Coming out of the worst economic downturn in our professional lifetimes — and facing a new normal that is distinctly different — it is remarkable that CEOs identify creativity as the number one leadership competency of the successful enterprise of the future. But step back and think about it, and this is entirely consistent with the other top finding in our Study — that the biggest challenge facing enterprises from here on will be the accelerating complexity and the velocity of a world that is operating as a massively interconnected system. — IBM Global Business Services, Frank Kern, Senior Vice President

The second study from Kyung-Hee Kim, an assistant professor in the School of Education/College of William & Mary. She analyzed the creativity scores of 300, 000 American children and adults from the past 20 years. This data was drawn from the Torrance Tests Of Creative Thinking. This standardized battery of tests, verbal and visual, measure several types of creative thinking including: curiosity, hypothetical thinking, imagination, emotional expressiveness, humor, and boundary breaking. Scoring components include: Fluency–the number of relevant ideas; Originality–the unusualness of the ideas; Flexibility (Shifts)–the variety of ideas; different categories of ideas.

Professor Kyung-Hee’s analysis shows the Creativity Quotient [CQ] for the United States has been in decline since 1990. She calls this decline ‘significant’. It’s also most serious among students from kindergarten through sixth grade. A key cause is that school curriculum remains geared to test based learning. Another is that fostering creativity is largely left to arts programs, most of which have been cut. It’s profoundly ironic that just as CEOs are recognizing the importance of creativity to the economy, the generational pipeline is shutting down. This also resulted in a highly publicized Newsweek article “The Creativity Crisis”.

The good news is that the transformation of Western education is underway. There are a growing number of K-20 programs that provide students with experiential, contextual learning opportunities. These often start with a challenging question or problem that requires creative thinking and project management. These also call for the exercise of social and emotional skills such as communication, collaboration, and appreciation for diversity. It’s worth noting the direct correlation between the two skills sets. For example, a “study of 1,500 middle schoolers found that those high in creative self-efficacy had more confidence about their future and ability to succeed. They were sure that their ability to come up with alternatives would aid them, no matter what problems would arise.” Even more heartening, it’s actually easy to develop creativity and social and emotional skills.

Location: Sunshine Coast, Sechelt, British Columbia

Programs: Experience Works Mobile Program

Overview: According to a 2007 StatsCan Study, over two million people aged 55 to 64 were employed or looking for work in 2006, representing 12% of the total labour force-up from one million (10%) in 1976.

Description: The Experience Works Mobile Program is an innovative initiative of Ethos Career Management Group in partnership with M. Magas & Associates Inc. It is designed for mature workers age 55 to 64. The 11-week process involves several training workshops and work placements. It is funded by Service Canada and BC Ministry of Housing and Social Development (MHSD).

Quotes:

Prelude impacted participants deeply. They were amazed at their individual-group process. The group synthesis within the allTag module was extremely powerful. Participants expressed an enhanced sense of personal assets and professional goals along with a better appreciation of the rich potential of diverse talents collaborating.

M. Prochnau, Employment Coach

Participants

• I’m going to print my Keynote Power Words out onto a T-Shirt, so people can see me ‘coming & going’!
• Prelude is a continual affirmation
• I have discovered that the ‘quiet’ ones have much to say when given the time and room to express themselves; and, that I like what I hear when they finally do share
• I will now always be looking for the close connection that allows us to be different and yet, work together

Photos:

The image below was drawn on the wall of a cave in Lascaux 17,000 years ago. How easily we ‘read’ it today. Great graphic skill was needed to capture the visual essence of the horse. We remain awed by this ability to draw a ‘realistic’ representation. This has led to a popular but erroneous belief that such skill alone denotes creativity. As a result, when presented with a crayon and blank paper all too many people profess a lack of creativity because they can’t draw ‘realistically’.

