By Gaia Grant and Andrew Grant

If you read some of the most popular books on creative thinking, you might conclude that you need to fail at school in order to succeed in life. Many of these books describe the admired contemporary creative thinkers and entrepreneurs who simply couldn’t fit into the standard system. This may be comforting for those who have just received their final results for school or university and feel they have ‘failed’, or for those heading into a new semester struggling with the rigorous demands of the current education system. But perhaps it might be best to look at this topic from a completely different angle. Doesn’t the education system, in fact, fail children by not preparing them adequately for the demands of the contemporary workforce? As these children will become the future leaders, isn’t it worth considering how they have been failed, and how this issue may be rectified? And isn’t the failing in itself an important part of the learning process?

A quick recap – Torrance tests results (the most reliable indicator of creative thinking capability) show that while IQ has been increasing with each generation, CQ (the Creativity Quotient) has been on the decline since the mid 1990s. And now one a new IBM study has revealed that CEOs believe creative thinking will be the most important quality needed for the leaders of the future. Which means that investigating the apparent death of creativity and the strategies we can use to get it back should become a top priority.

Creative thinking is not just inventing

Since Steve Jobs’ passing away, a number of articles have appeared that have cast him in a new light. One of the most unusual assessments has been that he was not actually an inventor. That claim might surprise many people, but it reveals that what Steve actually did best was to perfect and optimise other people’s inventions until they worked and were useful. He figured out how to make things do what they were actually meant to do. The digital music player, for example, was invented in 1979, the smart phone was released by IBM in 1992 and the tablet computer by invented by Alan Kay in 1968. But Steve Jobs pushed these concepts through until they worked and worked well. By combining, remixing and creating until the innovation was perfected and ultimately successfully sold in an attractive package, he left other tech organisations in his wake. The more traditional companies could only stand dumbfounded, scratching their heads and wondering just what had happened. Whilst it was Apple in the first decade of the 2000s, there will be others that might even topple Apple in the next. Consider how, for example, Google is now being threatened by Facebook.

How different is the unique skill Steve Jobs embodied from those school systems strive to develop! Learning for most students is characterised by trying to learn established facts and ideas, and is bookmarked by exams that measure the ability to replicate and reproduce rather than innovate. They are immersed in systems that rely on the ability to answer the questions correctly rather than creatively. There is little time or space to explore, reflect on, create and recreate – particularly as they advance through the education system.

To be creative, individuals have to be prepared to fail, and to be resilient in the face of rejection. They need to be independent thinkers, self-sustaining and self-reinforcing. Biographies of great artists and scientists nearly always start with a prolonged period of zero success and recognition, and this is a huge factor that often rules out many people from being productively creative.

Many inventions have been inspired by accident (3M Scotchguard is a famous example) or come about as a result of people using failure as a learning opportunity — people, that is, who did not fear failure and were willing to get back up and try again and again.

Hands up – identifying the problem (Videos….)

We decided to interview children in the school context to try to understand what happens as children go through the education system and how they end up losing their creative spark by the time they enter the workforce. We approached our children’s international school in Bali armed simply with a series of questions and a video camera, but were fascinated to get such stark responses from our small sample group. We started in the kindergarten room, which was adorned with all sorts of creative products from the children themselves. When we interviewed these young children there was a great enthusiasm. ‘Yes! ‘– they all felt they were creative, and ‘Of course!’ – they were all proud of it. We felt significant relief and hope that creativity was still well and truly alive.

However, when we entered the senior classrooms the wall art was replaced with maths and science charts, the children were sitting in rows, and everything was restricted and subdued. According to the teachers we interviewed there was “no need for the additional stimulation in the environment” as students were “being prepared for high school”. The students’ responses to the questions we asked were also markedly negative.

Following on from our school survey, we have now also surveyed thousands of international seminar participants from companies we have worked with to ask if they think they were more creative as children than they are as adults. Of the respondents, over 80% have indicated that they believe their level of creativity has declined, and many reveal that they struggle with being creative in their current work environment. Probably not surprising when you consider the emphasis in the workplace on reaching targets and impacting the bottom line.

Getting beyond correct to creative

Developmental psychologist James Fowler says that education needs to move people out of a synthetic-conventional type of belief system – where something might be believed because it is the perceived norm – into one that involves questioning, enquiry and tolerance with ambiguity.

