys, and other
traps that can dissipate both time and energy. During the time
that your mind is actually involved in the problem, you will
probably be much too busy smoothing out bumps and filling in
ruts to pay much attention to the road ahead. Then, when you
have made sufficient progress, or when you hit a really bad chuck-
hole, you again withdraw from the problem, look to see what you
have accomplished, and estimate what remains to be done. There-
82 H WT B AM R CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
O OE OE
fore, the creative "flow" of mental effort is not usually continu-
ous or in one direction. Rather, it is pulsating—moving forward
in surges and pauses, but always in a forward direction.
4 • Recognition of Autonomy
Autonomy is reached when the problem solution becomes
independent of its creator. There comes a time, in developing
the solution to any kind of problem, when the object or situation
being worked on begins to have an independent life of its own.
It begins to make suggestions to the creator—it takes a hand in
developing itself. Or just the opposite may occur: the object may
tell you by its nature that what you are proposing won't work.
Charles Kettering, in developing the high compression automo-
bile engine, used to admonish his assistants to "Let the engine tell
you what it needs!" This was perfect recognition of the autonomy
of engines.
Such recognition is important to the speed of a creative solu-
tion. If the creator ignores the natural inclination of a problem
solution to be good or bad, he is only causing himself needless
effort and wasting resources. There is no point in developing a
chair capable of holding a 130-pound person if the people who
will be using it will average 180 pounds or more. At the same time,
it is poor and wasteful design to build a chair capable of handling
180 pounds when the greatest load it will ever be subjected to
will be a 40- or 50-pound child.
5 • Permission to Develop
The recognition of autonomy immediately brings into im-
portance the creator's willingness to give his creation the freedom
to develop itself. It means knowing when the creative process is
complete. In the case of a machine, it may still be necessary to
decide whether a bushing should be of brass or bronze, but you
know a bushing of a certain size, shape, and general composition
83
THE NATUREOF C R E A T I V E THOUGHT
is called for. In the case of a management action, you may still
have to decide whether Tom Jones or Ed Smith is the man to
implement it, but at least you know what "it" is going to be.
The development may also be negative. When this happens, the
creator will immediately drop it and start over again, usually in a
new direction. But the creative thinker should realize when his
creation is complete, when he can put it into use, or turn it over to
someone else to use—even if it still needs some refinement.
Now in spite of all these steps, processes, methods, and pro-
cedures, the nature of a creative person is essentially simple. The
first and most basic characteristic is the love of his work and his
devotion to it. The second is that he takes a mature approach to
problems. He is extraordinarily aware of people, of surroundings,
of situations, of "things," and the problems they cause. He will
usually approach all these with humor and trust and confidence.
He is flexible in his thinking, and ready and willing to try new
things. He is always looking, and has confidence in his own re-
sources and knowledge to feel that what he finds, while it may be
bad when he finds it, can always be set to rights and be made good.
And the creative mind believes that "the concept paves the way
for the fact." What he can imagine should be so, can be made so.
6
The Nature of Problems
So far we have covered some of the basic fundamentals about
creative people —what types of personality characteristics they
exhibit; what mental factors can inhibit their problem-solving
abilities; and the ways in which they approach, generally, the job
of solving a problem. This chapter is concerned largely with what
the shooting is all about—or at!—fundamentals of problems them-
selves.
It is a common occurrence in business, or in your personal liv-
ing, to meet up with a major problem that only you can solve and
immediately begin to experience a feeling of being very much
alone in the world. It seems as though this is the very worst prob-
lem anyone has ever had to face; or that there has, at least, never
been anything quite like it before. The next mental short circuit
leads you to the frustrating feeling that, since you yourself have
never faced this before and neither has anyone else, you are cer-
tainly not equipped to cope with it. It is an impossible situation,
and why waste your time on it?
These "feelings" we experience probably inhibit our problem-
solving abilities more than any other type of block. And they are
completely false and misleading.
84
85
THE NATURE OF P R O B L E M S
A man who suddenly finds himself in marital difficulties, with
a divorce threatening, can easily go to pieces because of his inabil-
ity to cope with this completely new emotional experience—new
to him, that is. For when he finally gets around to seeing a divorce
lawyer, he will find several very thick books detailing case after
case just as bad as—or worse than—his.
The engineer frequently struggles in a mental aloneness with
a peculiar design problem that may take months to solve. During
this time he can become embittered, frustrated, and lose a great
deal of his self-confidence. But finally, he produces his idea and
it works. And a week later, a competitive design embodying many
of the same problems and similar solutions is on the market. It is
only then that the engineer realizes that he was not alone—that
somewhere else another lonely man was also suffering the same
emotional strain because of the same problem.
The industrial salesman may work over a particularly difficult
prospect for months, or years, feeling all the while that this account
is unique—nothing anyone else in the company has ever had any
experience with is going to help him. He may even confirm this
feeling by talking to other members of the sales force, actively seek-
ing their help, and finding that they do not, indeed, have any sug-
gestions to offer. But what the salesman is apt to forget is that
somebody is now selling that account. And somebody is actively
coping with the problems, whether they are personalities, price,
quality, or supply. The problem is being solved so far as the
customer is concerned, and so far as that customer is concerned,
there is really no problem. This brings us to one of the first funda-
mentals you should know about problems: Man makes his own
problems.
It has been said that if you give a monkey a peaceful stretch
of jungle, and a lifetime supply of bananas, barring ill-health or
physical accident, he will live quite happily for the rest of his
natural life. But give a man a correspondingly ideal environment,
as the Garden of Eden was said to be, and the man will get into
trouble somehow! Our ability to get into trouble by creating
86 HOW TO BE A MORE C R E A T I V E EXECUTIVE
problems for ourselves seems to be one of the great features which
distinguishes man from other animals!
On this same theme, it has also been said that the only enemy
man has is man. Man is a product of the universe. And the universe
does not really care whether man unlocks its other secrets or not.
A river, for example, has no interest in whether man uses its water
to bathe, drink, or drown in. It doesn't care whether man wants
to irrigate his lands, or create artificial barriers that will prove
so inadequate the river is forced into washing away a town. When
man succeeds in mastering the river's laws and using his knowl-
edge of those laws to ha rness the water in the river, then the river
will work for man. At the same time, if man does a faulty job of
learning and causes the river to become a destructive force, then
the man has succeeded in creating another problem for himself.
But either way, the river does not care.
Another fundamental of problems that should be kept in mind:
No one has to solve a problem. We always have a choice when
confronted with a problem—we can try to solve it, which is the
making of a problem; or we can put up with the present situation
—in which case, there will be no problem. Frequently, we do put
up with problem situations simply because solving them would
cost more in time, energy, and expense than the solution could
possibly be worth. This brings us to still another fundamental:
A situation should not be a problem unless its solution will have
importance far greater than doing nothing.
Many people fritter away their energies and mental resources
on things that simply do not merit the expenditure of serious
thinking. Like deciding what suit or dress they will wear for a
particular occasion. Or which restaurant they will go to for lunch.
Or whether they will see a movie on Tuesday night or Wednes-
day night this week. Or whether the car should be cleaned on
Saturday or Sunday. These are not problems at all. Such situations
call for routine decisions and they deserve no more mental atten-
tion than any other routine decision like brushing your teeth, or
whether to take off your right or left shoe first!
87
THE NATURE OF PROBLEMS
What makes a real problem then? One good measurement is
this: Will your decision on it be important to anyone ten years
from now? If it will, then you've got a real problem—one that
could call for real mental application and all the creative energy
you can muster. And, chances are you have more problems than
you realize that are just that important—they will affect someone
else's life ten years from now.
Are you a parent? Every day you have problems—and the way
you handle them can mean the difference between a responsible
citizen or a juvenile delinquent in ten years.
Are you thinking about buying a house? In ten years the house
you buy now will still be important to you and your family as
a home.
How about your job? If you are an executive or a supervisor—
or just someone that other people come to for advice—the way
you advise other people may, in ten years, be responsible for the
kind of people they are, or the attitude they have toward their
job, or even whether your company will still be in business.
But in ten years it won't be important whether you wore your
brown suit or your gray one today. And chances are you your-
self won't remember what you had for lunch this noon even ten
days from now.
There is a corollary that should be noted here, however:
Almost every big problem faced by anyone was at one time a little
problem. The reason it became big was that the responsible person
missed the clues which indicated that it could or would grow.
A problem cannot be recognized as a problem until someone
realizes there is something wrong: It may be something we don't
know about a situation, and a mental "red light" goes on warning
us that we should know this. It may be something that is out of
place—or seems to be out of place. Or it may be something we
have put into a situation which, upon later examination, does not
seem to fit exactly. The Gestalt school of psychology refers to
this type of "feeling" as the principle of closure—the efforts of
the mind to "close" or complete an incompleted figure or patte rn.
88 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
A simple manifestation of closure in action can be observed
by watching the average "doodler": if he should, for example,
doodle a series of parallel lines, then cross them with even one
line at right angle s, chances are he will go on to complete the
pattern by crosshatching the entire design. Or if he should start
a spiral drawing, almost inevitably he will complete the entire
spiral before letting his pencil proceed to other patterns. If inter-
rupted at his doodle, he will, at the first opportunity, go back
to complete the pattern that has been set up in his mind. All this,
of course, usually involves subconscious thinking, but it does
demonstrate the operation of the mental mechanism.
In making deliberate use of this function, it is important only
to remember that it is there and that it is operative. When you
begin to get a "feeling" that something is wrong, your mind be-
comes sensitized to the "missing" element that will complete the
pattern and make the situation "right." As long as you can avoid
developing a fixation about some one missing element in particu-
lar—which would cause you to overlook others you may also be
missing—your mind will be able to work with you in indicating
the general direction you should go in pinning down the real
problem.
There are, essentially, only two types of problems: analytical
problems, which can be stated exactly and which can have only
one correct answer; and creative problems, which can be stated
many different ways and can have an unlimited number of correct
answers. Here are two examples of how the same basic problems
can be treated both analytically and creatively:
Suppose we were to give a design group the problem of mak-
ing a better toaster for bread. This would be an analytical prob-
lem, calling, as it does, for an analysis of existing toasters to
determine their shortcomings, and a routine substitution of parts,
materials, shapes, etc. in order to come up with a more efficient
and streamlined product. But it would probably still be quite
similar to other mechanical toasters now on the market.
89
THE NATURE OF PROBLEMS
To turn this into a creative problem, we would ask the question
in some such way as this: What are some ways in which we can
brown and dehydrate bread? Now we have opened the possibili-
ties to many different solutions. Our designers would be free to
look at different types of heat treatments; to consider radiation
or irradiation devices; to think about a special knife that might
be coated with a material that would toast the bread in the act
of cutting it. They might turn to chemistry and come up with a
special butter that would "brown and dehydrate bread" when it
was spread on it. The possibilities are almost endless. Not all of
them would work or be practical. But only by taking the creative
approach could we free our designers to break away from tradi-
tional concepts of toasting bread.
Or consider the problem of making a better oil filter. Stated
this way, it is an analytical problem with a limited approach and
a limited number of solutions. But look for a better way of keep-
ing oil clean, and you have opened up creative possibilities that
could even result in someone asking, "Do we need oil at all?"
Undoubtedly much more study has been made of analysis and
analytical problems in the past than of creative problems. And
most persons tend to handle the majority of their day-to-day
problems in an analytical manner. Therefore, we will not dwell
on this type of problem at any great length in this book, but will
confine ourselves to the more creative problems and approaches
to their solutions. It is, however, necessary to set up some guide-
posts to help you decide when you can take the creative approach
and when you will find the analytical preferable. These are only
guides and should not be taken as rules or formulas.
One such guide lies in the needs of the situation. For example,
basic automobile styles change only every two or three years.
The in-between changes that any particular auto maker brings
out are just changes in trim, decoration, accessories, or minor
lines. Because of the huge investment in tools, dies, and production
changeovers, it is just not economical to make any major changes
90 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
in body frames or basic body shells. (Where it is done oftener
than every two or three years, it is usually an indication of trouble
in the previous model. It probably did not sell.)
When the automobile designer is planning ahead for his major
change model, he is free to assume a creative approach in every
sense of the word. But in the in-between years, he has, at best,
an analytical problem, because he is restricted by so many things
he must retain and so many details that he can modify only
slightly. In his work of solving the analytical problem here, he
may not be able to stop himself from coming up with a com-
pletely new or creative approach; but it will be an idea of very
little immediate value simply because it does not meet the needs
of the immediate situation, which is to produce minor variations
on a basic design.
Another important consideration, although creative minds may
buck and fight it, is the amount of time or money available to
accomplish a new problem solution. Generally, limited time or
limited money may indicate that only an analytical approach is
possible. Through analysis you confine your thinking to correct-
ing an immediate wrong or making a minor change for improve-
ment. With more time and more money you can begin to embark
on a creative search for a completely new approach or concept to
solving the problem. However, lack of either time or money
should never keep you from being as imaginative as you can in
making the changes you have opportunity to make. And fre-
quently, a simple "change" idea can be a breakthrough to pave the
way for a more creative approach at a later time.
Another fundamental of problems that should be understood
is their commonness. Consider these:
An advertising layout artist is attempting to design an ad that
will have one large photo and two smaller ones, all with explana-
tory captions; a separate block of text copy; the company logo-
type and trademark and a coupon. He must fit all these elements
into a space 7 inches wide by 10 inches deep. His final arrange-
91
THE NATURE OF PROBLEMS
ment must be dramatic and attention-getting, and all the elements
must appear importantly ...
A textile production engineer is redesigning his production line
for a new type of fabric made up of both synthetic and natural
fibers. He has seven looms, of three different capacities, and, for
greatest economy, wants to establish a continuous-production
line that will be practically unlimited in the patterns and colors
that can be handled ...
An office manager is moving into new space in his company's
administration building. He has twenty-four desks and chairs,
forty-two filing cabinets, and fourteen general storage units, as
well as three duplicating machines, which have to be accommo-
dated. He must arrange all these in the space so that they will
be neat and attractive and, at the same time, enable the personnel
to carry on their work with maximum efficiency ...
On the surface, these problems may not seem to have much in
common. In fact, if you were to question any of the individuals
involved, you would undoubtedly find that each of them con-
sidered his particular problem unique to his job and business. But
basically, they are all the same problem: fitting a given number of
units of specified sizes into a given amount of space. All three men
are working with what is essentially the same problem, and all
three will follow almost identical patterns of analysis in defining
the problem. Whether they will all exercise the same degree of
creativeness in their solutions is something else again. But they all
have the same opportunity to do so.
Another example: there is basically no difference in the prob-
lem of a small town trying to attract customers from surrounding
areas to its retail shopping center; the problem of getting more
visitors to visit a company's booth at an industrial exhibition; the
problem of boosting attendance at the games of the local baseball
team; or the problem of filling a department store with customers
the first day of a sale. All are really the problem of attracting
people to a given location.
92 HOW TO BE A MORE C R E A T I V E E X E C U T I V E
Being able to see such similarities lets us get to the "heart" of
any problem much faster and helps us find the basic, underlying
causes of troubles that may indicate the direction our search for
solutions should take. For instance, when the United States was
engaged in the 1958-1959 race to catch up with Russia on missiles
and rockets, many theories were put forth to explain our lag.
Everything from education to the congressional appropriations
for basic research were being blamed. But when the famous Ger-
man rocket specialist, Dr. Hermann Oberth, who had worked on
the American rocket program, returned to Germany where he
could take a closer look at what the Russians were actually doing,
he was able to cut through the fog and point his finger at the
American design problems. "The Russian rockets," he said, "re-
mind me of simple alarm clocks—you can throw them at the wall
and they'll keep on ticking. Compared with the Russian space
vehicles, American rockets are ladies' wrist watches that look
nice but tend to stop frequently."
What hampers us from seeing such basic relationships between
apparently "different" types of problems are largely word blocks.
Each of us tends to think in terms of word symbols for our par-
ticular job or industry or craft. We read about or hear about
other people's problems, expressed in their own particular word
symbols, and even though they may be absolute transfers of our
own problems, we are blocked by the words from making the
transfer.
In many cases, we have different words for the same thing, de-
pending on where in the country we live or come from. For ex-
ample, in some parts of the country, a certain type of cooked
batter is called a "pancake." The same cooked batter, in other parts
of the country, may be called hot cakes, flapjacks, slapjacks, frit-
ters, flannel cakes, batter cakes, batty cakes, and griddle cakes. Is it
any wonder that words often get in the way of understanding!
Then, too, different people tend to think in different ways.
The mental associations we make with any particular word or
phrase will depend, to a great extent on our education, experience,
93
T H E NATURE OF PROBLEMS
temperament, or other background characteristics. Sex certainly af-
fects the way we "associate" on any particular word. Here are the
results of word-association tests that were given to groups of men
and women. Each person was asked to say the first word that
came to his mind when he or she heard a given word:
Word Men Women
Door Clothes
Closet
Charm Snake Beauty
Garden Weeds Flowers
Spectrum Dress
Blue
Meat Pink
Flesh
House Happy
Home
Bullet Rouge
Powder
Weather Blonde
Fair
Church
Religion God
Stout Strong Fat
Gentle Horse Mother
Hunt Shoot Find
It is important to be conscious of these differences in word
interpretations. The fact that each job or industry or craft does
have its own word symbols or "jargon" means that words may
get in your way in trying to understand your own problems.
Once you become conscious of this, then you will find yourself
better able to look "beyond" the words and see more basic rela -
tionships in problems. And this will, in turn, enable you to make
more of almost any kind of experience you have ever had or heard
about for solving your problem of the moment.
It is possible, as one example, that the three men we considered
earlier, who were trying to fit given units into given space, may
have actually done that same job dozens of times in their lives—
in packing luggage for a trip, fitting the family's lu ggage into the
car trunk, or even fitting their home furnishings into a new house.
Persons trying to solve the problems of attracting other people
to a given location could draw on experience they had in high
94 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
school trying to make the annual "Harvest Moon Dance" a finan-
cial success; or the experience they have regularly on a church
program committee in attracting members of the congregation
to the various socials, dinners, and so forth. When you can get
basic enough in your approaches to cut through the blocks that
words, terms, and surface appearances set up, you will find that
you have practically an inexhaustible storehouse of previous ex-
periences in your mind which can greatly speed up your mental
process of getting started on any problem.
And many times the best place to start on a problem is the most
obvious, direct way of tackling it. Not only do we human beings
make our own problems, we also have the faculty for overcom-
plicating them:
One of the greatest naval battles in history was the battle for
Leyte Gulf between the United States and the Japanese in World
War II. It turned out to be the victory that changed the course of
the naval war in the Pacific. Between October, 1944, and Decem-
ber, 1958, more than two hundred books, including the official
History of United States Naval Operations, were written refer-
ring to this particular battle. Each of these books left many
unanswered questions and made many assumptions as to what had
happened to enable the American force to defeat the powerful
Japanese force so decisively.
Finally, after fourteen years, a sixteen-year-old California high
school boy decided to try the direct approach. He wrote letters
to several of the Japanese admirals and simply asked them. One
of the replies, from Vice Admiral Kiyohide Shima, has become a
prize document of naval history. He admitted several mistakes in
judgment and explained several previously unknown circum-
stances about which the older, wiser, and more experienced naval
historians had been making guesses and assumptions simply be-
cause it never occurred to them that they could get the truth by
such a simple expedient as writing a letter asking for it!
We even tend to overlook the direct approach to a problem in
much simpler affairs. One New Year's day a man had a real prob-
95
THE NATURE OF PROBLEMS
lem: he was notified that his father was seriously ill in a distant
city. It was suggested that he fly there immediately. Being a busi-
nessman with many connections, he tried to think of someone
who might be able to get him space on the crowded plane on New
Year's day, and called a friend that he knew had some connection
with the airline. This friend, in turn, called another man from
his office who was directly concerned in doing business with the
airline. This man began to call people at the airline to find out the
possibilities of getting this one seat. But here he hit a stone wall.
All of his connections were out of town or otherwise unreach-
able. Then it occurred to him to try the direct approach. He
called the number listed under "Reservations" for this airline in
the phone book and asked the young lady who answered if there
was any possibility of getting a seat to the distant city for an
emergency trip. The reply, there were several seats available on
a flight leaving one hour later! If the first man had tried the same
approach, instead of making the assumption that all seats were
sold out because it was a big holiday travel time, he would have
had about twenty-five minutes extra in which to pack his bag and
make the flight!
Sometimes the people whose job it is to get facts are the last to
think of the direct approach to getting them. A major department
store was overhauling their entire advertising and public relations
program. They had decided to make themselves seem a little less
formidable and a little more friendly to the people of their city.
Under consideration was a change in the official company name.
They had been using the formal corporate title ever since the
founding of the company, but there was some question whether
this was what the public thought of as the store's name. A research
consultant proposed a survey, with a price tag of several thousand
dollars, to go out and sample the opinion in the city. A member
of the store's advertising department thought of a more direct
approach. He, and three other members of the department, went
down to the sidewalk across the street from the store; each stopped
twenty-five persons, pointed to the store, and asked, "What store
96 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
is that?" Every single person answered with the shorter, abbrevi-
ated name of the store, and the whole survey took less than one
hour.
Even people whose entire training and experience has been
pointed toward finding the simplest, most direct approach to
solving a problem sometimes forget the obvious. Here is a true
story of how such an oversight may have changed the course of
history:
When Germany started development of the V-2 rocket, one
of the problems that stood out was the need for a high-pressure
pump to get fuel into the combustion chamber. A top engineer
was assigned to the project, with the job of investigating various
designs to see if something could be found that would serve. The
specifications were rig id: the pump had to maintain constant
pressure within -f- or — 0.4 per cent; it had to be capable of being
stored for long periods of time, and yet be immediately available
for use; and, after being out of service for some length of time, it
had to come to full- and constant-pressure delivery within three
seconds.
The engineer worked on this project for six months, during
which time he succeeded only in refining the specifications. After
that time, he recommended that all the pump manufacturers in
Germany be called together and have the problem presented to
them. His prime hope was that once these seemingly impossible
specifications were presented, the manufacturers might be able
to suggest some other new ideas that could be worked on to
eventually develop the pump.
The audience of manufacturers listened quietly as the specifi-
cations were read off. When they were finally asked, "Does any-
one have any comments or any ideas?" one manufacturer rose and
said, "Sir, it looks to me like what you need is the standard fire-
fighter's pump. A standard fire pump has to deliver large volumes
of water in order to put out a fire; it has to deliver the water at
a high pressure in order that the firemen can be at a safe distance
97
THE NATURE OF PROBLEMS
from the fire; the pressure must remain very constant, because
otherwise the stream cannot be directed. A fire-fighter's pump
has to be stored for long periods, because fires may not occur for
six months or a year, and yet, when they do occur, the pump has
to work and it has to come to full-pressure delivery in a very
short time."
In his History of the Second World War, Sir Winston Church-
ill said that if the V-2 rocket had become operational six months
sooner, the favorable outcome to the Allies would have been
seriously in question. Perhaps this is one case where the Allies can
thank fortune that it took a German engineer six months to think
of the direct approach of asking specialists how to solve the kind
of problem they specalized in!
There is another advantage in starting with the obvious direct
approach to a problem: it at least gets you started. Frequently,
the most difficult part of solving a problem is deciding where to
begin. But once you do begin, it is like deciding to jump into a
cold lake: once you are in the air and falling, the problem no
longer exists—you are on your way. So if no better place exists
to start on a problem, try the direct approach—do the obvious
thing first.
Of course, the direct approach to a problem will not always
be successful. But if you are down to a basic problem, you can
then see other approaches quite readily. For example:
If the direct approach just will not work, what about the in-
direct approach?—how about doing just the opposite?
If your problem seems to have almost an unlimited number of
sub problems (for instance, in management we often think of our
working force as one mass or one unit, when, in reality, it is a
large number of distinct individual people), group the sub
problems for group treatment (which you do when you treat
with one department or section at a time).
If something is unnecessary in a problem situation, do the
opposite of grouping, try removing it entirely and see what the
98 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
results will be. (Many types of machines have been greatly im-
proved as the result of taking things away from them instead of
adding more!)
Frequently, if all your possibilities turn out unfavorable and
your problem remains unsolved, you may be able to change the
problem itself. This proved to be the solution to the problem of
eliminating printing ink from newsprint and other paper in re-
claiming operations. No solvent could be found that would get
the ink out of the paper once it had been printed. So they changed
the ink formulas.
One of the key factors in how well and how quickly an indi-
vidual can point up, simplify, and solve any problem will be his
own attitude toward problems. If, through our attitudes, we
approach every minor problem as a major crisis inflicted upon us
by nature, other people, and the misfortunes of circumstance, we
will not be nearly so effective in solving problems as will someone
who is more realistic and realizes that problems are a part of living.
We make them ourselves, and if we don't like a particular set of
problems, we can always get away from them. (No company
owns a man—no one can force you to keep a particular job you
dislike!) And when we can take the more detached view of
problems, solving them becomes more fun—it can actually be-
come a game of skill or wits to see just how fast you can lick any
particular problem. Then any minor setbacks or complications
you meet—not enough time or not enough money—become just
factors of the problem, more cards in the decks, or the particular
position of your problem-opponent's checkers on the boards.
It may help you to remember that, as Napoleon Hill said, "A
man is only as big as the circumstances he allows to worry him."
Your whole approach to life, to living, and your job will depend
on how positively you can face up to the problems you have
selected to make your own. And if you feel that you shouldn't
have problems, that you shouldn't have to face them, then the
chances are you should trade in your present job for a South Sea
Island beach where you can pick food off the trees and sit in the
99
THE NATURE OF PROBLEMS
sun. It is still possible to find such spots, where no one has to work,
and no one has any particular problems. But if you elect to stay
in civilization and continue with your present job, the choice is
yours. It is not being forced upon you. The problems you meet
go with the choice. They are not being forced upon you either.
Therefore, why fight problems? It makes much more sense to
conserve your energy for the game and chase of finding solutions!
7
Steps in Deliberate
Problem Solving
One of the most interesting, vital, and promising arts to be placed
at the disposal of business executives in several hundred years is
the concept of deliberate creative problem solving.
The idea that you can "force feed" your mind into finding
ideas and problem solutions is a relatively new one. Like all new
ideas, it has far to go in winning complete acceptance from every-
one who meets up with it. There are many people who still feel
that you have to depend upon inspiration to incite creative activ-
ity. And there are others who dislike the idea of working as hard
as you sometimes do to force an elusive idea out into the open-
ness of your mind. These people want "bright" ideas to come
without any expenditure of effort. The truth is that both these
methods do occasionally produce ideas, some of which might be
called brilliant. But, in the long run, they are certain to be erratic
and, therefore, unreliable producers of innovations.
As was mentioned earlier in this book, the man most responsi-
100
101
STEPS IN DELIBERATE PROBLEMS SOLVING
ble for focusing attention on the ability to be deliberately creative
is probably Alex F. Osborn. Although he had famous forerunners
in the theoretical applications of disciplined creativity, such as
Aristotle and John Dewey, as well as contemporaries, notably
James Webb Young, author of A Technique for Producing Ideas,
and Robert Crawford, author of The Techniques of Creative
Thinking, Osborn's series of books, culminating in Applied
Imagination, were the ones to win widespread readership and
popularity. Much of his success was probably due to the almost
overnight popularity of the "Brainstorming" procedure, which
was described in his last two books, and which literally took the
country's brains by storm. It may prove, in the long run, that the
greatest contribution Brainstorming per se made to creativity was
to get many more people interested in studying up on the subject
than would ever have done so without the technique. If so, Brain-
storming has rightly earned its place as a creative contribution
to mankind!
In the wake of Mr. Osborn's writings and stimulation, came the
interest of business executives and less dogmatic types of edu-
cators. Among the latter may be counted Dr. John Arnold, whose
Creative Engineering courses, conducted while he was on the staff
of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, gained national
fame. Dr. Arnold has since moved to Stanford University, in Cali-
fornia, where he continues to innovate and to challenge more con-
ventional educators with his teaching methods.
Probably the greatest impetus to the movement toward more
creativity in business, science, education, and government came
with the establishment of the annual Creative Problem Solving
Institute at the University of Buffalo, New York, jointly spon-
sored by Mr. Osborn's Creative Education Foundation and the
University. There, leaders and thought-leaders from all fields of
endeavor gather every June to study, assimilate, and examine
every aspect of deliberate creativity. Leaders for the Institute are
selected on the basis of contributions they can make in specific
fields, and the objective of each Institute is to present the latest
102 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
news to interested people who can, in turn, use the information
they gain as a base for adding to our knowledge of the elusive
creative process.
The methods advocated for deliberate problem solving are
not, in any way, magic formulas or mystic rites that will produce
imaginative thinking. Nor are the principles underlying the use
of the techniques to be considered as absolute dogma that must be
accepted at face value. Rather, both principles and methods are
the result of closely observing the great creative minds of history
and the present; and, through cross-comparisons, arriving at some
basic characteristics these minds seem to have in common. The
working methods are those that creative persons seem either
to prefer or to use in common.
The steps, or principles, observed in attacking a problem are
basically five:
Orienting, or defining, the problem
Getting the facts needed to work on the problem
Getting ideas as tentative solutions
Incubating the problem
Evaluating the tentative solutions produced
By comparing these steps with the observed and reported
methods used by known creative people covered in Chapter 5,
it will be seen that the translation from creative theory to recom-
mended creative practice has been almost a literal one. These steps
are really simplified statements of the normal, often unconscious,
operations of creative minds when confronted with problems.
It should be pointed out that you would seldom follow these
steps in just this order in the normal course of working over a
problem. In fact, it is frequently difficult to see where one step
leaves off and another starts; and sometimes it is difficult to see
any clear-cut order whatever. A person may begin to get ideas
while he is still consciously in the fact-gathering stage. After
finishing incubation, he may decide that he wants still more facts
—the facts that, when he first plunged into the problem, he did
not know he would need. But in deliberately trying to court ideas,
103
STEPSINDELIBERATE PROBLEM SOLVING
it could pay you to deliberately follow the sequence —at least to
the p oint of making sure that you have covered all the steps.
Step 1 • Orienting the Problem
Perhaps the most important step in solving any problem is to
make sure that you understand it before you try to do anything
else. Frequently, eagerness to "get on with it" and "get it over
with" can lead to attempts to press for solution before the prob-
lem itself is clearly understood. Problem definition, essentially,
boils down to finding out where you are going with all your sub-
sequent work so that you will know when you get there!
Business or administrative problems seldom come to us in clear-
cut, easily recognized and defined forms. Often, personal opinion
or interpretations get in the way. For example, how many times
have you heard someone say, "Gosh, the boss is in a bad humor
today—everything I do is wrong!" Now let's just turn this state-
ment around: "Everything I do is wrong—the boss is certainly in
a bad humor!"
You'll notice that we've said almost the same things in the
same words, but the nature of that problem is certainly changed!
Other business problems are often obscure because of lack of
facts. For example, a national consumer product sells well every-
where but in the New England states. As an academic problem, it
would be easy to brush off—to say that it was due to the vagaries
of consumer behavior in the New England states. But the sales
manager for that company cannot brush it off—he has to start
by digging out the facts to pin those vagaries down and then pro-
duce the ideas to solve them.
Some business and community problems are difficult to define
because they get into the chicken-or-the-egg question. For in-
stance, nearly a hundred small cities throughout the country are
fighting to keep what may be a key to industrial and commercial
growth for them: scheduled airline service. The Civil Aeronautics
Board has set a 150-airline-passenger-a-month minimum for any
104 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
community that wants to keep scheduled service. And the service
is important if the community is trying to attract new industry.
In fact, if a town has the service, it is almost a safe bet that growth
will follow. But on the other hand, before they can get the service
on a permanent basis, they have to produce the business for the
airlines.
Other problems become complicated by the human element
which must be accommodated. A good example is what happens
when, for economic or other reasons, a manufacturing company
must close down a particular operation or plant, or move a plant
to a new community. Younger workers may have the flexibility
to accept transfers to other cities or to learn new skills on reas-
signed jobs, but workers in their fifties and sixties may be reluc-
tant to give up the town they have called home for many years,
or they may not have the ambition to learn a new skill or even to
learn to work under a new supervisor. The problem then becomes
a highly complex one of effecting the changeover with a mini-
mum of emotional or economic disruption, and of fulfilling what-
ever moral obligations the company feels it has.
Frequently, as in medicine, the symptoms of the problem can
obscure the disease. When this happens, the executive is apt to
find himself putting out a continual series of small fires that seem
to crop up in all directions, but around one central source. Until
he gets to the base of the trouble and thoroughly quenches any
latent sparks, he will never be able to put his fireman's hat away.
As an example, a plant manager is concerned about his production
—it is running behind schedule. Upon investigating, he finds that
absenteeism is running at an abnormally high rate. Thereupon, he
puts into effect various punitive and regulatory measures to deal
with the absenteeism. But somehow, production does not respond.
When his top management finally sends in a personnel specialist,
the finding is that the plant morale is extremely low, and while the
measures to curb absenteeism had indeed curbed it, the basic cause
of the production lag was, if anything, aggravated.
Therefore, the key to effective problem orientation is a com-
105
STEPS IN DELIBRATE PROBLEMS SOLVING
plete and thorough break-out of all the angles that may possibly
affect the problem solution. It is important that you deliberately
search for parts of the problem which may be hidden or obscure.
One good way is to start out by writing down your first impres-
sion of what a problem is. Then try to list every factor you can
think of that could be a part of the problem. Don't worry too
much about the sequence of your parts or their relationships to
each other at this stage. The important thing is to get just as many
subproblems out of the main problem as you can. Once this is
done, then you can begin to rearrange these factors into logical
relationships and sequences. Then look for the key factor. Fre-
quently, when you run through such a list of problem parts, one
will stand out—a person, a material, a design, or a need—which will
so obviously be the key that, if you can solve that, everything else
becomes a detail.
Another good device to try, in attempting to define a problem,
is that of writing it out in several different ways. Try to write it
out in ten words or less. Try to turn it around—see what happens
when you transpose the cause and effect—as we did in the example
of the worker complaining about his boss's bad humor. Try to
explain the problem to someone who is completely unfamiliar
with it—and have him restate it in his own words—not just
repeat what you have said. Such devices as these can often help
you clarify your own thinking on a problem.
Another way to limit or break down a problem is to concen-
trate on the elements of it that you yourself have some control
over. In other words, start where you are. This may, of course,
include the necessity of "selling" someone else—your boss or
your secretary or someone in another department—on the idea
of cooperating with you. But this saves you from wasting mental
energy on things that you could not possibly do anything about
anyway. (But be sure before you say something is not under your
control that you aren't just taking an easy way out for yourself!)
The creative problem solver should select his target for initial
attack only after he has studied the problem as much as time,
106 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
money, or the relative importance of the problem itself allows.
One of the greatest aids in defining problems—and isolating
the real heart of a problem, free of fiction, fantasy, opinion, or
misconception—is the use of the creative, well-aimed question.
This also includes the development of opportunities.
In his Creative Engineering course, conducted at M.I.T.,
Professor John Arnold advocated the use of questions like these
to uncover new possibilities for improving a company's product:
Can we increase the function? Can we make the product do more
things?
Can we get a higher performance level? Make the product longer
lived? More reliable? More accurate? Safer? More convenient to
use? Easier to repair and maintain?
Can we lower the cost? Eliminate excess parts? Substitute cheaper
materials? Design to reduce hand labor or for complete automation?
Can we increase the salability? Improve the appearance of the prod-
uct? Improve the package? Improve its point of sale?
Notice that each of these major questions approaches the
problem of redesigning the product from a different angle. This
is the key to creative questioning—to make sure that you
question around a. problem, so that you continually uncover new
directions as well as new possibilities for exploration.
Once you are aware of what your real problem is, of course,
you must then be able to state it clearly, concisely, and exactly
so that you can communicate it to others with the same degree
of understanding that you yourself have. But be sure, in
presenting your problem statement, that you do not limit the
possible types of solutions. Don't ask a man to think up a new
toaster if what you want is a new way to brown and dehydrate
bread; or don't ask for an improved oil filter if you want to
eliminate filtering entirely.
As you can see, just defining the problem calls for imagination,
as well as analytical judgment. It takes imagination to search
out and find the hidden aspects of a problem. It takes imagination
to think of the kinds of questions that are going to produce useful
107
S TEPS I D E L I B E R A T E PROBLEMSOLVING
N
answers. It takes imagination to recognize a specific aspect of
a problem as the key or vital aspect. Generally, it will take an
alternating of imagination and judgment to define and refine
the usual problem "mess" down into a workable problem state-
ment that everyone can understand. What it nets down to is this:
never try to tackle a big problem— instead, break it down into
little problems and tackle them one at a time, starting with the
one that is going to gain you the most ground right away!
Step 2 • Get the Facts
There is a saying that "The devil you know is a lot friendlier
than the devil you don't." This is especially true in problem
solving. If you can gather enough facts about a problem, the facts
themselves may point out what the solution to the problem will
be or must be.
The human thought processes are complex. But there is one
basic that cannot be ignored: they are all dependent upon a body
of reliable information. The mind — even the speculative, leaping,
p rojective creative mind— must have facts to feed upon. In
the absence of some facts, you can use hypothesis. But until you
can prove out the hypothesis, you must remember that it is
just theory — it is not fact, and you must be prepared to relinquish
your the ory, no matter how beautiful, when fact comes along
that is contrary.
Furthermore, any individual's thinking, on any subject, will
necessarily be limited by the boundaries of his information on that
subject. Thus, Leonardo da Vinci, certainly one of the great
creative minds of all time, could not have built a television set.
He may have thought of the idea of transmitting pictures through
the air, but without the preliminary factual background of
electricity, ether-wave transmission, and electronics, even t his
brilliant mind could not have invented television.
In gathering your facts about a particular problem, you want
to look for information that can make up a part or parcel of the
108 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE E X E C U T I V E
problem solution. You want to study the conditions of the
needed solutions, and the relationships of the facts to those
conditions. You want to learn to recognize truth in facts. And
all "facts" that you meet up with are not true. Charles Kettering,
shortly before he died, made the statement that "Forty years ago
everything about fuel engines was in a row of books 18 inches
long. Today not one word of that is true, because it was not true
then."
There was a time when scientists believed that when the water
vapor in a cloud was cooled to 32°F, the vapor would freeze, as
any water would, and there would be snowflakes. But when they
tried to duplicate this in the laboratory, the reality did not always
work out that way. Sometimes the temperature would get down
as much as 60° colder than the "freezing" temperature, and still
the stubborn vapor would refuse to turn to snow. Then someone
found that just a handful of dry ice would turn a whole skyful
of cloud into a raging snowstorm!