Watch any child to see how much fun crayoning can be. This innate capacity to express our selves visually doesn’t completely disappear into adulthood. Doodling is something that many people do naturally and unconsciously while in a meeting, a class, or on the phone.

There’s a growing body of research and practical evidence that this innate mark-making capacity is worth cultivating as a skill. This is not about taking art classes, although learning about aesthetic and design principals is always worthwhile. Sunni Brown, a graphic facilitator, has written a manifesto called the Doodle Revolution. Her focus is on the effectiveness of visual note taking over written note taking. In essence, “visuals are powerful, memorable, efficient due to their information density”. This part of “a highly pervasive phenomenon called the Picture Superiority Effect, or the PSE. Simply stated, the more visual the sensory input is the more likely it is to be recognized and recalled.”’

She also discusses Dual Code Theory. “Visual and verbal information are processed along different channels in the brain. So you have one highway for verbal content (including text and auditory content) and you have another highway for visual input.” The visual highway is much faster, more efficient, and greatly underused.

It’s worth noting that slightly over half of all early school leavers have a visual spatial orientation.  In her groundbreaking work, Dr. Linda Kreger Silverman makes a powerful case that these young people could be and should be taught to their strengths. This is particularly relevant when on considers the number of community agencies working with youth at risk that use mural making in their programs. For example, Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program over two decades has produced more than 2,700 murals throughout the city and hosts five youth programs.

All of us can and should become more comfortable with visual communication. It’s a natural part of our make up as humans. It’s also as easy and as simple as doodling.

The Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship is a community of scholars devoted to energizing and transforming organizations through research on the theory and practice of positive organizing and leadership. It is located at The Ross School of Business. Not surprisingly, it’s consistently ranked as one of the top business schools in the world.

Positive Organizational Scholarship is a relatively new field of study. It looks at organizations in the way positive psychology looks at individuals. “Just as positive psychology focuses on exploring optimal individual psychological states rather than pathological ones, Positive Organizational Scholarship focuses attention on optimal organizational states—the dynamics in organizations that lead to the development of human strength, foster resiliency in employees, make healing, restoration, and reconciliation possible, and cultivate extraordinary individual and organizational performance”.

EXTRACT

To explain the heliotropic effect, let us pose the question: What happens over time when you put a plant in a window? The answer, of course, is that the plant begins to lean toward the light. That is, a natural tendency exists in every living system to be inclined toward positive energy—toward light—and away from negative energy or from the dark. The reason is that light is life giving and energy creating. All living systems are inclined toward that which gives life.

The heliotropic effect is evident in many ways within individuals and organizations—physiologically, psychologically, emotionally, visually, socially, and so forth (see Cooperrider, 1990; Cameron, 2003; Bright, Cameron, & Caza, 2006). At the individual level, the heliotropic effect may be manifest physiologically as the placebo effect. That is, if a person believes that a medication will be effective, it will, in fact, produce the desired effect about 60 percent of the time.

Psychologically, the heliotropic effect is manifest as the Pygmalion effect. That is, not only does my system respond to my own positive expectations, but the expectations of others also can produce a heliotropic effect for me. The essence of this effect is that the perception of a teacher appears to affect the performance outcome of the class. If thinks that learners are bright, they are. Those expectations are more powerful than any other single factor, including actual IQ scores (Rosenthal & Jacobsen, 1968) on performance.

Website: http://www.northernlakescollege.ca

Location: Wabasca Area, North Central Alberta

Programs: Careers, Workforce Development

Description: This spring Prelude pilots were conducted with two staff teams from Northern Lakes College for professional development. In May the Careers Team, numbering eleven staff, played a round of the game. In June the Workforce Development Team, numbering nine staff, also played a round of Prelude. Both pilots were facilitated by J.D. Szezepaniak a NLC Life Skills Coach and Readiness Coordinator.