We need to start to think about how we might incorporate genuine learning processes into our organizations instead. Too many trainers are out there just thinking that they can impart facts that will solve everything. But it’s not the knowledge that we lack. What is lacking is the method of passing that knowledge on so it has an impact and is relevant in people’s lives. This is an art and a science, and it needs to be seriously studied.

Sales experts say that the biggest problem with an experienced sales person is that they know “so well” why their product benefits their customer, that they forget that the job is to help the customer make this connection, not themselves. What organizations need to be developing instead is what management guru Peter Senge refers to as “knowledge workers”.

No wonder a recent TIME article has reported, “The biggest problem with Asia’s schools today is that children themselves no longer link substantive learning with schooling. Students don’t see any interest in what they’re being taught.” The article goes on to report that, “Surveys show that while East Asian pupils top worldwide academic tests, they retain the information for the least amount of time, believing, not surprisingly, there is little utility in what they learn in the classroom…”

As Singapore’s Senior Minister of State for Education Tharman Shanmugaratnam has identified, “The existing education system has produced reliable managers for predictable times, but it now needs to produce a new breed of leaders who have a certain ruggedness, an ability to respond quickly to situations.”

It is critical thinking skills, along with the ability to push beyond failure to eventual success, which are the skills that are urgently needed for the future and that we need to be developing at all levels.

By Gaia Grant and Andrew Grant

On the last day of her final high school exams, our 17 year old daughter crossed the school quad feeling absolutely shattered. Despite having put her best efforts into studying, she felt she had failed the school system she had spent 13 years building up to and preparing for. Over the previous three days she had valiantly tackled the five three-hour tests, but had finally broken down when the overwhelming anxiety had become too much. She had cried through the last two exams and her face was red and puffy as a result, but she didn’t care what anyone thought. She was too exhausted to care about anything anymore.

When she was halfway across the playground she was stopped in her tracks by an all too familiar booming voice behind her. ‘Young lady, where is your proper school uniform!’ It was the school principal, who irregularly ventured out of his lair just to prey on unsuspecting students who had dared to express a modicum of independence, or so it seemed. After being berated and reduced to tears once more, she left the school that day for the last time, incredibly relieved she would never have to go back.

Somehow the school system had depleted her confidence over time, reducing her to a mere shadow of her former pre-school self. As she now waits in limbo for a single ranked mark out of 100, one that she has been told will rate her success in life to date and determine her success in the future, we are all reflecting on the whole experience.

Does school prepare for the future?

So has school prepared her for the future of work? And are contemporary organisations ready to take on her and her generation with the education they have received? We all know that yes, she will most likely be better off than an uneducated person, and yet we are not so sure what school has really taught her. So let’s look at where the education system may be failing her in preparing her for the workplace AND how employees will need to recognise and adjust to the possible failures.

In order to survive, companies today will not be needing knowledge experts or correct answers – Google and Wikipedia can now do this for us. The skills needed for survival into the future are creative thinking and innovation. Individuals and organisation of the future will be the ones who are flexible and resilient enough to invent and reinvent themselves. With the pace of change continuing to increase so fast (sigmoidal growth) adaptable organisations must learn to live constantly with disruptive innovations, knowing what’s core to their offering and adjusting to what will need to be reformed. It will be a case of either innovate or die.

As Tim Harford says, “Change moves so fast in companies now it’s not an option to ignore it or try to restrain it. But many traditional educated people will miss this – sufficiently disruptive innovation bypasses almost everybody who matters at a company: In short, everyone who counts in a company will lose status if the disruptive innovation catches on inside that company — and whether consciously or unconsciously, they will often make sure that it doesn’t. As a result, the company may find itself in serious trouble. It may even die.”

The move back to creative thinking

Most business leaders are acutely aware of this new innovative demand and must now tremble in their boots as a wave of matriculating students hit their workforce. When more than 1,500 CEOs from 33 different industries and 60 different countries were interviewed recently they revealed that they believe creative thinking is now the most important quality in leadership, rating it more important even than integrity and global thinking. The IBM report has identified a number of factors that set apart ‘creative leaders’, and has found that 81% of them rate innovation as a ‘crucial capability’.

The problem is that school rewards ‘correct’ answers not ‘creative’ ones. When a student gets the answer correct they move on to the next question and the next and the next, rarely getting time to try new creative approaches.