The humorist Mark Twain pointed out that even the seeming
bulwark of truth, the statistic, can be faulty. His example: "In
176 years, the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself 242 miles.
This is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year.
Therefore, anyone can see that 742 years from now the Lower
Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo
and New Orleans will have joined streets together."
One of the important points to remember in going after facts
is that other people's opinions are not always reliable. It is a
characteristic of a human being that he is seldom bothered by
insufficient data, and often the less he has, the more willing he
is to give a firm opinion. And, unfortunately, some people prefer
even a wrong answer to the necessity of digging further for
verification or amplification in their factual quest. Consequently,
it is easy to fall into a "blind-leading-the-blind" pattern in compil-
ing information, so that you end up with inaccurate information,
a confused mind, and a still unsolved problem.
One sure symptom of possible trouble with the "facts" you
109
STEPS IN DELIBRATE PROBLEMS SOLVING
have is that you find yourself in an argument when discussing
them with someone else. No matter how you look at it, argument
is an indication of lack of facts. When all the facts are known and
verified, there cannot be argument.
Once you are reasonably certain your facts are facts, then you
should classify or categorize them. Separate the usable facts from
the non usable; separate the important facts from the non important
o n e s . J u s t a s y o u c a n s e p a r a t e o u t t h e k e y s u b p r o b l e m in a
given situation — one that, if resolved, will make all the others
details —so you can also separate out the "mountain -moving"
facts: those so important that if you act on them, they will serve to
cancel out ma ny unimportant, even though completely op posed,
ones.
Where do you get facts? Many are probably readily available
in your office or in your home library. You can talk to other
people to find out what firsthand experiences they have had
(beware of the "I know a fellow who had a friend" type of fact!).
Visit the library and read up on the problem. If you know what
you are looking for in advance (and you should, if you have
suitably oriented your problem before you start), you can make
your fact-hunting time much more productive. John Gunther,
the author of the "Inside . . ." books, is noted for his ability
to make lightning visits to various cities and countries and come
away with all the pertinent facts that other authors spend weeks
or even months gathering . His secret? As one who worked with
him reports, "He is a master of the art of brain -picking —and of
choosing the right brain to pick. From careful homework, he
knows precisely what information his story needs, and can
extract it with the efficiency of an automatic orange squeezer!"
And that brings up one of the most efficient methods of digging
out facts: tough questioning. "Tough," not with people, but
with the information people give you. One of the country's most
successful new product companies uses a highly detailed checklist
to make sure it has all the facts before committing itself too
deeply on a new idea. Although you may never need such an
110 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE E X E C U T I V E
exhaustive list of questions on your problems, this will give you
an idea of just how far it is possible to carry question-asking
when you want to be sure you have all the facts:
Can we sell it? Is there a market now?—if not, can one be de-
veloped? Is it compatible with present products? Selling price all
right for the expected market? Consumer education needed?
Can we make it? Sources of required materials? Do we have per-
sonnel in the company to manufacture it now? Need for technical
staff to develop?—to manufacture? Do we have machines to make it?
What investment is required?—to develop?—to market? Distribu-
tion costs? How soon will it pay its own way?
What will the product be like? Size? Weight? Handling proper-
ties? Perishable? How will we transport the finished product? Can
related products be developed?
How will we sell it? Present sales force?—new sales organization?
What kind of sales promotion necessary? Manner of merchandising?
If the answers to any of these questions are unfavorable, the
standard follow-up question is then, "Can we change this sit-
uation? "
Of course you have to be sure that in this quest for facts you
don't let any of your own preconceived ideas of what the facts
should be deter you from getting the real facts. Frequently,
"facts" will contradict your own notions of what something
should be. To try to distort them, in this case, will only result
in your weakening your ability to solve the problem. So, in
searching for the truth in a situation, make sure you are not like
the coed on her way to a political rally, who stated: "I'm going
with an open mind, a complete lack of prejudice, and a cool
rational approach to listen to what I'm convinced is pure rubbish!"
When do you stop your fact searching? This will call for
exercise of judgment: it may be you will stop when the facts
you get seem to be duplicating each other—when you are no
longer getting usable new information. Or perhaps it will have
to be when the cost of gaining any additional information will
be higher than the possible value of the information. It is probably
111
STEPS I DL
N E LIBERATEPROBLEM SOLVING
true that no one ever has all the facts pertaining to a problem,
and there will come a time when you will have to work with
what you have. But before abandoning your search, it might
always be well to remember the remark made by one of the staff
physicians at the famous Mayo Diagnostic Clinic. When asked
why it was that this clinic could successfully isolate a disease that
had baffled even the best doctors in a patient's home town, or
why they were able to accurately diagnose a new disease that
other doctors had given up on, he replied, "We just probe a
little deeper, and keep at it a little longer/"
Step 3 • Get Ideas
Once you have suitably oriented your problem, and after you
have collected a sufficient body of facts so that you have some-
thing to work with, then you are ready to begin your systematic
search for ideas—but lots of ideas—all you or anyone you can
get to help you can think up.
Remember, it is a basic characteristic of any problem that can
be solved with imagination that there are many feasible solutions.
The only guarantee you have that you will eventually pick the
best solution to a problem is to be sure you have thought of
every possible solution. (One prominent and successful design
engineer claims that there are at least eight ways of doing any-
thing, including diapering a baby!)
Somerset Maugham, the novelist, once wrote, "To conceive
ideas is exhilarating, but it is safe only when you conceive so
many that you ascribe no undue consequence to them and can
take them for what they are worth. People who conceive few
find it very difficult not to regard them with inordinate respect!"
A biographer of the famous artist, Toulouse-Lautrec, records
that "always he was sketching—everything, everywhere, with any
kind of pencil. When his drawing pad ran out, he used a menu,
the back of an envelope, any scrap at hand __ He tore up
thousands of these drawings, but thousands still exist."
112 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
Even in higher mathematics, where there can be only one
possible exact answer to a problem, there is always more than one
way to arrive at that answer. Furthermore, even though you may
be searching for only one idea at the moment, one idea is hardly
enough to be self-sustaining. You will need supplementary ideas
to bolster up the weaknesses you are bound to find in your
original "big" idea. And if you make an intensive enough search
at the beginning, you will probably find that many of your
"secondary" ideas will serve to supplement your prime idea.
To draw an analogy on this all-out search for ideas, we might
consider the techniques used by a pearl diver in his search for
pearls: the pearl diver puts on his swimming gear, dives down to
the oyster bed, cleans the bed of every oyster that is there, and
brings them all up to the surface with him. Only after he has
completely cleaned the bed does he remove his swimming gear,
put on his street clothes, and begin to open oysters to see if
he has a pearl. He does not stop to change into street clothes
after each individual oyster, open it to see if there is a pearl
inside, then get back into water gear, go down and bring up
another single oyster, and repeat the whole time-consuming
process. And yet that is the way some people try to work with
ideas:
They get one idea; expend time and effort and money to prove
or disprove it; go through the whole process of "warming up"
their minds all over again; get another single idea; again expend
time and effort to prove or disprove it, and on and on. It is
wasteful of time, effort, and the company's money. When you
are after ideas, stick to getting ideas.
And this brings up a key point—one that is vital if you want
to improve your production of ideas: dotit let your judgment
interfere when you are on the hunt for ideas. It is like trying to
drive a car with the brakes on!
Imagination and judgment are diametrically opposed mental
functions. Either can cancel the other out; either has the power
113
STEPS IN DELIBERATE PROBLEM SOLVING
to weaken the other. Ye t both functions are present, or at least
available, in any individual's mind. It is possible to separate them
in use. This is not, as some people suspect, a new concept being
promoted by the new group of "deliberate problem-solvers."
The distinct character of these two functions was recognized
and stated quite clearly by the eighteenth -century German poet-
philosopher Johann von Schiller. In a letter to a friend, who had
complained of a lack of creative power, he wrote:
The reason for your complaint lies, it seems to me, in the constraint
which your intellect imposes upon your imagination __ Apparently,
it is not good—and, indeed, it hinders the creative work of the mind
—if the intellect examines too closely the ideas already pouring in,
as it were, at the gates. Regarded in isolation, an idea may be quite
insignificant, and venturesome in the extreme, but it may acquire
importance from an idea which follows it; perhaps, in a certain col-
location with other ideas, which may seem equally absurd, it may
be capable of furnishing a very serviceable link. The intellect cannot
judge all those ideas unless it can retain them until it has considered
them in connection with these other ideas. In the case of the creative
mind, it seems to me, the intellect has withdrawn its watchers from
the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell, and only then does it review
and inspect the multitude. You worthy critics, or whatever you may
call yourselves, are ashamed or afraid of the momentary and passing
madness which is found in all real creators, the longer or shorter
duration of which distinguishes the thinking artist from the dreamer.
Hence your complaints of unfruitfulness, for you reject too soon, and
discriminate too severely.
In the next chapter, we shall examine some of the devices
that can aid you in developing quantities of ideas. One final word
about what makes an idea for now, however: Don't kid yourself
with vague suggestions that you think might be ideas. Discipline
your mind to think in terms of specific propositions—make your
ideas as concrete, as "real," and as solid as the problems you are
going to be hurling them against.
114 HOW TO BE A MORE C R E A T I V E E X E C U T I V E
Step 4 • Incubate!
If you have labored over a problem and haven't found a
satisfactory solution, you run the risk of frustration. Creative
people of all sorts—writers, artists, composers, and scientists—
often get the feeling of being "blocked up" on a problem—their
minds just refuse to function on it any more. The best thing to
do when this happens to you is to get away from the problem—
let up on your mind.
Your conscious mind is only a small part of the mental powers
at your disposal. Back in the memory cells of your mind may be
dozens of facts and associations that you have completely for-
gotten about and so haven't brought into use on your particular
problem. But they are still there, in the subconscious. If you can
just open up the communications channels, they may come out
to help you find the solution to your present problem. In fact,
you may find that a subconsciously produced idea is better than
any that you were consciously able to develop, simply because
it will have the benefit of all the experience and knowledge you
have accumulated in your lifetime. The human brain actually
has ten thousand times as much "memory capacity" as the best
present-day electronic computer, and it can store and retain and
recall this data for sixty to ninety years or longer.
There are other advantages to incubating, also: For one, it
can give your mind a change of pace—a chance to inject new
light into your search for a solution. For example, one business
book author reported that while he was working on a rather
"meaty" volume, he was incubating a sexy novel! And, he
claimed, in mentally developing the characters and situations of
his novel, he found that he would occasionally gain a new insight
into the psychological aspects of his heavier subject and was able
to improve the contents immeasurably. "Besides," he said, "It was
nice to be able to get away from business once in a while!"
This touches on another prime advantage to incubation periods:
115
STEPS IN DELIBERATE PROBLEM SOLVING
they give ideas time to "grow." Psychologist Allan B. Chalfont
put it this way: "Perhaps in the course of several days or weeks
this thing that started with just the germ of an idea has developed
into a full-fledged idea, complete with trimmings. And, in its
full-fledged state, it is many times as exciting as before."
Still another advantage of learning to deliberately harness your
subconscious, which is what incubation amounts to, is that it
greatly increases the mental energy you have at your disposal.
Some authorities consider this a significant "secret" of powerful
minds: they have established a high degree of compatible co-
operation between their conscious and their subconscious think-
ing processes. After all, a man's conscious mental effort is some-
thing that is subject to fatigue and exhaustion. Experiments have
demonstrated, however, that the real thinking part of the brain,
the cerebral cortex, is never completely at rest unless it is under
the influence of powerful drugs—and even then, we are not
sure that it can be put completely to "sleep." This means, of
course, that your so-called "subconscious" can be kept working
for you even when you are asleep.
Among the people who believed in the power to incubate
deliberately were such minds as Josef Hofmann, Paderewski, and
Fritz Kreisler, all great musical composers who made it a
practice to spend hours in "idle" thinking. 'Charles Tellie r, the
French engineer, claimed that his greatest discoveries were made
in the course of quiet strolls while his mind was busy enjoying
the peaceful scenery. One observer reported that John Jacob
Astor's most striking characteristic was the patience with which
he would wait for one of his ideas to come "into full flower."
Sir Isaac Newton was another scientist who believed in thinking
continually by harnessing his subconscious, as was John Von
Neumann. Von Neumann is reported to have believed that pure
concentration alone was never enough to solve difficult mathe-
matical problems and that these were solved in the subconscious.
He would, therefore, frequently go to bed at night with a problem
in the unsolved state and wake up in the morning and scribble
116 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
the answer on the pad he kept on the bedside table. And therein
probably lies the key that these minds used to unlock their sub-
conscious mental powers:
To make your subconscious work for you intentionally, you
have to give it specific assignments. You must turn your problems
over to your subconscious mind in the form of definite jobs to
be done after giving it all the essential facts, figures, and argu-
ments to work with. This may seem to be a contradiction of the
statement that incubation consists of forgetting the problem,
or putting it out of your mind, but it is not, really. The trick is
that just before you deliberately put the problem out of your
mind, you just as deliberately review everything you have done
on it. And then change your pace.
The great mind of Leonardo da Vinci was kept at work full
time in this manner. Leonardo described his method this way:
"I have found in my experience that it is of no small benefit
when you lie in bed in the dark to recall in imagination, one after
the other, the outline of the forms you have been studying." And,
he reported, he would frequently awake in the morning with a
solution to such a problem.
Many creative people have, of course, benefited from non-
deliberate incubations. They would work on a problem until
they had just plain "fagged out" on it; then, through fatigue or
other necessity, would have the current of their thinking changed.
And then would come the "bolt from the blue." Those creators,
like Leonardo, who have studied themselves generally agree on
what happened, and from them we have learned what we know
about this subconscious "tool."
There is, of course, something else that must go along with this
deliberate charge to the subconscious: an open, receptive mind,
sensitized to the possibility of a new idea ready to be born. When
the first hint of a solution creeps into your conscious thinking,
you must then be ready to grasp it firmly and pull it bodily out
into the light of conscious examination. You should, at the very
117
STEPS IN DELIBERATE PROBLEM SOLVING
least, make a written note of it. If it can be visualized, make a
sketch of it. And make sure that either the note or the sketch
can be deciphered later. The idea that comes in a flash can go
in a flash!
The process of incubation has often been referred to as "sleeping
on a problem." In actual practice, particularly in business, where
problems can come thick and fast, the time you will have to
incubate any particular problem may only be time that you can
readily "make" in the course of the day. It may be just a matter
of breaking away from your desk for a walk to the water cooler
or for a "coffee break." Or it may be timing your activity on
a problem so that you can mentally lay it aside while you go out
to lunch.
It is nice when you do have overnight or a two- or three-day
spell in which to let your subconscious take over the problem,
and if you can allow yourself the time, then take it. But, at the
same time, don't let incubation become an excuse for procrastina-
tion. You can polish and refine and improve on an idea to the
point where the original spark of the idea is smothered and lost.
So give yourself enough time to incubate—but don't make it
forever. After all, you are after accomplishment—not mere
mental gymnastics!
Step 5 • Evaluate Your Ideas
All the steps in our method so far have had as their aim the
eventual production of a quantity of worthwhile ideas. But the
gathering of ideas is not an "end" in itself. The creative process
is never completed until the ideas are evaluated, some idea
selected as a possible solution, the possibility worked on and
developed, and some need filled.
All ideas are not worthwhile. Some of your first, second, or
third ideas will probably prove on final analysis to be "old hat."
Some ideas you produce will not have substance—they will be
118 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
hazy, nebulous, or too general in scope. Some will prove to be
completely impractical.
In sorting out and evaluating your ideas, it is well to keep
in mind the fact that many of them are going to be duds. Not
only will this keep you from becoming disappointed when every
scheme of yours does not pay off, but it will also aid you in
keeping your perspective through the whole evaluation process.
And, in spite of the experience all of us get every day in making
decisions and in the constant and sometimes instant evaluation
and selection of alternatives, most people don't have enough ap-
preciation for the potentials of ideas to be able to evaluate them
creatively.
Just watching most businessmen in the process of making
decisions, you get the feeling that the deciding is still done on the
basis of intuition, hunch, emotion, personal bias, or not enough
facts to decide otherwise. Often these methods are satisfactory.
(You can flip a coin and stand a good chance of being right 50
per cent of the time!) But if you are trying to build disciplined
creative habits into your mental workings, it will pay you to
build discipline into your decision-making also. And decisions
are not easy to make—especially in the selection of ideas.
In making a decision, it is important to be objective, unbiased,
and unemotional. And yet your decision may have to take into
account other people's emotional reactions to what you decide.
Decisions can become precedents for future decisions. But any
decision you make will probably be based, at least in part, on some
past decision. Your problem then is to make a decision that will
allow for the past, provide for the future, and yet not limit
the present!
And, of course, any decision involves risk. You could decide
wrong. However, no decision also involves a risk. Your pro-
crastination may allow the problem to grow.
When you are trying to decide on the relative merits of an
idea, or group of ideas, you need your judgment "full strength."
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STEPSINDELIBERATE PROBLEM S L I GO VN
But there is also plenty of room for imagination in evaluating
ideas. Often a seemingly impossible idea may be susceptible to
a switch which would make it usable. Therefore, you must not
let your judgment take over so completely that it excludes all
imagination. Again, it is a case of alternating, or oscillating, to
make sure that you will be able to see any hidden, partially
hidden, or otherwise obscure possibilities in an idea.
So how do you begin the job of judging ideas? How can you
be sure that you will consider, seriously, the best, won't overlook
the possibles, and won't waste time or effort on the impossible?
The first step is to turn on your objectivity. In the creative
stages, we suspended our judgment temporarily to let the ideas
come through the gates. But when you get to weighing alter-
natives, it is often a big temptation to hop on the idea you
favored all along because "It's obviously the best of the lot!" So
rather than switch from hot ideation to cold judgment, it is
better if you make the changeover gradually.
If you have a quantity of ideas to select from, and you should,
then do your evaluating in two steps: First, give them a "loose"
evaluation—screen them roughly for such categories as "im-
mediate possibilities," "possible possibilities," "research project,"
and, of course, "no goods." Then, tighten up your evaluation first
on the "immediate" and the "possible" categories. The best way to
do this seems to be to measure all the ideas against some
common yardstick. This yardstick will probably be whatever
standards or criteria you can set up (or that may already be
established) which will satisfy the needs of the problem.
It would literally be impossible for any book such as this to
provide comprehensive criteria for any problem that might be
met by any executive in any kind of business. Furthermore, the
best criteria will usually be specifically made for any specific
problem. However, problems do have "commonness," and here
are some examples of criteria listings that have been used suc-
cessfully to "measure" ideas of various types:
120 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
First, a rather general type, that may have its chief value in
helping you sort out the "possibles" and the "maybe's": Ask—
and answer—these questions about each individual idea:
Is the Idea Simple?
Does it seem obvious?—or is it too clever?—too ingenious?—too
complicated?
Is It Compatible with Human Nature?
Could your mother, or the man nex door, or your cousin, or the
t
service-station attendant all accept it? Is it direct and unsophisti-
cated?
Can You Write out a Simple, Clear, and Concise Statement of It?
Can you do this in two or three short sentences so that it makes
sense? Can it be understood and worked on by people of the average
intelligence level found in the field?
Does Your Idea "Explode" in People's Minds? Does someone else
react to it with "Now why didn't I think of that?" Can people
accept it without lengthy explanation? If it does not explode, are
you sure you have really simplified it?
Is It Timely?
Would it have been better six months or a year ago? (If so, is there
any point in pursuing it now?) Will it be better six months from
now? (If so, can you afford to wait?)
The U.S. Air Force has a "Key Criteria" list that is adaptable
to many business and management decisions on ideas. They
suggest that in using this list you rank the criteria in order of
importance for any particular job. In other words, rank them so
that any standa rds that an idea must pass will get more weight in
the final decision, and those which it would merely be nice if
the idea did meet will have a secondary scoring. Here are the
three points:
Is It Suitable?
Will this solution do the job? Will it remedy the problem situation
completely or only partially? Is it a permanent or stop-gap solu-
tion?
121
STEPS IN DELIBERATE PROBLEMS SOLVING
Is It Feasible?
Will it work in actual practice? Can we afford this approach? How
much will it cost?
Is It Acceptable?
Will the company president (or the board, or the union, or the
customers) go along with the changes required by this plan? Are
we trying to drive a tack with a sledge hammer?
One suggestion in the Air Force list—How much will it cost?—
has been expanded out into still another method of evaluating
ideas that has much to offer business executives. Rather than
ask, "How much will it cost?" however, you ask of each and
every idea on your list, "How much will it be worth if it can
be made to work?"
This system, used by the General Electric Company, among
others, accomplishes many things by making sure that potentially
good ideas get the attention they deserve. You will often find,
in evaluating any list of ideas, that some of them could be put
into effect immediately. But when you evaluate them on the
basis of their worth, you may find that they would cost you
more to implement than they could possibly be worth. On the
other hand, an idea that seems to offer only a vague possibility
of being useful, if it has enough potential worth, might justify
even years of engineering-development time to bring to fruition.
The only other suggestion for using this system is that you try
to assign your dollar-values before you let any other form of
judgment get in to cloud or prejudic e your thinking!
One of the most difficult types of problems to establish criteria
on are social problems—those dealing with solutions which are
going to affect human lives and living. But even here it is
possible. Witness this "Four Way Test" which has been widely
distributed by Rotary Clubs throughout the United States:
Is it the truth?
Is it fair to all concerned?
Will it build goodwill and better friendships?
Will it be beneficial to all concerned?
122 HOWTO BE A MORE C R E A T I V E E X E C U T I V E
If you can answer "yes" to each of those four questions,
chances are your idea will at least be "socially acceptable."
One final example of a criteria listing, also from the military:
Some departments of the U.S. Navy use this listing, which will
also be applicable to many types of ideas for business prob-
lems:
Will it increase production—improve quality?
Is it a more efficient utilization of manpower?
Does it improve methods of operation, maintenance, or
construction?
Is it an improvement over the present tools and machinery?
Does it improve safety?
Does it prevent waste, or conserve materials?
Does it eliminate unnecessary work?
Does it reduce costs?
Does it improve present office methods?
Will it improve working conditions?
If the answer to any of these is "yes," then, says the Navy,
you've got a constructive idea.
As mentioned, the best criteria listing you can develop will be
one tailor-made to your problem. You might want to start out
by adapting or adopting one or more of the example listings
that seem to be close to your own type of problems and ideas.
However, the actual questions that you ask about the ideas you
are trying to evaluate are not nearly so important as is your
attitude in asking. If what you are trying to do is to "knock
down" someone else's ideas, or discourage a particular line of
endeavor, then you are defeating yourself. The creative thinker
looks for possibilities to solve problems —he looks for the 90
per cent that is "right" in any idea, rather than the 10 per cent
that may be wrong. And the creative mind realizes that the 10
per cent may be so obviously wrong that it can almost obscure
perception of the 90 per cent "right."
Furthermore, a creative evaluation of an idea will include
looking for possibilities to improve or develop the basic idea,
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STEPS I DELIBERATE PROBLEM SOLVING
N
even if it is pretty good to start with. And, not surprisingly, the
way to go about this search for possibilities is again to ask
questions and get answers. When you have an idea that looks
possible, or even just hopeful, ask yourself questions like these:
What is the simplest possible way of doing it? If a seven-year-old
boy were tackling this, how would he approach it?
List on a sheet of paper every part or factor in your idea, then ask
of each part: "Is this absolutely necessary?"
Axe you sure you were starting fresh?—or were you being inhibited
by customs, traditions, and "the way we've always done it?"
Suppose the whole solution were completely reversed? What new
possibilities does this open up? What restrictions does it remove?
Can public (or management, or worker) acceptance be measured?
Can you check the feasibility of your idea out where life is going on?
Can you learn anything you ought to know by asking the public?
What opportunities are being overlooked either in the problem
or in the idea, because no one has bothered to develop them? Have
you overlooked "the invisibility of the obvious?" What is the com-
monplace in the new idea?—can this be still improved upon?
What are the special needs of the situation? Does this dictate any
idea specifications? Are there any situation needs that haven't as yet
been expressed?
If your idea won't satisfy the needs of the problem, how could it
be modified to strengthen it?
Asking questions like these can frequently lead you to ways
to strengthen and improve your ideas.
It is important to remember, when you are evaluating ideas,
that instant acceptance of an idea is as self-defeating as instant
rejection. Establishing and using criteria or other measurement
devices may seem to be a great deal of work to someone used to
making quick or "snap" decisions. But it is the only way to
discipline your thinking; it is the only way to be absolutely
"fair" to all ideas; it is the only way to make sure that you
"squeeze every drop" of value out of any potentially good idea.
Too often, a person with a problem will go through all the
motions of being organized and methodical in orienting his
124 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
problem, gathering his facts, collecting literally dozens of ideas
as possibilities, and then will throw all the previous work out
the window because he cannot maintain his objectivity and
discipline to the end.
A final word on evaluating your ideas is to pass on what may
probably be the best single criterion ever developed. It was
Charles Kettering's advice, and he believed in it so strongly that
he had it painted on a large sign and hung in the laboratory where
he worked. The sign read:
"This problem, when solved, will be simple."
8
Help Yourself to More Ideas
Of all the traits that are helpful to a creative person, one of
the most valuable is undoubtedly idea fluency—the ability to
generate sheer quantities of ideas against a given problem. If
enough ideas can be thought of, the law of averages says that
some of them are apt to have potential. And if a person will
persist long enough, chances are he will try to approach his
problem from different directions in the attempt to build up
a quantity of possible solutions, and benefits will also accrue
from this self-driven flexibility.
In attempting to build your fluency of ideas, there are arti-
ficial "spurs'* you can use. These are not magic formulas or
sorcerer's secrets that will automatically make you a "big idea
man." They are, rather, an organization and codification of
techniques and methods found to be common among people
known to be creative—"tricks of the trade," if you want to call
them that, but with enough general usage and acceptance in
enough different fields to make them seem worth learning.
Furthermore, experiments have demonstrated that people who
125
126 HOW TO BE A MORE C R E A T I V E EXECUTIVE
learn these methods and practice them to the point that they
become habitual, do show an increase in their idea production.
The basic aim of the different methods is to stimulate your
mind in one way or another. Some help encourage your memory-
recall; others build or activate your powers of association. And
some, like checklists and questions, merely stimulate your mind
into a more exhaustive analysis of either the problem or the
possible ways to solve it that you might normally make without
some "formal" type of discipline. As you get into these, don't
be surprised if you find one or two which you already use, pos-
sibly without ever realizing that you do. Most executives un-
consciously do use such techniques from time to time. The
value of having them "formalized" lies in the confidence it gives
you to know that these tools exist; that they have a purpose;
and that you can use them whenever you feel the need of them.
1 • Make Notes
Note-making can be a big help in idea producing if the right
kinds of notes are made and the right uses are made of them.
The use of notebooks, "Think Books," or "Idea Traps," as
they are sometimes called, is almost universal. Nearly every
businessman carries at least one pocket notebook or some sub-
stitute such as 3 x 5 index cards, pads of scratch paper, etc.
Unfortunately, carrying it is often as far as he gets. Or, if used
at all, it is merely a recording device for statistics like names,
addresses, or what to remember to tell the serviceman about the
car the next time it goes in.
But the habit of making notes is a good one, and it can work
for you in several ways. One of the most obvious is that it can
keep you from forgetting something. But more actively, it
can help you out on your actual thinking.
For example, often a "first-impression" idea seems to block any
further thinking on a problem. But by giving it the token
embodiment of a written note, you may be able to help your
127
HELP YOURSELF TO MORE IDEAS
mind move on past the obstacle and into the search for new
possibilities.
Another way that writing things down can help you is by
encouraging your powers of association. This is the mental
function first pointed out by Aristotle over 2,300 years ago. He
laid down the three laws still considered basic today: Similarity,
Contiguity, and Contrast.
Similarity is when your mind asks, "What is this like?''''—or
when it jumps right to the answer, "This is like the time Brown
Brothers had that overstock on shovels ..."
Contiguity is when your mind asks, "What is this related to?"
—or suggests the answer, "Well, this operation is much closer
to a design than a production function, therefore the responsibility
should probably be assigned to engineering."
Contrast is the opposite of similarity in that your mind will ask,
"Now how is this different?"—or answer, "Brown certainly acts
a lot like Smith, but he doesn't have the sense of responsibility
and the broad knowledge of the business."
It's obvious that once you can start your mind asking such
basic questions, you can then move ahead on your problem merely
by thinking through answers. The way to "trigger" such as-
sociations as you take off on a problem is to sit down with a
pencil and paper and begin to put your thoughts down just as
they come to you. Try to list the thoughts separately—on separate
lines or separate sheets of paper. Then, when your ideas have
finally stopped, start reading back over what you have done.
Ask the three associative questions about each of your notes—
What is it like?—What is it related to?—How is it different?
Continue writing down your answers or ideas. Chances are that,
if you can get five or six ideas on paper in this manner, just by
reading them over you will get numbers seven and eight. One
thought will spark another. One idea will lead to another. The
important step is to get your mind rolling in the direction you
want it to go. Making notes—writing things down—is a good
"primer" for the mental pump.
128 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
In the more permanent class of notes, the most useful type is
certainly the note that will capture a stray idea. You have
probably had the experience of "going to sleep on a problem"
and waking in the middle of the night with a good idea. It was
so obviously good that you knew you would remember it in
the morning. But came the dawn—and disappointment. The
problem was still there, but the idea was gone! "Idea men" who
really mean it keep pencils and pads all over the house and
capture those stray ideas immediately before they can get away.
In your permanent notes you can record your observations
of circumstances: plant operations, personnel conflicts, office
procedures, production problems. Later, when you find your-
self with even a few minutes' time, you can use such at-the-
moment notes as a base for giving the circumstance some thinking
time.
Learn to record your conclusions or opinions on problems
you have been thinking about. Frequently a person spends hours,
or even days, working on a problem. After reaching some good
conclusion (an idea or a decision) and taking action, he firmly
puts the problem out of his mind to work on the next one.
Later, the first problem may recur in the same or a different
form. The man may recall that he thought that problem through
once; but without a record of why he did what he did, chances
are he will have to do all that thinking again (when there are
other problems he hasn't gotten around to yet) or else take the
risk that all conditions are still the same and the same action is
still appropriate. Or, if the action was not successful the first
time, he will find himself without a base to use in analyzing the
cause of failure.
The statistical note does, of course, have a place. You should
certainly form the habit of noting anything down that may
have possibilities for future use to you, however remote those
possibilities seem at the moment. Psychological (Gestalt) tests
have established that on information of "average" interest (i.e.,
neither slight nor vital) the rate of forgetting is 25 per cent within
129
HELP YOURSELF TO MORE I D E A S
the first twenty-four hours and 85 per cent within a week. In the
face of this, pure memory-substitute notes do make sense. In
this class of notes, you should also include clippings from news-
papers and magazines, letters, book references, etc.
Along with your note-making system, however, you will also
have to develop a note-wing system to which you transfer your
spur-of-the-moment notations at the earliest opportunity. This
can be as simple or as elaborate as the problems you are making
notes on. Actual systems used by successful and creative ex-
ecutives range from a simple cigar box (which never fills up
because the owner constantly pulls out and uses his ideas) to an
elaborately indexed and cross-indexed library of loose-leaf note-
books, a system used by a leading physicist. (He does the riling
and indexing himself—claims he gets the same pleasure and relaxa-
tion out of it that other men get out of arranging stamp cata-
logues! )
One highly creative plant manager is the bane of his secretary
because his personal "file" consists of a shelf behind his desk
on which is heaped several years' accumulation of records, notes,
papers, clippings, and pertinent letters. "Best filing system there
is," he states; "nothing ever gets lost!"
Whatever system you devise, remember that the objective is
to enable you to quickly gather everything you have seen, read,
heard, or experienced on a problem or problem area when you
need it. Then, when you have the problem, be sure to use the
notes! Frequently, the hardest part of solving a problem is just
getting started on it. Your notes can provide a "take off" or
starting point to get you off dead-center in your search for
ideas.
2 • Pick Your Time
Every individual runs on a daily cycle. Each of us has a time
during the day or night when we are most capable of creative
or imaginative thinking. Conversely, we probably also have a
130 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
time when we are most capable of cold-blooded analytical
thinking.
Your personal cycle is something you will have to find out
for yourself. Try analyzing your normal "quiet" times—when
you are taking a bath, or driving to or from work, or walking
about the neighborhood. These are apt to be times when your
mind is more sensitive to new ideas. And once you find your
most creative time, set it aside and guard it zealously for ideation
—use it for thinking about problems with a view to getting ideas.
The practice of spending a definite time just in searching for
new ideas can be one of the most productive techniques you can
adopt. When you really concentrate your mental energy on a
problem, it tends to spark your mind into reaching further back
into your memory cells and exposing a greater fund of ex-
perience and knowledge to bring to bear on your problem.
It is a common complaint of business executives that they
"don't have time to think." They are so loaded with detail and
routine problems, which need on-the-spot or immediate solutions,
that they cannot seem to clear any time whatever for long-range
thinking and planning. And when these men meet someone who
seems able to handle and balance a great deal more activity, and
still seems relaxed and cognizant of the need for thought, the
first question is usually, "But how do you find time to do all
those things?"
Actually, no one "finds" time to do anything. You make time
to do the things that you consider important. The same people
who complain that they can't find time to think, or work on
extra problems, or do extra research into the problems they
have, usually waste more time in a week than they would ever
need to double their productivity. Next time you hear someone
complain of not having enough time, try this: Keep the conversa-
tion going. Get it around to the subject of TV programs. Or
baseball. Or nearby golf courses. Somewhere along the line, you
will ring a bell. Some of the loudest complainers about the
shortage of time are practically walking guidebooks to every
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HELP YOURSELF TO MORE IDEAS
television comedian, Western hero, and detective on the air. When
you actually analyze all the programs they are fully familiar
with, you find that they must spend a minimum of twenty hours
a week just watching TV.
This is not to say that a person shouldn't have some mental
relaxation or a chance to "recharge his batteries." Both of these
are musts. But you can carry them to extremes. If what you really
want is to get more time to think, take a long hard look at some
of your extracurricular activities and make sure you are not
dissipating your time in nonproductive and passive mental
activity.
Your work-habits should also be looked at in a cold analytical
way. There is a saying that "You can tell the condition of a man's
mind by the top of his desk." From observation of many ex-
ecutives and would-be executives at work, this would appear to
be true. In most cases, the cluttered desks belong to people who
haven't learned to appreciate the true value of systems.
Systems can be extremely valuable in gaining thinking time
because, if you work them out yourself, they can take over much
routine administrative detail for you. Such details as record
keeping, budgets, allocations, and other purely statistical work
can be put into forms of various types that can be completed
and checked with a minimum of time.
Letting yourself get bogged down in petty details is another
time-waster. Somebody has to take care of deta ils, it is true,
but if you are in an executive or supervisory capacity, the
chances are that "somebody" should not be you. Perhaps it is
your secretary (one of the biggest wastes of executive time is
failure to make the most effective use of secretarial time!); or
it may be a subordinate or even someone in another department.
With details that you just cannot pass off, the best approach is
to group and organize them. For example, get your dictation out
of the way at one time during the day. Group your tele phone
calls so you can make several at one sitting. Plan to have any
interviews or conferences at the most convenient time for all
132 HOWTOBEAMORECREATIVE EXECUTIVE
concerned, and make appointments in advance —this will cut
your waiting time. In sist on punctuality for meetings — for your-
self as well as others. You can easily lose an hour a day waiting for
tardy people. When a meeting starts, get it started— if six men
sit for ten minutes telling stories as a preliminary to a meeting,
that is one ho ur of manpower wasted. And learn to plan and
schedule your work. If you can do it daily, then do it daily and
stick to your schedule. If you can make it weekly — even to the
point of starting off on Monday morning with a meeting to
coordinate your activities and the activities of others for the week
—then schedule your time for the week and stick to the schedule.
If you analyze your activities closely and honestly, you will
undoubtedly find that you can gain at least some time every day
and every week just by cutting out the time -wasting habits that
you have fallen into through indifference and lack of planning.
If you want to gain time to think, this is the way to do it.
And if you want to make the most of that time when you get
it, then learn how you work best and work that way: steer
clear of mind -weakeners like fatigue, noise, and other distractions.
They divert your attention and interfere with concentration.
And don't be misled by stories you hear of great ideas coming
out of all-night coffee -drinking or liquor-drinking sessions. For
every "great" idea produced this way, there are a thousand that
have come out of clear, rested, incisive minds owned by men
who knew that the "only job of the body is to carry the brain
around," and who, therefore, kept their bodies in good condition
and their minds free of dulling fatigue. A good night's sleep and
moderation in diet, exercise, and pleasures will do more for your
thinking than any artificially induced stimulants.
3 • Give Yourself a Deadline
It is human nature to procrastinate. Yet prolific idea men find
that they are at their most creative in spurts, and they get their
best ideas when they go "all out" to get them. Sometimes, of
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course, there is a real and practical deadline to supply the urge
to push yourself mentally: the customer wants to see the new
design tomorrow; the planning committee is meeting next
Wednesday to decide whether your department or Ed Brown's
is going to get the extra money for expansion; you have only
ten days' supply of material "X" on hand and the only supplier
has a strike still going on. In any of these cases, you would find
yourself really mentally involved in finding a solution. But you
can also simulate such pressure by giving yourself a deadline
—just make one up. To get yourself equally involved emotionally
in meeting that deadline, just tell someone else—your boss, or
his boss, or the planning committee—that you are going to have
ten or twenty new ideas at such and such a time.
The idea of persona lly stimulating yourself to be creative
through the practice of setting personal deadlines should not be
interpreted as a recommendation for continual "crash programs."
To be sure, there are times when crash programs are necessary
(even mindful of the Pentagon wag who defined a crash program
as "getting nine girls pregnant in order to make a baby in one
month"!). In research or product development, crash programs
may have value if the paths to be followed are clearly defined and
there are no major unsolved problems in the way. Then an all-
out "drive" to finish a project may be justified. But by and large,
you cannot keep any machines, especially mental machines,
running at top speed all the time. They need "rest periods" and
time for maintenance and refuelin g. But so far as your personal
thinking is concerned, the occasional made-up deadline may be
just what you need to spur your mind to a new and better
problem solution.
4 • Set a Quota for Yourself
The aim of building up idea fluency is to enable you to
generate quantities of ideas against any problem you may have.
