Part 1 – Creativity Exercises
Exercise 1: With Dedicated Supervisor
Love Story - Story Background:-
Scene Location: Hong Kong & Hangzhou, China
Target Market: Hong Kong & China
In 1970s, there was a pair of young lover (Jack and Rose), they were separated due to one of the family had to migrate to Hong Kong from China.
Jack: (Silence pause) I have to tell you that…… I’ll be leaving.
Jack: Wait for me. I will be back and marry you!
Rose: I’ll be there for you……
30 years later, the young lover didn’t get together, and they had formed their own family in China and Hong Kong respectively. Rosanna (the daughter of Rose) falls in love with Jason (the son of Jack).
Rosanna: (Sad) Mom, I’m in love with a boy and we’ve been together already. But he’s gotta study abroad for at least 2 years. Should I wait for him?
Rose: (Silence pause) Someone told me a promise like this long time ago too. And I’ve waited for 5 years. At last? I have nothing left but a broken vow.
The story begins…………
Goal of Supervisor: Aimed to Marketable Movie
Methodology / Decision Making Process:-
1) Elect one group member to the supervisor. Everyone must check in with the supervisor when they have an idea and the supervisor has to approve it. The supervisor will instruct the rest of the team on what is the next direction to proceed with the script writing process.
2) Any time the supervisor decides something is a good idea (such as he/she gives a compliment,) the supervisor also has to point out two negative aspects.
3) No laughing is allowed. The company believes that laughing is not conductive to productivity.
4) No team member is allowed to talk without the permission to speak from the supervisor.
5) The supervisor presents the movie script.
Members have to provide constructive ideas for negative aspect.
Final decision is no objection by supervisor will be confirmed.
Exercise 2: Collective Thinking
3D Adventure - Story Background:-
Two youngsters (Paul and Peter), they are naught and impolite, not welcome by their surrounding schoolmates and friends. One day, they found a spaceship, they landed at……
Paul: The people in this planet are SO WEIRD! They’re too polite and kind, and so obedient!
Peter: Hey! Let’s make some fun on them!
Judge: You are not welcomed. Leave now!
Then they left this planet, and landed at another planet, and……
Paul: No! I had enough already! The planet is dirty and awful. I can’t stand it anymore! I wanna go home!
Peter: I can’t stand either. Let’s leave!
They finally returned home at the Earth, they change……
Goal of the Meeting: No boundaries, creativity based, brainstorming
Methodology / Decision Making Process:-
Firstly, ideas prepared from everyone before meeting.
Secondly, feel free to raise ideas by share and discuss ideas one by one.
1) Everyone must have the freedom to communicate with everyone.
2) It must be safe for everyone to offer ideas.
3) The group collectively presents the movie script.
Lastly, the final decision was made though voting, because the decision cannot be made by common consensus.
Part 2: Exercise and Situation Analysis
Aspects of Not Helpful and Inhibited in our Simulation Exercise
1.1/ With Dedicated Supervisor
l Dominated by Supervisor
n Meeting was dominated by supervisor with restriction create stressful environment and her assignment such as coordination of work may not be appropriate to individual team members and the team as a whole.
l Rigid Rules Over Communications
l Negative Feedback from Supervisor
n Although sometimes negative feedback can act as suggestions to the ideas, which enhance quality of work, frequent and non-constructive disagreement will dishonor and discourage team members from voicing out or making further elaboration on their ideas.
l Presenting Pitch by Supervisor
n Comparing with presenting by all team members with different capabilities, presentation only handled by single person may not provide enough clarity about an assignment. Team have to take risk at contract lose due to fail to present the script well.