In the week following that fateful last day of school, a new child was born. With her newfound freedom, a huge cloud was lifted from our daughter’s mind and she began to imagine what her life could become. She started to make dramatic changes. In the very next week she designed a music video clip for a friend, planned for travel in Europe, organised her eighteenth birthday, prepared for a university interview, and shopped for and cooked up a creative feast. She set herself goals with practical action plans that included finding ways to get a job, looking for volunteer work possibilities, reading books and completing a photography course…among many other ideas. It seemed that she had achieved more in that week than she had in the whole previous year, and she felt incredibly engaged and empowered in the process. The world had suddenly opened up for her!

School children and working adults spend more of their waking hours at school or work than anywhere else. Ensuring there is a positive environment for growth is both an ethical and an economic imperative. If those who lead organisations support the individuals and teams in them better, ensuring there is a continuing process of regeneration built on solid, positive principles for growth, we can create much higher levels of engagement and creative confidence.

By ensuring creative thinking remains a top priority, we can start to deal with the creativity killers and allow for the regeneration of individuals and organisations. Which means everybody wins.

In Part 2 find out why Steve Jobs was not an inventor, and why our education system is no longer relevant for this new breed of leaders….

Are Mission & Values is it worth the agonising? A journey to find the core culture

Part 1: The power of the process

The final sentence, and that wretched comma

We have just finished the process of assisting an executive team from a Fortune 500 insurance company with designing and implementing a new 5 year vision that will be rolled out country wide. It was a rewarding experience with great outcomes. As we got close to the end of the session, however, the team became stuck in an in depth deliberation over a minute detail. “Do we put a comma in or not?” This discussion went backwards and forwards until I noticed the body language of some members who became increasingly impatient. Many were wondering, “Is it really necessary to debate about a comma?!”

As the facilitator of the process I tried to remain neutral. To an outsider the answer might be a clear, many would think this would be a waste of precious executive time, but what was really happening was much more than simply a pedantic debate about a ‘comma ‘. The team was actually involved in an engaging discussion about deeper core values, and you could say the comma was just the tip of the iceberg. This debate revealed critical differences in thinking about who the company really is and what it actually stands for. This process was even more important in this situation, as the Vision Mission Values (VMV) had to then be translated into a second language, so the drilling down to the core values and how they could best be represented in words was essential.

More than words: the power of the process

If a VMV is not clear at the board / executive level, how would the average employee know what the critical values are and how to action them?  Flowery words are often thrown around in VMV sessions, and they do not always lead to practical actions. A lack of clarity in VMV statements can block employees from identifying and measuring appropriate behaviours effectively, ultimately rendering these statements confusing or at worst useless. When Wilson Learning surveyed 25,000 employees from the finance and tech industries, the respondents said they wanted a leader who could, “Convey clearly what the work unit is trying to do.” This visioning session gave the CEO the chance to communicate clearly to listening ears.

During the crafting of the vision with the insurance executives the common phrase “to be the best” was thrown around (as it is by many companies), but what became interesting was the process of coming to a more specific definition gave clarity on the CEO’s vision. It gave the CEO the chance to explain the point of differentiation he felt was essential: “We don’t have to be the best at everything, BUT we have to be the best at what WE DO”. This was a simple clarification that was so critically needed.  You see up until that time the sales people had felt they had to match or better their competitors, but with this clarification the sales people now had a clear focus. So while to the outsider it would have appeared that the executive team was playing with semantics (and at the most base level we were), the process of what was going on behind the scenes was what was critical.

What most companies miss in the visioning sessions is that the journey to come up with the final sentence (that gets engraved and hung on the wall) is actually the most important part. And the more people in the organization are involved in this process, the more buy in you get.

Not just on the fridge – now the tough part, implementation

Several years ago we sent a film team (with a comedian and camera operator) to an office to ask the employees if they knew what their organisation mission and vision were. Many of them enthusiastically told us it was displayed on the fridge. However upon further questioning we discovered that nobody actually knew what the mission statement was, and we were told it was ‘in corporate speak’. Of course everyone claimed to be unable to speak ‘corporate’!

A vision statement needs to get off the walls (or in this case the fridge) and become implanted in the psyche of the individuals and the culture of the organisation. Again here we see the most effective way to do this is to involve everyone in the process so they are not only proud of it but understand what it means. The final sentence is really just a reminder of the journey they have shared together. To people not involved in this process it can become simply empty words, sometimes even cynical words if they have no real impact. If they cannot be implemented they can actually have a negative effect.

So, is a poor VMV worse than none at all?