So start shooting for quantity right away any time you have
134 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
a problem. Give yourself an actual number quota of ideas to
get down on paper before you try to evaluate or organize them.
Don't set an impossible task for yourself, but if you can usually
think up two or three ways something might be done, try
setting a quota of at least five ways. When you can make five,
up your quota to ten. When you get to ten , try fifteen or twenty.
You shouldn't have to keep this up too long before you will find
that quantities of ideas begin to come easier, and you will be
able to produce any given number of ideas in much less time
than it took you when you first started the practice. You will
also notice that when an on -the -spot problem presents itself,
instead of making a "blind stab" for a solution, your mind will
automatically start running through many different ways of
handling it.
You will also find that the quality o f your ideas is improving
with the quantity. This gets back to the basic advantage of idea
fluency: If you have a problem, and you have only one idea
how it might be solved, then good, bad, or indifferent, one idea
is all you have. If it fails, then you are right back with no ideas.
If you have two ideas, chances are one will be somewhat better
than the other. If you have twenty or fifty or a hundred ideas,
your biggest problem may then be to decide which is best.
5 • Use Checklists
You have already met examples of checklists in the previous
chapter: the "Question Listings" to help you explore problems,
dig out facts, and evaluate ideas. And, of course, you probably
use other types of checklists every day in your normal business
routines. The most common business checklist is aimed at re -
minding a person not to make mistakes in an accepted procedure.
But another type, such as those we have already considered, is
aimed at reminding us not to forget to be original.
Such checklists usually consist of operational-type questions
that challenge the obvious aspects of a problem. Using them can
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often stimulate your mind into exploring areas you might other-
wise miss through mere acceptance of routine. We have already
mentioned the Gene ral Electric Value Analysis service as an
example of applied systematic creativity in business. Here is the
checklist used by a value analyst when he first meets up with
any particular part or component:
1. Does its use contribute to value?
2. Is its cost proportionate to its usefulness?
3. Does it need all its features?
4. Is there anything better for the intended use?
5. Can a standard or a vendor's standard be found which will be
usable?
6. Can a usable part be made by a lower cost method?
7. Is it made on the proper tooling, considering volume?
8. Do material, reasonable labor, reasonable overhead, and reason
able profit total its costs?
9. Will another dependable supplier provide it for less?
10. Can anyone buy it for less?
You will note that a lazy thinker could answer most of those
questions with a simple "yes" or "no" because many of the
answers lie purely in the realm of fact—they are either yes or no.
But a man with a creative mind, rather than take this obvious
way out, uses such questions to aid him in "thinking around"
t h e problem at hand. For example, consider question No. 2:
"Is its cost proportionate to its usefulness?" The answer to this
may be a simple "yes" or "no," but it may also be "maybe." It
could be that a "yes" would still leave some room for doubt
whether the part was being utilized to its fullest potential, even
though the cost was fair. On the other hand, a "no" could open
up a whole stream of questions aimed at narrowing down the
causes of the excessive cost and suggesting ways to reduce the
cost. In this manner, a creative thinker can develop his whole
problem solution from knowing which questions to ask and
what kind of answers to hunt for.
136 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
One of the most basic of all question checklists was formalized
by Alex Osborn and presented in his textbook, Applied Imagina-
tion. He lists more than seventy types of questions to ask yourself
when you are searching for new ideas. It is interesting to note
that most of these questions require the "commonplace" as a
starting point. In going through this sampling, it will be helpful
if you pick some common object, such as a pencil, ash tray,
paper clip, or other familiar item, and try to answer each of these
questions in terms of that object:
Can It Be Put to Other Uses?
Is there a new way to use it as is? Other uses if modified? Can
It Be Adapted?
What else is like this? What other ideas does this suggest? What
could I copy? Whom could I emulate?
Can It Be Modified?
Give it a new twist? Change the meaning, color, motion, sound,
odor, form, shape? Any other changes possible?
Can It Be Magnified?
What to add? More time? Greater frequency? Stronger? Higher?
Longer? Thicker? Multiply? Exaggerate?
Can It Be Minified?
What to subtract? Smaller? Condense? Lower? Shorter? Lighter?
Omit something? Streamline? Split up?
What Can We Substitute?
Who else instead? What else instead? Other ingredients? Other
process? Other power?
Rearrange It?
Interchange components? Other patterns? Other layout? Trans-
pose cause and effect? Change the pace? Change the schedule?
Reverse It?
Transpose positive and negative? Turn it backward? Upside down?
Reverse roles?
Combine It?
How about a blend? An alloy? An assortment? An ensemble?
Combine units? Purposes?
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You will note that not all of these questions are directly ap-
plicable to any specific product or situation. But if you made
a conscientious effort to answer each of them, you will also note
that they do stimulate your mind into thinking channels it might
not normally follow.
The best type of checklist is, certainly, one you make up
yourself to fit your own recurring problems. Using such check-
lists takes a certain amount of initiative, however. It takes
initiative and application to analyze your problems thoroughly
and compile the question-list that will make you think around the
problem. It takes effort to really ask the questions and find the
answers; and it certainly takes initiative to review your checklist
from time to time to make sure it hasn't become outdated. Using
an outdated checklist can be a major pitfall: we get lulled into
a sense of false security through feeling that everything is under
control just because we religiously ask questions about what we
are doing as we go along doing it. But situations change, and we
may end up predicating our thinking on outmoded or no longer
pertinent questions.
What's more, just a mechanical use of a checklist does not
produce originality. The purpose of such questions is to provide
challenges to obvious ways of doing things. Therefore, the
answers to these questions must be well thought out—even if
the answer results in a "No—this is the best we can do right now."
Checklists can often be improvised, also. An open-minded sales
manager looking for new customers might get real benefit out of
just leafing through the yellow pages of a telephone directory.
An office manager, trying to develop a more efficient utilization
of space, might get some ideas by paging through a trade
publication devoted to hotel or kitchen planning. Since you are
simply trying to find new or different ways of solving a particular
problem, you can never tell when or where you will find an idea
to borrow. The originality may consist of the fact that this has
never been used in your particular field before—and if that will
solve your problem, settle for that!
138 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
6 • Use Creative Questioning
Checklists are one technique which will aid you in asking
questions. But questioning should be almost a continuous process
throughout a problem-solving effort. The questions and the
answers provide the bricks and mortar with which you build
toward your solution of a problem. A strong sense of curiosity,
coupled with a well-developed capacity for questioning, is vital
to creative thought of any kind.
Questioning is an art. Like any other art, learning it is best
accomplished by acquiring some understanding of the aims and
methods and adding a large amount of practice in the technique.
Much of this needed learning could, for an adult, be better
classified as "relearning" because it involves methods and tech-
niques that you probably used quite instinctively and intensively
as a child. After all, the time of your life when you were learning
at the highest rate possible was probably between the ages of
four and six. And you were undoubtedly asking more questions
per unit of time during those years than in any years since.
For an adult to recapture this questioning attitude and ability
(which was lost largely through the indifference of parents,
school teachers, classmates, and the "big kids" of the neighborhood
and their unwillingness to put up with "silly kid" questions)
calls, first, for getting over the feeling that he is parading his
ignorance in asking. An adult, through constant exposure to the
school of success that says, "Never show what you don't know,"
is usually afraid to ask questions. Some of this fear is undoubtedly
the old fear of sounding foolish when asking a question. Some
of it may be due to not knowing how to ask meaningful and
worthwhile questions. Actually, it is only through questions that a
person can learn. Only by questioning other people's thoughts and
asking questions of your own mind, can you hope to uncover theo-
ries, new ideas, and new combinations of thoughts that will lead the
way to new and better ways of doing things. And it is always good
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policy to start by questioning yourself first. Your own experience
and knowledge, if they have been properly acquired, are probably
as good as anyone else's. You start questioning others when you
run out of answers yourself.
There is, needless to say, a difference, and an important one,
between questions of idle curiosity ("What's the weather like
outside?" or "Read any good books lately?") and what Einstein
called the "driving spirit of inquiry" of the truly creative person.
The questions asked by a person driven by this creative spirit
are not usually asked, nor can they be answered, lightly. So
in trying to build your own questioning ability, keep in mind
that it is somewhat like taking setting-up exercises. If you take
them halfheartedly—just now and then—very little good will
result. However, everyone realizes that such exercises taken for
a purpose—and taken purposively—can do wonders. In the same
way, purposeful use of questions can work wonders for your
imagination and your general thinking abilities—and can do so
in a short while.
(Before going any further on this subject, the executive must
never forget that his questioning should be done in a positive
frame of mind. Too many people use questions as a way of
establishing their presence in an organization. They never go
after the answers—they just raise questions. The object of
creative questioning is to uncover new possibilities for better
ways of doing things. The person who asks a creative question
does so with the intention of finding the answer himself!)
Here are some general types of questions that may suggest pro-
ductive avenues of inquiry that you can follow in pursuing your
problems:
Ask about What Is Around You. These questions will largely
concern the "which," the "what," and the "how" of things. Such
questions help you uncover problems—or opportunities. As ex-
amples: Questioning your present methods may lead to the elimi-
nation of unnecessary operations or to simplications of your pro-
cedures. Asking about working conditions can lead to improved
140 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
safety measures or to the elimination of accident hazards. Such a
simple question as "How can we reduce the waste on this par-
ticular manufacturing operation?" may lead the way to more
profitable production throughout the plant.
Maintain a Healthy Skepticism. Ask questions about the "why"
of things to keep yourself (and others!) from getting into ruts.
This kind of question can, of course, make you highly unpopular
with certain types of people because it forces them to think. And,
frequently, a "why" challenge to an accepted procedure can un-
cover the fact that the only reason for doing something a certain
way is that "We've always done it this way." If that "always"
covers a period of more than six months, a whole salvo of ques-
tions may then be in order to establish whether or not this is still
the best way to handle that particular problem. It may well be
that it is—but if you question it, then you know!
Ask When and Where. In business, good timing can often be
the crucial factor in the success or failure of a venture. Marketing,
sales, and advertising efforts are especially vulnerable to mistakes
in timing—and just as susceptible to help through good timing.
("Timing," of course, includes termination of an effort as well as
initiation.) Asking "where" is logical in the case of a new plant
location, new markets to be opened up, new sources of raw
materials, and even the location of a new water fountain in the
shop (Where are the largest number of workers located? Where
does the traffic flow? Where are the present water pipes? Where
are the drainpipes? Considering these, just where is the best place
for the water fountain?)
Learn about Personalities. The acceptance or rejection of any
new idea or new method of doing things is largely dependent
upon the people involved. So is the degree of probable success
in getting an order carried out. So ask about the "who" of things
—Who will have to approve this? What are his likes, dislikes,
strengths, weaknesses? What are the qualities we need in a man to
handle this operation? Who comes closest to filling those qualities
now? Who could be trained? Probably every executive believes
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in Harriman Hill's advice, "Never do anything yourself you can
get someone else to do for you," but if you hold the responsibility
for the success or failure of a venture, you should be very con-
cerned with questioning the "who" of things!
And don't be afraid to go "off-beat" with your questions. The
story is told about what happened in the metal-fabrications de-
partment of a major manufacturer when they were trying to weld
a tricky new aluminum assembly. The aluminum had been ano-
dized, for reasons peculiar to the application, and the develop-
ment people had about given up the whole project because it
seemed impossible to get satisfactory welds on the material. At the
meeting, where the vote was to abandon the project, one engineer
dissented. He said, "Let's not quit. Why don't we try doing it the
way an Indian would?"
"What do you mean, do it the way an Indian would?" asked
the engineering manager. "What do you have in mind?"
"I don't have anything in mind except that I know an Indian
wouldn't weld it," replied the engineer.
To make a long story short, the engineer was given the assign-
ment of seeing "what you and the Indians can do." He began
working with people who knew how to fabricate from wire—by
crimping, bending, forming, and so forth. Three months later the
problem was solved, and the company began enjoying savings of
$2.5-million a year!
Of course, eventually you have to stop asking questions and
start doing. Knowing when that exact point is reached calls for
tough judgment. Often it is easier to convince yourself that you
still haven't all the answers you need, and therefore should keep
on looking, than it is to get down to the job of solving the prob-
lem. So you should know how to tell when your questioning is
efficient and when to stop.
The first principle is know what it is you want to find out. This
may sound obvious, but it is deceptively so. To do a really efficient
job of questioning, you have to "back off" from your problem
initially. Then you begin to ask questions that will first establish
142 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE E X E C U T I V E
the "big picture" of the problem—its boundaries, limitations, his-
tory, and general characteristics. Once this is established, you can
again step back and look for the area that seems to offer most
immediate possibilities for attack.
Gradually, and with your big picture constantly in the back of
your mind, you reduce it into a series of smaller detail pictures
about which you ask detailed and specific questions. It is probably
a good idea not to try to zero in on details too soon. If you do,
you may miss something important in the over-all picture. Fur-
thermore, if you begin asking questions to pin down details before
policy is clear, you may end up wasting a great deal of time. A
shift from an assumed policy could make all your detail decisions
obsolete or even wrong.
As to when you stop, it is again a case of getting a worthwhile
return on your investment. You stop when what you "get back"
in information and ideas is no longer worth what you "put out"
in time and effort.
But always conclude with one final question: "Have I over-
looked any sources of new answers?"
7 • Other Aids
The individual spurs to ideas covered so far are the most popu-
lar with the greatest number of people largely because they can
be used any time, any place, under any circumstances, and they
are general enough to be adapted or adopted for almost any type
of problem, whether personal, business, social, or environmental.
There are several more specialized techniques that may also be
of interest. These are usually favored by persons with highly
specialized types of design, engineering, or other problems deal-
ing largely with tangible items.
They may be classified generally as analytical techniques, in
that, like checklists, they force you into an analysis of all the
various factors involved in changing or improving your common-
place beginning.
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Attribute Listing. This technique was developed and formalized
by Professor Robert Platt Crawford of the University of Ne-
braska (and is explained in detail in his book, Techniques of
Creative Thinking). Basically, it consists of listing all the at-
tributes or qualities of an object, product, or situation; then sys-
tematically considering each attribute or group of attributes in
turn, to try to change each of them in as many ways as possible.
The object of each change should be to do a better job of satisfy-
ing your new need. For example:
If the problem were to develop a different kind of picture
frame, you would start by listing the attributes of an ordinary
frame and looking for possible ways to change them:
Ordinary Frame Has... Could Be Changed to ...
Rectangular shape Round, oval, triangular, etc.
Glass covering Lucite, plastic film, ornamental tracery,
louvers, etc.
Wooden construction Aluminum, plastic, rubber, no frame,
built-in, etc.
Wire hanger Magnetic, double-faced tape, suction
cups, hook-and-eye, etc.
If you carry this far enough, you can soon get into such questions
as "What other objects are like picture frames?" (window frames,
wall-panel mountings, mosaic panels) and "What can I borrow
from them?" "What other materials used in decorating anything
might lend themselves to decorating a frame?"
The "X" Method. This is a method formalized by Professor
George B. Dubois of Cornell. Professor Dubois suggests that if
you have broken your problem down completely and still can't
seem to get started, you substitute "X" for any unknown and go
on to the next step. It's a little like the way General MacArthur
"island-hopped" in the Pacific during World War II: His strategy
was to by-pass enemy strong points and capture less well defended
islands beyond and around them. The "X" method lets you at-
tempt the same thing on design or development problems: when
144 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
you hit an impasse, go on to the next phase that you can tackle.
You may find the solution to your "passed" problem while work-
ing on another aspect of the total problem.
Input-Output System. This method serves first to define the
problem, and then to provide a framework for its solution. You
start by determining what it is you want to accomplish—the
final objective. Let's say this will be a new lamp base. This would
be the output. Then, you determine your input, or what you have
to work with—tools, materials, skills. In between these two, you
list any limitations—cost, structural requirements, aesthetic con-
siderations. Now you begin to work from one side of the problem
to the other and back again—from the input of one particular
detail, such as tools available, over to the desired output to see
what you can accomplish in view of the limitations you have es-
tablished. If your analysis is exhaustive enough and you are crea-
tive enough in looking for possibilities, the input-output system
can frequently produce a multitude of ideas for incorporation
into your final design.
It is well to note that in using any such analytical techniques
as attribute listing and the input-output system, the value and
quality of the results will be largely determined by the care and
accuracy of the original problem analysis. If vital angles of the
problem are not included in the initial framework, or if facts are
inaccurate, you will not be able to make accurate or useful trans-
formations to final ideas. Therefore, if you must make some un-
verifiable assumptions in order to go ahead on the problem, be
sure you put mental "flags" on them to indicate possible danger
spots. In many cases, of course, your final result will prove or dis-
prove the validity of your assumption; but if, in the course of
working your way through an analysis, you get the opportunity
to check out a key assumption for accuracy, you may save your-
self much time and trouble by stopping to pin it down right then
and there.
All the self-prodding techniques covered in this chapter can be
useful in helping you to produce more ideas; they will enable you
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HELP YOURSELFTOMORE IDEAS
to take an orderly approach to a problem and to avoid ordinary
blank spots which might be caused by faulty perception, haste,
or emotional or cultural blocks. But, to be effective, they must all
be used with intelligence and imagination. Before you consider
any particular technique, you should consider its suitability for
what you want to accomplish. In many cases, it may be useful
to mix or combine the devices you will employ. At every stage
you will have to use your imagination in deciding just which tool
is the best for your needs at that particular stage in the problem-
solving sequence. It is, in a way, like playing golf or trying to
catch fish. There are no hard and fast rules to tell you just what
to do next—you have to use judgment in deciding how you will
play the ball or lure the fish or solve the problem.
Finally, always remember the basic aim of all idea-spurring tech-
niques: to help you keep an open and receptive mind. You never
know where or when the solution to any particular problem is
going to come to you. So don't get all wrapped up in the tech-
niques, methods, procedures, devices, or what have you. They
are only means to an end—not the end itself. Be receptive—be
ready to "receive" when your mind starts "sending" a promising
idea or ideas.
And don't let yourself be blocked out of a good idea by what
anyone else says about it, or even by what you see in front of you.
9
When to Use Creative Groups
So far everything in this book has concerned itself with improving
individual creativity. This, and the following two chapters, will
be concerned with uses for a type of creative operation that is
becoming almost indispensable in certain areas of business—
creative teams and groups.
When our first Explorer satellite was put into orbit, American
technology moved irreversibly, if somewhat belatedly, into the
realm of 18,000 mph-and-up speeds. In spite of the wishes of many
people, we can never go back to the relative horse-and-buggy
days of even 1955 when the fastest man-made machine moved at
the "leisurely" pace of 500 to 600 mph. The age of space-travel
speeds is here, and we have to learn to live with them.
This means we also have to gear ourselves to new speeds in
thinking and problem solving. Even pre-Explorer scientific prob-
lems were so complex that it was a rare individual who knew all
there was to know about just one of the subspecialties within a
scientific specialty—let alone the complete science.
And, of course, complex sciences make problems just as com-
plex. Nearly, if not entirely, gone are the days when a lone scien-
146
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WHEN TO USE CREATIVE GROUPS
tist can suggest a simple "formula change" that will immediately
solve a major chemical or processing problem. We just don't use
chemicals that way anymore! And in other fields, too, we seldom
hear of a great individual inventor today. Most of our advances
seem to come from groups, out of laboratories or engineering sec-
tions. No single individual can claim invention of atomic energy;
there is no name tag on the automatic transmission of your car;
legal departments of large corporations will tell you that one of
their biggest problems in planning patent protection for products
is settling on just which three or four names out of a dozen or
more should be put on the patent application as "primary in-
ventor"!
This situation exists chiefly because research, development, and
production people frequently find that today no one man has the
knowledge or experience to solve the new "superproblems" they
are meeting. Individualists will tell you that the solution lies in
educating our scientists better—or more. Or in teaching them to
use more than the 15 to 20 per cent of their mental powers that
the average person uses now. Both of these goals are worth striv-
ing for and should certainly be explored and encouraged. Unfor-
tunately many of the problems of 18,000 mph-and-up science
and business can't wait for the human element to catch up. Not if
a company (or the nation!) wants to stay in business. And with
technologies increasing at an estimated rate of 22 per cent a year,
it seems somewhat doubtful whether we can catch up if we depend
solely upon the improvement of the individual.
Not only have problems become increasingly complex, but
we have, in recent years, tended to make our individual problem-
solvers more specialized. This pertains to business executives as
well as scientists. There are strong indications in business that, in
breeding new specialist executives, we may have shortchanged
ourselves on the "generalist" types so necessary to cope with
broad, over-all business problems. As any indiv idual becomes
more specialized, his sphere of knowledge and capabilities drops
off in the broader areas, and he finds himself in need of other
148 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
specialists in order to survive. The more we specialize, the more
dependent we become on one another—and the more we must
cooperate with others. For a business or scientific specialist of any
kind to declare himself independent of his fellow men today is
literally to commit professional suicide.
The scientific or management "team" of two or three men has
provided a partial answer to this. But even teams find their joint
imaginative efforts inadequate at times. So more and more we are
being forced to turn to group efforts to come up with ideas and
answers, particularly when those ideas and answers are needed
in a hurry.
It is unfortunate that the necessity of using groups has pushed
many people into the practice before they have taken the time
to seriously explore the use of groups or teams as problem-solving
tools. In some fields, group use has become almost a fad: a meet-
ing will be called on almost any pretext, and the group is turned
loose on the problem without adequate preparation, direction, or
leadership—and without achieving any close feeling of respon-
sibility for solving the problem. In such cases, it is probably true,
as critics charge, that the group will seek, or settle for, a compro-
mise rather than the best answer, or that it will settle for the most
daring idea that the least daring member can accept.
Consequently, many of the more responsible types of creative
persons have become somewhat suspicious of group creative ac-
tivities. As a result of one or two bad experiences with improperly
used groups, they have developed a resistance to the idea that
groups can be valuable adjuncts to a problem-solving effort, and
even to the thought that groups can be creative at all. This is un-
fortunate because, if used properly, a creative group can be a
powerful tool for helping the individual move along toward a
problem solution.
One of the important points to remember in using a creative
group is that the objective is to help you get ideas that will help
solve problems. Not ideas just for the sake of having a list of ideas,
but ideas to solve the problems you or your company consider
worth solving.
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HN O
Secondly, anything we can do to get those needed ideas is "fair
play." In this sense, a creative group in no way competes with
or replaces the individual. In fact, a creative individual becomes
even more important. He becomes the "problem planner" or
"coordinator" who uses his imagination and knowledge of the
various problem-solving tools, both individual and group, to
quickly and efficiently plot and execute the approach to the prob -
lem solution. This type of individual will regard the group as a
tool to be used where that particular tool will do the best job.
W h e n y o u c o n s i d e r a c r e a t i v e g r o u p o f a n y t y p e a s a t o o l , it
then becomes apparent that you will have to learn a few things
about it and develop some skill in using it before you can expect
maximum results. And you have to learn enough about each type
of creative group to know when it is the best tool for the job in
hand. An analogy could be made with a hammer. If you were
going to build a house by yourself, and someone said to you,
"Well, then, you'll want a good hammer," you wouldn't interpret
that to mean that a hammer is the only tool you would need, or
that a hammer should be used on every job in constructing the
house. But you would realize that a hammer would be a very
useful tool to have in your kit when you started construction on
your house. The same holds true for any of the creative group
techniques: none of them is the "universal" tool which will solve
any or all problems or even aid you on every problem. But it is
well worthwhile to have them in your mental tool kit for the
times when they can do a job more efficiently than an "individual"
tool. The really creative person in business today is one who is
willing to use any tool he can to obtain solutions to problems. To
this kind of individual, other minds are tools. And the way to
begin a study of creative groups is by studying groups in general.
Let's say that a business organization, or a department of an
organization, is made up o f 100 individual people. These people
all have different temperaments and different racial, religious, and
family backgrounds. Each of them is a product of his particular
heredity, early home environment, and parental training. Each
can, therefore, be expected to react somewhat differently to other
150 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE E X E C U T I V E
people, to business situations, and to any experiences with which
he is confronted. Their emotional reactions to any stimulus
will be quite individual and completely automatic. Their mental
reactions, in the form of associations and thought processes, will
also be automatic and individual. There will exist differences of
opinion on almost any problem and differences in reactions to
almost any type of challenge. All these individual differences in
backgrounds, education, experience, and emotional responses,
then, constitute an available "pool" of mental resources to draw
on in a search for a problem solution.
(This, incidentally, is where the understanding group user
differs from those critics who complain of "group-think" tactics:
the usual sense of "group think" implies that all members of an
organization think alike—will have the same responses in the same
situation. To a creative group user, such people are useless—what
he needs, and, in fact, must have, are the differences in thinking!)
In selecting people from this pool, the creative group user will
draw them on the basis of the contributions he expects them to
make from their own individual backgrounds, and he will work
to focus these varied characteristics on a solution to the problem.
He is after a cross-fertilization, rather than an inbreeding, of
ideas. There are times when the group organizer will want a flint-
like mind on his problem. He may also, in order to ensure some
sparks, include a more "steel like" mind. There will be times when
the heavy, ponderous, serious thinker is the person needed for a
particular problem. But it may be, in order to keep the group
from being overwhelmed by such a mind, that one or two frivo-
lous, lighthearted types will be needed for balance. It may be that
the nature of the problem will be such that you will want to cross
organizational or functional lines in making up the group. Re-
search scientists and the sales department, for instance, are usually
pretty well isolated from each other in a company. But if your
problem involved the planning of a new product, you might get
some very interesting results from mixing representatives of the
two interests.
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WHEN TO U S E C R E A T I V E GROUPS
Such planned, intentional, and intelligent mixing and inter-
mixing of personalities and interests is a key to successful group
usage on creative-type problems. Each member of the group
should be individually selected on the basis of a specific contribu-
tion you expect him to make. If you are so fortunate as to be able
to select specific contributors who are also highly creative indi-
viduals, then you will find yourself handling what can be an
extremely "hot" tool, and how well or how poorly you handle it
will determine the degree of success that the group can achieve.
Now let's see what happens, in a general sense, when you organize
a business group to attack a problem creatively.
The Individual in a Group
No two people in any group ever "join" it for exactly the
same reasons. In a business conference, each person present will
have a different degree of motivation and interest. Some will be
staunch proponents of either the pro or the con of the subject—
if there are pros and cons; others will be present as "resource
people," who were invited to contribute their experience or
specialized knowledge, but otherwise will not be concerned with
any action taken or decided upon; still others will be there purely
and simply because they were ordered to attend. Initially, these
may be completely indifferent to the purposes or causes of the
meeting. And finally, in any group, at least half the members will
be composites to varying degrees of any or all of these character-
ized members.
(Although we are concerned here pr imarily with business
groups of "conference" size it should be noted that most of these
principles and methods are equally applicable to social groups as
well. For example, the main concern of a religious group may be
to probe and explore the values of the human soul and spirit.
However, there will undoubtedly be individual members of any
such group who will be in it purely for the social opportunities
which the group provides. This can, at times, lead to a conflict
152 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
of interests which may threaten the primary purpose of the
group.)
Most groups of six or more persons will include one or more
individuals who may be almost fanatics for "group thinking"—
they consider the group the only efficient and impersonal arrange -
ment for objectively disposing of a problem. They may or may
not enjoy participating in the group action, but they do believe
in it.
Then there are other individuals who consider group participa-
tion an emotionally satisfying experience to be prolonged and
savored to its fullest. (In this respect, it is important to remember
that one of the biggest things you can "give" any person is recog-
nition. Group methods do give people a sense of being recognized
through participation and experience. This is a mixed blessing:
on the one hand, participation in a group can be used as a motiva-
tional tool or as a reward to an individual; on the other, there
exists the danger that such participation will "go to the head" of
a member and he will devote much time to scheming how he
can be included in more of it!)
The most satisfactory group member, however, will be the
one who finds the group personally satisfying to the extent that
he is motivated by participation to contribute, but who, at the
same time, realizes the true purpose of the group as a problem-
solving mechanism and will work efficiently toward that end.
Specific types of individuals who can be anticipated in any
group meeting will include representative samplings of these:
The Power Jockey. This type has a hidden agenda in any meet-
ing; he is seeking to build his own personal power or prestige,
either as an individual or as the leader of a clique. He gives him-
self away by frequent stubborn and usually uncalled-for attacks
on other members or on ideas or suggested lines of action for
reasons which have nothing to do with the main issue.
The Deflator. This individual may be an incipient power
jockey, or he may be supporting a jockey. His troublemaking
usually takes the form of an attack on a personal level which is
153
WHEN TO U S E CREATIVE GROUPS
intended to deflate and reduce the prestige of another member.
The Loyal Outsider. Here is an individual with a real problem.
He is usually a willing and helpful member of the group—at least,
he tries to be. Nevertheless, as a loyal representative of an outside
organization or department—and only incidentally a member of
the meeting group—he suffers from divided loyalty. He wants
to help the group do its job effectively, yet he feels he must resist
any attempt to blame, examine, or involve his parent group in
any way. He can usually be spotted by the appearance of con-
fusion, irritation, or stubbornness when the subject being covered
gets close to his primary-group interests. Other times, he will be
a most cooperative and useful member of the larger group.
The All-wise. This is the member who comes to a meeting with
a problem-solution all thought out and decided—at least in his
own mind. Instead of being present to share knowledge and con-
sider other opinions, he has his answer in his hip-pocket. (A minor
subtype is the snap-judger—he gets his answer in the opening
minutes of any meeting, then tucks it away for the proper time to
present it.) The all-wise is usually intelligent enough to realize that
a premature revelation of his solution will not sit well with other
members of the group (such a revelation might imply that he as an
individual is smarter than the group), so he waits until he judges
the time to be ripe for a solution suggestion. In the process of this
judging, his mind is pretty well closed to any other solution or
suggestion, and he will probably not be either objective or even
active in contributing to the major group effort.
The Withholder. Either lack of confidence or mental laziness
can be the root trouble with this member. He may hold back an
honest opinion or answer because of a fear that someone will dis-
approve, and he will lose stature. Or he may come to the meeting
in the first place with a determination that this is not his problem,
that someone else can do the thinking and the work. He is satis-
fied to be "a good listener." To switch this member's participa-
tion from the passive to the active is one of the toughest jobs a
group leader can face. Occasionally, you may be so unfortunate
154 OW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
as to meet up with an entire group of withholders. Then it will
take every trick in your leader's bag to get the meeting moving.
(Some such "tricks" will be covered in Chapter 11.)
These individuals are seldom met in a "pure" state in any
creative group. (In any event, it need not be disastrous for the
meeting, if the leader can spot the type he has to deal with early
enough!) Any individual may move from one category to another
as the meeting or conference progresses and as the subject being
covered moves nearer or farther from the individual's particular
interests or field of knowledge. Furthermore, in a fast-moving
group situation, the leader cannot always attend to each person
as an individual. He must deal with a composite of all of them.
Fortunately, a kind of law-of-averages comes into play to help
the leader.
The Group Personality
Whenever people are mixed together in a group, a different
personality takes over: that of the group. This personality is real
and positive to the point that a skilled observer can analyze it for
any given group much the same as an individual's personality can
be analyzed. This group personality consists of all the factors
that make up all the individual personalities present in the group,
intensified or modified in direct relationship to how many times
each of those individual factors appears in the group. In other
words, a group made up of predominant extroverts would tend to
have a sharply extrovertic personality; one made up of predomi-
nantly hostile or suspicious individuals would be most disagree-
ably hostile or suspicious in its group behavior.
The executive who is attempting to use a group for problem-
solving must be sharply conscious of the effects of this group
personality. Just as the group personality is affected by the indi-
vidual factors involved, so too will continued exposure to any
group affect the individuals. Many people, over a period of several
adult years, acquire their attitudes, beliefs, and feelings from their
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WHEN TO USE CREATIVE GROUPS
experience with groups. Therefore, one of the tools of prediction
for group behavior is to know in advance the outside interests the
individual may have in other groups.
By balancing out the individual personalities you select for a
group you are putting together, you can make reasonably sure
of a group personality that will have the best opportunity to
solve the problem.
This is demonstrated clearly by the composition of many re-
search and development task groups: depending on the nature of
the problem, R&D group members may include a balanced ratio
of chemists, physicists, metallurgists, electronics specialists, and
engineers. Each would be selected because of a specific knowledge
contribution he was expected to make. And the group can be
directed or steered toward a specific type of group action by
including more of one type of personality than another, or by
carefully selecting individuals of one type who are known to be
more aggressive in their personalities than the others. The pre-
dominant or aggressive specialists then tend to take over the
leadership of the thinking, with the secondary members dropping
back into the roles of resource people —specialists who will be
called upon by the group as their specialized training and experi-
ence are needed.
An effective use of groups depends, however, on how well the
various personalities and interests can be pulled together by the
leader into an integrated and smooth-working whole. Therefore,
the prospective group leader would do well to familiarize him-
self with some of the resistance factors that can be encountered
once the group personality has come into being.
Pressures within a Group
The ills that bother a group action, once it begins to function
as a group, can be oversimplified by considering some of the char-
acteristics of a family:
Though it may appear unified and close-knit to the outside
156 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
world, there are, at the same time, minor and almost continuous
conflicts going on within the family group. Husbands attempt
to influence— or even pressure!— their wives into certain lines
of thinking or action; wives attempt the same with their husbands.
In trying to guide their children, parents, with the best of inten -
tions, frequently run head-on into conflicts o f interests among the
children. In attempting to accept parental guidance, the children,
in turn, often find themselves in a state of conflict with their own
emotions and instincts, which tends to set off a chain -reaction of
confusions and even frustrations. These family conflicts, of course,
seldom break out in open warfare between the participants be-
cause the bonds of the family are strong enough to override them.
Nevertheless, they are present. And such conflicts are also present
in adult groups gathered to solve a business, community, or social
problem. They are usually described by social analysts as "group
ills." Here are some of the more common:
Confusion of Purpose. Members of the group become dissatis -
fied or openly hostile in the process of group operation. There
may be flights into endless discussion of petty or completely un -
related details. There may be long arguments over points that
could more easily be resolved by a single individual at a later time.
Such symptoms may indicate that the group lacks a clear under-
standing of its purpose. This is usually the fault of the leader—
either he failed to give them suitable orientation as to why the
group was called together in the first place, or he failed to impress
upon the group the importance of their activity to the extent that
they are motivated to undertake it to the exclusion of personal and
more selfish interests.
Incompatible Personalities. These conflicts can arise between
individuals or subgroups who may, ordinarily, work in perfect
accord. For example, a normal boss and subordinate relationship
may be a smooth, well-coordinated team activity. But put them
together in a larger work group where, ostensibly, everyone is on
an equal footing, and a defensive conflict arises: the boss feels he
mus t maintain his position of authority by demonstrating it, and
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WHEN TO U S E C R E A T I V E GROUPS
the subordinate is really afraid to challenge that authority by
publicly refuting the boss. Symptoms of this frequently show
themselves in the domination of the discussion by a boss or sub-
group of bosses; or in the passivity of a subordinate or subordi-
nates; or in too enthusiastic support by subordinates of essentially
mediocre ideas or opinions ventured by the bosses. The two most
satisfactory cures for this are both preventive. The first, logically,
is to avoid any opportunity for conflict by careful selection of the
group members in the beginning. As an example, for a group that
is intended to be a creative group and to produce creative results,
it is better to avoid putting a boss and a subordinate together.
Keep your group make-up on the same level— either all bosses or
all subordinates. The alternative is to plan your program in such
a way that opportunities for conflict simply do not happen —
neither the boss nor the subordinate is put in a position of having
to define or challenge a normal relationship. On the other hand,
of course, if the issue is one that needs to be faced squarely, the
principal antagonists, whoever they may be, should certainly be
brought in, and the leader can brace himself for the battle and
attempt to ensure that any wounds inflicted will not be fatal or
long-lasting!
Leader Hostility. In every case of a leader-directed group, there
will be a certain mixed -emotion feeling. The group member wants
to be independent and free-thinking. At the same time, he wants
to be told what to do and be given guidance for the doing. This
means that if the leader attempts too much to dominate the group,
the result may be either passive resistance or out right revolt. On
the other hand, if he avoids leading, the group may react with
apathy and disintegrate or—possibly worse— accept real leader-
ship from a more positive member whose aims and objectives may
in no way resemble those of the leader. Suggestions for coping
with this will be found in Chapter 11. For now, we will just say
that the leader must keep firmly in his own mind the fact that the
easiest and fastest way to lose control of a group is to first lose his
own temper!
10
Creative Group Techniques
Creative groups are a relatively new concept in business operation.
It is true there have been committees, conferences, and various
types of small group organizations working on problems ever
since there have been problems (the tribal "elders' meeting" for
instance). But the idea that you can deliberately put a group of
people together and, through planned use of a formal technique,
encourage these people to be creative is relatively new—so new,
in fact, that we are only beginning to learn how such groups
function, and how they can be made to function better. The
techniques themselves are still in rather "crude" stages, and we
have much to learn about improving them. The important thing
to remember is that they do work now—and that an executive
who will take the time to learn and understand them can give
himself and his company potent tools to use in searching for ideas
and problem solutions.
You will recognize from our study of creative individuals that
it is not always easy to find one person with all the attributes of
a highly creative thinker. However, you will also recognize that
158
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CREATIVE G O PR U TECHNIQUES
at least some of these attributes will be found in varying degrees
in most people. Creative group techniques focus the creative
characteristic s, as well as the educations, experiences, and back-
grounds, of a group of people against some problem on which
they share, or can acquire, some common knowledge. What you
are doing is putting a mental "team" to work on a problem—you
give them a set of rules, which all understand and agree upon, in
order to coordinate them into a single "master mind." The objec-
tive is to accomplish more than an individual mind could alone,
or, at least, to accomplish it in less time.
Another reason for the more or less "formal" organization of
creative groups is the same as that for putting a definite discipline
into your own personal attack on problems: it is a much more
efficient way to think. Nearly everyone in business has at some
time attended a meeting or conference which was a complete
waste of time. This, however, is no reason to condemn the idea
of using groups. It is, rather, a condemnation of the individual
who allowed a wasteful use of the group tool. There are many
reasons why groups fail at their intended tasks. But they are all
caused by individuals failing. The group itself is a tool—and it
can be used wisely, audaciously, poorly, or disastrously. It de-
pends entirely on the skill of the individual who is using the tool.
