Riding the Creative Rollercoaster How leaders can evoke greater levels

of creativity, productivity and innovation

Dr Nick Udall

HYPOTHESIS

Innovation emerges from a co-creative frequency, not a process.

The way we think, relate, learn and organise

either moves us towards this frequency or away from it.

The leadership challenge of our time is to evoke ‘the music of innovation’ – to tune the frequency at which our teams and organisations operate,

by design.

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

Wall Street Journal

The only real strategic differentiator left is a company’s ability to innovate, sustainably

Gary Hamel, What Matters Now

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

Forbes

The future will continue to get more Volatile, Uncertain, Complex & Ambiguous

(V.U.C.A world) Bob Johansen, Institute for the Future

Technology is now part and parcel of every problem and every solution

Jared Cohen, Director of Google Ideas

We live by the myth that stress is the enemy in our lives. The real enemy is our failure to balance stress with intermittent rest

Tony Schwartz, The Energy Project

Meritocracy Camaraderie

Non-Traditional Integration of Work and Personal Life

Fierce Independence The values of Generation Y, Knoll

Business has become, in this last half century, the most powerful institution on the planet.

The dominant institution in any society needs to take responsibility for the whole

Willis Harman, World Business Academy

The elements that make up a truly innovative company are many: a focused innovation strategy, a winning overall business strategy,

a deep customer insight, great talent, and the right set of capabilities to achieve successful execution. More important than these

individual elements, however, is the role played by corporate culture – the organisation’s self-sustaining patterns of behaving, feeling,

thinking, and believing – in tying them all together. Booz & Co

There is a quantum leap in context

Leaders are reaching a ceiling of capability

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

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

STEPPING INTO THE FOURTH REALM

EVOLUTION OF CULTURES EVOLUTION OF TEAMS

Based on William Torbert and David Rooke et al

Innovator / Shaper

Achiever

Expert

Opportunist

EVOLUTION OF LEADERS

Based on Gregory Bateson and Roger Benson et al

Creative

Strategic

Operational

Ad hoc

Evocative

Proactive

Responsive

Reactive

INNOVATION AS A CO-CREATIVE DANCE

TANGIBLE

INVISIBLE

UNCONSCIOUS

UNKNOWN

INTANGIBLE

VISIBLE CONSCIOUS

KNOWN

Flatlining

RIDING THE CREATIVE-ROLLERCOASTER

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UNKNOWN

KNOWN

4 th

Realm

CREATIVE INSIGHT • COLLECTIVE BREAKTHROUGH • FLOW • COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE • PEAK PERFORMANCE

BUILDING BLOCKS OF THE FOURTH REALM

CREATIVE INSIGHT

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PEOPLE FEEL DIFFERENT ON THE OTHER SIDE OF INSIGHT stronger, more confident, more capable

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COLLECTIVE BREAKTHROUGH

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

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FLOW

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!WE THEN YEARN TO STEP INTO THIS STATE MORE FREQUENTLY AND FOR EXTENDED PERIODS OF TIME

continuing to tune our physical, mental, psychological, social, creative and decision-making capacities

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COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE

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

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PEAK PERFORMANCE

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TAPPING INTO CREATIVE INSIGHTS, FLOW STATES AND COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE amplifies our creativity, productivity, innovation, collaboration and communication skills

THE MAGIC TRIUMVIRATE

Innovation BRINGING THE NEW TO THE WORLD

Creativity BRINGING THE NEW TO MIND

Consciousness STATES & QUALITIES OF MIND

The two advantages of the Implicit System are speed and efficiency (the benefit of systemic pattern-based decision-making)

WE HAVE TWO DISTINCT SYSTEMS FOR PROCESSING INFORMATION

THE EXPLICIT SYSTEM •  Rules, analysis and data based •  Expressed verbally •  Conscious accessible (tied to PFC) •  Located more in the shorter, closer and

more ordered neural networks of the left hemisphere – good for linear connections and logical deductions and all the other keystones for standard reasoning

THE IMPLICIT SYSTEM •  Skills, experience, creativity and intuition based •  Expressed non-verbally •  Not consciously accessible •  Located more in the meandering and broader

dendrites in the right hemisphere – enabling far-flung corners of the brain to talk to one another, increasing the likelihood that novel stimuli combine (or ‘bind’) with random thoughts and obscure memories to create new thoughts in moments of CREATIVE INSIGHT.

THE CHALLENGE IS TO BUILD FOURTH REALM CULTURES

Most conventional organisations are…

Built around the Explicit System: linear, fragmented & slow

Risk averse and tolerant of mediocrity

Dominated by the interplay between Beta & Alpha

Fact-based decision-makers

Victims of time and therefore time poor

Ego-centric: valuing similarities

Only able to work the parts (unable to work ‘wholes’)

Driven by high performance norms (same old same old)

Fear-driven, holding on too tight to the past and present

Emotionless, hierarchical and compensation based

More comfortable avoiding conflict and tension

Obsessed with accountability and execution

We design post-conventional cultures around

The Implicit System: systemic, efficient and fast

How risk heightens focus, and flow follows focus

Low Alpha / High Theta with Gamma Spikes

Pattern-based decision-making

Masters of time and therefore time rich

Eco-centric: valuing novelty and difference

Patterning, binding, blending and chunking

Insights, flow, collective intelligence & peak performance

Purpose-driven, creatively escaping forward step-by-step

Emotional, passionate and intrinsically rewarding

Working intentionally with creative tension and struggle

Freedom, shared responsibility, candid feedback and trust

IN ESSENCE, LEADERS…

Think Talk Hold space

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COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE INTERSECTION DIFFERENCE

!!CREATIVE INSIGHT

& COLLECTIVE BREAKTHROUGH

+ + + =

THE ‘SECRET SAUCE’

BY DESIGN

CREATIVE TENSION

‘Meetings’ are the stage upon which leaders perform.

The way leaders run their meetings… reflects both the levels of consciousness of the leader and the level of consciousness of the organisational

culture of which they are a part.

MEETING FORMS (1)

STRATEGIC meetings

Finding the most elegant movement forward through

TIME and SPACE How best to get from here to there?

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CREATIVE meetings

Stepping into the UNKNOWN

What quest-ions do we need to breakthrough?

Managing the KNOWN

What’s working and what’s not?

OPERATIONAL meetings

In these meeting forms, the only way of generating new patterns of (collective) action is by first

generating new patterns of (collective) thought.

The trap is repeating and defending old patterns of thought and action, over and over again.

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

BENEFITS OF THE FOURTH REALM

Our physical, mental, psychological, social, creative and decision-making capacities all become magnified

Our creativity, productivity, innovation, collaboration and communication skills all go through the roof

A whole new world of conscious, creative and commercial possibilities open up

We are able to literally lean into and co-create the emerging future

We evoke the best possible version of ourselves and others – also becoming happier

We acquire new skills e.g., our pattern recognition faculties expand

We move from high performance to peak performance

We become up to 5x more productive

THANK YOU

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© nowheregroup ltd 2014