See the 4 min video interview on YouTube:  “It’s on the Fridge” http://www.tirian.com/programs-services/dimension-2/inventing-future-leader-story-teller/quick-bite.php

Part 2: Stripping back to the core

The problem with Kafkaesque vision statements

Scott Adams has become famous for tapping into the scepticism of the everyday worker when there is no clear vision or mission through a cartoon character called Dilbert. Dilbert portrays corporate culture as “Kafkaesque bureaucracies marked by a senseless, disorienting, often menacing complexity”.  Through Dilbert Adam creates a world of work in which employees keep busy for the sake of being busy. The humour emerges when the characters make obviously ridiculous decisions that are natural reactions to mismanagement, and readers can easily tap into the sense of frustration that Dilbert represents.

The cartoon is humorous and highly successful because it captures the sense of frustration employees feel when ‘corporate speak’ becomes the norm, and when there is a mismatch between the apparently empty words that come down from the top to the daily actions of everyone else in the organisation.

Click here to the full article to test your skill at spotting the fake vision statements. 2 are Dilbert’s, one is Enron’s, and only one is real.

Work in progress

I love to be challenged, so when I recently read a controversial book by Sam Keen called Dwelling in the Presence of the Sacred, I enjoyed the way it encouraged me to think about the important link between words and action. Keen explains how systems can become rigid through static language that isn’t anchored in action. He captures this idea that when the focus is on the words rather than the process, the meaning or the actions resulting from the words, they can be counterproductive or even dangerous.

“As humans we inevitably construct a linguistic frame around objects, events, and emotions. Language is our glory and our downfall, our greatest freedom and our maximum-security prison. Before we know it, the gossamer words we have spun to capture our fleeting experience harden into rigid beliefs that block the flow of passing moments and new meanings.

Every institution and profession—religious or secular—has its lingo. It is the nature of professions and organizations to invent special languages that are understood by insiders but are otherwise opaque; to be a professional is to speak in code. For the uninitiated, reading internal documents is like deciphering code. It is not uncommon for professionals of all kinds… to use obfuscation, complexity, and mystification to claim knowledge—and thereby power—unavailable to the layperson.”

Verbal fasting

One way to recover the original meaning and power of a VMV, according to Keen’s theory, is to adopt the radical discipline of ‘linguistic asceticism’. “Put yourself on an austere verbal fast: slim down; clean house,” he says.

Imagine if our organisations underwent a time of verbal fasting? Imagine if they put their old stories on hold while they spent time contemplating the real meaning and purpose of the organisation, just as people of many religious traditions fast as a time of cleansing for true reflection? It would certainly be difficult to know how to communicate initially, but eventually each person would learn to a create a new language with a fresh perspective and craft new stories, bringing new meaning to what they do.

At first things would probably get worse. People wouldn’t know how to talk about certain matters. But gradually people would begin to experiment with new metaphors and create a new poetry by sharing stories and by helping one another discover fresh expressions of their perennial fears and hopes. As Keen says:

“It would be interesting to see what would happen within corporations if, for one hundred days, it was forbidden to talk about profits, losses, stockholders, competition, or market share. Some workers might wonder out loud if what they were doing with fifty or sixty hours a week truly reflected how they wished to spend their fleeting years. Others might wonder whether the product being promoted was ecologically viable, or if their contribution to a global economy was likely to benefit those on the planet who needed it most, or whether we might choose to measure the success of our society by gross national happiness [as they do in Bhutan], rather than by gross national product.”

Those that want the ‘comma’ in a  VMV and those that are less patient with a VMV inhabit the same world but experience and interpret it differently, our core statements (VMV) can only be an art, like poetry or music, expressing the poignancy of living in a world that evades our simplistic explanations

Foundations for success

Is creating a Vision and Mission statement worth the agonising? More than you could possibly imagine, but only IF it’s done properly.

Chris Norton GM of the award winning Four Seasons hotel has 5 simple steps to ensure a successful vision. See full interview here >

1. Establish STROYTELLING AS THE CORNERSTONE of the organization
2. Create BUY IN to ensure consistency
3. Encourage a PASSION to ensure commitment
4. Identify the organization’s UNIQUE THEMES for success
5. Provide an ENVIRONMENT for the story to flourish

You can subscribe to Tirian’s Podcast here.

1. DEFINITION: What is the ‘Collaboration Deception’?
2. EXPLORATION: How to win at an impossible game?
3. ACTION: Creating a collaborative environment in a cut throat competitive workplace?