When you think of groups in terms of tools, then many of the
nuts-and-bolts questions about using them become somewhat
easier to answer. To repeat an analogy, consider what you go
through when you use more tangible types of tools:
When you pick up a hammer, you don't just start hitting things
to see what will happen. You wouldn't even take a handsaw off
the rack unless you had a specific need for a saw—and then you
would pick a specific saw for the particular type of cutting you
had to do. By extension, you don't call a creative group together
unless you know what it is you expect the group to produce or
create. If it happens to be a group aimed at getting ideas, the
answers to the questions of how the ideas should be evaluated,
and who should do it, should be practically predetermined. And
160 H WT B AM R CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
O O E OE
the worst possible way to use a creative group—one that can kill
off all interest and any spark among your most creative people —
is to turn to it simply because you don't know what else to do.
Knowing when and where to use any kind of tool demands an
understanding of both the characteristics and the functions of
the tool. You can't acquire skill in using a tool just by looking at it,
so proper understanding will also require some practice. It will re-
quire making mistakes and wasting materials—"materials" such
as the time consumed and the disruptions of other activities every
time a group is organized. Therefore, please do not consider that
the descriptions of group methods and techniques which follow
are going to give you everything you need to make productive
use of groups right away. (They may, but it will be pure luck!)
The rules and methods come first; the understanding and skill
will come with experience and analysis of mistakes.
1 • The Creative Team
Strictly speaking, two or three persons probably cannot be
called a "group." The creative team is, however, such a commonly
used working unit today that it deserves some consideration to set
it off from its opposite, the individual.
Teams have probably won their widest acceptance in scientific
and technical fields. They are, however, coming increasingly into
use in management and administration. Where they are used
wisely, they can produce effectively. Where they are used care-
lessly and casually, they can end up as prime villains, breaking
morale and destroying initiative. In far too many cases, unsuccess-
ful team operations have resulted from a lack of understanding of
the objective of a team: to put two complementary minds into
proximity so that each will help and strengthen the thinking of
the other. It was Emerson who said that "Idea and execution are
seldom found in the same head." By a proper combining of the
"heads," therefore, a team can be built that will combine both
ideas and executions. The trouble starts when the selection of
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CREATIVE GROUP TECHNIQUES
teammates becomes a haphazard thing, done on the basis of ex-
pediency and without regard to the compatibility, or lack of it,
of the two or three individuals involved. A good team operation
will utilize strengths to offset weaknesses. If both members are
weak on the same characteristics, or if both are strong in the same
directions, there will undoubtedly be failure or outright conflict
rather than a self-complementing cooperation. At the same time, an
outright conflict of completely opposite personalities will prob-
ably never produce an effective team. The focus of team efforts
must be against a common problem—not against the teammate!
Another reason for giving special consideration to the team
operation is that it is the normal work pattern for almost every
person in business: the executive-subordinate relationship; the
executive-secretary team; department head A and department
head B, who have to coordinate the work of their respective inter-
ests. And even a key administrator, with several secondary man-
agement men reporting to him, will usually find himself dealing
with them one at a time, on a strictly two-man team basis. For
this reason, an understanding of the principles of good team oper-
ation, together with a knowledge of what makes good team tech-
nique, can make almost anyone more creative and productive
when working with another person—even if the other person just
happens to be the man's wife.
To start with principles, there are two that can make a team
collaboration more productive: the separation of creative and
critical (or judicial) thinking; and the alternating of team and
individual effort.
Separating your creative from your critical thinking is, as we
have seen, basic to imaginative thinking under any circumstances.
By alternating the team thinking with individual thinking, you
combine the advantages of introspection and mind-searching,
which can best be done by the individual alone, with the benefits
of cross-fertilization and sparked associations which come from
one mind stimulating another. For purposes of clarity, the various
steps the team goes through to combine these principles will be
162 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
broken down as separate activities. It will readily be recognized
that, in actual practice, many of these individual steps can be, and
are, compressed into single sessions or single phases of processing
the problem:
1. The first step is a creative act done by the individuals alone. This
is to try to define the general problem area. It is better to start with at
least two conceptions of this.
2. Next is an evaluative step taken by the team together. They
compare their initial understandings of the problem, and either reach
a final agreement on what the general problem really is or submit
their disagreements to an arbiter for clarification. At the conclusion
of this phase, both members of the team should have exactly the same
problem in mind, and both should be certain that this is the right
problem.
3. This, again, is an imaginative step to be taken by the individuals
alone. It consists of each of the team members breaking down the
general problem into its component sub problems . It is best done by
the individuals, because no two minds will ever work in exactly the
same way, and you can be sure that, working alone, both members
will come up with at least slightly different lists of minor problems
to be solved in the over-all general problem.
4. The next step is a two -part activity for the team that will call
mostly for evaluative thinking: consolidating the individual lists of
sub problems and searching for the key sub problem. This is the
most
important of the minor factors, the one that seems to offer the great
est danger of holding up solution of other parts of the big over-all
problem. Once this "key" is agreed upon, the team can then go to
work on it as their problem (and for the rest of this outline, the word
"problem" will refer to this key sub problem which has been selected
for the initial creative attack).
5. Next the individuals go back to being individuals in a separate
search for the facts needed to solve the agreed upon key problem.
This again takes advantage of the diverse characteristics of two minds,
since the two minds will each approach the job of collecting infor
mation in a different way. It multiplies effort where effort can stand
multiplication. (This is distinctly different from a duplication of ef-
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CREATIVE GROUP TECHNIQUES
fort. Duplication would result if the team were to search out factual
background as a team.)
6. The team do get together, however, to consolidate their in
formation. In this step, which will be largely evaluative, they com
pare and discuss, combine and discard. For almost any problem,
such a comparing of "facts" will disclose at least some discrepancies
and, possibly, outright conflicts caused by an acceptance of faulty
information by one or the other of the team members. Depending
upon their relative importance, such inconsistencies should be re
solved or the questioned information should be dropped from con
sideration.
7. Once all information has been pooled, the next stage is for the
individuals to go into individual creative sessions to think up ideas as
possible solutions to the problem. It would make sense if, at this
stage, they were working on some agreed upon quota. ("Let's see
if we can each think up at least five different things we could do.")
8. The next step is to pool ideas and try to add more possibilities
as a team. All ideas should be listed for later consideration by both
team members as individuals. During this stage, no evaluation what
ever should be attempted. It is a purely creative step.
9. Now, individually, working from duplicate lists of all the ideas
produced, each spends time evaluating and judging the ideas. As a
refinement of the method of each person selecting one single idea,
it is better if they each try to select what they consider the best two
or three possibilities out of the combined total listing.
10. The next step is, again, an evaluative one, but this time as a
team. Here is where the team finally turn into a "supreme court" on
everything they've been doing so far, and attempt to reach agree
ment on which of their ideas is the best, or seems to offer the best
opportunities for future development. The team should come out of
this with one idea rated "number one"—even if it means that they
rank two or three others as first- and second-choice "alternates."
11. Another "creative" step follows in which the individuals, as
individuals, pit their imaginations against the problem of determining
what the next step should be—some course of action, either investi
gating or activating, which will result in action on the idea or ideas
they have developed. This is followed by—
164 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
12. The team, again evaluating, agreeing on the course of action to be
taken and then initiating the action.
Any "seasoned" business executive reading through such a
detailed breakdown can be excused for scoffing somewhat at the
thought that he has to go through any such rigmarole in order to
get something done with another person. However, we are not, in
this book, concerned with the way people have always done
things. The team method outlined has been tested and refined in
actual use and has been found to increase productivity. And, if
you will find yourself an open-minded teammate and try it a few
times, you will be pleasantly surprised at the increase in quality
of your problem solutions.
As already mentioned, however, you will seldom, in actual
practice, work in such clear-cut steps as these. But again, if you
are deliberately trying to solve an important problem, it could pay
you to deliberately follow these steps. Or, if you find that you
and a co-worker are having trouble resolving a problem, it might
be beneficial to check back through this method to see if you
have missed any steps that might have been vital to the progress
on your problem.
2 • Buzz Sessions
The "Buzz" technique was originally developed as a device,
for large groups, to encourage full-audience participation in dis -
cussions. Its originator was Dr. J. Donald Phillips, of Hillsdale
College in Michigan. His concept of the technique was that
groups of six persons would discuss a problem or assigned topic
for six minutes. Hence it has been tagged with such names as
"Discussion 66" "Phillips 66 Sessions," and "66 Buzzing." But
the most popular term is the simple "Buzz Group."
The basic goal of the technique is to gain democratic participa -
tion in a meeting or conference. Instead of a discussion controlled
by a minority who may simply be more vocal than the other
members, without having more to contribute, the Buzz session is
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CREATIVE GROUP TECHNIQUES
intended to allow everyone to participate. It starts with a discus-
sion target in the form of a carefully prepared question on a spe-
cific point, and has both a stated objective (the answer to the
question; or suggestions for action; or a recommendation) and a
limited time in which to reach that objective. It is an extremely
flexible technique and can be used in many ways. In its original
form, for large audiences, it has been used during the traditional
question-and-answer period following a speech; it has been
used as the basis for an entire meeting; and it has been used in
conjunction with other more standard discussion and
participation devices. Here is the way it can be applied to an
audience of even hundreds of persons:
Start by dividing the audience into groups of six, using any
convenient method of doing so. A very simple method is just to
tell the audience to "Look around you and find five other people."
Another is to have them "count off" by sixes. Ask each group to
appoint a chairman and a secretary. (The chairman's job is to
see that all members of the group have an opportunity to partici-
pate in the discussion and idea production, and that the group
keeps moving toward its objective so that it will reach a definite
conclusion at the end of the given time period. The secretary
records such notes as seem pertinent to the subject at hand, or, if
the purpose is straight idea production, he records the list of ideas
produced.)
The chairman should be instructed to see that every member of
his group is acquainted with every other member. The organized
groups are then given six minutes to discuss a specific problem, or
decide on specific questions, or arrive at specific
recommendations. When the discussion time has elapsed, the
group is then given an additional few minutes, if necessary, to
screen their ideas or synthesize the thinking. Each secretary then
reports the conclusions or ideas of his group to the entire
membership of the audience as the summarized thinking of the
six people.
Although the original purpose of the Buzz technique was for
large-audience use, it has quickly found acceptance, in modified
166 HOWTOBEAMORECREATIVE EXECUTIVE
forms, as a business-conference technique. The two key princi-
ples of a stated objective and a limited time to reach that objective
can give regular business meetings discipline and objectiveness
that most do not ordinarily have. When used this way, the official
leadership of the group generally evolves upon the man who called
for the meeting in the first place. It then becomes his responsibility
to enforce both the principle of democratic participation and the
principle that the group will progress toward a stated goal without
digressions or distraction. In most such adaptations of the Buzz
technique, the six-minute time limit is changed to a longer interval
in order to obtain a full discussion in depth of the problem or
situation.
One of the best methods the chairman of such a group can use
to obtain full participation, without interference, is the so-called
"circular response." The members of the group, seated in a circle
or around a conference table, are asked to comment in strict turn
upon the problem presented. Members are allowed to disagree
with other members' views and to express contrary opinions, but
always in turn. The chairman should encourage all members to
present such divergencies of view as positive counterarguments
rather than the nebulous "Well, I don't agree with that." This
method is based on the simple assumption that persons who share
knowledge and background adequate to discuss a problem or situ-
ation should also be capable of engaging in a cooperative evalua-
tion of that knowledge.
Buzz methods will be found to be most productive on problems
where it is necessary:
To present information about a program, a problem, or an area of
interest, and, through discussion, to make certain the information is
understood.
To pool the knowledge or share the experiences of workers or
executives from different departments or divisions on a problem of
interdepartmental interest.
To inspire people by unifying them around an objective or a pro-
gram. This will work best if the members of the group actually par-
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C R E A T I V E GROUP T E C H N I Q U E S
ticipate in building or outlining the program or stating the
objective.
To gain backing or support for an idea or a policy. Through par-
ticipating in a democratic airing of pros and cons behind a new
proposal, a group will often "sell themselves" on its merits.
To explain a new program or policy, with the circular Buzz being
utilized to give everyone an opportunity to ask questions and
clarify their thinking.
To plan a long-range program. In this case, members are asked to
contribute their forecasts or opinions on any factors that will affect
the success or failure of the long-range forecast. In fact, they
might start by outlining which factors should be considered in
making any forecast.
The executive attempting to use the Buzz discipline for the
first time in an organization can expect to be greeted with a cer-
tain amount of resistance and skepticism. Too many people look
upon a business conference as a "socia l" break in the day's occu-
pation, rather than an instrument for getting things done. They
are, therefore, somewhat inclined to favor long, rambling, and
disorganized meetings in order to prolong the sociability. How-
ever, business-minded participants will quickly take to the Buzz
principles, once they have the opportunity to learn that meetings
can be both productive and efficient.
3 • Brainstorming
Probably no group technique has ever been so widely publi-
cized, acclaimed, used, and, at the same time, so misunderstood,
damned, and abused as Brainstorming. In some fields, it has been
hailed as the first really "great" development in democratic par-
ticipation. In others, it has been looked down on as a product
of commercial hucksterism, fit only for extrovertic advertising
and sales promotional types.
Part of this latter attitude is undoubtedly due to the name
"Brainstorming," which does, in a way, suggest a flash-in-the-pan
approach to problem solving. Part of it is undoubtedly due to the
168 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
origins of the technique. Developed by advertising man, Alex
Osborn, and introduced into his advertising agency, Batten, Bar-
ton, Durstine & Osborn, in 1939, Brainstorming more or less cut
its teeth on promotional problems. And it was the advertising and
promotional departments of BBDO's clients who were the first
"outsiders" to be exposed to the results of the technique, and who
began to spread its use. Therefore, Brain storming history is
replete with new product names, supermarket promotional ideas,
and wing-ding, razzle -dazzle whoop deedo's which, though they
did solve the problems for the people who needed just such ideas,
did not contribute anything to gaining a respect for the technique
among more conservative minds.
It is not really important to a business executive that Brain-
storming is called "Brainstorming," or that it was originated by an
advertising man, or that its chief advocates are still "promotional
types." The only thing that is important is whether or not the
technique has any value in the kinds of problems your company
faces.
Basically, a Brainstorm session is a conference aimed at produc -
ing ideas. It has no other objective. It differs from conventional
conferences in that all criticism is ruled out during the Brain-
storming, and evaluation of ideas is strictly reserved until a later
time. Thus participants are free to express any and all ideas they
can think of, without fear of censure, ridicule, or disagreement.
It works because of the inter-stimulation of the group—each mem-
ber of the group stimulates every other member. The power of
association becomes a two-way stimulus: when a panel member
spouts an idea, he immediately spurs his own mind toward another
idea. At the same time, his ideas stimulate the associative power of
all the other members of the group.
Much of the misunderstanding about Brainstorming stems from
a lack of understanding of both the aims and the use of the tech-
nique. Brainstorming is used as a supplement to individual think-
ing. In fact, in the sense that it is a tool of the individual, it should
not be used if the individual responsible for solving the problem
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CREATIVE G O PTECHNIQUES
RU
feels that he can do it entirely alone. It should never be used until
and unless an individual has had opportunity to attack, orient, and
define the specific problem he wants Brainstorming assistance on.
Brainstorming should always be thought of as a three-step
procedure: the preparation to brainstorm, which includes ori-
enting the problem and careful selection of panel members; the
Brainstorm itself; and the follow-up to the session wherein the
ideas are screened and evaluated and the best possibilities selected
for further development or action.
One of the chief causes of failure to obtain usable ideas from
Brainstorming is undoubtedly failure to select the "right" kind of
problem. The basic aim of Brainstorming is to pile up a quantity
of alternative ideas. Therefore, the problem must be one that
lends itself to many "possible" answers. As an example of a wrong
and a right type of problem, an experienced Brainstorm leader
was once called in by a metal-working firm and asked to conduct
a session to help them find distribution outlets for a new line of
metal office furniture they had developed. On a hunch, he re-
quested a copy of the telephone book and, flipping to the yellow
pages, found "Office Furniture." He showed the manufacturer the
fifteen firms in town who handled such furniture, and showed,
further, how these were actually grouped in only three basic
types of retail outlets. To have attempted to brainstorm the prob-
lem as presented would have ended in failure. But, at the expert's
suggestion, the problem was changed to "Ways to gain distri-
bution for a new line of office furniture against existing com-
petition." This turned out to be highly Brain stormable, and the
company was able to plan a successful and profitable marketing
program utilizing the ideas produced during the session.
You should not try to brainstorm problems that require value
judgments—or judgments of any kind. This includes questions
like "What's the best time to start our new campaign?" Brain-
storming, being a non-evaluating technique, cannot make a decision
for you.
Your problem should be specific, rather than general. Do not
170 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
try to brainstorm something as broad as "How can we improve
our packages?" Instead, point it more specifically toward "How
can we improve this particular package?"
If a problem is large and complex, break it down. Instead of
"How can we promote our new flashlight?" brainstorm three sepa -
rate problems: "How can we promote our new flashlight to (1)
drivers of automobiles? (2) homeowners? (3) law-enforcement
agencies?"
Once you have suitably defined your problem and stated it in
a way that will invite group participation, the next step is to
select your panel and brief them, by means of a letter or memo,
on the problem they will be brainstorming. This is to allow a
period of individual thinking on the problem before the time of
the Brainstorm. Generally, the memo should be sent about forty-
eight hours before the time of the session.
In selecting your panel members, remember to balance them
out on the basis of their expected specific contributions. Don't
limit your panel to "experts." Occasionally the best ideas come
from people who "don't know any better"! The panel should
have between eight and fifteen members—eight being the mini-
mum that experience indicates can get a session self-generating;
fifteen being the maximum that even an experienced moderator
can control with ease.
It is a good idea to include a few "self-starters" on your panel—
the kind of people who can produce ideas on anything and every-
thing at the drop of a question. Such persons can help you get
your session off and rolling. (But be sure you don't let them domi-
nate once it gets under way—one of the prime purposes of Brain-
storming is to get the benefits of full participation in the idea
production.) And keep top brass away from the session. No mat-
ter how democratic and impartial they try to be, the mere fact
that they are in the room will tend to put a damper on the
panel. This goes for "visitors" also. If there is some reason why
you can't avoid a visitor, make him a participant.
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The actual session itself should be conducted according to
the four basic "ground rules" of Brainstorming:
1. Criticism Is Ruled Out. Adverse judgment of ideas must be with
held until later. (To first-time Brainstormers, you can explain that
allowing yourself to be critical at the same time you are being cre
ative is like trying to get hot and cold water from one faucet at the
same time. Ideas aren't hot enough; judgment isn't cold enough—
all you get is lukewarm thinking. Criticism, therefore, will be re
served for a later screening session.)
2. "Free Wheeling" Is Welcomed. The wilder the ideas the better;
it is easier to "tame down" than to think up. (Explain that off-beat
"blue-sky" suggestions may trigger practical ideas from other panel
members which they might not think of otherwise.)
3. Quantity Is Wanted. The greater the number of ideas, the more
the likelihood of good ones. (This, after all, is the basic aim and prime
legitimate use of Brainstorming: to generate such a quantity of ideas
on a problem that you have almost a mathematical certainty of find
ing one or more usable ideas.)
4. Combination and Improvement Are Sought. Suggestions by
others on an idea give better ideas. Combinations of ideas lead to more
and better alternatives. (This is basic to any creative activity. Syn
thesis, combinations, mutations, and other idea -mixing forms are
the basic methods for producing any "new" ideas.)
The chairman of the Brainstorm session is the key person
at the conference table. It is his responsibility to get ideas
from the panel members and to see that each person has an
opportunity to take part. A good chairman will carefully "pre-
Brainstorm" any problem he is asked to moderate. He will
look for categories of possible ideas and develop ideas of his
own as well as leading questions which he can use to
stimulate the panel to think "around" the problem in the
course of the session. Usually, the chairman of the session
will do a better job if he is not the man with the problem.
In running the Brainstorm itself, the chairman should have
some kind of signal, usually a small bell, which he can use to warn
172 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
anyone who forgets himself and criticizes an idea. The bell is
also handy for enforcing orderly conduct of the session. Although
some Brainstorm advocates feel that the conduct of sessions should
be informal, others are inclined to "ring the bell" also on come-
dians, "wise guys," and those who try persistently to "sell" their
ideas. These leaders feel that since the purpose of a Brainstorming
group is to solve a business problem, and since there is apt to be a
sizable amount of company time and talent tied up in the session,
the Brainstorm itself should be run as a business meeting.
The leader also has the job of keeping all the minds working
together—he has to be alert to any tendency of his panel members
to break up into smaller groups. And, although the four rules and
the activities of the moderator should serve to keep the session
disciplined, the chairman should also strive to keep the mood as
relaxed as possible. He may do this with some preplanned, com-
pletely "wild" ideas himself; he may accomplish it with his own
relaxed method of conducting the session. And, by all means, the
chairman should keep shooting for quantity of ideas.
All ideas produced during a session—mild, wild, mediocre, or
magnificent—should be recorded by a secretary. She can take the
ideas down reportorially , rather than verbatim, because when she
later types up her list, she will have the opportunity to put back
missing words and make complete sentences out of her key
phrases. If you expect your session to be a fast-moving one, you
can use two secretaries, having them alternate the ideas recorded.
Although there is no hard and fast rule on how long a Brain-
storm session should run, it is recommended that you set your
"extremes" at forty-five minutes and an hour and a half. The mini-
mum of forty-five minutes (which should be announced to the
panel right at the start) will ensure that after "surface," "tried and
true," and "what someone else tried" ideas are out of the way,
the individual panel members will not sit back and feel they are
finished. It is frequently noticeable in a session that about ten to
twenty minutes after it has started, there is a definite lull in the
idea production. This is when the "easy" suggestions stop coming,
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CREATIVE GROUP TECHNIQUES
and the panel members have to "dig in" and really start thinking.
This is also a critical point for the moderator to watch for, because
he will have to "move in" fast to get the session going again, or
risk having it die out completely on him. The hour-and-a-half
maximum time represents what is generally a "fatigue point,"
beyond which panelists will decrease in productivity.
Brainstorming is a relatively simple procedure. In reality, all it
amounts to is a group of people tossing out ideas, without self- or
outside evaluation, as fast as they can be thought up and recorded.
There is no "discussion," "elaboration," or "selling" of any par-
ticular ideas. And when the flow of spontaneous ideas begins to
slow, the moderator or chairman moves in to get the flow going
again. Members of the panel listen to each other and try to im-
prove, modify, or combine their ideas to increase the number of
alternatives. When the time limit is up, or some arbitrary quota
of ideas has been reached, the chairman closes the session by
thanking the panelists for their efforts, and requests that any
"after-session" ideas be written down and sent immediately to
the secretary for inclusion in the typed list. And the whole ses-
sion is kept relaxed, informal, and friendly.
That is all there really is to Brainstorming, but simple as it is,
there are some real pitfalls to be avoided in introducing the tech-
nique into a company.
One of the first is to avoid overselling the technique before it
has produced anything worthwhile. It takes time and experience
to learn to lead a Brainstorm session effectively. It takes a certain
amount of indoctrination and practice before people can partici-
pate to the full extent of their capabilities as members of a panel.
Therefore, a good way to initiate it, or any group method, in a
company is to suggest trying it as an "experiment" to explore the
possibilities. As long as you keep your Brainstorming on an experi-
mental basis, and everybody understands and is sympathetic with
this objective, you have both time and freedom to make mistakes,
analyze them, correct them, and gain the experience you and your
Brain stormers will need.
174 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE E X E C U T I V E
Another major difficulty of Brainstorming is attempting to use
it as a substitute for individual thinking. This can quickly earn
you hostility from your panelists. Brainstorming should not be
used on a problem simply because an individual is too lazy to work
out solutions himself. It may be used to supplement the work of
the individual by adding to what he has already produced. But
it is not a substitute for individual thinking.
A prime pitfall is failing to orient your problem correctly. A
problem that is too broad will cause the panel to flounder and go
off in far too many directions for them to really explore or exhaust
the possibilities in any one approach. On the other hand, a prob-
lem that is too narrowly confined does not take advantage of
Brain storming's ability to uncover many different approaches.
And in between is the problem that is just plain misdirected:
trying to design a better mouse trap when what you really want
is a new way to get rid of mice.
As mentioned before, it takes a certain amount of indoctrina-
tion before panelists are ready to brainstorm. So another major
pitfall is to fail to give this indoctrination. Brainstorming, for all
its simplicity, is different from any other kind of meeting, con-
ference, or group activity. This means that, initially, the average
person will lack an understanding of just what he is expected to
do, and how he is supposed to do it, and, most importantly, ivhy
he is doing it. All these questions should be covered in an indoctri-
nation meeting with panelists before they are expected to partici-
pate in a Brainstorm session. It is also a good idea to put new
Brainstormers through a simple practice session at the time of this
indoctrination so they can get the "feel" of participation without,
at the same time, feeling that they are on the spot to produce. A
simple, nonobjective problem like "How many uses, other than
writing, can you think of for a common pencil" makes a good
practice problem.
Two major pitfalls of Brainstorming lie in the area of follow-
up: failure to take action on ideas produced; and failure to report
back to the panel members with any "successes." Either of these
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C R E A T I V E GROUP T E C H N I Q U E S
failures can result in discouragement and apathy toward the
Brainstorming process and make future participation and coopera-
tion difficult to obtain.
Here are general types of situations where you might consider
the use of Brainstorming, with some observations on the results
you could reasonably expect:
Exploring the Possibilities in a Product or Situation. Example:
"What changes could we consider to make this product more
salable?" (or to increase the performance or the function or to cut
the costs). In this type of problem, you can expect that your ideas
will be largely broad, general leads—but only leads or approaches
—-which will have to be developed. In this case, you should know
in advance that the next step will be for an individual (or, per-
haps, a team) to evaluate those leads for possibilities. Chances are
you will also know who that man is, because he should be the one
who requested the Brainstorm in the first place.
Creating a List of New Needs. Example: "What new food
products, not now on the market, would you like to be able to
buy?" This was actually brainstormed for a food-products manu-
facturer who wanted to diversify his line. There was no question
about how he was going to screen and evaluate his ideas—he
knew in advance what he wanted them for and had set up criteria
covering his production abilities, research budget, and general
plant and financial considerations. These effectively limited how
far a field from his present lines he was willing to go. (These
criteria were not, however, given to the panel members for fear
of restricting their thinking.) And this manufacturer got what he
was looking for: a few ideas for promising products that merited
further attention and development.
Uncovering Potential Uses for New Products or Raw Materials.
A chemical company use Brainstorming in this way. When a
new chemical or seemingly promising material comes out, they
brainstorm for possible new products they could make with it or
possible replacement uses in their present products. These ideas
are considered only as starters—the list is then turned over to a
176 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
development group to evaluate and research. Sometimes this
group reports complete blanks. But this is not considered a fail-
ure. It simply means "no potential for this material at this time."
This is what the company wanted to know in the first place.
As a "Crash Program" Knowledge-pooling Device. Brainstorm-
ing is primarily an orderly method for concentrating the knowl-
edge, experience, and education of a group of people on a prob-
lem. By mixing a variety of specialists, who, as individuals, know
something about the problem, you may be able to save time in
gathering information. Notice, the word was "information" not
ideas. This use of Brainstorming utilizes the rules and framework
of the tool for the sake of discipline and expediency, but the
objective is different. If you do happen to get a few promising
ideas, they are side benefits.
As a Group Test. This can be an effective and productive use
of Brainstorming, particularly on technical problems. When an
individual, or a team, has what looks like a feasible solution to
a problem, the problem and the solution are given to the Brain-
storm panel with the challenge: "What improvements can we
suggest on this solution?" To evaluate the resulting ideas, you
simply measure them against the test idea on standard criteria of
cost, function, dependability, efficiency, etc. Again, you may
not get anything worthwhile. On the other hand, you may get
some new approaches or good modifications or simplifications.
Either way, you know your final solution is probably the best
you can come up with at the moment—even if it is not completely
satisfactory.
4 • The Operational Creativity Technique
The "Operational Creativity" technique is sometimes called
the "Gordon Technique" after its inventor, William J. J. Gordon,
of the Arthur D. Little Company, a research and consulting firm
in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This technique is the basic group
method used by that company's Design Synthesis Group. It is the
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CREATIVE GROUP T E C H N I Q U E S
job of this group to invent products to order for their clients.
They claim that, so far, they have never failed to produce a re-
quested invention, using the Operational technique as a basic crea-
tive step. Among the products they claim for this technique are
a revolutionary new kind of gasoline pump; a new type of can
opener; and a new method of building construction.
The basic objective of Mr. Gordon's technique differs from
that of a Brainstorming session in that, with this method, only one
radically new idea is wanted.
The principal characteristic of the Gordon session is that only
one man—the group leader—knows the exact nature of the prob-
lem to be solved. There are two main reasons why Gordon feels
that the other panel members should not know what the problem
is:
First, he feels that Brainstorming produces superficial ideas
because solutions are arrived at too soon. He avoids this by not
revealing the problem initially.
Secondly, he seeks to avoid "egocentric involvement." He feels
that a participant in a Brainstorming session, or in some of the
other group techniques, can become infatuated with one of his
own ideas—perhaps, he will even go so far as to consider it the
only logical solution to the problem ("the all-wise"). Such in-
volvement or infatuation does, of course, seriously hamper the
participant's effectiveness in the group search for solutions.
Because group members involved in the Gordon session do not
know the exact problem being considered, it is extremely impor-
tant in choosing the subject for discussion to choose one that is
suitable—one that is actually related to the real problem, but does
not reveal its specific nature. Here are a few examples of the
subjects Mr. Gordon has used: for a new toy, play or enjoyment;
for a fishing lure, persuasion; for a new can opener, opening.
Utilizing some such subject, the group begins to discuss it
with only enough guidance from the leader (who does know the
final objective problem) to keep them from going completely
astray. When the leader feels that the group has either exhausted
178 HOW TO BE A MORE C R E A T I V E EXECUTIVE
all the possible aspects of thought surrounding his problem area,
or when he feels that the group has uncovered a particularly good
idea worth following up, he then reveals the exact nature of the
problem. At this time, the group begin to channel all their efforts
into synthesizing all the previous exploratory and speculative
thinking toward solving the real problem. After a promising
initial idea is obtained, and as much spontaneous development
of it as is possible has taken place, the project is then turned over
to a development group and the finished product is worked out
by more conventional engineering means.
In attempting to apply this Operational Creativity technique,
Mr. Gordon makes several suggestions:
He feels that the session length must run a minimum of two
to three hours. In practice, this usually results in about 75 per cent
of the time being devoted to "de-conditioning" the group through
the broad, general field discussion, and in the remaining 25 per
cent of the time being given over to spontaneous development
of ideas. These figures should not be taken literally, however:
the exact moment of revelation of the problem is entirely up
to the discretion of the panel leader.
The group leader should be exceptionally gifted in group
dynamics and thoroughly trained in the use of the Gordon
technique. The leader is unquestionably the key man in the
group, and his judgment and running analysis of the group
progress is vital to the success or failure of the effort.
In selecting personnel, try to obtain a group with diverse
backgrounds. Try to get a balance of highly active and quiet
members. You may want to mix groups of men and women,
especially on consumer problems. Mr. Gordon feels that his
groups are most effective in sizes of from four to nine members.
For this type of group, a secretary and a tape-recording ma-
chine are almost musts. Ideas and thoughts are produced in
rapid-fire cross-discussion, and must all be recorded. Frequently,
once the problem has been revealed, the group will want to re-
fer back to a previous theoretical discussion. This can be done
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CREATIVE GROUP TECHNIQUES
easily with the tape. It is a good idea to have blackboards avail-
able for members to sketch out or visualize any ideas they
may have.
There are some obvious drawbacks to the Gordon system,
but also some obvious advantages. Mr. Gordon himself feels,
and probably rightly, that the only way any company can deter-
mine the value of the system to their particular problems is to
"plunge in" and experience and experiment with the technique.
For this reason, he is somewhat loath to give too many sug-
gestions or to reveal his own specific experiences.
One of the prime drawbacks, obviously, is the requirement
for a skilled and gifted leader. Any personnel man who has
attempted to find or develop a good leader for even ordinary
business conferences will immediately recognize that "skilled
and gifted" leaders are hard to come by. Furthermore, there are
certain other difficultie s to be overcome for a good Operational
session:
Group members will frequently try to "guess" the real problem
in their attempts to get down to more concrete thinking or in
their attempts to take over leadership from a leader who must
necessarily remain "withdrawn" to a certain extent.
Some group members suffer major inhibitions in this type of
meeting, because they feel that purely theoretical discussions
are too impractical. This will limit the types of thinking they
contribute.
Operational sessions can be extremely fatiguing. The two or
three hours mentioned was a minimum—some sessions actually
go on for days before the group begins to come near to a
solution. This also interjects the question of the time investment
—will the group really produce an idea good enough to merit
the cost of the continuing session?
And, of course, the statement of the problem, in the form
of a key word or phrase is vitally important. It is possible to
mislead a panel through selection of the wrong word or key,
and thus to completely waste the entire effort.
180 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
At the same time, Operational Creativity does offer some
highly interesting possibilities for group-technique development:
The avoidance of preconceived ideas and ego involvement holds
distinct possibilities for improving creative exploration of a
problem area. The very broadness of the initial problem state-
ment is a spur to complete flexibility in searching out approaches.
For a company willing to invest the time and cost of ex-
perimenting with this technique, it would probably be a good
one to have "on tap." So far, it has been limited largely to problems
of design and of a technical nature. But it would also seem to
offer distinct possibilities in many other fields, including
management (to develop a new form of organization structure
based on fundamental organizational principles, rather than
tradition); sales management (to develop a marketing concept
completely free of such inhibiting factors as past experience and
competitive threats which are often imaginary); and even in the
field somewhat preempted by Brainstorming, advertising (for the
development of new campaigns to appeal to specific segments of
the market). Probably the greatest contribution of the Operational
technique is its possibility for synthesis with other group tech-
niques to help them overcome some of their major drawbacks.
Just as one example, if it is true that Brainstorming tends to
produce superficial results by revealing the problem too soon,
it might be possible to strengthen this technique by borrowing
from Mr. Gordon and starting out the Brainstorm on a more
general subject. Let's take the problem of improving a specific
package:
The first problem given to the panel, in the form of their
regular briefing memo, might simply be to think about packaging
anything. The Brainstorm could then start off by developing a
list of "Positive characteristics of good packages." These would
be listed on a blackboard. After a few minutes—say ten or
fifteen—of this, the actual package under consideration could
be revealed, and the problem would become "Specific improve-
ments we could make on this package."
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CREATIVE GROUP TECHNIQUES
5. • Practical Combinations
Probably the greatest potential for the various group techniques
lies in making intelligent adaptations and combinations of the
different methods. It is important that the group participants be
indoctrinated into the "formal" methods first; but once they know
and understand what is expected in each type of group, they
can then utilize various principles and operating techniques "on
the spot" at the discretion of the meeting or conference leader.
As examples:
In opening a standard conference on a production problem, the
person running the meeting might want to call for a ten-minute
"Buzz" on the present state and condition of the production line,
or on special equipment or workers on the line, without making
any particular attempt to relate this to the basic problem that
is to be discussed. This would serve the purpose of encouraging
broader thinking on the problem and put the entire problem, when
it is finally presented, into a relationship with the over-all line. In
other words, it would be a "deconditioning" process to open
minds up to new possibilities.
Later, in the same meeting, and when the specific problem
was beginning to be more defined, the meeting leader might
call for ten minutes of Brainstorming, with the ideas being
recorded on a blackboard or large pad, so that everyone could
see them later. This would give the group an immediate "stock"
of possibilities which they could then evaluate and discuss. And
the Buzz rule of an over-all time limit is a valuable one for even
a conventional conference.
The Hotpoint Company has developed a modification of
Brainstorming which they call "Reverse Brainstorming." This
has as its objective "creative destruction." In operation, a specific
product or problem or system is put before a group. One person
has pre-Brainstormed an accepted or proposed method to find
everything he can that is wrong with it. In the group meeting,
182 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
he then takes each of the flaws he has uncovered and presents
at least one suggestion for improving it. The rest of the group
brainstorms improvements on his and all other suggestions on an
exhaustive basis. This is a form of group test. The final result
is usually a list of highly refined ideas. In one instance, such a
group was able to take a planned $200,000 conveyor system, cut
the proposal to pieces, suggest improvements and consolidate
them, and come up with a new design that was installed and
worked successfully for a cost of $4,000.
Another modification of basic Brainstorming that is meeting
with some success, particularly in technical fields where it was
originally developed, is one which, for lack of any better name,
is called "Stop-and-Go Brainstorming." It was devised in an
attempt to overcome one of the major deficiencies of regular
Brainstorming: the difficulties in quickly brainstorming a com-
plex technical problem from an original broad problem state-
ment through to a usable idea, approach, or lead. It also over-
comes one of the major weaknesses of the Operational Creativity
technique: the absolute dependence upon a strong leader to
direct the group. This is accomplished through having a more or
less "set" procedure, comparable to the agenda of a conventional
meeting. It does require a leader with the ability to maintain
an orderly discussion at times, however.
In practice, the Stop-and-Go method utilizes both Buzzing
and Brainstorming alternately. The sequence is usually some
adaptation of this plan:
1. The broad general problem, without definition or other limiting
restriction, is presented to the group of ten to twelve members.
2. Two Buzz groups or teams are formed. Each group then buzzes
to break out all specific sub problems important to the solution of the
general problem.
3. The chairman of each group then reports on the sub problem his
group considers most important and why. Through conventionalgive-
and-take discussion, under the strict control of the over-all
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CREATIVE GROUP T E C H N I Q U E S
group leader, agreement is reached on which sub problem the group
will take as their initial target.
4. In a full-group Brainstorm, ideas are then developed as possi
bilities for solving this particular problem. The ideas should be re
corded on a blackboard or large pad so all members will be able to
see and refer to them at later stages of the processing.
5. In two Buzz groups, members then evaluate the ideas to judge
which seem to come close to meeting the requirements of the original
problem.
6. Following the Buzz group reports, the whole work group should
seek agreement on two or three of the best possibilities and then
brainstorm each of these, one at a time, for any needed refinements
or changes that seem required to put it really "on target" as a solution
to the particular subproblem being worked on. Again, the ideas
should be recorded on a board or pad for full-group visibility.
7. At this time, the two Buzz groups run in dependent over-all
evaluations aimed at answering such questions as these: Are we
making any progress? Can we now zero in on some specific direction?
If not, where are we weak? These evaluations are then pooled, com
pared, and synthesized to indicate th e next step the group should
take. This may be to begin the Stop -and-Go process all over again
with another subproblem or specific phase, or it may be to continue
with further refinement of the progress that has been made.