J.D. first learned about Prelude through his facilitation work with the Bigstone Cree First Nations Education Authority. Bigstone was introducing the game within its own community. J.D. saw the value for both students and staff development. He proposed a two-phase pilot project to introduce Prelude to both groups. After several months piloting with 107 first year students, the two final pilots with staff just occurred. The response from students and instructors was very positive. The response from staff playing was also equally positive. It was unanimous between both staff groups that the game experience was positive and worthwhile. Everyone also said they would recommend it to others.

Quotes

• The whole process was a great exercise in building a stronger, more productive team
• Prelude put everything into perspective
• I thought the iTag was interesting and personally relevant

Photos:

Location: Demarais, Alberta

Program: New Middle School Launch & 21C Change Learning Toolkit

Website: http://www.bigstone.ca/

Description: Prelude was introduced to the Bigstone Cree Nation Education Authority through Classroom Connections in early 2009. The initial goal was to introduce Prelude to the staff and students of a new Middle School later that year. In August 09, as a first step, Council Members and Educators played the learning game. In October 09, as a second step, the BCN Chief, Council Members, and Band Department Directors also played Prelude. In April 2010, students of the Oski Pasikoniwew Kamik (Bigstone Community School) played the game for the first time.

During this time, the initial pilot project became subsumed within a larger initiative under the banner of the 21C Change Learning Toolkit. Prelude is now one of four tools including an assessment tool from Resiliency Initiatives, a financial literacy game from National Life Work Centre, and a career development process from the Aboriginal Human Resource Council. The goal is to create an easy-to-access online Toolkit of innovative assessment and career development tools for use in Aboriginal communities across Canada—even in remote regions where the cost of implementing new programs for multi-barriered youth would be prohibitive, and awareness of available programs is very limited.

The combination of tools is designed to engage unemployed and out of school youth (15-30) in the process of discovering their strengths, imagining positive futures and exploring potential career paths.  They will also have the opportunity to build essential workplace skills, emotional/social skills and functional literacies in communication and technology. Staff training, student piloting, and technology integration is currently underway between collaborators.

Photos:

August 2009: Staff Training

October 2009: BCN Chief, Council, &  Band Department Directors

April 2010:  Middle School Students

Constructionist ideas link directly to Appreciative Inquiry. AI is the theory and practice of organizational transformation developed by David Cooperrider at Case Western University. It focuses on what works well and can be improved upon as opposed to what doesn’t. During the process, members co-create a picture of the positive future organization they imagine using images and words. Research shows that this helps people to actualize what they envision. It’s called the Heliotropic Effect.

During Prelude, individuals identify their many positive elements and create a unique self-portrait with these elements. As the game progresses, the group builds on this knowledge by co-creating a positive self-portrait and worldview as well. As Prelude is played within schools, agencies, and the workplace, we’re hearing powerful stories about players of all ages learning to see themselves and each other in a new more positive light.

Plan B: Skip College

Dr. Robert Lerman, a Senior Fellow at the Department of Economics, American University, observes that social and emotional skills are “ranked the most desired even ahead of educational attainment — in many surveys of employers”. Employers want entry-level employees who can co-operate with others, negotiate, resolve conflict, listen actively, solve problems, and make decisions. Problematically this is not what they are getting.

Graduates’ First Job: Marketing Themselves

Edwin Koc, Research Director of the National Association of Colleges and Employers, says the same thing as Dr. Lerman. That is, companies want graduates who can effectively communicate and work as teams. Interesting to note that employment trends are up in accounting, engineering, computing, and mathematics. These are professions noted for a lack of social and emotional skills. EQ needs to round out IQ.

Prelude will be highlighted at the Global Challenges Workshop. More specifically, the presentation will occur as part of a panel on Supporting Health and Well-Being of Children and Families. Of particular interest is Prelude’s use in innovative cross-sectoral collaborations. This will include the Classroom Connections and Bigstone collaboration.  This will also look at the cross-cultural videoconference last year between students in Quebec and Dubai. For more information, please see related case studies and other blog posts on this website.