1. DEFINITION: What is the ‘Collaboration Deception’

Two accused street smart school students sit in separate rooms awaiting a visit from the Principal. The Principal knows that both of them committed the crimes of which they are accused but she has no proof, and the students know this. What they don’t know is that the tactic the Principal will employ is one of the most powerful methods used to elicit the correct solution in a situation like this. She privately offers each of them a deal. The deal is that if they both confess they will get one detention each, if they both deny the crime they walk free, but if one confesses and the other does not the non-confessor gets expelled while the confessor walks free. This tactic – commonly known as the ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ – plays with the internal conflict we all have as humans between what we know is right for ourselves and what we know is right for the group. And this principle is not only be seen in human groups. Even animals like bats can find themselves in a prisoner’s dilemma situation: bats who feed each other are better off than bats that do not, however while bats that take food but do not give it are best off, bats that give food but do not receive it are worst off.

Back to the schoolyard. This time we’re focusing on an experimental classroom across the playground where an additional 30 students sit, each in a private cubicle with their fingers on buttons. Each student will get $1,000 after ten minutes, unless someone pushes their button, in which case the person who pushed the button will get $100 and everybody else will get nothing. What do they do? What happens when the right decision for the individual becomes the wrong one for the group?

Welcome to the collaboration deception, where humans struggle with the ambiguity of collaboration in a culture that breeds self survival and competition. Where organisations use individual bonuses as the ultimate form of recognition, saying they focus on team building while ultimately reinforcing the office tournament zero sum game.  TV reality shows work on the curious ambiguity that while groups need to form teams to survive, in the end it’s each person for themselves.

Even cigarette companies have had to learn how to work this principle. They may eventually have smiled quietly to themselves when governments imposed advertising bans recognising that most of their advertising is about winning users from the competition. Almost  equivalent of the annual spending on the arms race was spent on advertising aimed at trying to beat the competition, if one company pulled out they would significantly lose market share and as a result advertising skyrocketed.

In the end do we often have to choose between personal benefit and group gains. What, then, is true collaboration?

2: EXPLORATION: How to win at an impossible game?

Does true logic lead to collective disaster? And if so, how did we get this far?

Scientists believe that in many parts of nature the parts work together to make up a whole only because of elaborate mechanisms to suppress mutiny, not because the driving motivation is to support group cohesion. Both the collective harmony of a bee hive and our individual bodily functions working together to create a working whole body clearly demonstrate this principle at work. It has also been shown that behind many acts of altruism lie basic survival needs, which indicates that while the outcome is collective the motivation is still individualistic. It seems that the natural bias in many areas of life is towards personal benefit rather than group gain. All computer models show that as soon as someone in a team defects it becomes a race to the bottom. This is well illustrated by the way the ‘commons’ (shared park areas) deteriorated in village communities in England in the past when one person failed to stick to their allocation and overused the resources. As soon as one person defected from the common good, all others tried to ensure they didn’t lose out, and all became self- rather than community-focused. The underlying reasoning individuals have when such a defection occurred was that if the commons is eventually going to be used up, whoever makes the greatest use of the space stands to benefit the most. As Hersey and Blanchard have identified, “The productivity [and focus] of a work group seems to depend on how the group members see their own goals in relation to the goals of the organisation.”

The process of defection can prove to be infectious. Defecting sets off a chain reaction where trust ends up the victim. In the absence of collaboration a small number of misbehaving entities can have a devastating effect on the whole group. At the root of the tragedy of commons is the unrestrained self-interest of some individuals. A culture of non-collaboration eventually causes those who initially gained to lose.

The Inside job reflecting on the Global Financial recession shows that It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. In 80% of airplane accidents, pilots made mistakes that could have been prevented if the crew were able to learn to work together.

Are we forced to agree with Dawkins conclusion that “We are just survival machines –robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.”

3. ACTION: Creating a collaborative environment (in often  a cut throat competitive workplace)

Option 1: Defect and make the others lose

In a tournament people are paid for relative performance – for how well they do in comparison to others doing the same thing. But there is more than one way to win –such as making the others lose. In over three-quarters of poorly performing companies, executives set their successors up for failure, or deliberately chose weak successes in order to make themselves look good. (Collins, Good to Great). Leaders that defect in this way and set up a tournament–style approach can impact the organisation as a whole. One Australian study comparing 23 firms found that those giving big pay rises encouraged workers to put more into the job, (ie take less days off work etc), BUT is also showed that these workers refused to lend equipment and tools to their colleagues. So before introducing a tournament style motivation and incentive system it’s important to identify first whether each worker’s efforts to improve performance will outweigh their efforts to drag others down (Hartford).