8. Subsequent questions that the leader may want to inject for
either Buzz or Brainstorming, whichever seems most appropriate at
the time, include these: Do we have any specific real possibilities
now? If none, what have we overlooked? Which direction seems to
offer the best possibility for further exploration at this time? And,
when a good possibility has been uncovered, In what ways can we
economically test this possibility?
It will be apparent from studying just the few examples of
combinations and variations given that Brainstorming is one
of the basic creative group tools. And this has been proved in
all other attempts to develop similar combinations. The basic
separation of creative and critical thinking in the Brainstorming
process seems to be one of the most efficient group operational
184 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
techniques that can be used. As a matter of fact, instructors who
have taught creative-thinking courses, including uses of all the
various types of creative groups, generally agree that Brainstorm-
ing is so basic, and the principles so valuable, that they get their
best results if they make Brainstorming the first introduction to
group methods. Persons who have been indoctrinated into Brain-
storming first—which is an easy method to teach—take much
more readily even to Buzz groups and team operations. There-
fore, it is suggested that any attempt by an executive to introduce
group creative methods in his company start with at least enough
Brainstorming to give members practice and skill in the technique.
It will readily be seen that the group leader is the key to any
creative group's success. This, in a way, is further reinforce-
ment of the theory that the group, at best, is a tool of the in-
dividual. This, in turn, puts a tremendous responsibility upon
the leader to know and understand not only the basics of group
dynamics, but also the various methods that make up the specific
tools he is calling upon. And, throughout any creative group
effort, from the time the leader first begins to plan and organize
for it until he has submitted his final report, he must constantly
keep in mind that a creative group is largely a medium of com-
munication—it is a means to an end and not the end itself.
Too many people who meet up with the techniques and
methods of creative groups become so intrigued with the things
which can be done that the opportunity to "be different" becomes
their goal for every conference or meeting. They play with the
formats and formulas to the point where they completely forget
that the aim of these devices is to produce some kind of result:
a change of attitude, a supply of ideas, a redefinition of a problem,
a broadening of possibilities, etc. They, in short, get "gimmick
happy."
In practical business reality, overuse of methods may cause just
the opposite reaction to what is desired. No meeting should ever
be planned to be so out-of-this-world as to be unrealistic in terms
185
CREATIVE G O PTECHNIQUES
RU
of the participants' normal thinking, actions, and reactions. To
go contrary to human nature will throw all members of your
group into a role -playing situation where they will simply be
acting out their parts, rather than giving you honest effort and
true "thinking" based on their normal, previous experience and
knowledge.
11
How to Lead Creative Groups
When the American Management Association surveyed top ex-
ecutives on reasons for inefficient meetings, it found the largest
share of the blame laid to poor leadership. This included such
factors as lack of a clear-cut objective; meeting called at the
wrong time; wrong person or persons included; failure to prepare
necessary information in advance; digressions; failure to sum-
marize; unchecked repetitious argument; toleration of interrup-
tions.
If these are faults in conventional business meetings and
conferences, they could easily be fatal to the success of a creative
group, wherein the full resources of the group are being called
upon for active and imaginative response. In a creative group,
the leader must remain in complete control of the group's
activities, and he must do this without in any way inhibiting the
group or restricting individuals from participating in a positive
manner. And this is where so many creative group meetings fail:
the leader has not sufficiently planned his own participation.
It is the leader's responsibility to think through such basic
questions as these: What are we trying to accomplish anyway?
186
187
HOW TO LEAD CREATIVE GROUPS
Are we in line with the company policy on this project? How
are we tying in with the long-range plan? What objective will
be reasonable and relevant to the problem for this group? What
resources will we need in the group to help us accomplish the
objective? This planning may take two minutes or two hours or
two weeks, but until you have the needed answers, you are not
ready to call a creative group meeting!
Furthermore, a basic planning step is to orient your problem
thoroughly. This is important for individual creative work, and
doubly so for group work. Frequently, a person thinking through
a problem for presentation to a group will, in the course of his
own orientation, hit upon a satisfactory solution. Or he may even
find, after defining a problem, that no problem exists. In either
case, of course, there is no reason to go on with the group meeting.
Once the leader has thought through the answers to the basic
questions about the problem, he is then ready to plan his own
part in the meeting.
He should keep in mind that the secret of success in leading
a creative group is to manage the actions of the group and to
manage to do it unobtrusively. A good leader accomplishes this
by thinking through the problem in advance, and then matching
up various work methods and continuity devices to the thinking
steps he believes will be required. Then, in action, he suggests,
rather than forces, the use of the procedures and techniques
which might be of help.
The leader will try to guide the group in such a way that they
will balance the narrow line between strict rigidity of methods
and disorganized confusion. He will resist any inclination on his
own part to "mastermind" the problem, knowing that this can
backfire in the form of group reaction. (In fact, if the leader
is in any position to "mastermind" a problem, he should probably
go ahead and do so on his own, without tying up the expensive
investment in time and disrupted work schedules that use of
any group involves!)
And the leader must somehow manage to stimulate, encourage,
188 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
assist, and recognize group contributions on the problem, all
the while keeping them on the track and moving toward a goal.
In a truly creative group, calling upon the full resources of its
members, it may be that the leader will make his greatest
contribution by creating an atmosphere that permits free ex-
pression of opinion, along with giving directional guidance.
Finally, the group leader must maintain complete objectivity.
He must learn to work, at least during the time that he is in
a leadership position, impersonally. He must himself learn, and
enforce on the group, if necessary, the art of give and take. He
must realize that a group member who expresses intense dislike
for a plan or an idea isn't necessarily disliking either the person
who proposed it or the fact that it was proposed.
So far as the leader's own ideas or proposals are concerned,
in a productive group the leader's own ideas are bound to be
challenged. Moreover, his plans for the group and his own ideas
of the way the group should go are apt to receive some jolts
and may even be disrupted completely once the group begins
to function as a group. Therefore, the leader will try to keep
his eye on the basic objectives, rather than on any individual and
isolated expressions of thought or opinion.
The leader's attitude is usually the determining factor in
whether or not a creative group will succeed in reaching its
objective. Skill in techniques he needs—but unobtrusive skill.
Group members will usually respond to the leader who does not
try to change their natures or force their thinking, but who uses
both to the fullest extent.
The leader who seems to understand his members instinctively
and to respect them sincerely will quickly command their
respect in turn. But if the leader does not have a genuine regard
for the people with whom he is working, he will never "get
through" to them. There are no tricks, techniques, methods, or
gimmicks to replace genuine understanding and respect in the
communication and leadership process.
Much of the leadership of any creative group consists in
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HOW TO LEAD CREATIVE GROUPS
applying techniques and methods which are known as "group
dynamics." Briefly defined, "group dynamics" is the art of giving
an active "life" to a group. And because leadership is so largely
a matter of communication, much of the art of group dynamics
is based on ways to break down any social, organizational, or
other inhibiting barriers to communication that may exist within
a group.
Nearly everyone has seen or participated in a meeting or
conference that was handicapped and inhibited by the carrying
over of some "big shot-little shot" (such as boss and subordinate)
relationship from the world outside the conference. What happens
is that the big shots tend to monopolize the time of the group
whether their ideas merit the time or not. The little shots always
hesitate to challenge the big ones, even though they, the little
shots, may actually have insights, ideas, and experience more
relevant to the problem. As a further example, in many businesses,
the same types of relationships exist in mixed groups of men and
women: although the company, and any individual men in it,
may profess to consider their co-working women as "equals," in
reality such is not the case. Any female member of a conference
or meeting can go only so far in challenging a male opinion or
thought before she is in danger.
Nevertheless, in business it is frequently necessary to use
different combinations of people and temperaments in seeking
solutions to problems. The hidden or unmentioned conflicts do
exist and will not disappear merely because you'd like them to.
Therefore it is up to a meeting leader to see that these do not
interfere with reaching the objectives of the group. It is the
leader's job to create a climate of safety, so that group members
know that they are free to express themselves and that their
expressions will receive consideration. (Even in the Brainstorm
process, for example, where head-on criticism of another's ideas
is ruled out, a member can always interject a positive objection
simply by proposing an alternative way something might be done.
This alternative may be the exact opposite of a suggestion already
190 HOW TO BE A MORE C R E A T I V E EXECUTIVE
given—but he knows it will be recorded and evaluated on the
same basis as the idea he took issue with.)
In its bare essentials, a creative group is a group of people
interacting to seek the solution to a problem. Good leadership of
such a group calls first for the ability to plan such an opportunity
to interact. Just as a wife will plan a party, so a business executive
should try, where possible, to put together a creative group that
will wear well and get things done with a minimum amount of
friction when it comes to solving a problem or contributing to
the solution of a problem. And just as a party-planner will try
initially to "break the ice" and make guests feel "at home," so
the meeting leader will plan his program to make his group
members feel "involved" in finding a problem solution.
Some of the qualities desirable in a good group leader are
these: a sense of humor (and the sense of "timing" that tells him
when to be humorous); the ability to listen to people and to
make them feel he wants to listen; a genuine liking for people;
and the ability to accept the other person's point of view, even
though he may not totally agree with it. In addition, it is
desirable if the leader can remain calm and poised in the midst
of a fast-moving group situation; if he can generate an aura of
security when conflicts arise; and if, whatever happens, he can
remain and act both optimistic and positive in his approach to
the problem. He will use all these characteristics, or as many as
he has, in setting the tone and atmosphere of the meeting in the
hope that his own attitudes and attributes will prove contagious
and spread to the other members. His chief aim throughout the
group session will be to keep the channels of communication very
wide, and very open, and make it very clear that they are that
way.
There are certain physical helps that you can employ both
for "breaking the ice" and for suitably communicating your
problem to the group members. These are demonstration devices
such as charts, slide presentations, movies, blackboard demonstra-
tions, props, models, and even magic tricks. It is helpful to a
191
HOW TO LEAD CREATIVE GROUPS
group that is working on the improvement of some actual object,
such as a product, package, or material, to have a sample or
samples of that object to look at, poke at, examine, feel, or in
other ways make themselves familiar with. The purpose of using
any such physical or visual aids is largely educational: to help
members of the group understand the problem or some obscure
phase of the problem; or simply to broaden their backgrounds to
make sure they have enough information to cope adequately
with the problem being presented to them. Well-planned, such
devices can stimulate early participation by getting the individual
members' thinking "warmed up" ahead of time. In any case, the
use of such informative or educational aids will contribute to the
self-confidence the members have in their ability to make sug-
gestions on a problem.
Once a creative group is under way, the actual things the
leader does will generally reflect the kind of things that are done
in any other type of dynamic group: the occasional summary;
the probing question with a purpose; the trick of making a
statement every member of the group can agree with to gain
their support and friendship; or the reverse, to make a contro-
versial or antagonistic statement to excite interest. The leader
who is aiming for total group participation, however, will keep
in mind that he is trying to motivate people to work with him,
and not against him. He must also be extremely careful to impress
upon his group that he really wants their contributions.
Any group will need a summary of where they stand from
time to time: what they have accomplished; how far they have
to go; exactly what route they are expected to take in arriving
there. You may give them this yourself, or you may ask your
secretary or recorder to summarize briefly, and ask the members
to correct or supplement that summary.
It is also up to the leader to remind the group at intervals
that they are working within a time limit. This should be done
in such a way as to encourage them to stay on the track, but
not to get anxious or feel pressure.
192 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
Probably the most flexible and all-round useful tool to keep
a group moving is the probing question. It is, of course, necessary
that the leader's questions should be asked in such a way as to
place a maximum responsibility on the group to reply. If
possible, they should be phrased to show that the leader is not
only accepting members of the group as individuals but is also
confident of their ability to come up with good answers. Some
examples of good questions are these:
To Get Discussion Started:
What do you think about this problem as stated? What has your
experience been on this type of problem? Can anyone suggest the
kind of facts we ought to have or know at this stage?
To Get More Participation:
How does what we have been saying so far sound to those of you who
have been thinking about it? We've heard from a number of our
members now; does anyone who hasn't spoken want to give us his
thinking? What other phases of the problem have we missed cov-
ering?
To Limit the Overactive Participant:
We appreciate the help you are giving us. However, it might be well
to get some other thinking. Would some of you who have not spoken
care to add your ideas? Or: You have made several interesting state-
ments, and I wonder if someone else wants to add to them or modify
them? Or, as a last resort: Since all our members haven't yet had an
opportunity to speak, I wonder if you will hold off for a while?
To Orient the Discussion:
Where do we stand now in relation to our goal? For comparisons
and a check, why don't I review my understanding of what we have
said and the progress we've made so far? Your comment is interesting.
But I wonder if it contributes to the chief problem?
To Keep Discussion Moving:
Do you think we have spent enough time on this phase of the prob-
lem? Can we move on to another part of it? Have we covered this
section of the problem enough that we can shift our attention to
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HOW TO LEAD C R E A T I V E GROUP S
another area? We do have a time limit to meet; should we perhaps
look at the next question we have to face?
To Press for a Decision:
Am I right in thinking that we agree on these points? (Follow with a
brief summary.) What have we accomplished up to this point? We
seem to be zeroing in toward a decision now, so should we consider
what it will mean if we decide this way?
The questions the leader must avoid at all costs are those
which will complicate an issue or mislead the group
members, or which will limit the group's thinking by
taking away some of their latitude on the problem. This
latter is a consideration that the leader must be especially
conscious of throughout any creative effort. The leader, if
he is really searching for new ideas, cannot, in any way,
restrict the group effort to go off in new and different
directions. This is what the group is there for. But, at the
same time, the leader must be ready to bring the group
back in case they wander too far. This can be done with a
leading question or a contribution of an idea by the
leader which is more "on target" so far as the basic
problem is concerned.
On the other hand, if a group member should
unconsciously launch into a brief speech or grow slightly
fuzzy in expressing an idea, the leader should exercise
restraint, overlook it, and carry on. Don't try to short-
circuit or clarify someone's thinking by interrupting him—
that is a dampener. Everything about a creative meeting
should be aimed at developing free and easy thinking.
And this brings up the pitfalls the leader of any creative
group has to watch out for. On the deep, and usually
unconscious level, the leader may have a hidden purpose
of his own: that of maintaining his leadership at any cost.
The position of influence and power, even a temporary
one, is pleasing, and most people resist letting it go. One
of the most difficult jobs the leader of a creative group
session faces is that of allowing the group to "grow up"
and be less dependent upon him. He must, as parents
194 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
frequently do, maintain his control in little ways that will not
interfere with the development and expression of the group
personality. Furthermore, groups can readily develop hidden
agendas concerning the leader. If he is too dominant, the hidden
reaction will take the form of passive resistance. If he takes sides
on crucial issues or leaves the group with a feeling of insecurity
about his fairness or objectivity, active revolt may take place.
Frequently a group in revolt will obviously follow the leadership
of one of its members, while it permits the nominal leader to go
through the empty forms of leadership.
There are other troubles that can beset a leader also. For
example, he may find himself fighting to maintain leadership
against an individual member of the group with a hidden purpose.
In many cases, this individual may not realize he has a purpose
himself—he may be the type who is generally hostile to leader-
ship in any form. If accused of trying to take over the group,
he would strongly deny it, and be righteously indignant at the
accusation. The leader himself may frequently have to make a
quick analysis to decide whether his leadership is indeed being
challenged for the purpose of taking it away, or whether the
member is making a legitimate challenge of a mistake by the
leader. It is not always easy to distinguish between the two in
a fast-moving group action.
Another source of trouble has already been touched on: the
apathy that keeps the meeting from developing into a productive
session. Here again, the leader needs to make a quick analysis of
what is going on. Apathy can be caused by many factors: the
group may feel that they don't really have the procedural tools
to move ahead on the problem (this is frequently caused by a
lack of indoctrination and orientation into the principles, tech-
niques, and purposes of the tool being used). The group may have
the impression that their decisions or recommendations will not
have any real stature in the final analysis of the problem or
policy. One subgroup within a larger group may have a too
zealous or personal feeling about the problem under discussion,
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HOWTOLEAD C R E A T I V E GROUPS
and so may intimidate other members to the point where they
actually block or shut off the outside thinking. Whatever the
cause, when apathy sets in, a "What's the use?" attitude takes over.
Most such group ills, however, have their beginnings in the
initial minutes of the meeting, at the time of the actual presenta-
tion of the problem and the suggestions for handling the problem.
Many group members, for instance, will be slow to take a leader
up on his invitation to "express yourselves freely." This is because
from childhood they have been used to having the person in
authority tell them what to do or to think. It is difficult to
change a lifetime habit simply by being told to do so. The leader,
recognizing this, will accept it and plan his meeting in such a
way as to create a climate favorable to free expression and par-
ticipation.
It is certainly helpful to the leader of a creative group if he
knows its members. You can guide and direct people only on
the basis of how much you know about them and their interests
and feelings about a subject. If you don't really know the members
of a group, you must at least make a quick surmise about them
in order to establish your own behavior "base line." The old
theory that a group leader has to be an inspirational evangelist
to be effective is being severely challenged by today's crop of
dynamic exponents of group techniques. Instead of using pep
talks, which are, at best, transient in value, the true leader uses
empathy to get at the real roots of his group's personality,
interest, and capabilities.
In preparing to handle a meeting, then, the leader will think
about the people who will be involved. He should study their
natures and characteristics closely, and then use his own in-
genuity, imagination, and resourcefulness to figure out how to
produce the reactions that will be needed.
Leaders, of course, vary in personalities and temperaments just
as members of the group do. Therefore, it would be a mistake
to lay down any hard and fast rules for exactly how the leader
should approach or operate with his group. Since you are trying
196 HOWTO BE AM R C REATIVE EXECUTIVE
OE
to be sincere and friendly, it is usually good to be somewhat
informal in your approach to the group. Some leaders can
comfortably sit on top of a desk or a table in the front of the
room. Others simply do not feel at ease unless they are on their
feet (but a leader on his feet tends to be a "formal" figure to the
members of the group). Still other leaders get a sense of comfort
out of having a lectern to lean on. But the important thing is
that anything you do to reduce the degree of formality in your
meeting must be in harmony with what you can comfortably
bring yourself to do. An ill-a t-ease leader will only succeed in
communicating his uneasiness to the group.
In dealing with a group that has never been exposed to creative
group concepts before, probably the one most important in-
troductory step is to let the members know how they are going
to be expected to act—just what part they will be playing in the
problem-solving effort.
Once you are sure you have suitably broken the ice, you can
then get on with the business at hand. A good way of taking
this step is to present the problem in objective discussion, but
without divulging your own viewpoint on it. Or you may
give several tentative solutions to help the group start their
thinking. If you do this, you should be sure to mix and vary the
suggestions in as many ways as possible to avoid giving the
impression that you are in favor of any one particular approach or
that you are trying to "steer" the group in their thinking.
Initially, the most difficult part of running a creative group
meeting, particularly a Brainstorming session, may be just to get
started. Therefore, the leader must be 100 per cent alive to any
tendency by the group to begin to participate, and he must be
sure that he does not, in any way, discourage participation when
it begins. On the contrary, he should be working to encourage
the group to "take over" as soon as possible.
Once the group makes its initial break into activity, the
leader's job then switches over to mainta ining the activity. He
may have to suggest, cajole, challenge, tease, and otherwise
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HOW TO LEAD CREATIVE GROUPS
motivate each individual to contribute in his own way and, at
the same time, guide the individuals into working within the
framework of shared commitments in both the job at hand and
the methods being used.
He must, at the same time, be alert to any indications of
confusion or hostility and exercise his guidance to reduce or
eliminate the trouble before it can cause a breakdown in the
group process. For example, if one member launches into a speech
about some pet idea or proposal, it could quickly set up an
apathetic reaction among other members. It is important for the
leader to move in quickly at this point and get the group
functioning again.
If you, as a creative group leader, are really sincere about
getting the group to take over, you can only plan a creative
session up to a point. Once the group reaches that point, the
leader will find himself trying to adhere to the framework of
his planned-out methods, but very definitely "playing it by ear."
In a really productive group, the leader's original plans and ideas
are bound to be challenged and strained. Moreover, you may find
that some of your own favorite thoughts or pet predictions will
receive some unexpected jolts and you may have to disrupt your
whole plan in order to accommodate the new changes suggested
by the group. It is a real challenge to maintain both your leader-
ship and the cooperation and good will of the group when you
suddenly find yourself thrust into strange territory by the group.
Perhaps we can sum up the leader's responsibilities in a general
way:
He should, first, create a friendly atmosphere for discussion.
He should make sure the group members know and under-
stand the "rules of the game" for whatever discussion or participa-
tion device he is using.
He must be ready to help individuals, or subgroups of indi-
viduals, or the group itself move ahead with continuity and
focus.
He should see that all members have ample opportunity to
198 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
participate and that they realize and take advantage of a climate
of safety.
He must, in the end, be the catalyst that will help varied interests,
opinions, and convictions in the group come together to arrive
at definite conclusions, suggestions, ideas, or decisions.
Many people, in surveying all these responsibilities, possible
difficulties, and unfamiliar duties for the first time, get a feeling
that this is not for them. It sounds too tough. They are even
discouraged from trying such group activities by the feeling
that they, themselves, could never lead such an activity. Actually,
this is a mistaken attitude to take. Many of the things a creative
group leader must do are just as important to the successful
conduct of any other type of meeting or conference. Many of
the difficulties never arise—at least, they never all happen at once.
It is only important to know about them so that when they do
come up, you as the leader won't be thrown for a loss by some-
thing completely unexpected. And, fortunately, you have ample
opportunity to practice being a group leader every day in your
relationships with individuals.
A group, as mentioned earlier, is merely an extension of the
individual personalities involved. Therefore, many of the things
you must do in leading a group—encouraging them, keeping
them on the track, discouraging blind arguments, and so forth—
you can practice in your day-to-day relationships with indi-
viduals. (This, in any event, makes good practice for you in the
art of getting along with others.)
Most of the "strain" of leading creative groups in the business
world comes from the knowledge that you, as the leader, have
the responsibility, which you cannot duck, of making the group
"pay off" for the company. This pay-off may be in the sense
that you produce money-making or cost-saving ideas; or it may
be that you just make productive use of the time of the individuals
that you have drafted for your group. But nearly everyone has
opportunit ies to practice group leadership, even if informally,
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where this strain of showing a dollars-and-cents pay-off is not
present.
For example, a church group to which you belong may very
well have projects or aims that could profitably use new ideas
or new approaches. The same with a civic or social group. And
even a friendly party of neighbors takes a certain amount of "ice
breaking" to get conversations going. Any such opportunity is
a chance for you to experiment, analyze, and learn without real
danger of expensive waste.
Furthermore, you may find, with a little asking around, that
you are not alone in having a desire to gain inexpensive ex-
perience with group leadership techniques. There is a great deal
of interest in creative groups these days, and many of your
contemporaries may have the same desire to experiment and
share experiences. If so, you could easily form a one -night-a-week
study group to work on each other's problems. (Several such
groups have found that they are now able to get problems from
people outside their group and are paid for solving them!)
But don't let the academic considerations of what may happen
in a dynamic group discourage you from trying to gain ex-
perience. You can experiment and learn in small, nonvital ways
and acquire a knowledge of what it is actually like to meet any
of these difficulties before you are forced to meet them in an
important way. Furthermore, you will learn what it is possible
to accomplish in the way of producing ideas and obtaining con-
crete results. And you can learn, in a small way, what will take
place when you lead your first "formal" creative group. Once you
know, even on a small or unimportant scale, what may, can,
and does happen, then you will have the experience and confidence
to go ahead and stick your neck out when the chips are down
and it is important.
12
The Importance of Follow-Up
In 1940, Walter Behlen, of Columbus, Nebraska, earned a gross
profit of $194. In 1957, he earned over $3-million. His method?
A firm belief that "Ideas are a dime a dozen—it's doing some-
thing with them that counts." In this simple principle, Behlen
covers nearly all the reasons why good ideas fail to solve problems
or bring their inventors justly deserved fame or fortune: having
ideas is not enough; "it's doing something with them that counts."
As a matter of fact, even a "fair" idea, if it is put to use
intelligently and aggressively may do more good than the most
brilliant suggestion that is never followed up. So it is important
when you think you have a good idea, no matter how you got
it, to do something with it.
If it concerns a personal problem that is entirely within your
control, then put it to work—try it. (And if it fails, try another
one.)
If it is an idea for the company, tell your boss, or put it into
the suggestion system.
If your idea is one that will involve a patent, check with your
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201
T H E IMPORTANCE OF FOLLOW-UP
company's legal department to find out the approved company
method of screening patentable ideas.
If your idea is one you think will help someone else solve a
problem they have, by all means tell them about it. But do
something with every worthwhile idea.
It is probably true, as some experts claim, that there are more
ideas wasted in business every day than are ever used in a year
because of that simple failure to do something to give the idea
substance. Remember that a "raw" idea is absolutely worthless.
It doesn't even merit the description of creative if it isn't allowed
to produce a benefit of some kind. Many such wasted ideas are
products of people who never intended to do anything with them
in the first place. But many are wasted simply because the
inventors didn't know how to "sell" their ideas. In fact, they
may not have realized that ideas do need selling.
But there are many reasons why people in authority are apt to
turn down ideas. Not the least of these is ignorance of what the
idea really means. Remember that if a new idea is really good, it
will also be strange. It is open to question. In many cases, the
person you are submitting your idea to will not even realize
that there was a need for such an idea. You may have to begin
at the beginning and trace through the whole reasoning process
that you yourself followed in arriving at this new idea of yours.
You may even have to teach the other person the meaning of
some new words that will be necessary in order to understand
your idea. And, because resistance to change is perfectly natural
and normal in every human being, you may have to overcome
that tendency in your boss, or whoever it is you are giving the
idea to.
For an executive, the necessity of "selling" ideas to overcome
another person's ignorance and reluctance to change is a two-way
street. The chances are you will also have people coming to you
with their ideas. Remember what they are up against, and help
them all you can. Many persons, when they are faced with the
prospect of convincing someone else that the idea they have is
202 HOW TOBE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
good, literally get scared out. This may be the biggest cause of
idea waste. But it is one that is relatively easy for you to overcome
in yourself, and one you can help others overcome. It is not
that people lack ability to sell their ideas. It is, rather, that they
lack forethought, initiative, and resourcefulness in the way they
go about it.
Let's look at some of the reasons why an idea which appears
perfectly good—perhaps even "sensational"—to its creator may
meet resistance and even refusal "higher up" in the company:
The most common true reason for rejecting an idea is that
there is something wrong with it. If the fault is not in the idea
itself, it may be in what would happen if the idea were put into
use. Most of the time, if the idea's creator had taken pains to
think his proposition through, he could have found such flaws
himself. And, having found them, he could have corrected them
or marshaled his facts to counter them.
Another reason for turning down an idea is that, although the
idea itself seems sound, the evidence to support it may be untrue
or illogical. This frequently happens to young men right out
of university or college business schools who are ready to "set
the world on fire." As soon as they are established on a job, they
immediately begin proposing ideas based on what their college
textbooks or their professors or other sources of academic in-
formation told them was the way something should be done.
Unfortunately, academic theories don't always work out in
practical business, or a particular company may have a very
sound reason for violating some principle of "good practice"
which the young man hasn't had time to learn. Consequently, his
idea is rejected for reasons that may not be directly related to its
real merit. When this happens often enough to the same young
man, he either "smartens up" and learns to get more information,
or he becomes embittered and discouraged and stops suggesting
ideas.
Another pitfall you have to watch for in presenting any new
idea is overselling. It is easy to get too enthusiastic about an idea,
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THE IMPORTANCE OF FOLLOW-UP
especially if it is your own. And when you begin to overestimate
rewards and overstate your opinion of them, it may create doubts
among people who would otherwise want to give your idea
serious consideration. Actually, the idea itself may be perfectly
good in a more modest sort of way, but obvious overselling can
frighten people out of wanting to take a chance on it.
Another reason why an idea can be rejected by a particular
individual, or in a company with a certain type of atmosphere,
is commonly called the "NIH"—for "Not Invented Here"—
factor. This phrase was supposedly coined by an embittered
scientist who felt that his ideas were being turned down by
people in authority simply because they had not thought of them.
In most cases, it is probably not true that an NIH factor can,
by itself, kill a good idea. But there is no question that it can
make a good idea more difficult to sell. And it may be that a
failure to "sell," in the literal sense of the word, is the real
cause of the NIH attitude. If you present an idea on the basis
that it will solve all the evils of the past, you are on dangerous
ground. Your superior, or whoever it is that you are presenting
the idea to, is then forced into the position of having to defend
that past of which he was so active a participant!
One way to overcome this particular type of resistance is to
make sure you always stress the benefits to be derived from your
ideas in terms of the future. Talk about the "good times" ahead,
rather than the bad times past.
Closely allied to defending past mistakes as a cause of resistance
to new ideas is pride of authorship in past methods. Many new
ideas are turned down simply because the person in authority
cannot bear to give up one of his own "brain children" even
though that child may no longer be adequate to the job. One
salesman of business forms was bemoaning this in regard to one
of his customers: by cutting an eighth-of-an-inch off the bottom
of a 42-inch accounting form, he could have saved his customer
$18,000 a year. But the firm's treasurer had designed this form
and didn't want it changed even after twenty-seven years!
204 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
Another reason why an idea can meet rejection, even though
the idea may be good and sound and would be profitable, is that
it would infringe on someone's real or imagined "status" in the
company. This type of resistance is frequently met in proposals
for the reorganization of departments or functions within a
company. Once status or position or a "preferred relationship"
is obtained, the person obtaining it is extremely reluctant to give
it up and will fight anything that threatens his position, regard-
less of the true merits of the idea. Probably the best route to
circumvent this kind of resistance is through some applied
psychology: bring the potential objector into the act of selling the
idea; make him a part of the proposal. This, naturally, means
that he will have to be sold on it first.
And this brings us to the real fundamental of getting ac-
ceptance for your new idea, no matter how good it might be:
it may take more imagination, more resourcefulness, and more
outright creativeness to "sell your idea than it did to get it in
the first place.
There are not, of course, any 100 per cent sure methods of
selling anybody anything. But any experienced salesman can tell
you that the first principle of selling is to know the interests of
the person to whom you are selling. And this is just as true in
attempting to sell an idea as it is in attempting to sell a more
tangible item.
To cite just two extremes: if you have an idea for a new
product for your company and present it to your management,
you can be almost certain they will look at it from the standpoint
of how much it will cost to go into manufacture on it, and they
will then compare and evaluate that cost against the cost of
other projects they may be considering. If the product is
produced, and it is time to sell it to the public, you can be very
certain that any prospective purchaser will look at your idea in
a different light. He will want to know "What will I get out of
it?" before he buys.
Of course the key person in your company that you will
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THE IMPORTANCE OF FOLLOW-UP
probably have to sell your idea to is your own immediate boss
or the person who heads up the department or function that your
idea pertains to. Once you can get a responsible executive to back
you, then the job of selling the idea further up the line becomes
much easier. And this holds true even for the president of a
company. He may find he has to get at least one of the directors
"on his side" in order to sell the board as a whole on a new idea
or policy.
So let's look at the man on the "next level up" to whom you
will be presenting your idea. Even if he is a person who has
actively demonstrated a progressive attitude, the only safe way
to start out is by assuming that he will not like your idea when
it is first presented to him—unless you know that that is not
true. Remember that you are proposing a change, and it is
human nature to resist change. Furthermore, if he has not
demonstrated a receptiveness to new ideas, it is possible that this
man may be lacking the positive attitude that such receptiveness
requires. He may even be what is loosely termed "unimaginative."
Or he may be a "weak" executive in the sense that he has never
been made to realize that it is a part of his job to encourage you,
and others like you, to produce new ideas and new thinking for
the company. He may have all these faults in varying degrees,
but he is the man to whom you have to present your fragile
brainchild, so you will have to accept his faults.
The important thing for you is that you don't waste your time,
energy, and mental resources fretting about the trouble you are
apt to have with this man, because such anguish won't help.
The approach you should take is that of actively helping that
other person understand your idea and the benefits it can bring
to the company. Be particularly careful to put your own thinking
in order before you go in to see that man. Be prepared to teach
him everything he needs to know about the problem your idea
was devised to solve, if necessary; and be ready to give him all
the answers, alternative solutions, data, facts, and reasoning
processes you yourself went through in arriving at the particular
206 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
problem solution you are now presenting. And, in preparing all
this material to educate your boss with, try to put yourself in his
shoes all the way through: try to imagine how you would react
to this idea if your positions were reversed, and you had to think
of all the things your boss will have to think of; and consider
all the changes that will have to be made if he accepts your idea.
If you give consideration to his problems, then you will do a
better job of interpreting your idea in terms he will be willing
to listen to.
There are also certain "basics of buying" that you should keep
in mind in planning your selling program. Here are some of the
reasons people will buy a product—or accept an idea:
The idea may let them do something they have wanted to do:
cut operating costs, or make more profits, or compete against
other lines or brands.
The idea may improve the individual's status in a desirable
group. For example, the head of the purchasing department may
feel that he will gain status among all the department heads in
the company if he is the "sponsor" of a successful new idea.
There are some people who will buy an idea, unfortunately,
because it will make someone else look bad. It gives the person
accepting the idea a sense of satisfaction to know that he is "in on"
something that someone else has missed. (This is not a recom-
mendation that you encourage this type of feeling; only a state-
ment of fact!)
An idea can be accepted because it helps to simplify some
larger problem. Or because it enables some additional move to
be made against a much larger problem.
And, of course, an idea will be accepted because it gets
someone "off the hook" with his boss, or with the operating
committee, or with anyone else who might have authority over
him. This type of idea is usually the easy one to sell.
There are, naturally, many reasons why people will not buy
an idea. And many more reasons why they think they should
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THE IMPORTANCE OF FOLLOW-UP
not buy an idea. Probably the most common of these is the old
"Well, the way we are doing it now seems to work out okay."
In other words, complacency. A suggested way of overcoming
this is to take the "old way" and work out as good a selling story
for that as you possibly can. Then, when you present your new
way, you also show the old way. If you have been honest and
objective in evaluating the advantages of the old, and if your new
idea is really better, it should be obvious to anyone concerned
that you do have the advantage in your new idea.
There is another real and potent reason why you may fail in
attempting to sell your idea: you haven't really thought through
the business aspects of the idea itself. Too often, we get so
enthused over our ideas and make out strong and detailed cases
supporting them, only to find that some simple consideration of
business can kill the idea completely. An example is a new
product suggestion that would make it necessary for a company
to hire and train a completely new sales force to call on an
entirely different type of retail outlet than it now uses. This
might cost more than could possibly be made from the idea in
five years. So learn your business—not only your own job,
department, and division, but everything you can about the
business as a whole. Attend any meetings, conferences, lectures,
or other training programs you can get yourself into—even if
they don't pertain directly to your job. Soak up the facts about
your company, its customers, its economic and financing needs,
the people who work for it. Know your company inside and out
so that, when you do face that job of selling an idea, you will
know exactly where your idea fits into the total scheme of
company operations.
So what are the steps in actually presenting an idea? What,
specifically, should you think about in planning the presentation
of this idea in which you have invested so much time and effort?
Here are a few suggestions that you may be able to adapt im-
aginatively to suit your particular idea:
208 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
First (and though it may seem obvious, it is frequently
neglected) sell yourself on the idea as the best possible solution
to the problem at this time.
Study your idea through carefully so you are well acquainted
with all the problems that will be involved in carrying it out.
Refer back to the "new product checklist" in Chapter 7 for the
kinds of questions to ask about a new product idea. Make up some
similar kind of checklist for other types of ideas you may be
proposing. And be sure that you ask the same questions about
any possible alternative problem solutions to make sure that yours
is unquestionably the best.
In presenting your idea, be sure to point out the real need for
it; don't assume the other person is aware of the need. He may
not be. Be sure to point out the benefits of your idea; don't make
the mistake of thinking they are so obvious the other person
can't help appreciating them. Tell him.
If it is possible to show your idea with sketches, drawings,
models, or floor plans, by all means take the time to prepare the
illustrations. Better a day later in presenting the idea than to
have it rejected because the other person couldn't appreciate it
from your verbal description.
If you possibly can, make your own idea presentation in person
to anyone who may have the power to accept or reject it. It
may be necessary to have your boss or a co-worker along, but
be prepared to fight your own fight if it becomes necessary.
As one successful creative man said, "The most important
ingredient in selling an idea is mother love like a tiger's!"
Have a comprehensive written report to leave behind after
you've presented your idea. If there are several people to sell
the idea to, have copies of your report for each of them.
Avoid trying to sell weak ideas. All you will do is lose your
own prestige and undermine whatever confidence other people
have in you.
In presenting your idea, and also in preparing the covering
report, follow a definite, logical sequence. Here is an example:
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THE IMPORTANCE OF FOLLOW-UP
State the idea clearly. Assume you are explaining it to a ten-
year-old child. You aren't, of course, but this will quickly show
up any fuzziness in your own thinking.
State the value of the idea to the company. Tell exactly why
the owners of the business should be prepared to risk x number
of dollars on your idea. Make sure that your arguments will
satisfy the toughest person you can imagine who will have to
pass on the idea.
List the advantages of your idea on one side of a sheet of paper.
List the disadvantages on the other. Then justify your reasoning
that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Be sure to look
for "hidden" advantages like public -relations benefits, filling up
of slack production periods, effects on company or industry
prestige. These can all be "sold" if they are present in your basic
concept.
Tell where you fit in. This is a form of recommending the
next step on the idea. Are you through with it now? Should you
be the person to carry out further exploratory or development or
implementation work? It is always a temptation to ask for the
opportunity to carry an idea all the way through and thus reap
whatever rewards may result from it. But it is a mistake to trap
yourself into a position of having to do something that you may
not have the training, experience, or temperament to do.
Restate the benefits; recommend the next step. Always make
a recommendation of the next thing to be done when you present
an idea. This may be to investigate further along specific lines;
to check out costs; to conduct a study to determine the effect of
the idea or consumer reactions to the idea; or to appoint some-
one to activate the idea. But always make a specific recommenda-
tion as to what should come next. The aim is to make it easier
for the person with authority to keep the idea moving than to put
up with the uncomfortable feeling that an idea is hanging in sus-
pension while he decides what should be done with it. Tell him
what to do.
And suppose your idea is accepted and put into practice—
210 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE E X E C U T I V E
either into actual use or into a development stage. What do you do
then?
This is where many idea men fail on the following through,
and where many ideas fail to hold their own against all the de-
structive forces that can cut down their effectiveness and even
kill them. If it is your idea, don't stop once it is sold—continue to
follow through even if you can only do so from the sidelines.