1.2/ Collective Thinking
l Individual Goal Overweighed
n Difficult to build common goal or shared vision because each member has his or her own preference. They usually make their own creativity without the sense of marketable and profitable.
l Lack of Common Goal and Target
n No one as a supervisor to set a goal and target to the team, no boundary of discussion is hard to achieve a common consensus during the meeting. Creativity must be present at every level of every artistic and technical part of the organization. The leaders sort through a mass of ideas to find the ones that fit into a coherent whole – that support the story – which is a very difficult task. (Catmull, 2008)
l Voting
n The final idea is generated though voting. There is only one idea could be adopted, and thus most of the members have to still work together for their less favorable theme of story. Quality of work may not be easily created.
l Poor Time Management
n Variation in age and background lead to enormous differences in ideas, values and decisions will affect the progress of meeting. Team members may tend to dedicate effort to persuade others to support his/her ideas in instead of reaching a common goal.
l Extreme in personalities
n Dominant and insecure will give negative impact to the discussion. When someone dominated, entire meeting tend to be a presentation over a single person rather than a constructive brainstorming session.
Aspects of Helpful and Facilitated our Simulation Exercise
2.1/ With Dedicated Supervisor
l Lead for Creativity Mindset
l Control Meeting Agenda
n Agree on a common Goal or shared vision. (Rational Deliberate mechanisms), which enhancing creative potential by pivotal role of supervisor who provide clear direction of our road map facilitate brainstorming. Give direction to the team (task conflict that effective in stimulating the creativity necessary for integrative agreement).
n High level of trust fosters creativity and decision-making progress.
n Members feel confidence to be success and eager to flow their point of view. They concern group goals instead of individual goals.
n Time effective and the team have direction to focus on.
l Identification-Based Trust
n Trust is grounded in complete empathy with another person’s desires and intention. It means that other people have adopted your own preferences.
l Positive Supporting
n Showing support for a team member’s actions or decisions can help in solving stressful situations for subordinates. When keeping team members informed about stressful issues and addressing subordinates’ negative feelings to show supporting from supervisor.
l Monitoring
n Supervisor has to maintain regular contact with and providing general guidance to subordinates. It also provides constructive positive feedback on work done and monitoring progress in a timely manner. The supervisor also reacts to problems in the work with understanding and help.
l Recognizing
n Recognizing good performance in private and public sectors is function as provide positive feedback to the members.
l Consulting
n Supervisor helps for consulting ideas, he/she has to act on subordinates’ ideas or wishes and provided freedom for members to raise ideas and opinions
2.2/ Collective Thinking
l Results as a vibrant community where talented people are loyal to one another and their collective work, everyone feels that they are part of something extraordinary and their passion and accomplishments make the community a magnet for talent people coming out of schools or working at other places (Catmull, 2008)
l Brainstorming for New Ideas Generation
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n No boundary to create. Each team member has their own idea and favorite.
l Agreed on Common Goal or Shared Vision
n The final decision was made by voting many times to get the final result. For instance, for which theme is better and details as well.
l Identification-based trust
n Trust is grounded in complete empathy with another person’s desires and intention. It means that other people have adopted your own preferences. (Thompson, 2009)
l The Brian Trust
1.1 Give and take discussion
1.2 This is purely peers giving feedback to each other (Catmull, 2008)
1.2 This is purely peers giving feedback to each other (Catmull, 2008)
Part 3: Analysis and Explanation for 2 Exercises
Analysis based on 3 dimensions: Trust, Creativity and Teamwork
Exercise 1: What We Work Well With Dedicated Supervisor!
TRUST
l Rational and Deliberate Mechanisms (Thompson, 2009)
n Focus on the Future – we have worked together for various projects in the previous year, high trust level was built among the group, and this was a way to move things forward with more productive partnership. With supervisors’ advice, a common goal was compromised quickly and shared within the group. Situation: The common goal of the group was agreed as market oriented.
l Psychological Strategies (Thompson, 2009)
n Flattery – People are more likely to trust other who like them and to respond move favorably when they are flattered. Situation: The supervisor suggested the situation comedy with romance as the movie theme. One member proactively provided the love story which met the supervisor’s needs.
n Reciprocity – It is a rule permeating exchange of all kinds. People often will turn down favors and rewards from others because they do not want to fall obligated. Situation: In the exercise 1, one member initiated in trailer making, and the other members would automatically pick up the other tasks on sharing basics.
l Avoidance to Mistrust
n Ask for clarifying information – to confirm members’ idea is exactly the meaning. Situation: With the trust level built, clarifying of ideas could be fostered without delay, especially in clarifying the story background and the relationship amongst the characters.