Option 2:Play ‘Tit for Tat’

‘Tit for Tat’ players cooperate with co-operators, punish a defector by further defection, and return to cooperating after a mutual defection. However the outcome of this approach would mostly result in inconsistency and mistrust. (Ridley)

Option 3: Create a culture of collaboration

It is only possible to survive long term in an organisation through deliberately creating a culture of collaboration as follows: (based on Harford and Aireys behavioural economics & Matt Ridley’s anthropological research from  ‘The Origins of Virtue’)

1. Recognise and challenge defectors

Collaborators naturally seek out collaborators, so a culture can only be changed by identifying and challenging defectors to establish a positive mutually acceptable approach. To play in a world where many people are untrustworthy and many individuals don’t trust others, collaborators need to form new teams and challenge the structures that encourage defecting: “The reward of cooperation, and the temptation of defection are forbidden to those who do not demonstrate trustworthiness and build a reputation for it” The first step involves recognising defectors and turning collaborators into champions.

2. Change the game

Refuse to play with defectors or challenge the rules: the more people can be in more non-zero sum relationships the more healthy new networks will grow. Bats tend to roost in the same places up to eighteen years, and since they get to know each other as individuals and they have the opportunity to play the game repeatedly, and as a result start to form teams of collaborators putting pressure on the defectors to leave or conform. More collaborative groups of baboons fail to accept new members into the group that don’t display the same collaborative approach – or they ensure the new members change to fit into the predominant approach to maintain the collaborative culture. Compassion normally flows through long non zero sum channels.

3. Ride on reciprocity & reputation

As controversial as it may sound, anthropologists believe that humans have traditionally hunted not just for meat but for what it represents. Most humans hope to turn their meat into a durable and valuable commodity – prestige. As resources often need to be shared for survival, from the beginning the hunter learnt fast that it was often a matter of time before they found themself in the position of recipient rather than donor. Trust, like money, is a crucial lubricant for the economy. When people trust other people, a merchant, or a company, they are more likely to buy, lend, and extend credit. The hunter is reducing his exposure to one currency (meat) by buying another (prestige), in just the same way that a company that can raise a loan cheaply in dollars might swap it for one in Deutschemarks to hedge its exposure to exchange rates. Covey calls this the ‘building of the emotional bank account’, others call it good will. The top 250 companies in the UK have claimed that damage to reputation is the biggest business risk they face. Goodwill is believed to account for 70% of total market capital. (Regester & Larkin).

4. Divide the labour, share the rewards

Collaboration and sharing spread the risk as well as the reward of hunting. If a human were to rely on their own resources they would often go hungry and occasionally have more than they could eat. Food needed to be shared as it takes more calories to hunt that it does to eat. But if they were to share their meat and in return expect others to share with them, they could be fairly sure of getting at least some meat every day. The sharing of meat therefore represents reciprocity in which one person trades in their current good luck for an insurance against their future bad luck.

5. Focus on a goal bigger than the sum

”Successful collaborative teams emphasise external outreach and a focus beyond themselves”. (Ancona & Bresma) A unifying goal has power only if all relevant groups need to pull together to make it a reality. “The greatest benefit of a common-fate goal is that it elevates the aspirations of people to something bigger than parochial group goals.” Hansen

6. Discover healthy competition

Sports bike racers race better against a team mate than against the clock, and super market check-out staff work better when they know that someone is watching them –even if it’s just a colleague. By setting up healthy internal competition that enhances performance rather than providing discouragement, a high performing collaborative culture can be established.

7. Use positive language

It is important to be aware that culture is shaped informally not formally. The language a leader chooses matters a great deal in shaping behaviour. Leaders must use quality metaphors to connect, as they help to transfer meaning from one domain to another effectively – creating connections between what is familiar and what is not. Poor metaphors can perpetuate associations that are stagnant, superficial or destructive.. “Every time I am talking, I challenge people: `How can you help your colleagues?’ We want people who can deliver their own results and collaborate across the organization when needed; I talk about this all the time.” Henrik Madsen CEO DNV.