Keep open-minded about improvements. It is one thing to resist
changes in your idea that may undermine and weaken it. It is quite
another to think that you are the only person who understands
the idea sufficiently well to improve or "polish" it. Look for any
opportunity to improve an idea yourself, and at least listen
with an open mind to suggestions from others.
Know when to fight—and when not to. If your idea is really
important and really creative, there is probably a "heart" to it
that should not be changed. But surrounding that heart will be
dozens of details that can be changed in hundreds of ways without
hurting the main idea. You can always concede on these details
so long as it won't hurt the big idea. It takes judgment and a sense
of timing to know when to fight and when not to. But too much
fighting at the wrong time or about the wrong thing has resulted
in the loss of many worthwhile ideas.
Keep people sold. This is important as your idea passes from
the stage of theory into that of application. Remember that your
management probably felt they were taking a chance, even if they
felt the odds were in favor of success, when they approved your
idea. So keep them sold: report any and all successes; stay enthusi-
astic yourself; try to communicate that enthusiasm to your boss,
to his boss, all the way up the line. Keep everyone firmly behind
your idea until it takes over itself by demonstrating success.
Get other departments in on your idea. This will, to a large
extent, depend on the particular idea. But don't hesitate to let
someone else in on it or ask for someone else's help in making your
idea succeed. You may get some valuable cross-fertilization of
thinking that can "beef up" your original idea immensely.
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THE IMPORTANCE OF FOLLOW-UP
Keep adding to your idea. If, for example, it is a packaging
idea for one product, show how the same basic concepts can be
adapted to other packages in your line, or to the shipping con-
tainer, or to the point-of-sale display piece. If it is for a new type
of product, look for possible related products or for other possible
uses in addition to the original one. If it is an idea for a depart-
mental reorganization, try to carry the basic principles down into
individual operating sections, or on up into division operations to
improve efficiency as a whole. Use your original idea as a seed for
spreading the benefits in as many different directions as you can.
Expect to be sniped at. Remember that it is always easier to see
the 10 per cent bad in an idea than the 90 per cent good. So you
can expect any idea—particularly a really bold or new one—to be
sniped at. In this respect, you should develop into your own best
sniper. You should, of course, be the sharpest sniper of all because
you will know more about your idea and its weaknesses than
anyone else. So keep looking for flaws yourself. And listen to
other people's suggestions on flaws. And when they suggest, don't
damn in defending. Remember, they may be right and you may
have to make a change. Leave yourself the opening to make it
gracefully.
Know when to quit. It often happens that a promising idea just
will not prove out when put into practice. No matter what the
creator does in the way of refining, improving, combining, or
otherwise strengthening the idea, it just won't work. The thing
for the creator to do then is to drop it. Quit it completely, no
matter how much it hurts. And then go on to another idea. And
the creator should be the first to know that his idea is no good.
He should be the person to "blow the whistle on it." It will be
far better for you in the long run to get the reputation of being
a person with the courage to admit you were wrong, than to be
branded a "stubborn damn fool who doesn't know a good idea
from a bad one!"
13
Creating the Creative
Climate
Thompson Products, Inc., of Cleveland, had a problem: expensive
polishing belts used in one of their operations kept fraying and
breaking. Engineers couldn't find an answer, but one production
employee did: Emma Gabor put nail polish on the belt edges,
"Just like stopping a runner in my hose." The company paid her
over $6,000 for the idea; the idea saved the company about $43,000
a year.
One of the greatest photographic laboratories in the world
spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to develop a film
that would take pictures in color. But when color film was suc-
cessfully developed, it was by two traveling dance-band musicians
who had been using their hotel bathtubs as "laboratories."
During World War II, regular production employees of the
B. F. Goodrich Company turned in over three thousand ideas a
year—a third of which were good enough to merit cash awards.
And General Motors says that today they receive about thirty
thousand usable ideas a year from their employees.
A new method of assembling electronic components saved the
Army (and U.S. taxpayers!) $4,200,000 the first year it was in
212
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CREATING THE CREATIVE C I A E LM T
use. The inventors were two Signal Corps civilian employees,
Stanislaus Danko and Moe Abramson, who received $10,000 for
the idea. The award was made within the framework of the gov-
ernment's Incentives Awards System which, in one year, received
over 294,000 suggestions from government and military workers;
adopted 79,000 ideas for use; paid out $2,365,000 in awards.
Today, developing and building airplanes is a multimillion-
dollar business. Huge research and engineering staffs constantly
strive to improve planes, to make them better, safer, and more
efficient. And who started all this? The Wright brothers—two
bicycle mechanics.
One final example : in Minneapolis, an "ordinary" machinist,
who had never been to college, received a check for over $50,000
from a company that manufactures giant "electronic brains" be-
cause he was able to give them something that even one of their
million-dollar "thinking machines" couldn't—an idea on how to
make a troublesome mechanism operate better.
These are just a few examples to demonstrate that imagination
isn't confined to a select few people who happen to have positions
in an organization chart indicating that they are responsible for
thinking. A leading industrial personnel man recently said that
if Thomas A. Edison or Alexander Graham Bell were to try to
get a job in the research department of nearly any large corpora-
tion today, they probably wouldn't be hired because they didn't
have the technical knowledge to be inventors! It is a fact that
when Mr. Bell first got his idea for the telephone, he didn't know
anything about electricity—he had to learn everything he needed
to know about the science, right from scratch, before he could
develop his invention!
It seems to be true that most businesses underestimate the abil-
ity of their "ordinary" workers to produce ideas. In fact, it often
appears that some of the "professional" idea men underestimate
the abilities of other idea men to produce ideas! But it is also true
that there is only one place to get the ideas that any business needs
for survival today—from people.
214 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
Regular production, clerical, office, and salaried employees in
any organization probably represent the greatest untapped poten-
tial for new ideas that any company has. But you have to make
them want to give you the ideas they have. You can't order people
to be creative. You can't really "buy" ideas from them. You can't
threaten or otherwise intimidate them into thinking creatively
about your company problems. They have to want to do it first.
This means you need what is generally termed a creative climate.
The general objectives of a creative climate are to encourage
more creative thinking about company problems; to make sure
that new or original ideas are never blocked or sidetracked with-
out serious consideration by the company; and to provide what-
ever training, indoctrination, and encouragement is necessary to
help workers think constructively and creatively about every-
thing the company does or may need to do. Building this climate,
or atmosphere, or attitude is a top-management and executive
responsibility. It has to start with the "brass" demonstrating
that they are receptive to new or radical solutions to problems.
The example that there are no "sacrosanct" ways of doing things
must come from the top.
A creative atmosphere in a company is much like water in a
hose. There must be a reservoir to provide necessary pressure—
and the pressure source must be above any outlets. Just as a
faucet or valve can completely shut off the flow of water, a divi-
sion or department head can close off the flow of encouragement
for ideas. A kink in a hose can stop the flow of water; a poor
foreman or supervisor can cut off the flow of ideas. If you
puncture a hose, you cut down the pressure and the flow of water.
If workers are subjected to negative attitudes and reactions from
co-workers and immediate supervisors, it will cut down the flow
of their ideas and dissipate the effects of the pressure from above
to be creative. And once water reaches the nozzle outlet, you can
spray it—in which case it is at the mercy of the wind to carry
it about—or you can direct it in a steady, forceful stream against
some particular object. And, by giving your "creative climate"
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CREATING THE CREATIVE C I A E LM T
some direction, you can do a better job of directing it against
specific problems and objectives that are most important.
One of the most successful attempts to build a creative climate
within a company is that of the AC Spark Plug Division of General
Motors. This company began several years ago to see what they
could do in the way of encouraging more ideas from their people.
The man most responsible for this program was Mr. Joseph A.
Anderson, Vice President of General Motors and the General
Manager of AC. His interest in developing a creative program
stemmed from the fact that he was impressed with the high cost
of ideas in a company which are not thought of, or that come too
late, or are never developed to their fullest potential. Too often,
he says, we examine a new idea and say to ourselves, "We should
have had this ten years ago—if only someone had thought of it."
Mr. Anderson believes strongly that top management must
lead in creative development and that the urge for new ideas must
be infused into all management in order to clear the way for ideas
from below. "Management can bring out creative effort, and
management can also stifle creative effort," he says. "Most man-
agement does some of each. That is because good management is
made up with a high degree of good judgment; whereas, high
creativity involves risks and taking chances."
His conclusion: A good manager, exercising good judgment
only, could easily become a barrier to creativity.
With this consideration in mind, probably the first step an
executive should take to begin building a creative climate in his
company is to make a soul-searching analysis of his own attitude
toward creativity. The first requirement for a creative manager is
that he himself really wants new ideas—that he himself will have
the capacity to change with the changes that new ideas require.
He must be receptive to new, and even radical, propositions; he
must be sincerely interested in them.
The man who really does want more ideas can begin to demon-
strate it by following some advice that is so old, it is almost trite:
216 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
Maintain an open-door policy. Most executives have heard this,
and many practice it. But the reason it doesn't always work for
those who do practice it is that the door is often the only thing
that is really open—the mind beyond the door is not.
Many executives who consider themselves to be completely
approachable actually discourage any employees from approach-
ing simply because the boss does not really mean it. A "boss" must
be easy to talk to. He must, himself, assume the burden of making
the interview successful when an employee comes in to submit
an idea. After all, many employees don't really know (because
they haven't been taught) how to present an idea. Furthermore,
the average employee may lack confidence in his own idea. This
comes, in part, from lack of experience. The organized effort
to promote more creatively is a relatively new force in our cul-
ture. If yours is an average company, you may as well assume
that, up to now, no one has ever tried to encourage your workers
to use their imaginations; no one has ever made them conscious
of ideas, or what ideas are, or how to go about having them.
You have the job of developing the confidence if you want the
creativity. Therefore, it is up to you to pave the way. You must
be a good listener when an employee comes to you with an idea;
you must resist any temptation to reject the idea before you have
given it enough thought to make sure that you fully understand it
yourself.
If you, as an executive, have not formed the habit of trying to
encourage your people to submit ideas, you will also have to
watch out for another personal pitfall: that of prematurely re-
jecting an idea through false pride. This, unfortunately, happens
quite frequently. It may stem from the executive's chagrin that
he didn't think of the idea himself—or from his fear of admitting
to superiors that one of his subordinates was ahead of him on a
problem. This makes it difficult for the executive to be objective
in evaluating the idea, and, if it is your problem, will mean an
added burden for you of always checking to be sure that you
are being scrupulously fair to both the idea and the employee be-
fore rejecting or accepting any new suggestion.
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C R E A T I N G THE C R E A T I V E CLIMATE
It has been said of Igor Sikorsky, one of the great aeronautical
designers of all times and a creative man in tune with creative
minds, that whenever a subordinate came to him with a sugges-
tion, he would say, "Excellent! Now let's work it out this way"
—and, busily sketching, he would often make radical changes.
When the part got into production, it was often Sikorsky's design,
but so well had he handled it that the employee believed it was
his!
The executive must also form the personal habit of both ac-
knowledging and praising usable ideas if he wants to continue
to receive them. In the first place, it is not very intelligent for
anyone to assume the credit for the work of others. As an execu-
tive it is your job to get results on company problems, so you will
automatically receive the credit no matter where an idea came
from. It is also a universally understood rule of administration
that an executive is responsible for developing the people under
him. An executive who fails to report personal progress of sub-
ordinates, in the production of ideas or otherwise, may be sus-
pected of "credit grabbing" or of not living up to his responsibil-
ities as a leader.
The reverse of giving praise is also true: never reject an idea
without giving as full an explanation as possible, and, if you want
the employee to try again, be sure to say so. This situation is
probably one of the touchiest of all to handle and, if it is bobbled,
may turn a potentially good idea-producer into a completely
negative worker. Criticism is difficult to give when you want to
preserve a positive attitude. And the best rule for giving it is, "Be
slow to."
It is easy to find fault with any idea, and frequently it is easier
to criticize an employee than to praise him. But in many instances
it is not necessary to criticize an idea to reject it. Furthermore, the
idea-hunting executive will never abuse an employee for a bad
idea, never ridicule any idea, and particularly never ridicule an
idea in front of others or to others.
The "freedom to fail" must be an integral part of any creative
climate. Charles Kettering once made the statement that "I can
218 HOW TO A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
take any group of young people and teach them to be inventors
if I can get them to throw off the hazard of becoming afraid to
fail. A study made some years ago said that the more education
a man has, the less likely he is to be an inventor. Now the reason
for that is quite simple. It is because, throughout his life, he
has been taught the danger of failure. From the time he enters
the first grade until he graduates from the university, he is ex-
amined three or four times each year; if he fails, he is out and, in
many cases, disgraced. In research and invention work, you fail
hundreds, and even thousands of times; and, if you succeed once,
you are in."
But probably the single most important trait an executive can
acquire is that of personal enthusiasm for ideas. Be positive in
your approach to problems, and to the problems of solving them.
An enthusiastic, confident-appearing leader can do more to set a
creative example or attitude in a company or department than
all the special procedures or techniques put together.
This does not, of course, mean you should blind yourself to
anyone's shortcomings, or forget anything you have learned about
evaluating and judging ideas. An executive who could not sensibly
evaluate an idea could be a positive danger to his company and
this, of course, is just the opposite of what you should be trying
to accomplish. But it is just as dangerous to operate on the
antiquated theories that workers can't understand your problems
and therefore can't possibly contribute ideas, or that everything
must be judged by how it will appear on the quarterly balance
sheet.
Another tool for building a creative climate in a company is
that of training for creativity. This training includes the steps
and methods an executive can use to educate his workers where
he can exercise some control over the materials of education.
In practice, training for creativity or idea production may use
many of the same methods used for any other type of worker
training: conferences, discussions, literature study, outside guests
and speakers. The basic difference is in aims and objectives.
219
C R E A T I N G THE C R E A T I V E CLIMATE
Standard training programs are aimed at teaching set procedures
for accomplishing a given task or assignment. Creative training
usually goes in the other direction: it is aimed at teaching the
worker to use his own mind to figure out better ways of handling
standard tasks or assignments. Rapidly coming into general usage,
however, are the training methods that combine both: they utilize
the standard procedure of teaching a worker a specific job with
specific methods, but integrate into such training the thought that
nothing about these methods is final, that if the worker can think
up a better way of doing something, his ideas will certainly be
welcomed.
The worker is further encouraged along these lines by being
exposed to information that will increase his ability to think in
creative ways. As examples: a conference on methods will in-
clude background on the development of the method—including
the "why"—so the worker can project that "why" in terms of any
ideas he may later get to improve the method. Specialized reading
material, such as rack booklets on idea-production methods, are
made available. Outside speakers or instructors are brought in to
conduct indoctrination sessions on principles, practices, and
methods of solving problems creatively; or regular company
training personnel may be sent to special seminars or institutes
to familiarize them with creative training methods. Still another
alternative is to assign selected workers to prepare reports on
idea-stimulating helps and problem-solving techniques.
A fairly common practice in larger corporations when they
want to "season" a promising executive is to rotate him through
a variety of job assignments. This is the cross-fertilization prin-
ciple and it can, in modified forms, be extended to help develop
promising line workers, foremen, and other supervisory person-
nel. It can also be used to acquaint representative workers with
problems and solutions from other departments or plants to
broaden their own frames of reference for ideas pertaining to
their jobs.
Some companies, including AC Spark Plug, report good results
220 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
from specialized courses in creative thinking or creative problem-
solving methods. These are usually aimed at developing potentials
among middle-management executives, or men who are consid-
ered good prospects for the middle -management corps. The ob-
jectives of such specialized training are, first, to increase the
individual's own creative output, and secondly, to make the ex-
ecutive more receptive to ideas from others. Generally, a man
who has invested eighteen to twenty hours in a classroom study-
ing and experiencing the creative processes will be more conscious
of the need for a creative climate than one who has never had such
specialized instruction and practice.
Along with any more or less formal training program should go
some form of development program. This differs from training
to the extent that development is usually something you can guide
a worker into, but probably not control to the extent you can a
training program. It is usually aimed at helping the employee gain
self-confidence and to develop as a person. In far too many com-
panies, workers are made to "live by the book"—required to do
only what they are told to do. In time, they become as helpless as
an unfeathered baby bird in exercising initiative. On the other
hand, in companies where authority is delegated and workers are
tested with responsibilities by being put "on their own," they do
make mistakes, but simultaneously, they also develop initiative,
exercise their imaginations, and grow as people. If you can guide
employee or executive development in the direction of a more
creative approach to living and to problems, the company will,
needless to say, also benefit.
Since this guidance does not always allow dictation of direction,
your efforts will probably be limited to making imaginative sug-
gestions of things the particular employee should take an interest
in. Encourage him to study company problems—which means, of
course, letting him know what the problems are and cooperating
in his efforts to get information for the study. Encourage ques-
tioning—and, if it is you that is being questioned, be sure your
answers really do answer. Try to explain a problem or situation
221
C R E A T I N G THE C R E A T I V E CLIMATE
in full, but without prejudicing or restricting subsequent thinking
by the worker. Another method, fairly obvious, is to encourage
workers who have ideas to try them out.
A few other development devices worth considering: member-
ships in job or industry-related organizations; company social
activities outside the plant; participation in outside study courses,
with time off to do so. All of these have the advantage of exposing
workers to other people with other problems, methods, ideas, and
thinking patterns to help build an "idea background" the worker
can utilize in solving the problems you give him.
A frequently overlooked tool, even in companies that have
made some attempts to get more ideas from the general working
force, is an organized and complete plan for two-way communi-
cations: a simple, orderly procedure for getting ideas from the
workers to the people who need those ideas and, just as impor-
tantly, a continuous, all-inclusive system for keeping workers
informed of problems that need solving and the rewards for
solving those problems. An executive or company that follows
that archaic policy of "Tell 'em nothing!" can only expect pay-
ment in kind so far as worker interest is concerned.
Actually, channels of communication from the "bottom" to the
"top" are probably already set in your company, and if you want
to use them for carrying ideas, it is only necessary to make sure
they are not clogged or booby-trapped by unsympathetic super-
visors, foremen, or junior executives. The channels for communi-
cating problems downward are probably in existence also: house
organs, pay envelope enclosures, bulletin boards, meetings, super-
visors, and training programs. These can be utilized for imple -
menting a creative program, providing the "technicians" manning
the communication network understand what is being sought.
Probably the only general guide necessary on this is that creativity
thrives best on informality. The atmosphere for communicating
ideas and for publicizing the need for them should be friendly
in both directions.
The type of information to be communicated downward is
222 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
something else again. It is not enough to present a cold, bald prob-
lem and expect such a presentation to stimulate ideas (although
it occasionally has for some companies—probably proof that any
communication is better than none!). With the pr oblem state-
ment should go enough background to enable the average worker
to understand it; the limitations, if any, on solutions; some sug-
gestions to get thinking started, i.e., the kinds of ideas that are
already under consideration and where they seem to fall short.
A pitfall to watch for is that your initial suggestions do not re-
strict or hamper fresh thinking.
If the problem is being presented on an individual contact basis,
some elementary psychology will often prove fruitful. The execu-
tive who ends up his problem indoctrination with "What would
you do if you were in my shoes, Bill?" can usually expect a better
reception than if he stopped with "That's the problem—take care
of it!"
For any kind of sustained program, one good system cor-
responds to the way you handle promotional or sales campaigns:
For one week, or month, the whole communications effort aims
at getting ideas on a particular production problem; the following
week or other period, the objective becomes waste reduction.
The next period may be on product improvement, or increasing
selling effectiveness; another could be on plant safety. This way
workers have specific targets to shoot at in their thinking, rather
than the broad, amorphous "Give us ideas."
Every plant should, of course, make use of suggestion boxes.
However, it would be a mistake to limit channels of idea-sug-
gesting to the boxes, and it is also a mistake to assume that just be-
cause the boxes are there and painted an attractive color, the
workers will use them without further efforts on your part. Your
communications program should include frequent reminders of
the need for ideas, and should stress and re-stress the point that
ideas are wanted and, if possible, will be rewarded.
One of the most difficult tasks in setting up any formal idea-
seeking program is certainly that of arriving at suitable rewards
223
C R E A T I N G THE C R E A T I V E CLIMATE
and incentives for ideas submitted. On the one hand, there is the
very real need for something to motivate workers to "give" more
than just the minimum effort needed to hold their jobs; and on
the other, there are all the complications of union agreements, the
moral issues such as fairness and equitability of the reward, and,
certainly, the company's ability to pay.
It may be, however, that motivating for creativity is being
needlessly overcomplicated. We read and hear so much about im-
pressive monetary rewards for new suggestions, methods, patents,
etc. that we often forget there are other ways to appeal to people.
When you are dealing with an individual who may be under your
supervision, for example, you may find, with a little gentle prob-
ing and a great deal of understanding, that money really isn't too
important. Individual motivations differ. This means that you can
use different incentives to spur people to think.
If, for example, your company morale is high and your esprit
de corps is strong, it may be enough just to let workers know
that you would appreciate their ideas on such and such a prob-
lem. The only reward needed then will be recognition and per-
haps praise for the idea-giver who succeeds, and sincere thanks
for those who did not quite make it. On the other hand, if your
plant morale is low, it may be that demonstrating some real crea-
tive leadership can help raise morale to the point where it will
become the factor that motivates for you.
Other nonmonetary rewards to consider include such things as
adaptations of "service awards" like lapel pins for workers who
submit acceptable ideas: a bronze pin for five ideas; silver for
ten; gold for twenty-five; etc. Another way would be to bring
the family into the rewarding: instead of cash for ideas, give
points tied in with one of the established incentive-reward mer-
chandise catalogues so familiar in sales promotion.
AC Spark Plug uses a program of giving supervisory employees
point credits for ideas submitted. Points range from 10 to 200 per
idea. Each supervisor has a personal goal of 100 points a year.
These point scores are used in considering promotions and salary
224 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
increases. Non-supervisory personnel receive cash awards for their
suggestions and may earn as much as $5,000 for an idea.
At Lincoln Electric Company, the creative contribution each
worker makes is one of the basic factors in determining the
amount of annual incentive bonus he earns. Lincoln evaluates each
person's contribution in new ideas, new methods, and new think-
ing. This plan, although rewards are monetary in nature, is tied
in with profit-sharing, a less costly way of paying, and pays off
directly to the worker who has ideas that can help the company
reduce costs, increase output, improve quality, or help the com-
pany in its relations with its customers and the public.
For a continuing program, you might consider a weekly or
monthly award for the most original idea submitted, regardless
of whether or not it can actually be used. This offers a double
opportunity: it maintains worker interest in submitting ideas, and
it forces management to set up a system for regular review of all
submitted ideas.
Of course, any rewards made for ideas should be well pub-
licized throughout the company. The best encouragement you can
give any individual to break out of the rut of conformity and to
explore new possibilities for the company is the knowledge that
others who have done so have met with both management support
and some form of reward and recognition.
It could be very possible for a company to have all the theoreti-
cal requisites for a creative atmosphere and fail to get any ideas
from it. This is frequently the case in smaller companies where,
by virtue of favorable social and environmental factors, morale
and esprit de corps are already high. But idea production is low.
Creating the atmosphere is usually not enough. Workers must also
be stimulated to take advantage of that atmosphere. In fact, it may
be necessary to do something as basic as calling attention to the
fact that the atmosphere exists. In the comfortable acceptance of
established and recurring work habits, workers may forget that
new ideas are really wanted. So it is necessary to repeat the atten-
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C R E A T I N G THECREATIVECLIMATE
tion-calling periodically until acceptance of the new creative
policy itself becomes a habit.
Suggestions for stimulating idea production are many and
varied. Some are simply communications techniques borrowed
from advertising and editorial fields. Some companies have, how-
ever, experimented with actions that can be taken, and here are
a few of their ideas:
Idea Breaks. These can range all the way from daily or weekly
half-hour sessions, where employees are encouraged to do nothing
but sit and think, down to informal meetings wherein an idea-
trained foreman calls his group together during the coffee break
and presents a problem for them to "kick around." Such sessions
may or may not employ some of the formal group creative tech-
niques described in Chapter 10. A more ambitious type of idea
break is that used in several large research organizations where
researchers are theoretically free to spend up to 20 per cent of
their paid time working on projects of their own choosing.
Experimental Facilities. Many companies have successfully en-
couraged profitable developments through the expedient of offer-
ing the use of such standing company facilities as laboratories,
model shops, and machine shops for experimental work on new
ideas related to company problems. This is usually tied in with
the program of giving a percentage of company time for such
work. In other cases, only the facilities are made available, and
the worker, if he wants to use them, does so on his own time.
Many workers are willing to do this, particularly if they know
that the company will be generous in rewarding them for a suc-
cessful development.
Discussion. Regular or periodic discussions of problems are, of
course, a standard in-company communications technique. But
the practice of setting them up on a scheduled basis, with the sole
object of stimulating workers to produce ideas on company prob-
lems, is well worth considering if a company needs or wants ideas.
Closely related to this is the use many organizations make of the
226 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
Brainstorming technique. They frankly admit that the ideas actu-
ally produced in the Brainstorm session may be of secondary
value. What they are after is the stimulation that Brainstorming
a problem gives the participants to continue thinking about it ort
their own.
Competition. Considering that Americans are basically a com-
petitive people, it is surprising that more has not been done to
encourage friendly competition among workers for ideas. It is
fairly common to pit departments or sections or plants against
one another in campaigns to reduce absenteeism or production re-
jects or accidents. It should also be possible to develop similar
competition to stimulate idea or improvement suggestions.
Display. Every plant has lobbies, entrances, bulletin boards, or
other "dead" space that could be used for idea-stimulating dis-
plays. For instance, a display of models of basic machinery and
machinery modifications in your industry could easily tie in with
the rewards for inventing such machinery. Another display might
serve to encourage some of the more timid souls by tracing out
a few of the ridiculous or impractical inventions of the past and
demonstrating how applied creativity developed them into useful
machines or products. Still another type of display could use
photos or models from some of the "world of the future" maga-
zine articles and features that are so popular today. This, if well
planned, could serve to orient workers' minds toward the
future and stimulate speculation on how your company's prod-
ucts or services can be made to fit in.
Follow-up. No program of creative stimulation can be con-
sidered complete unless it includes a planned system for follow-up
and action on the ideas produced. This is so essential that it might
even be wise to plan what you are going to do with ideas before
you worry about how you are going to get them.
The follow-up cycle must provide for such factors as screening
and evaluating ideas, determining suitable awards or rewards,
and an air-tight, iron-clad, welded-to-the-floor procedure to make
sure that some action—whether investigative or activating—is
227
CREATING THE CREATIVE CLIMATE
taken on every promising idea. Your company can generate a
thousand million-dollar ideas, but until some action is taken, they
will not be worth the paper they are listed on. And last, but cer-
tainly not least, your follow-up system must provide for indi-
vidually communicating with every worker on the ideas he sub-
mits, whether they are accepted or rejected.
This worker communication, ideally, is best done in person.
But where that is impractical, it should certainly be a highly
personalized, individually written letter from some individual
whom the worker will consider important in the company.
If the letter is to reject an idea, it should summarize the details
of the proposed suggestion; tell and explain what action was
taken; and tell why the idea cannot be adopted. Give the worker
enough information about your investigation of his idea to show
that it was considered fairly. Then be sure to thank the suggester
and ask him to try again. The whole letter should be positive
in nature and show appreciation of the worker's effort, coopera-
tion in company objectives, and his eagerness to do a better job.
If the letter is one informing a worker that his idea has been
accepted, you follow somewhat the same general content: de-
scribe his suggestion briefly; explain the investigation and testing,
if any; show him the benefits you expect from it; explain how his
reward or award was computed; encourage him to submit more
ideas. And, of course, express your appreciation. Remember that
the successful "inventor" will "spread the word around" that
they do, indeed, like good ideas "upstairs." Give him some proof
in the form of intelligent information of just how his idea was
handled from beginning to end.
All of this makes it apparent that building a more creative
climate is not the easiest task an executive can undertake. How-
ever, the stakes are high and the rewards are tremendous. Mr.
A. L. Simberg, Supervisor of Personnel, Research and Develop-
ment of the AC Spark Plug Division, made a report on the four-
year results of their program. He said: "While many tangible re-
sults and dollar savings have occurred either directly or indirectly
228 HOWTOBEAMORECREATIVEEXECUTIVE
because of the Creativity Program, it is impossible to list them all.
In addition to specific results, many employees ha ve made general
statements along the following lines:
1. The creativity program has tended to make everyone much
more aware of problems and problem areas and has increased their
sensitivity to them.
2. People are much more responsive to suggestions. They are will
ing to try many more things than previously. The basic philosophy
of the entire organization has been permeated with "green light"
thinking. The first reaction to novel ideas is seldom negative.
3. The number of ideas has shown a marked up-turn. Evidentially,
the theorem that quantity helps in producing quality seems to have
taken effect. The first obstacle encountered seldom stops anyone any
more.
4. Much value to the organization has accrued from the principle
of having more than one solution to a problem. It is the rule, rather
than the exception, for people to turn in three or four alternatives for
solving problems.
5. The creativity program has helped our employees not only on
the job, but in their home life and outside activities as well. One
engineer, who also serves as a minister on Sundays, attests to its help
in preparing his sermons; another talks about its uses in working
through the local Youth Bureau and finding unusual and interesting
tasks for the boys with whom he works.
At the Duquesne, Pennsylvania, Works of the U.S. Steel Cor-
poration, a unique company-wide creativity program aimed at in-
creasing safety is under way with the title "Operation Attitude."
Mr. W. W. Keenan, Supervisor of Safety, reported that in the
first two years of the program, the workers of the Duquesne plant
had completed the study of 4,300 job procedures. Unnumbered
changes in operating practice, and hundreds of pieces of equip-
ment, large and small, were installed at the suggestion of the
production workers themselves.
"Operation Attitude has the effect of giving us 6,000 safety
men," says Mr. Keenan. "And having that many persons concen-
trating on this job is a lot more effective than relying on a few
229
C R E A T I N G T H E C R E A T I V E CLIMATE
hundred management personnel or a handful of safety engineers,
believe me."
He also reported that out of the study of the 4,300 standard pro-
cedures have come literally hundreds of recommendations for
new or different equipment, or changes or additions to machinery
already in use, in order to provide maximum safety on the job.
Some of these recommendations, he said, are so simple and under-
standable that safety men shudder to think that they overlooked
them. Others are more complex and reflect sound thinking and
long years of experience on the job.
But profitable and productive as a creative climate can be, there
is one caution for the executive who undertakes to build it in his
company: it cannot be accomplished overnight no matter how
willing or how sold you yourself are. But one thing we do know:
Creativity in any company must come from the top!
14
How to Spot
Creative Potential in Others
One of the most important responsibilities any executive must
handle is seeing that his company gets "the most" from its
workers. This is particularly so when it comes to creativeness—
the production of the ideas upon which the company is dependent
to make money, or to operate efficiently and at a profit.
Most of us, in our everyday lives, make the mistake of over-
simplifying our classifications of others. We say someone is "lik-
able" or "not likable." We call him a "pessimist" or an "optimist."
We decide a certain worker is "responsible" or "irresponsible." A
man is either "loyal" to the company or he is "disloyal." Our defi-
nitions are all black or white—we have no "gray scales" for in-
betweens. However, most people, upon careful analysis, fall into
the gray area between black and white. And this complicates the
job of the executive who is trying to make certain that his com-
pany is making the most of the creative potential at its disposal.
The problem of spotting creative potential is also complicated
230
231
HOW TO SPOT C R E A T I V E POTENTIAL IN OTHERS
by the fact that people do not always think up to their capacities.
It is relatively easy to spot the highly creative person who is
using his ability actively and conclusively to its fullest extent.
Not so easy to spot are at least five other types of workers who
have the ability to make creative contributions, but who are not
contributing to their full potentials. These types are:
The highly creative person who is doing inferior work because
he is asked to work at tasks that do not challenge his abilities
sufficiently.
The highly creative person who is being limited by emotional
problems which interfere with his proper perspective on either
his work or his job or himself.
The person with a high creative potential who lacks sufficient
knowledge of, or the instinct for, problem-solving methods to put
that potential to work.
The potentially creative person who is limited by too narrow a
range of interests or by attitudes opposed to creative (or any
other!) endeavor.
The potentially creative person who lacks sufficient knowledge
of his field or the business he is in.
It has been said that "Creativity is best revealed by what it
creates." There is certainly a great deal of truth in this. But the
practice of looking only at achievement for determining creative
potential can cause an executive to overlook many potentially
good creative workers who have never had either the inclination
or the opportunity to reveal themselves as being creative.
The creativity program installed in the AC Spark Plug Division
of General Motors was described briefly in the last chapter. This
program has, to a certain extent, become the model for dozens
of similar programs by other companies. An especially valuable
part of the AC program, so far as this company is concerned, is
the testing they do to uncover the various hidden classifications
of creativity. These tests were developed because AC manage-
ment wanted to find out if they had their most creative people
working in areas where their creativity would find the best out-
232 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
lets. And they hoped to be able to "spread the talent around" to
bolster up the idea potential of every department, based upon
the need of each department.
The tests developed by AC's Personnel Research Section were
validated by approved psychological measurements and were
found to have a high degree of correlation with ratings of special
test groups set up within the company. Test scores were also cor-
related against actual records of ideas, suggestions, and proposals
submitted by members of the test groups.
The AC Test of Creative Ability, which was developed by
Mr. Simberg and Dr. Richard Harris, is now used extensively
within AC and has also been made available to other interested
companies, with the following restrictions:
(1) The person or firm desiring to use it must send someone to
Flint to learn all aspects of administering the test, and scoring
and interpreting it. (2) If the test is used, a validation study must
be conducted, using criterion groups. (3) AC Spark Plug Division
must be advised of the results of such a study. It is apparent that
these restrictions are more for the protection of the company
that "borrows" the test than for the benefit of AC.
The AC Test of Creativity is designed to give an indication of
the number and uniqueness of ideas a person is likely to have. As
such, AC says, "It may or may not be a test of creative ability,
depending on which one of a number of definitions of creativity
is accepted. It will probably be more accurate to think of the test
as an indicator of a person's ability to produce a quantity of
unique ideas in a given situation."
The full test is in five parts, and requires one hour and twenty
minutes to administer:
PART I: A twenty-minute test containing five common situations.
A person lists as many possible consequences of each situation as he
can. The part yields both a quantity and a uniqueness score.
Typical example: In a thick fog in a major American harbor, a
passenger liner is moving cautiously toward its berth. While it has
the latest radar equipment, it is inoperative and the radar operator is
233
HOWTOSPOT C R E A T I V E P O T E N T I A L IN OTHERS
unaware of this fact. Another boat is approaching the liner amidships,
and it is obvious that neither ship is aware of the other's presence.
List all the things you can think of that might happen as a conse-
quence.
PART II: A ten-minute test of general reasoning containing five
unusual and not necessarily true statements. A person lists as many
reasons as possible to explain the truth of the statements. This part
also yields a quantity and a uniqueness score.
Example problem: Residents of Chicago consume, on the average,
more Brazil nuts than residents of Omaha.
PART III: A fifteen-minute test of sensitivity to problems contain-
ing a list of five common appliances. A person lists any improvements
that he feels could be made in each one. This part yields a uniqueness
score.
Example: List all the things you think are wrong with, or could be
improved upon in, a wrist watch.
PART IV: A twenty-minute test of practical judgment containing
five problem situations. A person gives the solutions which he con-
siders to be the least expensive and least time -consuming. This part
yields a single quality score.
Example: An Air Force pilot was told to take samples of air at five
different altitudes up to 10,000 feet. For this purpose he was given
a small plane with a nonpressurized cabin and five bottles with small
openings which could be sealed with a cork. When he was ready to
take off, it occurred to him that the bottles already contained air at
ground level. This air had to be removed so that air at the varying
altitudes could be collected. Rather than go to the trouble of locating
a pump or other special device to create a vacuum in each bottle,
how could he accomplish the assigned task?
PART V: A fifteen-minute test of originality containing five com-
mon objects. A person gives as many possible uses as he can think
of for each object. This part yields both a quantity and a uniqueness
score.
Example: How many uses can you think of for a common paper
clip?
Although AC and other companies who have used the AC test
report satisfactory results from it, no company should ever feel
234 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
that such testing is the panacea for unlocking, or even uncovering,
creative potential with 100 per cent accuracy. All such tests
measure what people can do under test conditions. They do not
give you a completely accurate picture of what people will do.
When carefully standardized, validated, and administered, there-
fore, such formal testing procedures can give you indications of a
person's capabilities, but no clear-cut prediction of his perform-
ance. This is one of the reasons for the AC requirement that any
company using their test come to Flint for prior indoctrination.
In practical business management, however, there are many
"rule-of-thumb" tests and observations that the executive can
apply to the persons under him to get a nonscientific, but pos-
sibly functionally usable, measurement of creative potential. It
goes without saying that the final value of any such applications
as these depends largely upon the judgment, understanding, and
interpretive abilities of the person who is making the observations.
Before going into the descriptions of these symptoms, therefore,
it is desirable to establish some "ground rules":
First, all men are not created equal when it comes to imagina-
tive abilities. Even if they were, not all would have had back-
grounds and home environments that would give them both the
encouragement and the opportunities to practice their creative
abilities. For many persons, the chief deterrents to creativity will
have been built up during their years as children under unsympa-
thetic or noncreative parents.
Second, even psychologists and sociologists who have special-
ized in the study of creative people do not always agree exactly
on the personality factors that make a person creative. These
people are handicapped in pinpointing the creative characteristics
by the relatively late start that has been made in this field of
study—we simply have not built up the background of tests and
verified case histories to be able to make accurate predictions
even of "potentials."
Third, it is desirable to spot creative potential as early as pos-
235
HOW TO SPOT CREATIVE POTENTIAL IN OTHERS
sible after a person goes to work for you. (At AC, for example,
the Test for Creativity is given to all new hires at the time of em-
ployment.) This is important, because creative potential will not
develop unless it is given favorable conditions and encouragement
to do so. A highly creative person, put in a job that does not make
demands on his imagination, can quickly lose interest in applying
imagination, or, worse, can become frustrated and embittered
toward the company.
Fourth, the process of identifying, or encouraging, creative
potential should be continuing. Remember, many people may
be completely unaware that they have the ability to produce
ideas. They may completely lack any understanding of problems
or any knowledge of methods for solving problems. Only through
patience and friendly "coaching" can you help them develop
the confidence to "venture out" into the world of imagination.