CREATIVITY
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l Egolessness
n ‘Lose self’ and to minimize self-concern and ego issues within one’s creative work. Situation: The supervisor would redirect the team back to the right track.
l Social Factors
n Pivotal role of mentors, colleagues, managers/bosses and a field of practitioners. Situation: The supervisor would able to act as a mentor in directing the guidance in the creative process. The team members could provide constructive comments as good practitioners during the process.
l Role of the Leader
n Sometimes, leadership is really help for creativity in case of the one with good leadership skills. It really helps for the group members think in the right track. Situation: When we are doing creativity, we will generate different ideas from others’ mind. If the meeting was under supervision, some of time, it is useful for leading the conversation and be focus to the topic.
n Drawing the right minds – Leadership is to engage the right people, at the right times, and the right degree in creative work. (Amabile & Khaire, 2008) Situation: The supervisor could assign the right tasks to the right person, such as trailer making and detail script writing.
n Fanning the flames of motivation – Leader could provide intellectual challenge and the setting for “good work”. (Amabile & Khaire, 2008) Situation: The supervisor made negative and challengeable feedbacks to the ideas proposer, in returning of a constructive outcome.
TEAMWORK
l Team Building
n Key actor recalls or narrows the experiences, events, happenings and decisions form a large part of data. Structuring these and putting them in a proper perspective results in the process identification. Situation: The supervisor could act as the key actor in narrowing down the gaps and minimizing the happenings during the process.
n Clear Direction, purpose and goals being set. Situation: The team members could follow the direction set by the supervisor in creating the ideas and scripts.
n Effective and efficient operating procedures. Situation: This exercise was set with predefined guidelines and procedures to follow.
Exercise 1: What Could Have Been Improved?
CREATIVITY
l Balancing of Lateral Thinking
n Generally, creativity ideas are incurred from right brain, the role of the leader should focus in balancing the right brain (imagination and creativity thinking) and left brain (rational thinking) among the members in avoiding the elimination of creativity ideas. Recommendation: The leader should be open-minded and tap the ideas from team members’ own initiatives.
l Role of Leader
n Drawing the Right Minds – Managers are not the source of ideas, should engage the right people, at the right times, to the right degree in creative work. (Amabile & Khaire, 2008)
l Tap ideas from all ranks – New ideas may come from different people, the leader should accept and welcome for new creative from different people, while good ideas may not just come from the single genius who got award before. Recommendation: The leader should encourage various levels of staff to generate for new ideas, such as Google and 3M.
l Encourage and enable collaboration – It is important that the role of the supervisor has to manage the balance of collaboration, nowadays, independent work may not be feasible in developing for new product or service, collaboration in meeting the common goal would be more successful with satisfactory outcome. Recommendation: The leader may need to coordinate people’s thinking in achieving collaboration on radical innovations, and may need to figure out how to get people to shut up at the right time.
l Open the organization to diverse perspectives – Managers could also enhance diversity by looking outside the organization for sources of creativity, collaboration need not be bounded by the walls of the firm. Recommendation: Leader should able to accept any new ideas which was initiated from external parties, such as 3M, new products would be originated from a family member of the staff.
n Bringing Process to Bear Carefully – Creativity within an organization depends on vibrant, ongoing collaboration and free idea flow, which tend to dry up as a business adds people and project. (Amabile & Khaire, 2008)
l Map the phases of creative work – The leader’s job is to map out the stages of innovation and recognize the different processes, skill sets, and technology support that each requires. Recommendation: Models like Six Sigma may be adopted and is to “make good sense for middle and end stages of the innovation process, when the game has moved from discovery to control and reliability” by Mark Fishman, MD, President of the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research.
l Create a filtering mechanism – In the real commercial world, numerous ideas that are not worth to purse, the leader has to facilitate to screen and filter the potential ideas for further development. Recommendation: It is a difficult process that in screening out the potential ideas, seek for management direction and consult for market intelligence in fostering the filtering process.