8. Rebuilding trust

In an online dating service it was established that women reported a 5% drop in weight and age and men gave themselves a few extra cm and a generous $30000 pay rise in their profiles. Do honest people who refuse to exaggerate substantially lower their market value? This depends on who their market is. The honest dating pool might be smaller but will have better quality, and without trust most relationships don’t last. Instead of exaggerating some companies have chosen to proactively address consumers’. complaints through listening and even allowing access to honest feedback. Changing the rules to create a reputation of transparency and sacrifice serves to restore public trust and help a firm set itself on the right path in the long run.

What about the free riders?

A lighthouse is the classic example of a public good. It is erected at some expense, but its light can be used freely by anybody to guide his ship to port, even if he refused to subscribe to the building of the lighthouse. Therefore it is in everybody’s interests to let everybody else pay for the lighthouse, so lighthouses do not get built – or rather, they do, but it is not immediately clear why.

A curious theory is now emerging among scientists who have studied the behaviour in the wild. Chimps (and possibly humans), are not just hunting for nutritional reasons at all, but for social and reproductive reasons. In a collaborative society free riders lose social status. Relationships are critical to ensuring all people pull their weight.

Creating Community based organisations and teams.

Where are the best teams in the world…

Having worked with and been exposed to diverse teams for over 20 years all over the world and people often ask us, where are the best teams we’ve ever seen? Ironically it was not in the academic hallways or corporate offices but far far away from our everyday lives. In the orphanages of war torn el Salvador and the displaced villages in Cambodia. If you want to learn more about what makes  a collaborative team have a look at the 10 min video interview we made called “Different Worlds” (with Habitat for Humanity) on youtube and you will see that great communities are amplifiers of human capacity and real collaboration? How you and your colleges define the word “you” will define the collaboration you achieve.

Read on to see a solution to the $1000 push the button game and why Bali has become an environmental disaster (and possibly a micro study of our world situation?)

Click here for some interesting perspectives. Send you answers to ….. we will post them next  T-Thoughts.

You can subscribe to Tirian’s Podcast here.

You can subscribe to Tirian’s Podcast here.

By Andrew Grant (with interview Michael Burchett GM Conrad hotel)

Things go wrong, there is often no getting around it. And for organisations responsible for serving customers, when things go wrong it can have a major impact on the customer experience and in turn the overall perceptions of the organisation. Yet while some organisations quickly recover and even prosper when things go wrong, others suffer enormously. Statistics show that the customer experience overall is actually declining over time. A quarterly survey of 65,000 Americans which looked at The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) has found that in the past five years the index has dropped. For some reason, the more an emphasis is placed on improving the customer experience, the less it seems to work.

From our observations and research we have discovered that good customer service often comes from a strong vision, clear systems and processes that embody that vision, and simple common sense. And yet so many are still finding it difficult to get it right. Why is it that one organization can have bright smiling staff that are always willing to help, whilst staff in another company in the same industry suffer from low morale and can find it hard to smile? Why do some individuals and organisations flounder and fall apart under pressure , while others are able to turn potentially negative incidents around through positive initiative? Finding the solution is not always that difficult. Following are a few personal stories from our travels which reveal just how important good customer service is for the customer experience and ultimately the image and reputation of the organisation, and how easy it can be to get it right.

NO ACTION IS ACTUALLY AN ACTION
Stop 1: Sugarloaf Ski Resort Maine USA

“200 hundred stranded, several dead and many injured.” This is what we were hearing from the crowd as we looked up the mountain at the emergency zone, still in disbelief that a chairlift cable had literally been blown off its runners in 40 knot winds. People did end up being stranded for hours in the strong winds and icy minus 20 degree Celsius temperatures, but fortunately the impact didn’t end up being quite as severe as it had at first seemed (a few did need to be flown out for emergency treatment, but as far as we know no one died). The way the ordeal was handled ended up causing unnecessary additional stress. On one of  the busiest days of the year in the Christmas/New Year period, with thousands of people out for a holiday, an emergency became a public relations nightmare. At the time there was no official information about what had happened, and no one was informed of the planned procedures going forward, so in the absence of official information the rumours spread and the panic built up. As the media trucks rolled in the rumours continued to spread like wildfire. Almost all of the lifts on the mountain were shut down with no explanation as to why, even hours after the incident. The online the status of the resort remained “fully open” so angry people poured into the mountain buying daily passes to be funnelled into one tiny crowded run. And yet some simple actions could have ensured that the impact of the incident was minimised – perhaps noticeboard updates at the base of the lifts and/or at the entry points to the mountains, or a loud speaker announcement providing accurate information and helpful next actions. In this case they didn’t realise that no action can actually be a negative action. (See CNN report here).