So although you may employ a formal or informal screening for
creative potential initially, it is important that you also watch for
any signs of developing potential as the worker progresses.
Finally, people with creative potential can be spotted by the
executive who has an understanding of the basic characteristics,
at least as we now know them, and who will apply his under-
standing toward interpreting the "signs " that any person gives
to indicate his personality.
Mr. C. M. Sinnett, of RCA-Victor's Television Engineering
Department, describes the process of interviewing to determine
creative potential this way:
If we are going to identify creativity, then we must separate and
define some of the main characteristics possessed to a greater extent
by the creative individual or engineer than by his less creative or
even non-creative brother. In the final analysis, these characteristics
may be mixed up in the genes, chromosomes, or hormones, but as far
as I know, this has not been determined. We shall have to deal with
factors which are visible to us, or can be found without the help of
the electron microscope, radioactive materials, or the encephalograph.
236 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
In other words, we must apply common sense, experience, intuition,
and a lot of plain "seat of the pants" judgment. I agree that this sounds
very prosaic, but the method is quite effective after all.
Having thus removed all the glamour and most of the science from
the subject, just what do we have to go on? I believe we can break it
down into two basic categories: surface characteristics and mental
processes. Some of the surface characteristics which can establish a
basis for a first impression or judgment of an individual are (1) gen-
eral appearance, (2) speech, (3) hobbies, and (4) experience. Please
note that I said "first impression" because we are barely starting on
our dissective road.
Let us now consider a couple of illustrative examples. These may
be extreme cases, but I have seen both types many times on college
campuses while recruiting. In fact, they can be found in almost any
Engineering Department if one cares to take the time to look for
them. On occasions we may rely too heavily on these first impressions,
and then have a rude awakening as the interview proceeds. This hap-
pens so seldom, however, that I believe it is no more than the ex-
ception that proves the rule.
We shall assume that you are sitting behind a desk and have the
job of interviewing several candidates for a position in your Engi-
neering Department. Approaching you is a young man in his twenties.
As he walks toward you it is obvious that he is no Beau Brummell
as far as attire is concerned. There is really nothing radically wrong
about it, but you have the overall impression that his mind was on
many other things than his appearance when he got dressed. I don't
imply that the creative person is never well-dressed, but if you will
look around you and observe the highly creative people you know,
you will probably find that the majority of them dress with an air
of careless abandon. As your prospect comes closer, you note that he
is looking straight at you; that any movement of his eyes is quick;
and there is no outward sign of nervousness. In other words, he is
as anxious to meet you as you are to meet him. He appears utterly
self-confident and possesses an intensity of purpose that is unmistak-
able.
With these preliminaries out of the way, we have the next check
point—his manner of speech. You note in talking to him that he will
carry his share of the conversation irrespective of the subject being
237
HOW TO SPOT CREATIVE POTENTIAL IN OTHERS
discussed. His grammar may not be perfect and on occasion he may
not say exactly what he means, but his speech tends to be snappy and
to the point. No difficulty is found in getting him to talk about any-
thing.
As you delve into his hobbies and experience, you find that he has
done many things outside school hours. He has built radio receivers
or amplifiers and perhaps serviced them for his neighbors. While he
was in high school, he built model airplanes, even reaching the radio-
controlled gas model stage. He dabbled a bit in photography, includ-
ing developing, printing, and enlarging his own prints, and can dis-
cuss intelligently such things as lenses, light meters, exposure time,
film speeds, etc.
By now you are convinced this is the man you want and the only
problem is how to land him. I don't know the answer to this part of
the story. At any rate, there is no need to spend further time question-
ing him, so an offer is made and you look for the next applicant.
As this fellow approaches you, his appearance, particularly his
clothes and bearing, are sort of ordinary. There is nothing unusual
about him that you can detect. As he comes toward you, he may
look straight at you but there is no fire in his eyes—they are not
exactly listless, but his attitude seems to be one of "Well, here I am;
try and find out something about me!" His handshake is perfunctory,
there is no particular life to it, and you wish there was some way to
strike a spark in him. So far you have a negative impression regard-
ing his creative ability, but perhaps you are wrong. It may be that
he is reticent, scared, an introvert, or able to hide his true feelings.
You start the interview by asking him questions regarding his
school work, his laboratory experiments, his outside experience, etc.
To all questions you get answers, but they have no particular interest
factor connected with them. Delving into his hobbies indicates that
he has never tinkered with electronic devices or the construction of
any kind of a model. He does like to golf and fish and has always been
fond of athletics. When asked why he took up engineering, he isn't
too sure, but basically he feels that it is a good line to get into, partic -
ularly since there is a shortage of engineers. He feels there is not
much the matter with anything you can think of; no improvements
which need to be made. By this time you are convinced that he is not
creative and unless some miracle occurs, he never will be creative.
238 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
It should be remembered that Mr. Sinnett's interviewing is
done with the view of locating creative potential for television
engineering. Hence his emphasis on previous demonstrations of
interest in electronics by the candidates. An executive interview-
ing prospective workers in other fields should be similarly pre-
pared to question previous experie nces and interests that would
indicate a real inclination toward the field the candidate is being
considered for. As one example, a young man applying for an
office or administrative-type job may show signs of imaginative
ability through previous accomplis hments as an "administrator"
in one of the "Junior Achievement" groups so popular among
high school students.
In beginning your rule -of-thumb testing and observations,
there are a few pitfalls to avoid. Any person, understandably,
tends to favor persons he considers like himself. For example,
a college-educated executive might have an inclination to "look
down on" a worker who may not have finished high school. But
when it comes to creative ability, the actual educational level
attained by a person may not be too important. A basically cre-
ative mind will have enough drive to acquire the equivalent knowl-
edge of a college education in other ways. At the same time, a
college degree, even from the same school as the screening
executive's, is no guarantee of high creative potential.
Executives, being human, also tend to like the person most who
is most cooperative in following company procedures, and who
gets along with other people. This kind of person, in many cases,
makes the executive's or supervisor's job much easier. A creatively
gifted person, on the other hand, tends to be independent in
thought and in his actions. He may occasionally ask embarrassing
questions of an executive. He may prefer his own ways of doing
things and his own methods of solving problems. In short, he may
be a true nonconformist. If this nonconformity has ever been at
the expense of the screening executive, he may, inadvertently, not
do the best job of judging the creative worth of the person.
Although most creative persons usually know or sense where
239
HOW TO SPOT CREATIVE POTENTIAL IN OTHERS
they are going, there are many who perform erratically. The
executive who happens to observe such a person when he is in a
"low" may make the mistake of underestimating that person's
potential. This is another argument for constant observation of
a worker for signs of creative potential.
Most suggestions for informal observing and testing to spot
creative potential are based on the outward signs of the basic
creative characteristics and the thinking patterns of creative peo-
ple. This puts quite a responsibility upon anyone trying to screen
people for creative potential, because so much is dependent upon
the observation and correct interpretation of the basic "signs."
However, here are some general personality traits to look for:
The Observant Person. Generally, a person who is highly alert
to what is around him, who sees details and relationships that
others miss, has a great advantage in developing creative potential.
Knowledge. New ideas are usually combinations of old ideas,
or old ideas in new forms. The greater a person's knowledge about
his field, the greater his potential creativeness. Remember that
field knowledge may be acquired through related experience or
on-the-job instruction—it does not necessarily have to be from
schooling. It is relatively easy to determine a person's knowledge
of his job, field, company, or industry.
A Good Memory. This is a part of the acquisition of knowl-
edge, but becomes more important in the less formal types of
knowledge. The man who can remember an odd-shaped piece
of metal he saw in the storage room at just the time such a piece
is needed, may be indicating the kind of "odds-and-ends" memory
that frequently typifies a creative mind.
Drive. This is a relatively easy factor to observe. It shows itself
by a man's dogged determination to see a job through—or his
insistence on finishing a task before letting something else inter-
fere. Such persistence, however, may easily be confused with
stubbornness or obstinacy. The determining factor will usually
be the reason or motivation for persisting.
Ability to Concentrate. This is more difficult to determine.
240 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
Some persons, when they concentrate, are literally in a wor ld
of their own. Nothing can bother or distract them. Others, how-
ever, can just as easily develop a high degree of concentration in
the midst of relative calamity, and may even be contributing to
the calamity. But the ability to concentrate on a problem, or the
solution to it, to the exclusion of other irrelevant and distracting
factors, is usually a mark of a creative personality.
Reasoning Power. The ability to discipline thinking into logical
reasoning patterns is another prime creative characteristic. Re-
member the creative mind's ability to be thoroughly organized
and methodical in seeking solutions to problems, regardless of its
ability to be the same with ordinary conventions such as dress,
work schedules, etc. It is important, of course, to determine the
quality of a person's reasoning, along with his methods of reason-
ing. It is perfectly possible for a man to follow a sound, logical,
well-thought-out approach to a problem and arrive at a com-
pletely erroneous conclusion.
Communicative Ability. This is not a basic creative characteris-
tic, but it is a highly valuable one for a creative person to have.
It is mentioned here as a possible cause of misjudging a person in
attempting to determine whether or not he is creative. Some crea-
tive persons can communicate their ideas and thoughts with ease.
Others, of a more introverted type, may have trouble putting
their ideas and thoughts into words, either written or spoken.
Furthermore, it is easy to overlook the importance or significance
hidden in a short memo or a quick answer by a person who has
thought a proposition through in all its ramifications, and then
"netted" it down to a short explanation. Communication, then,
may or may not be a tip-off to creative potential; the important
caution is that you do not let its lack "throw you" in your evalu-
ation.
The Curious Person. This is an easy-to-spot trait and a key one
to be alert for in another person. Chances are anyone without
curiosity will not have a very high degree of creative potential.
It is importa nt, however, to distinguish between true creative
241
HOW TO SPOT CREATIVE POTENTIAL IN OTHERS
curiosity and the idle type of questioning that only serves as con-
versation. ("How's the weather outside?" or "Where did you
have lunch today?")
The Skeptic. In evaluating this quality, it is important to
evaluate the quality or motivation of the skepticism. The creative
skeptic doubts many things—particularly the obvious things that
everyone else accepts perhaps too readily. The noncreative skeptic
has destruction or belittlement as his motivation. The two can
usually be distinguished by an adroit question or two. The non-
creative skeptic will usually assume that things are going from bad
to worse and nothing can be done about it, so why try? The crea-
tive skeptic normally feels that no matter how bad or how wrong
something is, it can always be made better. He may even have
some ready suggestions for betterment.
Ready Suggestio ns. There is a type of person who, no matter
what kind of problem is presented to him, usually has several sug-
gestions for solving it. Regardless of the value of the ideas, such
a person is giving a strong indication of idea fluency. If his ideas
are all hopelessly off-target, or inconceivable in the light of the
limitations of the problem, it may indicate a need for some in-
doctrination in problems per se. But generally speaking, idea
fluency is one of the most valuable traits in a creative person.
Pace Changes. Nobody can be creative who loses the ability
to change his mental pace occasionally. This is manifested in a
really creative person by his knowledge of, and interest in, many
things. The ability to be "wrapped up" in a problem one minute,
and then relax the mind completely with something else the next
minute, is a key characteristic of the person who has developed
the ability to discipline his thinking and change his mental pace.
This type of person, however, should not be confused with the
"activity boys"—the types who belong to every club they can
join; participate in every social activity they can fit in; and man-
age always to keep themselves surrounded by people every min-
ute of the waking day. Far from being a manifestation of creative
ability, this frenzied activity may be just the opposite: a re vela -
242 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
tion of deep-seated feelings of inadequacy and inferiority which
the individual attempts to compensate for by an enforced sched-
ule of activities with other people. He is, in short, trying to prove
to himself that other people do accept him. The really creative
person may not care whether other people accept him or not.
Specification Fighting. The person who is held down to a
single routine job has his horizons compressed to the point where
his creative ability may not be able to exercise itself. If the creative
urge is strong enough, it may show up as a constant battle to "get
in on" other jobs or other functions, or at least to broaden the
horizons into a knowledge of other people's work. It may also,
of course, be a mere objection to authority of any kind when a
person refuses to follow instructions or stick to the specifications
of his job. But a persistent resistance to a narrow job specification
may indicate an imagination that is not being given the freedom
to imagine.
Routine Buck ing. The routine bucker is closely related to the
specification fighter. But in the case of the person who hates
routine, it may be more an indication of a strong sense of curiosity
at work—the kind of curiosity that burns at the person to explore
and to venture. Routine, of course, means repetition. But the really
creative mind, when it has been over a problem course once,
rapidly loses interest in repeating that trip. It much prefers to go
on to something new.
It can be seen from just this cursory study of the ways creative
potential can show itself that creative ability can announce itself
in ways which a company or an executive might not like. It is
necessary to have job specifications; some people have to put up
with routine; a strict "lone wolf" may be a detriment to certain
operations or functions. Yet each of these may have potential as
an idea man for your company. Many of the organizational and
operational problems raised by the presence of such people can
be solved to a large degree by the placement of them in the com-
pany. This is one of the basic aims of properly locating your
creative potential in the first place. Just as it would be sheer
243
HOWTOSPOTCREATIVE P O T E N T I A L IN OTHERS
waste of talent to put a physicist into a storeroom as a clerk, so
it is also highly wasteful to put a person with problem-solving
abilities in a routine job where he never has any problem greater
than should he take sugar in his coffee today.
It should also be remembered that few of these "types" of per-
sonalities will ever be found in a "pure" state. They have been
set out as individuals here to make it easier to distinguish among
them. But many people will be mixtures and composites of any
or all of these to varying degrees. The mere presence of one such
trait, then, is probably not enough to immediately classify a person
as "potentially creative." The detection of several or many such
traits, however, should at least give the executive cause to go out
of his "way to really get acquainted with the worker. The result
of further acquaintance may be the happy discovery of still an-
other mind capable of coping with the company's problems in an
imaginative way.
15
The Creative Executive
in Action
In the world of business, the word "leader" is one not used very
often. Or, if it is applied to a man, as often as not it is in a fatuous
sense.
Businessmen, perhaps through modesty or pretended modesty,
seem to prefer terms like "executive," "administrator," "super-
visor," "manager," or even "chief." Yet the problems inherent in
all those preferred titles are problems involving leadership: making
decisions; implementing policy and action; influencing the think-
ing and actions of others in such a way that they will want to be
"followers."
Leadership, of course, comes in all sizes and shapes. The grade
school youngster who organizes a game of sand-lot baseball is
exercising it. So is the production worker who feels that the only
solution to his problem lies in organizing a grievance committee
to complain to management. So is the company president who
"sells" his board on expending $5-million on a new plant. 244
245
THE C R E A T I V E EXECUTIVE IN ACTION
Of chief interest to the business leader, however, are forms of
leadership best described as "dynamic"—meaning leadership char-
acterized by energetic action that is both progressive and effec-
tive. And dynamic leadership must be creative leadership. It must
be imaginative and forwardly oriented to be of benefit to the
company or organization in which it is applied. A man who dis-
plays energy in tackling the problems of his job, and who also
produces results that are both effective and progressive for the
company, is a dynamic, creative leader—no matter what his
official title or what he prefers to call himself.
It is true, of course, that every business executive or leader,
no matter how creative or dynamic the results he obtains, is first
of all a human being. If we were to list all the virtues that an
executive should have, according to all the writers and "authori-
ties" on management, the composite results would probably be
more angelic than human. Therefore, the best we can hope for in
describing the traits of creative leadership are some "ideals" that
are worth working toward, and even these must be generalized to
a high degree.
It has been said that the qualities for success as an executive
are "drive; a sense of responsibility; the ability to communicate;
the ability to think; the ability to get along with people; health;
good character." To these should probably be added that of
having a focus or goal in life: the creative leader should know
what it is he is trying to accomplish—he should know where he is
going and be able to explain it to others. It is often surprising
and even amazing how many men you can find who are in their
middle productive years of thirty-eight to forty-two who have
never asked themselves the questions, "What do I want out of
life?" and "Just where do I think I am going?" But a would-be
creative leader must know the answers to these because, upon
them, will revolve his entire attitude toward his relationships with
others.
The executive's activities in applying his own creativity to help
others release their imaginations are many: he, as an individual,
246 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
must be a planner, coordinator, judge, and coach. And he must do
each of these jobs in such a way that it does not interfere with any
of the others or weaken his position as the final authority. This, in
many cases, requires the highest degrees of applied imagination!
The creative executive will, needless to say, set a creative ex-
ample himself. He will always be ready to suggest courses of
action on problems that will at least get action started, without, in
any way, taking away from the delegated freedom to experiment
or develop. This means that the executive's own idea sources must
be developed. He will attend conventions; he will travel; he will
visit other plants or departments and question their proceedings
with a view toward finding new ideas. He will be familiar with
the views of business writers and authorities in trade magazines—
even in fields not directly connected to his own. He will associate
with creative people and people who can spark—and even shock
—his own thinking.
In attempting to obtain results through other people, the crea-
tive leader will, in a way, be a human chemist. He will think im-
personally about people —as if they were human chemicals that
will behave themselves in certain ways if skillfully handled. This
means he will "learn" his people. He will study their natures as the
chemist studies his chemical elements. The results, far from being
inhuman or cold, will be that he can then employ the specific
talents and reactions people have for creative, positive accomplish-
ment, instead of making the mistakes that are attendant upon per-
sonal, and often prejudiced, conception and misconception.
In the role of coordinator, probably the most difficult and
complex job the executive faces is that of delegation. But a
manager of anyone other than himself must learn to delegate
or cease to grow. His own success and ability will be measured
largely by his ability to get things done through other people.
The manager who will not delegate is always in danger of having
the people under him work at far below their capacities. One
symptom of inadequate delegation is that the executive finds him-
self saddled with details and so busy helping his people do their
247
TEH CREATIVE EXECUTIVEI ACTION
N
jobs that he has no time left to concentrate on and think about his
own job. And, of course, by insisting on such a close supervision
of subordinates' work, the executive is preventing them from
growing in their own right.
It is a well-quoted maxim of management that delegation of
responsibility must be accompanied by delegation of authority.
Not so well known is the maxim that there must be delegation
of the freedom to use imagination. This means that the subordi-
nate must have freedom to develop his own, even completely
new, ways of doing things, to develop or invent his own methods,
and to keep track of his own results. Many an executive knows
his job or his field so well that he can solve a problem almost
instinctively. And when he sees a subordinate struggling with a
puzzle that he could solve in a minute, there is an almost irresistible
temptation to step in and do the job. It requires real self-control
to resist that temptation. But it is the only way to ensure that, in
the long run, you will end up with subordinates who are capable
of doing their own thinking.
One of the best ways to accomplish this creative delegation is
to do so in terms of a completed job. It is necessary to tell people
what is required of them, of course. But, unless standardization is
absolutely necessary, they should not be told how to accomplish
what is wanted. The executive who is trying to encourage more
creativity in his company will avoid giving detailed job instruc-
tions along with the job assignment. He will, instead, present the
job assignment and require the subordinate to carry it out to the
finished job when he has a "complete package" to present as his
own effort.
The role of creative judge for the executive will usually overlap
or interlock with that of creative coach. Beginning with the reali-
zation that unless he, or the company, has provided it, the average
subordinate will not have had any training in creative problem-
solving methods, the executive must then take on the job of guid-
ing a worker through the necessary steps to solving a problem.
Initially, the executive will probably be the one who is sensi-
248 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
tive to the problem and who will recognize, define, and orient it.
If, however, he has an interest in developing a worker of promis-
ing creative potential, he may ask that person (or persons) to sit
in on a "problem-clinic" session and attempt to formulate a work-
able problem statement, with all its attendant requirements.
Next will come the job of gathering the information and data
needed to work with, screening and evaluating this, and correlat-
ing the "knowns" and "unknowns" of the problem details with
the data. Again, this can be assigned to a subordinate with an
explanation of why the information is wanted; or it can be made
a joint effort with a subordinate.
Once the principal "unknown" parts of the problem are clearly
delineated, the executive is then ready to delegate these off in the
form of specific problem assignments. He may, at this time, sug-
gest certain idea-development techniques, specialist resources, or
individual or group idea-gathering methods. But note "may sug-
gest." If he orders, or implies that he favors a certain method over
another, he will restrict the subordinate's freedom to think for
himself. If he suggests several alternative methods, he encourages
the subordinate to do some thinking on his own.
The executive should probably not get back into this picture
until the subordinate has come up with recommendations he has
developed on his own. It is a good technique of creative encour-
agement to make the idea-developing assignment one of providing
"three or four" alternatives for consideration. He may or may
not require the subordinate to make a specific recommendation
on one of the alternatives, and he should always require that all
ideas considered be available in case the subordinate's judgment is
open to question.
The executive cannot, of course, duck his own responsibility
for the successful completion of any courses of action that are
taken under his direction. He may, therefore, have to be arbitrary
in his final decision as to which of the recommended alternatives
he will accept. But he should also be completely "open" in his
249
THE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE IN ACTION
reasons, and be sure that he is being objective and imaginative.
In other words, that he is not just taking the "safe" way out.
And finally, if the subordinate's idea, suggestion, or recom-
mendation proves successful, the executive must acknowledge
and praise it. The worker must be made to feel a sense of ac-
complishment for having a part in the problem-solving effort,
no matter how much of a "follower's" role it was. Only in this
way can the novice problem-solver be given the encouragement
and confidence needed to build the inner resourcefulness that will
turn him into a creative problem-solver.
These few recommendations for executive coaching are based
on the fact that it is up to each "boss" to give his men maximum
opportunities to develop. This means the delegation of responsibil-
ity. More, it means exposing promising men to the company's
problems. It means letting them "sit in" while the seniors or bosses
wrestle and wrangle over problems. And it means giving them
specific assignments to carry out on their own as contributions to
solving the problems.
In the case of a younger subordinate, it is every bit as important
to build his courage and confidence as it is to increase his knowl-
edge of the business. He must feel free of any fear of criticism.
He must feel free to make mistakes, realizing that management
will consider mistakes as experie nce, and that they are willing to
pay for that experience as an investment in his future value to the
company. This does not mean, however, that he should never
expect criticism. Constructive criticism is how he will learn from
his mistakes. It can build his confidence, pride, ambition, loyalty,
and most importantly, his determination to do better. But it does
place on the executive the burden of making sure the criticism
is constructive, positive, and private.
One secret of making criticism constructive, other than think-
ing it through well in advance, is that of trying to get on the other
person's wave length. Try to see his point of view; imagine what
you would want if you were the person receiving the criticism in
250 HOW TO BE A MORE C R E A T I V E E X E C U T I V E
this particular case. Mr. Fred Manchee, formerly executive vice
president and treasurer of BBDO advertising agency, relates the
story a friend once told him of an experience that changed the
course of his business life:
"I was feeling pretty good," said the friend. "I liked my job,
had a healthy family, good home. And there was a man I'd
known for years, thought I knew pretty well. One day I found
out what I had never known—that this man and his wife had
a child who was a mindless lump. Every night of his life this
man went home and helped bathe and feed the child. Never
afterward did I forget that the man across the desk might be
carrying a totally unbearable load. And that whatever I planned
to say to him might be the last straw that would send him out the
window!"
And it was Charles Schwab who said, "There is nothing that so
kills the ambitions of a man as criticisms from his superiors. I
never criticize anyone. I believe in giving a man incentive to work.
So I am anxious to praise, but loath to find fault."
Much has been said in this book about the necessity of a
questioning or challenging attitude as a requisite for creativity.
Therefore, the creative leader will keep firmly in mind that he
must not only set the example in this, but must encourage others
to follow his example. It is all too easy for an executive to fall
into the habit or the trap of feeling that he or his contem-
poraries on the same level are the only persons capable of
creative or progressive thinking. But the executive who rebuffs
questions himself, or who discourages questions on the part of
subordinates, runs a grave risk of shutting himself off from either
a new idea or what would ultimately be a profitable line of
investigation. Therefore, the executive leader himself must be
open to questions and should, in fact, respect and encourage them
if he is interested in developing and releasing creativity in his
subordinates.
Perhaps, in our generalizing, we can sum up the personal at-
tributes necessary to be a creative leader with these observations:
251
T ECREATIVE EXECUTIVE INACTION
H
He must be receptive to other people's ideas; he must, in fact,
actively seek other people's ideas and help to supplement his own
imaginative resources.
He must, at the same time, be able to plant his ow n ideas in
the minds of others, and to compliment them on their ingenuity
and resourcefulness.
He must be sufficiently placid to see a subordinate make a
mistake, and to charge it off as an investment in the development
of his most valuable resource: a creative, progressive worker.
He must forever forego the luxury of that most satisfying of
experiences, "blowing his top" over the mistakes or shortcomings
of his assistants. He must never, under any circumstances, berate
or criticize a subordinate or worker in front of others.
He must be able to restrain himself from telling the sales
manager how to sell or the comptroller how to keep accounts,
no matter how much knowledge or experience he, the boss, has
had in these fields. He will, rather, content himself with exercising
broad direct and indirect control over obtaining results.
As was stated in Chapter 13, creativity in a company must come
from the top—top and middle management must pave the way.
This is so because only at the management level do the conditions
exist for the encouragement, development, and recognition of
both creative potential and the results of creative action.
Furthermore, it must be an executive responsibility because the
most difficult talent to develop in business is that of executive
replacement. Not only is such replacement in short supply, but
also the quality of it needs a great deal of upgrading. In this
respect, it is worth paying particular attention to the current
shortage of so-called "generalist" executives: those with the
breadth of knowledge and far-sighted vision to be able to cut
through the limiting thought patterns of the specialists and think
in terms of the over-all good of the company.
In this respect, creative encouragement and even "formal"
creative training may prove to be the most efficient and effective
method yet found for developing generalists. What is needed to
252 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
make a generalist is a broad understanding of many different
types of problems, and the capacity to think in terms of many
different approaches to solving all the problems encompassed in
any particular company's activities and interests. With the in-
creasing complexity of business today, even in such "formularized"
functions as accounting and traffic management, it is extremely
doubtful that any company can set up an executive training
program which will teach its future managers everything they
might possibly need to know about every problem they might
conceivably be called upon to solve. Far more efficient would be
a program aimed at teaching them to be "at home" with problems
of any kind, and to use their imaginations and resourcefulness
to produce creative solutions to those problems.
With regard to the business leader's own attitude, he should
realize that if, indeed, it is habit that takes us back to where
we were yesterday, then it is only an improper attitude that
keeps us there. A leader, to be a creative leader, must believe
there is a better way before he will be able to find it. He must
believe that, in most cases, there is more than one way. He must
recognize that he will never have the ultimate in human ac-
complishment, but that through utilizing his own imagination and
the creative potentials available to him, he can, with persistence,
accomplish results that will at least be superior to what he has
now. He must make sure that his own scope does not become too
narrow and that, if he is going to fail, he will at least fail forward.
He may not accomplish all that he sets out to do, but he will at
least carry his company forward beyond today.
And the creative executive will look to his own and his workers'
strengths as well as their weaknesses. He will learn to work with,
and make the most of, the values his company has, while he tries
to develop those that don't exist. He will utilize his own courage
as an example —rather than give in to his fears of the unknown.
And he will not retreat from those things he believes in, even
when he finds that he is alone among his peers in his beliefs.
For a business executive to grow in stature and quality in the
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THE C R E A T I V E E X E C U T I V E IN ACTION
coming years, he will need to be able to compete creatively—
not with other candidates for promotion, but with other busi-
nesses, with technologies of competitors, and even with national
and international developments. This means that management's
preference for the "sound" executives who are able to conform
and administer according to set standards and procedures will,
of necessity, be forced to give way to a search for executives who
will challenge all such standardized thinking and who will be
able to apply creative thinking to upgrading the company in every
phase of operations.
Ideas are probably the most valuable products any company or
organization ever produces. Therefore, under the common law of
investment and return, you cannot reasonably expect the job of
securing them to be an easy one. It takes persistence, determina-
tion, and dedication to make yourself more creative. It takes
persistence, determination, dedication, planning, and, above all,
imagination on the part of the executive to get more imagination
and develop a creative spirit in his company or organization.
As mentioned, this creative spirit is not something you can ac-
complish throughout a complete orga nization overnight—no mat-
ter how willing or sold you yourself are. But it could easily be that
your personal road to fame, fortune, and success in your company,
field, or industry will be that you will use your own imagination
to analyze, develop, and solve the problem of infusing your
organization with both the necessity and the means of getting all-
out, imaginative, creative thinking from everyone.
Appendix
Review Questions and Exercises
The following questions and exercises may be used to gain a greater
familiarity with and understanding of the principles and procedures
covered throughout the book; or as topics for group discussions based
on the book contents; or as class exercises for problem-solving courses
utilizing this book as text.
Chapter 1 • Why Be Creative?
1. Consider some social institution or concept with which you are
familiar—church, marriage, public schools, democracy, or the like.
a. What changes will take place in it in the next twenty years?
b. What new ideas have been introduced into it in the last hundred
years?
c. What forces exist to slow up or accelerate the changes in the
next twenty years?
2. It has been stated that technological knowledge—that pertaining
to the sciences —is increasing at a rate of 22 per cent a year. What
changes in thought patterns, ways of working, and job responsibilities
will this require for a salesman? purchasing man? office manager? pro
duction engineer? retailer?
254
APPENDIX 255
3. Do you agree with Mr. Brower's statement, "This in America is
the high tide of mediocrity, the great era of the goof-off, the age of
the half-done job?" If yes, why?—if no, why not? Think of at least
three examples to support your reasoning.
4. a. How can the increasing amount of leisure time, due to the
shorter work week, cause a social problem in this country?
b. Other than get a second job, what should you personally be
doing now to make sure you won't waste this coming leisure in
"escapist recreation"?
5. Think in terms of your own company or organization: what prob
lems that you have today could be aggravated by the growing shortage
of executives and administrators? What do you think your company
should be doing about this shortage now?
Chapter 2 • What Is Creative?
1. In your own words, distinguish between the terms "original,"
"talented," "imaginative," and "creative." Name at least one person
among your own acquaintances who exhibits primary symptoms of
each.
2. Give examples of progressive innovations in some commercial
product, other than the automobile, since it was first developed .
3. Suggest at least ten ways the introduction of frozen food into
supermarkets was a destructive force so far as "established" methods
were concerned.
4. The text traces out the history of what happened as a result of
John Dunlop's pneumatic tire being applied to the bicycle. Construct a
similar history beginning with the Wright brothers' first successful
airplane.
5. What would be the benefits to your company if you could cut
50 per cent of the cost out of your most important product? Suggest
at least five.
Chapter 3 • Characteristics of Creative People
1. a. Write down the name of the "most creative" person you know.
b. Write a short statement of the reasons why you think this per
son is creative.
c. Relate each of your reasons to the creative characteristics given
in the text that come closest to describing the characteristics exhibited
by this person.
256 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
2. Suggest at least five things in your own business that are not being
done as well now as they could be. For each of these, give at least two
suggestions of how it might be improved.
3. Dr. John Arnold has said, "If the creative individual wants to be
an inventor, he cannot be a specialist." Assume this is true. What are
the implications? How do they pertain to you in your jo b?
4. What are the advantages of idea fluency? How can it also improve
both flexibility and originality?
5. Suggest at least five ways that the creative characteristic of "drive"
can help overcome deficiencies in some of the other characteristics?
Chapter 4 • Blocks to Creativeness
1. Think of the last major business problem you had to solve.
a. Make a list of the mental steps you went through in solving it.
b. Take some current personal problem and try to work out a
solution following the same general steps.
2. What is your concept of the kind of security a creative person
should strive for? How can he keep a desire for security from becom
ing a block to his development as a creative individual?
3. List five examples of how people you know (you may include
yourself) conform to "accepted" patterns not involving questions of
morality.
a. Why do you think each of these patterns is "accepted"?
b. Are any of the original conditions of acceptance outmoded
today?
c. What are the dangers of conforming to such outmoded pat
terns?
4. List at least five "unwritten laws" governing personal behavior
where you work. Do any of these tend to inhibit the freedom to create
for the company? What would be the results if you were to challenge
any of them?
5. List at least ten habits that govern your daily living.
a. Which of these tend to simplify the details of living to leave
your mind more free for thinking?
b. Which tend to restrict your thinking so as to inhibit you from
finding new and better ways of doing things?
c. For each of the restricting habits you list in b above, suggest at
least three things you could do to help yourself replace the bad habit
with a good one.
APPENDIX 257
Chapter 5 • The Nature of Creative Thought
1. What specific meaning might the word "idea" have for each of the
following?
a. An artist
b. A chemist
c. A salesman
d. A poet
e. Your company president
f. A composer
g. The U.S. Secretary of State
h. Your office mail boy
Give a specific example of each type of idea.
2. Einstein's mind has been described as "slow and contemplative";
John Von Neumann's as "lightning quick —stunningly fast." Both men
made outstandingly creative contributions in the field of mathematics.
What implications do you draw from this?
3. List at least three advances (product, operation, methods, organ
ization) in your own business that came about as a result of a combina
tion or relation of two or more previously unrelated ideas.
4. If you were given the assignment of developing a new way to
clean carpeting without the use of liquids, suggest at least thre e things
you could use as the "commonplace" to start your thinking. Do the
same for developing a more efficient organization of your present job.
5. Consider either of the two problems in 4 above. Make a ten -step
outline showing how you might alternate "involvement" and "with
drawal" thinking in hunting for the solution to the problem.
Chapter 6 • The Nature of Problems
1. List at least ten problems of any kind that are currently occupy
ing your thinking in one degree or another. Which of these are caused
by forces outside your own control (such as the fact that the problem
was assigned to you by someone else)? Which are problems that you
have made for yourself?
2. a. Think back over the last month. How many of the "problems"
you had to meet passed the "ten-year test" of importance?
b. Think back to ten years ago. What problem solutions did you
produce then that are still affecting your life today?
258 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
3. Here are several analytical problem statements. Restate each to
open them up to possibilities for more creative solutions:
a. Design a better automobile.
b. Reduce company personnel costs 20 per cent.
c. Design a new box for a tube of toothpaste.
d. Devise a new way to teach American History.
4. For each of the following, list at least five experiences you have
had that might be of value to you if you were suddenly confronted
with the problem (include vicarious experiences such as reading a book
about it):
a. Developing an executive training program for your company
b. Organizing a bird-watchers club
c. Planning an annual convention for some industry
d. Designing a new vacuum cleaner
e. Provisioning a two-man rocket for a sixty-day trip to the moon
5. a. Every company would like to increase profits by making more
money. Suggest at least three direct ways you could uncover oppor
tunities for your company to increase their income.
b. Every company can also increase profits by saving money.
Suggest three direct ways your company could begin saving money
immediately without harming either product quality or customer serv-
ice.
Chapter 7 • Steps in Deliberate Problem Solving
Case study: You have a promising junior production engineer, Bill
Brown, transferred into your department. He is intelligent, enthusiastic,
and has a high scholastic rating. He has an unusual flair for shaving costs
on production problems. However, he also has the ability to exasperate
all his associates to such an extent that they actually resist valuable sug-
gestions simply because they come from him. You have talked to him
twice about the need for tact and diplomacy in working with others,
but he doesn't seem to care. In any event, he has failed to reform.
You now have in blueprint form a new item on which the saving of
every fraction of a cent will be highly important. You have been count-
ing on Brown's help to make the savings. You also have a request in
with your company's finance committee for funds to buy new produc-
tion equipment. The comptroller has tipped you off that the committee's
decision may be influenced to some degree by the size of your profit
margin on this new item.
At the same time, the morale of your production unit is at the lowest
APPENDIX 259
ebb ever because of Brown's unpleasant personality. In a particular
slump is a veteran of twelve years' experience who knows the practical
side of manufacturing like the back of his hand. He is in a completely
negative frame of mind and refuses to consider any of Brown's sug-
gestions whatever. But you need him almost as much as you need
Brown.
1. On the basis of the facts given, how would you orient this prob
lem? Be sure to break out all sub problems .
2. a. What facts are given in the study that will have to be reconciled
with any solution you propose?
b. What facts do you feel are still needed?
c. How would you go about getting the additional facts—either
directly or indirectly?
d. How could you prove the validity of any facts you turn up?
3. Working with what you have developed so far, list at least twenty
possible ideas—good, bad, or indifferent—you might try as a means of
solving your problem. Try to do this on an "ideas only" basis, without
evaluating their merits as you produce them.
4. Read over your original orientation of the problem. Does this
suggest any additional ideas to you? Read over the list of facts you felt
were important to the problem. Can you add any additional ideas now?
Reread all the ideas you have listed so far. Can you add another five?
Ten?
5. a. Establish at least five criteria points that any solution to this
problem must meet. (Remember to consider the original facts that you
said must be reconciled into a solution.)
b. Evaluate each of your ideas against the criteria you have de-
veloped. Which idea seems to offer the best possibilities for immediate
solution of the problem?
6. Assume that none of the ideas you produced and tried had any
effect on resolving the conflicts caused by Brown's personality and atti
tude. List at least ten alternative courses of action you might be able to
take. Do any of these satisfy the criteria for solution?
7. Assume you decide to fire or transfer Brown. Orient the problem
you would then have of making up for the loss of his specialized abilities.
Chapter 8 • Help Yourself to More Ideas
1. When was the last time you made a written note of something you
wanted to remember? What did you do with the note? What could
you have done with it that would have made it more useful?
260 HOW TO BE A MORE C R E A T I V E E X E C U T I V E
2. Devise or plan a note -making and note -using system for your
particular needs that will be efficient, convenient, and simple.
3. Make a list of all the things you could change or eliminate in your
daily schedule to "clear" at least one hour a day for uninterrupted
thinking about problems and/or opportunities. Try processing this as
a problem, following the five-step method suggested in Chapter 7.
4. Use a clock or kitchen timer for this one: In ten minutes, try to
meet a quota of twenty ideas on how you could raise a son so he would
grow up to be a creative person.
5. Assume you have decided to submit one new idea a day to your
company's suggestion system. Devise a checklist with at least twenty
points on it that you could skim through every day to stimulate your
mind to produce the needed idea-a-day.
6. Make up a list of ten questions about your company that, if you
had the answers, might help you produce profitable ideas. Work out a
simple plan to get the answers to those ten questions.
7. a. List at least three basic attributes of each of the following:
A lead pencil; a flashlight; the chronic tardy worker; the daily coffee
break; transparent window glass.
b. For each of the attributes you have listed, suggest at least three
possible changes.
Chapter 9 • When to Use Creative Groups
1. What are the implications in the statement, "Most great advances
in technology occur when two sciences get together?" How is this apt
to "transfer" to other branches of business: administration, finance,
personnel?