n Fanning the Flames of Motivation – An employee uninspired to wrap her mind around a problem is unlikely to come up with a novel solution. (Amabile & Khaire, 2008)
l Be an appreciate audience – A good leader can do much to challenge and inspire creative work in progress. Recognition honored by the leader in both public and private would strongly promote the morale of the staff and the team. It can help to generate a healthy environment for ideas generation. Recommendation: The leader can honor the staff and the team during the team meeting and recognized the work personally to motivate the staff.
n Response With Positive Behavior – A research conducted by Harvard Business School in 2003-2004, it revealed that positive behavior of the leader could help to promote the creativity. (Amabile, Schatzel, Moneta & Kramer, 2004)
l Provide proper supporting – Provision of both personal and working support to the team and subordinates would help to motivate the team spirit for on-going creativity process. Recommendation: When necessary, the leader could provide consultation to encourage and check what is needed from the team. Further, additional support from management team would be required in asking for extra resources.
l Balance the control and monitoring – The leader and management should monitor the progress on a timely manner, however, without a tight control on the progress in avoiding pushing the stress to the team during the process. Recommendation: Periodical update with the team on the progress should be coordinated in order to understand the progress and offer help properly, in addition, the leader should be absent from the negative issue in avoiding direct involvement of non-sense conflicts.
l Being a consultant instead of controller – The leader should provide minimal guidance and participate in creativity process. During the progress, she should ask for team members’ ideas and opinions and position herself as one of the team member in expressing the ideas and advices. Recommendation: The leader should proactively invite the team members in addressing their opinions and ideas for discussion, share and exchange their thoughts in fostering the creativity process.
TEAMWORK
l Ground Rules
n Release of rigid procedures and guidance. Recommendation: With a health creativity process, open dialogue and sharing should be allowed with any facial expressions, such as laughing and jokes should be allowed.
Exercise 2: What We Work Well In Collective Thinking!
TRUST
l Psychological Strategies (Thompson, 2009)
n Similarity-attraction effect – Attraction effect may occur on the basis of little, and sometimes downright trivial, information. People who are similar to each other like one another. It has dramatic effects. Situation: Upon confirmed the theme of the movie, team members are devoted to share the similar thoughts towards the same topic, which are environmental related issues.
n Mere exposure – the more we are exposed to something, a person, object or idea, the more we like it. The mere exposure effect is extremely powerful and occurs below the level of our awareness. Situation: When the common and interested topic defined, environmental related issues, each team members were proactive in addressing their ideas.
CREATIVITY
l Perspiration
n Work consistently with creative absorption and intrinsic motivation, without burning. Situation: Each team members were allowed to present their ideas and scripts during the brainstorming process.
l Without Boundary
n Situation: There is no limitation on generating new and unrealistic ideas, especially when thinking of the storyline for the adventure movie.
TEAMWORK
l Ground Rules
n In order to work more efficient and effective, some ground rules have been set in compromising the outcome. Situation: Each member has provided a script for discussion, and we finalized and confirmed the script by voting if there was no common consensus could be reached.
l Constructive External Relationships
n Other than creativity process, external relationships were built among members, opinions and advice were constructive towards the task instead of person. Situation: Separate gathering would be organized after meetings, informal discussion on the tasks would still be encouraged.
Exercise 2: What Could Have Been Improved?
CREATIVITY
n Generally, creativity ideas are incurred from right brain, as there is without a role acted as a leader to balance the right brain (imagination and creativity thinking) and left brain (rational thinking) during the creative process, it is hard to constrain unprofitable project within a team whose all are right brain thinking. Rebalancing process by setting ambitious targets for sales and earnings growth. (Rigby, D.K., Gruver, K. & Allen, James, 2009) Recommendation: It is better to have at least one team member among the team have both-brain thinking (imagination & rational thinking) to do the balancing.
