Cultivating a Creative Mindset
Hello Friends,
Beliefs form our mindsets. Despite the fact that they are strong views, you have the ability to change your mind.
Benjamin Barber, an eminent political theorist, once said, "I don't divide the world into the weak and the strong, or the success and the failures. I divide the world into the learner's and nonlearners.
Carol Dweck mentioned about the "CEO disease" in her book (Mindset: The New Psychology of Success) Speaking of reigning from atop a pedestal and wanting to be seen as perfect, you won’t be surprised that this is often called “CEO disease.” Lee Iacocca had a bad case of it. After his initial success as head of Chrysler Motors, Iacocca looked remarkably like our four-year-olds with the fixed-mindset. He kept bringing out the same car models over and over with only superficial changes. Unfortunately, they were models no one wanted anymore.
Meanwhile, Japanese companies were completely rethinking what cars should look like and how they should run. We know how this turned out. The Japanese cars rapidly swept the market. CEOs face this choice all the time. Should they confront their shortcomings or should they create a world where they have none? Lee Iacocca chose the latter. He surrounded himself with worshipers, exiled the critics and quickly lost touch with where his field was going. Lee Iacocca had become a nonlearner. But not everyone catches CEO disease. Many great leaders confront their shortcomings on a regular basis. Darwin Smith, looking back on his extraordinary performance at Kimberly-Clark, declared, “I never stopped trying to be qualified for the job.”
CEOs face another dilemma. They can choose short-term strategies that boost the company’s stock and make themselves look like heroes. Or they can work for long-term improvement risking Wall Street’s disapproval as they lay the foundation for the health and growth of the company over the longer haul. Albert Dunlap, a self-professed fixed mindsetter, was brought in to turn around Sunbeam. He chose the short-term strategy of looking like a hero to Wall Street. The stock soared but the company fell apart.
Lou Gerstner, an avowed growth mindsetter, was called in to turn around IBM. As he set about the enormous task of overhauling IBM culture and policies, stock prices were stagnant and Wall Street sneered. They called him a failure. A few years later, however, IBM was leading its field again.
Experts believed that many of the most successful persons had no future. And in some of these instances, it's possible that it's accurate to say that they didn't initially stand out from the crowd. But isn't potential someone's capacity to improve their abilities over time with work and coaching? And that's precisely the point. How do we predict where someone's effort, instruction, and time will lead them? Who knows, maybe the experts were correct about some of these people's abilities at the time. Maybe they weren't yet the individuals they were going to be.
Cultivating a creative mindset involves developing a way of thinking that encourages new ideas and innovative solutions.
Personally, practicing Design Thinking helps me cultivate the Creative Mindset. "Design thinking is a way of finding human needs and creating new solutions using the tools and mindsets of design practitioners." - David Kelley, IDEO founder.
The process involves:
Empathy - You put your self in the shoes of the user, by trying to understand how they feel, what they do and say by talking to them. This procedure enables you to gather real time feedbacks and Insights from users.
Problem definition - The Insights you've gathered will help you understand the right problem to solve and reframe appropriately.
Ideation - You brainstorm on the reframed problem for possible solutions. you start divergently then narrow down to the one you should eventually work on.
Prototype - You create a quick solution with available materials just to have a feel of what your final product/service will turnout to be.
Test - This allows you go back to the user with your prototype, allow them interact with it, ask questions and use the feedback to improve your product/service.
This process has been helpful to me overtime in tackling challenges, ensuring Innovation is at the intersection of customers desirability, technology feasibility and business viability.
I shared a case of how I adopted the design process in a previous letter
Note that the process is an iterative procedure not a step-by-step sequence, so you can adopt any part of the process based on need.
In addition to adopting a framework that will aid you in developing a creative mentality, the most crucial attitude you need to have is, in my opinion, a "learning" attitude. As you journey through the year remain open-minded and prioritize collaboration over competition.
Cheers,
'Seun.