2. a. What are the dangers of overemphasizing competition with
others to the neglect of cooperation?
b. From your own expe rience, can you think of a cooperative
effort that would have been better handled by an individual?
3. For each of the following, make up a list of six other people in your
company who might be able to help you in finding a solution to the
problem:
a. Improving union-management relationships
b. Designing a new product to augment your present line
c. Improving interdepartmental communications
d. Obtaining a 10 per cent increase in production without increas
ing labor costs
APPENDIX 261
4. The "power jockey" can thoroughly disrupt any cooperative
group effort. How could you, as a meeting chairman, enlist his support
to help you make the group effort a success?
5. Your company has just learned that they are in danger of losing
one of their oldest and most profitable accounts because of several
recent instances of failure to keep promised delivery dates. You have
been given the dual job of getting to the cause of the trouble and cor
recting it and of pacifying the customer. You may call on anyone else
in the company that you feel can help you solve the problem. What
kind of group would you put together? What specific contributions
would you expect of each member?
Chapter 10 • Creative Group Techniques
1. Analyze in detail the last conference you attended—a sales meet
ing, church or civic club, family conference, or one you called your
self. List in particular the anticreative things that were done.
2. Consider the general problem of new inventions (products, meth
ods, materials, etc.) needed in your business. Find an open-minded
teammate and process the problem, following the steps given in the
Creative Team outline. Analyze your results.
3. Consider the general problem of encouraging workers to take a
greater interest in improving product quality:
a. Suggest where or when you could profitably use a Buzz group
on this problem.
b. Suggest where or when you could profitably use Brainstorming.
c. Write out the specific problem statement you would give the
Brainstorm panel.
4. Consider the general problem, "What new products, not now avail
able, are needed in the home?"
a. Make up a list of ten people you think could effectively con
tribute to a Brainstorming session on this problem. Give a brief state
ment of why you selected each person.
b. Make a list of ten categorical questions you could use in leading
the session on this problem.
c. List at least five "wild" or "blue-sky" ideas of your own you
could use in the course of the session to keep it relaxed.
5. Assume you have conducted a Brainstorming session on the prob
lem of improving the frame design for an electric motor used in a win
dow air-conditioning unit. A panel of engineers and designers produced
262 HOW TO BE A MORE C R E A T I V E E X E C U T I V E
eighty-nine unduplicated ideas. Exactly how would you go about de-
termining which five of these ideas you would recommend for labora-
tory testing.
6. Write a five-minute talk you could use to explain Brainstorming
to a group of people who had never heard of it before.
7. The text gives several general suggestions for problems in which
you could use Brainstorming:
a. Exploring the possibilities in a product or situation
b. Creating a list of new needs
c. Discovering potential uses for new products or new materials
d. As a "crash program" knowledge-pooling device
e. As a group test
For each of these, give a specific problem your company has on which
you could consider the use of Brainstorming.
8. This problem is listed as "Vital to the National Defense" by the
National Inventors' Council:
Needed: A personal built -in heating unit. The armed services want
a device that can be built into a man's suit to distribute heat over his
body in subzero weather. The device...
Must operate without a restricting power source
Must operate eight hours (minimum) without refueling
Must permit rapid discard
Must not hamper agility
Must be reasonably lightweight
Must be fully reliable
Assume you are going to conduct an Operational Creativity session
to find an idea for this problem.
a. Determine your "subject" word or phrase.
b. Make up a list of at least ten leading questions that you, as the
leader, could use to keep discussion going without revealing the exact
problem.
Chapter 11 • How to Lead Creative Groups
1. Do you agree with the statement, "Any female member of a
conference or meeting can go only so fa r in challenging a male opin
ion or thought before she is in danger"? Why or why not?
2. You have assembled a creative group of ten people from sales,
design, and production to tackle the problem of designing a new
thermos bottle. List at least five things you could do or say in the first
APPENDIX 263
three minutes of the meeting to "break the ice" and motivate each of
those people to contribute to solving the problem.
3. You are conducting a fast-moving Brainstorming session aimed at
producing ideas on a ma jor problem for your company. Suddenly
one of your most important members stands up and says, "This is
ridiculous. I've never seen such a waste of time before. I'm going back
to my desk where I can spend my time profitably!"
a. How would you calm this member down and win back his sup
port?
b. How would you get your meeting going again without loss of
the creative momentum?
4. As the leader of a creative group, you notice that one of your
members is not participating at all. You know this person is a rather
shy-type personality, but quite brilliant and capable of original think
ing. Suggest three things you could say or ask that would bring him
into the discussion without "pressuring" or otherwise embarrassing
him.
5. In the interests of giving yourself "inexpens ive experience," sug
gest at least three problems on which you could lead creative groups
for
a. Your church
b. Your PTA
c. A Boy Scout troop
d* Your favorite charity
e. A political action group
f. Your family
Chapter 12 • The Importance of Follow-u p
1. For a twenty -four-hour period, write down every idea or sug
gestion you hear someone else make and about which you are pretty
certain nothing will ever be done. For each of these ideas, try to sug
gest at least three things you could do to put the idea into action, as
suming it's a good one.
2. Assume you have a new idea for improving coordination of the
sales, production, and shipping departments of your company. If you
had only one hour to check the validity of your facts before present
ing this idea to top management, how would you go about it?
3. Your office is about to be redecorated. It is the standard practice
for the office manager, a man two years short of retirement age, to
264 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE E X E C U T I V E
pick out colors and furnishings. You would prefer a professional dec-
orator who would be compensated by his commissions on the paint
and furnishings. Suggest a plan that would get the office manager
"on your side" even though it would take away one of his status pre-
rogatives.
4. Your management has accepted your idea for a new package for
the company's most profitable product. The package will give the
product better protection in shipment, and cost 23 per cent less than
the previous method. The whole suggestion has now been taken away
from you and turned over to an outside supplier to produce. Suggest
at least five ways to build on your initial success with this idea.
5. Consider the last idea you submitted to anyone that was rejected.
Plan a detailed "selling" presentation for this idea that will overcome
the previous objections.
Chapter 13 • Creating the Creative Climate
1. Suggest at least five things your company could do to make sure
that employee-suggested ideas are not discouraged or blocked by non-
creative supervisors.
2. Suggest at least ten things your company should do to make gen
eral employees more conscious of the company's need for new ideas.
3. Employee Tom Anderson has submitted a completely useless
idea on a production problem. You have sent him a polite note explain
ing in detail why his idea was turned down. But today, as you are walk
ing through the plant area where Anderson works, he stops you and
loudly and rudely begins to berate you, your judgment, and your ap
preciation of ideas. Approximately a dozen other workers are looking
on and taking it all in. How would you handle the situation?
4. Outline a five-hour program that would give junior executives
and supervisory personnel in your company an indoctrination into
and an appreciation of the principles of creative problem-solving.
5. Select one of your company's standard training programs with
which you are familiar. Suggest at least ten changes that could be
made in it to give the participants a greater appreciation of the need
to think imaginatively, without in any way cutting down on the qual
ity of the training.
6. In addition to those given in the text, suggest at least ten forms
of non -monetary rewards to give to workers for worthwhile
ideas.
APPENDIX 265
Chapter 14 • How to Spot Creative Potential in Others
1. Suggest at least three things a manager could do in attempting
to correct each of the following situations:
a. A highly creative worker in a job that does not make full use
of his capabilities
b. A worker with creative potential who does not exercise it be
cause he is "at war" with his supervisor
c. The worker who occasionally produces good ideas, but is not
interested in taking on "extra" problems in spite of the possibilities of
receiving generous rewards
2. Suggest a specific indication, such as a way of speaking, a pattern
of action, or an approach to an unfamiliar situation, that might serve
to indicate the presence of each of the following characteristics in a
particular individual:
a. Problem sensitivity
b. Idea fluency
c. Flexibility
d. Originality
e. Drive
f. Creative ex pectancy
3. Develop a list of ten basic conversational questions you could
ask of any prospective new employee to get answers which might
indicate either creative potential or the lack of it.
4. Make up a specific question you could ask a prospective em
ployee to determine if he
a. Is observant
b. Knows his field
c. Has a good memory
d. Can concentrate for any length of time
e. Can reason effectively and accurately
f. Can communicate his thoughts and ideas
g. Is curious
h. Can change his mental pace
i. Can work within problem limits when necessary
j. Can ignore apparent problem limits when they are not truly
restrictive
266 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
Chapter 15 • The Creative Executive in Action
1. List at least ten things you can do, on your own, to improve
your relationships with other people.
2. List at least ten ways in which you could make better use of your
own imagination in
a. Your job
b. Your marriage
c. Raising your children
3. a. Write down the name of the most dynamic leader you have
ever worked under.
b. Analyze, in detail, the qualities that you believe made him that
way. (Note: "Quality" cannot be expressed in one word!)
c. What shortcomings did he have?
4. List at least ten things you can do in the way of developing your
own imaginative resources to enable you to be a better creative "coach"
for others.
5. Your company is about to introduce a new electric dishwasher.
You believe it is superior to any other on the market, but you will
have to build a dealer organization from scratch. You, as General Sales
Manager, have decided that Fred Smith is the most promising man
to head up the job of planning and executing the marketing strategy.
He has never had appliance marketing experience before, but he will
have the assistance of your advertising agency. Write the memo tell
ing Smith of his new assignment; delegate his specific responsibilities;
and instruct him to write a similar memo to the agency detailing how
he would like them to work with him.
6. Suggest at least twenty things you personally can do to promote
more imaginative thinking throughout your company.
Bibliography
The following list of books, reference works, and selected articles
relative to creative thinking was compiled by the Creative Education
Office of the University of Buffalo (N.Y.), under the guidance of Dr.
Sidney J. Parnes, Director. Reprinted by permission.
Arnold, John, et al. Summer Session Notes (1955, 1956). Creative En-
gineering Laboratory, Mechanical Engineering Department, Mas-
sachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge.
Clark, Charles H. Brarnstorming. Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden
City, New York, 1958.
Crawford, Robert P. How to Get Ideas. University Associates, Lincoln,
Nebraska, 1950.
-------- . The Techniques of Creative Thinking. Hawthorn Books, Inc.,
New York, 1954.
Cros, Gamble, Mraz, Whiting, et al. Imagination. Undeveloped Re-
source (A Critical Study of Techniques and Programs for Stim-
ulating Creative Thinking in Business, prepared by a student re-
search group in the Manufacturing Course, Class of 1955, Har-
vard Graduate School of Business Administration, Cambridge,
Massachusetts). Creative Training Associates, P.O. Box 913,
Grand Central Station, New York, 1955.
NOTE: A second study, Individual Creativity and the Corpora-
tion, is now in preparation by a group of students in
the same class in 1958.
267
268 HOWTO BEA MORE C R E A T I V E E X E C U T I V E
Guilford, J. P., Christensen, Paul R., and Wilson, Robert C. "A Bib-
liography of Thinking, Including Creative Thinking, Reasoning,
Evaluation, and Planning." Department of Psychology, University
of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, July, 1953.
Kogan, Zuce. Essentials in Problem Solving. Arco Publishing Com-
pany, New York, 1956.
Osborn, Alex F. Applied Imagination. Charles Scribner's Sons, New
York, 1957.
-------- . Teacher's Guide. For Use in Conjunction with the
Revised
Edition of the Textbook "Applied Imagination." Creative Edu-
cation Foundation, 1614 Rand Building, Buffalo 3, New York.
-------- . Wake Up Your Mind. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York,
1952.
-------- . Your Creative Tower. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York,
1948.
Parnes, Sidney J. Creative Retailing. Department of Public Instruction,
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. (An instructor's manual for a course in
creative retailing.)
Smith, Paul (Editor). Creativity. Hastings House, New York, 1959.
Von Fange, Eugene K. Professional Creativity. Prentice-Hall, Inc.,
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1959.
Wertheimer, M. Productive Thinking. Harper & Brothers, New York,
1945.
Whiting, Charles S. Creative Thinking. Reinhold Publishing Corpora-
tion, New York, 1958.
Creative Education Foundation. Compendium of Research on Creative
Imagination. Buffalo, New York, 1958. Reports of 30 research
studies concerned with identification and development of creative
ability, and additional studies under way. (A separate "List of
Available Materials" regarding creative thinking is also published
by the Creative Education Foundation.)
Creative Problem Solving Institute, University of Buffalo. Proceedings
of first through fourth annual institutes, 1955-1958. Detailed pro-
ceedings of the institutes involving the creative problem solving
process, emphasizing the methods of Alex F. Osborn (Applied
Imagination).
Foundation for Research on Human Behavior. Creativity and Con-
formity. Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1958. A report of research on
creativity and conformity in organizations.
Industrial Relations News. Company Climate and Creativity. New
York, 1958. A study of the impact of the business and industrial
BIBLIOGRAPHY 269
environment on creative people, with special reference to engi-
neers and scientists, and how to establish a favorable creative
climate.
-------- . Creativity (a bibliography). New York, 1958.
Industrial Research Institute. Bibliography on Creativity (1919 refer-
ences). Prepared by Creativity Sub-committee of Research Per-
sonnel Committee, 1955.
-------- . The Nature of Creative Thinking (a monograph). New York
University Press, New York, 1952, 73 pp. This monograph con-
tains a series of articles dealing with creativity and creative think-
ing, as presented at a symposium on c reative thinking sponsored
by the Industrial Research Institute.
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Massachusetts. Reports of con-
ferences on the creative process, 1956-1957. Three detailed reports
of proceedings of conferences, emphasizing the William J. J. Gor-
don Operational Approach to Creativity.
University of Utah, Salt Lake City. Reports of the 1955 and 1957 Re-
search Conference on the Identification of Creative Scientific
Talent. Papers presented by a variety of researchers working in
the area o f scientific creativity and its identification.
Papers and Articles Relevant to Research in
Creative Thinking
In preparing this bibliography, Psychological Abstracts were re -
viewed from January, 1950, through April, 1958. Articles were ob-
tained chiefly from this source and from the files of the Creative Edu-
cation Foundation and the University of Buffalo Creative Education
Office.
Bergler, Edmund. "Unconscious Mechanisms in Writer's Block." Psy-
choanalytical Review, 1955, vol. 42, pp. 160-167. The author dis-
cusses what he believes to be the four main hurdles which hinder
creative thinking.
Bristol, Lee H., Jr. "The Application of Group Thinking Techniques
to the Problems of Pharmaceutical Education." American Journal
of Pharmaceutical Education, 1958, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 143-146. This
article offers the reader a resume of the Brainstorming principles
and procedures. Suggestions on how to set up a session are also
included.
Bromiley, Dennis B. "Some Experimental Tests of the Effect of Age
on Creative Intellectual Output." Journal of Gerontology, 1956,
vol. 11, pp. 74—82. This article deals with a study of the Shaw Test
270 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
of creative intellectual output. The results yield information con-
cerning the relationship of quantity and quality of output to age.
Burack, Benjamin, and Mass, Donald. "Effect of Knowing the Princi-
ple Basic to Solution of a Problem." Journal of Educational Re-
search, 1956, vol. 50, pp. 203-208. The results of an experiment
show that "knowledge of the principle underlying the solution of
a problem does not necessarily lead to solution of the problem."
Burchard, Edward M. L. "The Use of Projective Techniques in the
Analysis of Creativity." Journal of Projective Techniques, 1952,
voL 16, pp. 412-427. The author reviews some contemporary psy-
choanalytic theories of creativity, as well as certain studies of
creativity which have utilized the projective technique.
Bush, George P., and Hattery, Lowell H. "Teamwork and Creativity
in Research." Administrative Science Quarterly, 1956, vol. 1, pp.
361-372. In view of the fact that traditional methods of administra-
tion cannot always be applied to scientific endeavors, the author
suggests three areas which should receive more emphasis.
Chorness, Maury H. "Increasing Creativity in Problem-Solving
Groups." Journal of Communication, 1958, vol. 8, pp. 16-23. This
article discusses some possible methods for increasing creativity
in problem-solving groups, as well as the results of a number of
studies on creativity conducted under government contracts.
Coon, Arthur M. "Brainstorming—A Creative Problem-Solving Tech-
nique." Journal of Communication, 1957, pp. 111-118. This article
offers the reader a concise history and description of the Brain-
storming technique. Dr. Coon elaborates on the theories behind
the four Brainstorming rules and discusses Brain storming's place
in the fields of business and education.
Gordon, William J. J. "Operational Approach to Creativity." Harvard
Business Review, 1956, vol. 34, pp. 41-51. This article deals with
the approach called "Operational Creativity," which is a theory
of how creative groups function. Gordon lists and discusses what
he has observed to be the six themes or elements of the creative
process. He also goes on to illustrate how these themes are exer-
cised in group creativity.
Gough, Harrison G. "Researcher's Summary Data for the Differential
Reaction Schedule." Institute of Personality Assessment and Re-
search, University of California, Los Angeles, 1957 (mimeo-
graphed). The paper includes a discussion of Gough's Differential
Reaction Schedule containing five scales which yield six scores.
Guilford, J. P. "Creativity." American Psychologist, 1950, vol. 5, pp.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 271
444-454. Creativity is discussed as patterns of primary abilities
containing certain factors, such as sensitivity to problems, idea-
tional fluency, flexibility of set, synthesizing ability, and analyzing
ability.
. "Some Recent Findings on Thinking Abilities and Their Im
plications." Informational Bulletin, Training Analysis and De
velopment, TA&D Directorate, Deputy Chief of Staff Opera
tions, Hq. ATRC, Scott AFB, Illinois, Fall, 1952, vol. 3, pp. 48-
61. This article deals with the hypothesis that creative individuals
possess certain characteristics; and the author presents research
results which support the hypothesis. Various approaches to the
measurement of originality investigated at the University of Cali
fornia are also discussed.
-------- . "Creative Abilities in the Arts." Psychological Review, 1957,
vol. 64, pp. 110-118. From this investigation Guilford sets forth
a set of hypotheses concerning factors and abilities involved in
artistic creative talent.
Hart, Henry H., M.D. "The Integrative Function in Creativity." Psy-
chiatric Quarterly, 1950, vol. 24, pp. 1-16. This article introduces
some psychoanalytical viewpoints concerning creativity. The au-
thor deals primarily with the integrative function in its relation to
creative effort.
Joelson, Edith A. "Creative Thinking." Journal of the American Soci-
ety of Training Directors, September, 1957, pp. 7-13. Cultural
factors which act as impediments to creativity are discussed.
Lehman, Harvey C. "The Creative Years of Long-lived versus Short-
lived Individuals." American Psychologist, 1950, vol. 5, p. 365.
This paper reports the results of a study designed to investigate
the effects of increasing life span upon quantitative creative pro-
duction.
Lincoln, John W. "Developing a Creativeness in People." Proceedings,
Fourteenth Annual Conference, American Society of Training
Directors, 1958. A discussion of the theory of Synectics or Opera-
tional Creativity is the main theme of this article.
Mooney, Ross L. "Groundwork for Creative Research." American
Psychologist, 1954, vol. 9, pp. 544-548. In this article the author
discusses the nature and importance of creativity in scientists and
its relationship to the training functions in the university.
-------- . "Perception and Creation." Proceedings, Fourteenth
Annual
Conference, American Society of Training Directors, 1958. The
author discusses the intrinsic potentiality of man as a creative
272 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
being. Experiments in perception and in group influence on judg-
ments are also reviewed.
Morgan, Douglas N. "Creativity Today." Journal of Ae sthetics and
Art Criticism, 1953, vol. 12, pp. 1-24. This paper presents an ana-
lytical review of certain philosophical and psychological studies
of creativity. It also suggests an analytical definition of the crea-
tive process and discusses certain contemporary psychological
inquiries into the subjects.
Munn, Norman L. "Theoretical Creativity in Psychology." Main Cur-
rents in Modern Thought, 1954, vol. 11, pp. 35-39. This article
deals with creativity within the field of psychology from the early
schools to present.
Murphy, Gardner. "Creativeness." Menninger Quarterly, June, 1957,
pp. 1-6. Creative acts are discussed as involving four develop-
mental phases. The various effects that culture has upon these
phases are illustrated throughout the article.
Rhodes, James Melvin. "The Dynamics of Creativity; an Interpreta-
tion of the Literature on Creativity with a Proposed Procedure for
Objective Research." Dissertation Abstracts, 1957, vol. 17, p. 96.
The author not only reviews various literature on creativity but
also offers a comprehensive theory of creativity as well as a new
procedure for investigating the dynamics of creativity.
Rogers, Carl R. "Toward a Theory of Creativity." ETC: A Review
of General Semantics, 1954, vol. 11, pp. 249-260. Rogers sets forth
a theory of creativity, focusing on such aspects as: (1) the nature
of the creative act, (2) the necessary inner conditions for its
occurrence, and (3) the desirable external conditions which fos-
ter it.
Scientific American, September, 1958, vol. 199, no. 3. The entire issue
of the magazine is devoted to articles regarding the creative proc-
ess, the physiology and psychology of imagination, and innovation
in the sciences.
Stein, Morris I. "Creativity and Culture." Journal of Psychology, 1953,
vol. 36, pp. 311-322. Beginning with a definition of creative work,
this article dwells upon the various stages involved in the creative
process, with particular emphasis on the stage of hypothesis forma-
tion.
Taylor, Donald W., and McNemar, Olga W. "Problem Solving and
Thinking." Annual Review of Psychology, 1955, vol. 6, pp. 455-
482. This article contains a review of experimentation centered
around the areas of problem solving, concept formation, decision
BIBLIOGRAPHY 273
making, and creative thinking. An extensive bibliography is also
included.
Thurstone, L. L. "Creative Talent." Report from the Psychometric
Lab., The University of Chicago, December, 1950, no. 61. This
paper focuses upon hypotheses concerning the nature of creative
talent and the means by which they may be investigated. Pro -
posed types of experimental studies are discussed in some detail.
--------. "The Scientific Study of Inventive Talent." Report from the
Psychometric Lab., The University of Chicago, July, 1952, no. 81.
In this paper Thurstone further elaborates upon hypotheses con-
cerning the nature of creative and inventive talent.
Tumin, Melvin. "Obstacles to Creativity." ETC: A Review of General
Semantics, 1954, vol. 11, pp. 261-271. The author views creativity
as an aesthetic experience which is "self-consummatory in nature."
He also explains how modern social conditions have created four
"social pathologies."
Veatch, Jeannette. "The Structure of Creativity." Journal of Educa-
tional Sociology, 1953, vol. 27, pp. 102-107. This article contains
a discussion of the effects of the creative and democratic climate
in the classroom as well as in society. Results are reported of an
experiment investigating the effects upon children of participation
in creative activities.
Wilson, R. C. "An Operational Definition of Originality." American
Psychologist, 1951, vol. 6, p. 297. Wilson's presentation deals with
the development of an objective method for the measurement of
originality, which he defines as "The ability to produce ideas
which are statistically infrequent for the population of which the
individual is a member."
Index
Abramson, Moe, 213 Association, powers of, 126-129
Astor, John Jacob, 115
AC Spark Plug Division, in creative
Atom, nucleus discovery, 18
research, 32
Atomedic Hospital, 39
creativity program, 215
Atomic bomb, history of, 25
idea awards, 223, 224
Attitude, in asking questions, 139
program results, 227, 228
group leader's, 252, 253
test for creativity, 231-233
toward creativity, 215
Acknowledging ideas, 217
toward problems, 34, 98, 99
Advancement of Education, Fund
Attribute listing, 143
for, 38
Automobile designing, 90
Air University, 39
Autonomy, as mental process, 82
"All-wise" in group, 153
Awards for ideas, 223, 224
Aloneness, mental, 85
Alternating-current generator, 23
Bank liquidity, decline of, 5
Aluminum welding, 141
Barton, Bruce, 35
American Management Association,
Basics of buying in ideas, 206
186
Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn,
Analytical problems, 88-90
Inc., 168
Anderson, Joseph A., 215
Behlen, Walter, 200
Anger as emotional block, 58
Bell, Alexander Graham, technical
Apathy in groups, 194, 195
knowledge, 213
Applied Imagination, checklist ques-
Bias, personal, in decisions, 118
tions, 136
Bicycle, history of, 26, 27
Aristotle, on associations, 127
Blocks, mental, creative transfer, 50
on disciplined creativity, 101
cultural, 51-57
Arnold, John, 101
definition of, 47
questions for problems, 106
275
276 HOW TO BE A MORE C R E A T I V E E X E C U T I V E
Blocks, mental, emotional, 58-64 Crawford, Robert, 101
(See also Fear) attribute listing, 143
habits as, 64-67 Creative characteristics, abstracting
overcoming, 66-67 ability, 45
perceptual, 48-51 drive, 42-45
Blomquist, John, 38 flexibility, 40-42
Brainstorming, 167-176 idea fluency, 36
aims of, 168 organizational ability, 46
chairman's duties, 171, 172 originality, 37-40
in creative courses, 184 problem sensitivity, 33-36
as creative interest stimulation, 101 redefinition skill, 45
panel selection, 170 synthesizing ability, 46
pitfalls in, 173-175 Creative climate, 214
problems suitable for, 169,170 Creative development programs, 220,
procedural steps, 169 221
rules for, 171 Creative Education Foundation, 101
situations for using, 175,176
Creative leadership, 250, 251
Brann, Donald, 34
Creative vs. noncreative person, 70
Brower, Charles H., 8
Creative Problem Solving Institute,
Buffalo, University of, 101
101, 102
Burlingame, Roger, 26
Creative process outlined, 70
Business, new and changing charac
Creative tests (see Tests for creativ-
ter of, 12
Business leadership, weaknesses of, 75 ity)
Creativeness, applied to man, 17
Businesses likely to disappear, 11
defined, 17
Businessman vs. scientist, 41
dual nature of, 22
Buzz Groups, 164-167
nature of persons, 83
not a science, 29
personality traits, 239-243
Cancer virus research, 23
Creativity, deliberate, 28
Castro, Fidel, 44
Chad wick, James, 25 primary, 29
Chalfont, Allan B., 115 as regenerating process, 80
Chance, effects of, 18,19 secondary, 29
Characteristics of leadership, 245 Criteria for evaluations, 119-124
Checklists as aids to ideas, 134-137 Critics, career, 35
Churchill, Winston, 97 Cycle, daily time, 129-130
Cities, problems of, 7
Closure, principle of, 87 Danko, Stanislaus, 213
Da Vinci, Leonardo, limitations, 107
Color film, invention of, 212
subconscious, use of, 116
Common sense, 62
Deadlines as aid to ideas, 132, 133
Communications of problems, 221
Decisions, aids to making, 118-124
Competition, business, 9
Deflator in groups, 152
Complacency, effect of, 207
Delegation for creativity, 246, 247
Conant, James B., 26
Deliberate problem solving, evalua-
Conformity, 51-53, 57
tions, 117-124
Consolidated Electrodynamics, 38
facts, use of, 107-111
Contiguity in associations, 127
hypothesis, use of, 107
Contrast in associations, 127
Crash programs, 133 ideas, gathering, 111-113
incubation, 114-117
277
INDEX
Forgetting, rate of, 128,129
Deliberate problem solving, orienta-
Four Way Test, criteria, 121
tion, 103-107
Osborn, Alex F., 101
Gabor, Emma, 212
problem, statement of, 106
General Dynamics, 34
steps in, 102
General Electric Co., in creative re-
subproblems as keys, 105
search, 32
use of questions, 106
value analysis, 28
Department store, naming of, 95
checklist for, 135
Details, handling of, 131
worth method evaluation, 121
Develop, permission to, as mental
General Motors, employee sugges-
process, 82, 83
tions, 212
Dewey, John, 101
Generalist executives, 147
Different, fear of being, 55
training of, 251, 252
Discoveries, simultaneous, 20
Goodrich, B. F., Co., 212
Discovery, 17
Goodyear, Charles, 17
Discussion, 66,164
"Goof-off," era of, 8
Doodler, demonstrating closure, 88
Gordon, William J. J., 176
Drive, vs. talent, 43
Gordon system (see Operational
Dubois, George B., 143
Creativity)
Dunlop, John Boyd, 26
Grass, chemical inhibitor of, 4
Gravity, repeal of, 4
Easi-Bild Patterns, 34 Greed as emotional block, 58
Edison, Thomas A., 23 Group leadership, apathy, 194, 195
technical knowledge, 213 gaining experience in, 198,199
Education in creativity, 238 gaining participation, 196-198
Ego involvement, 5 key to success in, 184 in
Einstein, Albert, on common sense, 62 Operational Creativity, 178
compared with Von Neumann, 73 orienting problems, 187
Electric Boat Company, 34 pitfalls in, 193, 194
Envy as emotional block, 58 planning, 186-191
Epilepsy research, 44 poor, causes of, 186
Executive-subordinate relationship, visual aids, uses of, 190,191
161 Group techniques, Brainstorming,
Executives, future shortages, 12 167-176
qualities for success, 245 vs. Operational Creativity, 180
Experimentation in invention, 80 Buzz technique, 164-167
in creative courses, 184
Operational Creativity, 176-178
Faber, Eberhard, 22
overuse of methods, 184, 185
Familiar, use of, 77, 78
practical combinations, 181
Fear, as emotional block, 58
Reverse Brainstorming, 181, 182
of failure, 60, 61
Stop-and-Go Brainstorming, 182,
of ridicule, 61, 62
183
Fermi, Enrico, 25
team operation, 160-164
Ferren, John, 71, 73
Group-think, 150
Firebird III, 3
Groups, as fad, 148
Food, irradiated, 3
failure, reasons for, 159
Force-feeding ideas, 100
general characteristics of, 148-151
Ford, Henry, 60,61
improper use of, 148
278 HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
Groups, individuals in, 151-154, 189, Inquiry, driving spirit of, 139
Institute, Creative Problem Solving,
190
101, 102
objectives in using, 148
Institute for Advanced Study, 73, 74
organization, reason for, 159
Integrity of self, 57
personality of, 154, 155
Intuition in decision making, 118
pressures within, 155-157
Involvement as mental process, 81
religious, 151
skills in use of, 160
social, 151 Judgment, in decision making, 119
Guilford, Dr. J. P., 32 vs. imagination, 112,113
Gunther, John, 109
Keenan, W. W., 228, 229
Habits, changing, 65-67 Kennedy, Joseph, 26
Happiness seekers, 63 Kettering, Charles, on fearing failure,
Harris, Richard, 232 217,218
Hate as emotional block, 58 on fuel engines, 108
Health in mental blocks, 59, 60, 63 on problem solving, 124
Hecht, Ben, 69 Key Criteria, U.S. Air Force, 120,
Hill, Harriman, 141 121
Hill, Napoleon, 98 Kreisler, Fritz, 115
Hofmann, Josef, 115 Krenek, Ernst, 72
Hopkins, John Jay, 34
Hospital shortage, 39 Lamps, electroluminescent, 3
Hotpoint Company, 181, 182 Laughter as creative deterrent, 61, 62
Hunches in decision making, 118 Lawrence, Ernest, 25
Hunt, Walter, 77 Leader hostility in groups, 157
Hypothesis, use of, 78-81 Leader's responsibility in groups, 197,
in problem analysis, 144 198
Leadership, in business, 9
Idea Traps, 126-129 Ideas, challenge of, 75
acknowledgment and praise for, 217 creative, 250, 251
action on, 200, 210 as executive responsibility, 244
awards for, 223, 224 group {see Group leadership)
improvements on, 210, 211 Lee, Dr. T. D., 18
rejecting, 217 Leisure, increase in, 9
stimulation for, 225, 226 Leyte Gulf, Battle of, 94
wasted, 210 Lincoln Electric Company, 224
Ills of groups, 155-157 Love as emotional block, 58
Imagination vs. judgment, 112, 113 Lowenfeld, Dr. Viktor, 32
Incentives Awards System, U.S. Lust as emotional block, 58
government, 213
Individual, as group user, 149
MacArthur, Gen. Douglas, 143
in groups, 151-154
Man, modern, 56
Individuality, dangers to, 54
Manchee, Fred, 250
demand for, 55
Manpower efficiency, 10
Industrial Research Institute, 71
Marketing, business, 10
Initiative in checklists, 137
Maugham, Somerset, 111
Innovation, 21
Medicine, problems in, 39
Input -output system, 144
Mediocrity, high tide of, 8
INDEX 279
Paderewski, I. J., 115
Meetings, efficient, 132
Parity, law of, 18
inefficient, causes of, 186
Parnes, Sidney J., 267
Memory as aid to problem solving,
Party, office, 53
114
Penfleld, Dr. Wilder, 44
Memory -recall, encouraging, 126-
Persistence, 45
129
Personality of groups, 154, 155
Mental processes, autonomy, 82 of
Personality traits, creative persons,
businessmen, 75
239- 243
commonness, 68
Phillips, J. Donald, 164
comparisons of painter, musician,
Photofact Folders, 33
poet, 71-73
Physics as a field, 74
familiar, use of, 77, 78
Picnic, company, 53
hypothesis and suspension, 78-81
Pneumatic tire, 26, 27
Involvement and Withdrawal, 81,
Policy, company, as creative deter-
82
rent, 65
perception of relationships, 76
Population, growth of, 7
permission to develop, 82, 83
Potential, creative, not realized, 231
scientist vs. artist, 73
Power jockey in group, 152
Minnesota M ining and Manufactur-
Praise for ideas, 217
ing Company, 3 Predictions, future, 1
Missiles, U.S. vs. Russian, 92 Pressure as emotional block, 59
Mistakes, learning from, 60 Pressures within groups, 155-157
Mutations, 22 Problem measurement, 87
Problems, analytical, 142 vs. creative,
Natural resources, exhaustion of, 5 88-90
Navy, U.S., criteria listing, 122 commonness, 90-92
New products, 10
direct approach to, 94-97
checklist for, 109,110 enthusiasm for, 218
creative groups for, 150 getting away from, 114
Newton, Isaac, 115 growth of, 87
NIH factor, 203 man makes own, 85, 86
Nonconformity, 53 matter of choice, 86
Note-making, 126-129 vs. routine decisions, 86
solution limitations, 90
Oberth, Dr. Hermann, 92 symptoms vs. disease, 104
Obvious approach to problems, 94- word blocks on, 92, 93
97
(See also Deliberate problem solv-
Open-door policy, 216 ing)
Operation Attitude, 228, 229 Procedures, standard, as creative de-
Operational Creativity, 176-179 terrent, 65
drawbacks to, 179 Procrastination, 132
leading groups for, 178 Productivity, industrial, 6
length of sessions, 178 Products, new (see New products)
Opinions, dangers of, 108 Progress, human, 24
Oppenheimer, J. Robert, 74
Osborn, Alex F., 101 Questions, as aid to habit changing,
and Brainstorming, 168 67
in deliberate creativity, 28 for evaluating ideas, 120-124
Others as environment, 56 first principle of, 141
Outsider, loyal, in group, 153
HOW TO BE A MORE CREATIVE EXECUTIVE
280
Questions, to get facts, 110 Sex in word associations, 93
in group efforts, 192, 193 Shima, Kiyohide, 94
as idea-spurring checklists, 134-137 Sikorsky, Igor, 217
in meeting preparation, 186 Simberg, A. L., 227, 228
positive attitude for, 139 Similarity in associations, 127
in problem orienting, 106 Sinnett, C. M., 235-238
in stimulating mental associations, Situations, needs of, 89, 90
127 Snap decisions, avoiding, 123
using creatively, 138-142 Social problems, evaluating solutions,
Quotas as aid to ideas, 133,134 121
Specialist executives, 147
RCA-Victor Television, 32, 235 (See also Generalist executives)
Rejecting ideas, 217 Speculation, 78-81
Relationships, ability to see, 76 Statistical notes, place of, 128
Reports for new idea, 208, 209 Statistics as facts, 108
Research and development groups, Status, individual, effects of, 204
155 Stop-and-Go Brainstorming, 182, 183
Resource people, use of, in groups, Subconscious, use of, 116, 117
151 Success, effects of, 62
Reverse Brainstorming, 181,182 executive qualities for, 245
Reynolds Metals Co., 37 Suggestions systems, awards, 223, 224
Rocket pump problem, 96, 97 stimulations to participate, 225, 226
Rotary Clubs, Four Way Test, 121 Summarizing for groups, 191
Rous, Francis Payton, 23 Superperfectionism as emotional
Routine as creative deterrent, 66 block, 63
Russia, dangers of, 6 Superproblems, 147
Rutherford, Ernest, atomic nucleus, Suspension, use of, 78-81
25 Sylvania Electric Co., 3, 37
X-ray experiments, 18 Synthesis, 21, 22
Systems, use of, 131
St. Scholastica School, 38
Sams, Howard W., 33
Schools, need for, 7 Tape teaching, 38
Schwab, Charles, 250 Teams, creative, 160-164
Science, search for comprehension, in management, 148
74 in science, 148
unity of, 20 Technology, rate of advance, 4
Seaburg, Glen, 26 Tellier, Charles, 115
Secretaries, productive use of, 131 Tesla, Nikola, 23
Self in environment, 56 ability to visualize, 80
Self-satisfaction as emotional block, Tests for creativity, AC Spark Plug,
63 231-233
Selling ideas, basics of buying, 206 observation and interview, 235-238
complacency, effects of, 207 rule-of-thumb, 234, 235
necessity of, 201-204 Think Books, 126-129
principle of, 204 Thompson Products, Inc., 212
visualizing as aid to, 208 Time, creative cycle, 129, 130
written reports as aid to, 208, 209 using preductively, 130-132
Serendipity, 19, 20 Timidity as emotional block, 62
Toulouse-Lautrec, 111
INDEX 281
Training, business, 10 Wall, Arthur, 26
for creativity, 218-220 "Want to" attitude, 42
Twain, Mark, 108 Wasted ideas, 201
Westinghouse, George, 23
Upgren, Arthur R., 5 Wilbur, Richard, 72, 73
Uranium-235, 25 Will power, 44
U.S. Incentives Awards System, 213 Withdrawal as mental process, 81, 82
U.S. Steel Corporation, 228,229 Withholder in group, 153
Words as blocks to problem under-
V-2 rocket, 96 standing, 92, 93
Value analysis, 28 Work as environment, 56
checklist questions for, 135 Work habits, daily, 131
Worry, 64
Visual aids, 190,191
Worth method evaluation, 121
Visualizing ideas, 208
Writer as a human phenomenon, 69
Von Neumann, John, compared with
Einstein, 73,74
X method, 143
concentration vs. incubation, 115,
116
Yang, Professor C. N., 18
will power of, 44
Young, James Webb, 101
Von Schiller, Johann, 113