TEAMWORK
l Time Management/Ground Rules
n To an efficient and effective project, time management is very important in the team work project, especially in the right brain thinking team whose characteristic is time-free. Recommendation: Set an agenda for each meeting/discussion as a guideline or set up a deadline for each project which aims to result a better time management.
l Effective Communication
Comparison between 3 dimensions: Trust, Creativity and Teamwork
Our Team Approach
Exercise 1:
With Dedicated Supervisor
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Exercise 2:
Collective Thinking
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Trust
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l Trust towards the supervisor
l Vertical relationship
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l Trust across each individual member
l Horizontal relationship
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Creativity
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l Narrow down the boundary and more focused on details
l More on top down direction
l Limited ideas would incurred
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l Broad and unlimited ideas, but not in specific requirement
l Horizontal approach
l More diversified ideas could be initiated
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Teamwork
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l Collaboration is managed by the supervisor
l Team would follow the direction and style led by supervisor under pressure
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l No micro management and control
l Loss control on time management
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According to our simulation exercises and above analysis, the followings are the key essentials elements in choosing the proper approach for creativity:-
With Dedicated Supervisor:-
Collective Thinking:-
Part 4 CONCLUSIONS
Based on our simulation exercises, it is more feasible for our group, SMART5, in adopting the approach with dedicated supervisor. With time constraint, the leader had collaborated and balanced the team objectives.
Further to our study, collective thinking is also adoptable approach for creativity which depends on the weight of the above key elements, including time management, creativity, trust, communication and teamwork.
References
Amabile, A.T., Schatzel, E.A., Moneta, G.B., and Kramer, S.J. (2006), Leader behaviors and the work environment for creativity: Perceived leader support, Harvard Business Review, The Leadership Quarterly, 15 (2004) 5-32
Amabile, A.T., and Khaire, M (2008), Creativity and the Role of the Leader, Harvard Business Review, 86(10) 100-109
Catmull, E. (2008). How Pixar fosters collective creativity. Harvard Business Review, 86(9), 64-72.
Ferguson Publishing (2009). Team Goal Setting and Negotiating. In Ferguson Publishing. Teamwork skills (pp. 113-134). Ferguson Publishing Company
Joseph, J. A. (2009) Process Documentation. In Group of Adult Education, Documentation, Dissemination and Networking Course 02, (pp.13-26). School of Social Sciences Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi. Retrieved from http://www.unesco.org/education/aladin/paldin/pdf/course_02.pdf
Rigby, D.K., Gruver, K. & Allen, James (2009). Innovation in Turbulent Times. Harvard Business Review, June 2009, 79-86
Thompson, L. L. (2009). Establishing Trust and Building a Relationship. In L. L. Thompson, The mind and heart of the negotiator (3 ed., pp. 128-158). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, USA
EXTENSION
Response to comments:-
Replied to CHIU Peggy, thank you for your comment on our blog. We agreed that leader in a group can increase the effectiveness but limit the creative or innovative idea. So, it will depend on the purpose of the meeting. In business world, fast response is one of the important criteria. Sometimes, it will lost the chance for business growth if delay decision or actions. So, leader is very important in the meeting who control the creative idea and effectiveness. For example, if a creative idea takes 6 months to complete, leader will choose the 2nd choice creative idea which takes 3 months to complete.
On the other hand, like develop a creative film in Pixar. Although investors want to make the revenue fast, their priority to make the film is creativity and then money. So, investors are willing to provide more time in the Pixar production team. I believe the reason of the investors accept more time is Pixar has excellent reputation and historical background that many films produced by Pixar can generate revenue. Otherwise, investors should not accept longer time to return their investments.
Amabile, A.T. and Khaire, M. (2008), Creativity and the Role of the Leader, Harvard Business Review, 86(10), 100-109
Catmull, E. (2008), How Pixar fosters collective creativity, Harvard Business Review, 86(9), 64-72
Replied to Gordon, thank you for your appreciation of our work. We agreed with you that creativity and time management are not mutually exclusive, but they are interconnected. From this exercise, we realized that brainstorming create plenty of new ideas in a second, but when we would like to get more details on top of that idea, it takes time. Brainstorming can only generate an idea, a particular point, but not a period of time or courses of action. We have to spend time to encourage more ideas/details about this particular idea, such as how to produce the movie in a funny way and what combination of actor attract audience's attention. All of these seems to be time consuming. Therefore, to a certain extent, creativity requires time management to make thing done better.