Key Lesson 1: Like the old chairlift that fell down under pressure –things can easily grind to a halt where the right systems are not in place. Staff can become paralysed, ‘blown off the rails,’ and it can be difficult to avoid negative outcomes.

THINK BEFORE YOU LEAP
Stop 2: Portland Airport USA

The storm that hit the east coast was one of the worst in years. The whole region was blanketed in a heavy snow and everything came to a standstill. It was fascinating to watch how different people handled the emergencies. At the airport, when a group of people in the departure gate next to us were ready to board their plane, instead of the boarding announcement they heard an announcement that the airline didn’t have enough staff to cover the flight and the flight was now cancelled. They were told they would all need to go home and wait for the next flight. Then they were told the next flight would be in 3 days. An angry crowd soon descended on the poor man who made the announcement, and his attempted pleasant approach quickly degraded into an aggressive defensiveness. Rather than a sincere apology and constructive recommendations and alternatives, which may have helped to rescue the situation somewhat, things rapidly deteriorated. A bad situation had become a public relations and customer experience disaster. Unlike the broken chairlift (which was an freakish accident) the US gets regularly gets hit by serve winter storms, and you would have thought that the airlines would have learnt to deal with these situations. And yet the poor man that was lynched by the angry crowd seemed to have no idea of what was about to hit him and how to handle the situation effectively.

Key Lesson 2: Good customer service requires learning to think ahead (scenario planning) to anticipate potential problems and to know how to deal with them effectively.

‘WE’RE SORRY FOR THE INCONVIENCE.’ REALLY?
Stop 3: Somewhere over the Arabian desert

Across the other side of the world, flying over the Arabian desert on the new A380 airbus, I hear a major crack and an extremely loud noise. The initial noise is frightening enough on its own, but then the sound of hissing air that seemed to be gushing from the door continues for the whole flight. After several recent incidents regarding emergency landings for this particular plane, the passengers were terrified of what it could mean! Instead of turning the plane around, which I fully expected given the apparent gravity of the situation, I was horrified to see the crew simply shoving blankets and towels around the door in an attempt to stifle the sound. “It’s leaking,” was all that one of the crew could offer in response to my enquiry about what was going on. With the worry about an emergency landing somewhere in the Arabian desert on my mind and the incessant hissing noise at what must have been an extremely high decibel measure – which was not effectively stifled –  it was impossible to sleep or concentrate the whole trip, and I could not believe the lack of response the airline had in the follow up. After over a month period and several emails we received a fairly standard email denying that it was a leak and stating, “We are sorry for the inconvenience…” Nothing more. Surely the airline knew of the bad PR the A380 was having, and yet they simply left a deck full of business class passengers seething over the lack of adequate follow up. It may be important to note here the statistics from an International Bank, which found that 68% of customers stopped doing business with vendors due to an attitude of indifference from an employee while only 16% said it was due to problems with the quality of the product.

Key Lesson 3:  Immediate proactive action and a sincere apology to support upset customers in an unpleasant situation and ensure they feel like they are being listened to and respected can help to avoid the considerable impact of a negative experience.

AUTHENTIC COMMUNITY ACTION
Stop 4: Queensland Australia

The recent devastating floods in Queensland have been described as, ‘Australia’s worst natural disaster ever’. The flooded area was equivalent to the land area of both France and Germany put together. The damage to property has been estimated to be in the billions of dollars, and of course the impact of the loss of lives is immeasurable. The media has been effusive with praise for the rescue teams and for the individuals offering to help. Headlines such as “Rising above the misery,” and “Heroes continue to emerge in the aftermath of the floods” reflect the positive emphasis that is being placed on the follow up process. As a result, money is pouring in from donation efforts from a range of individuals and groups with creative money raising ideas. Queensland was clearly not ready for this, and had limited experience/training/resources to deal with  a disaster of this scale. There was no customer service, marketing or PR department busy ensuring that the impact was minimised, and yet the media response was positive. Clearly, where there is communicated a genuine awareness of issues and sincere desire to work together towards positive outcomes, people can feel a part of the recovery process, which creates a positive attitude.

Key Lesson 4: When people are personally motivated and work as a true community with a common goal and focus they can achieve amazing results

SMALL HICCUPS, BIG SMILES
Stop 5: Conrad Hotel Bali

Over in Indonesia, the GM of the Conrad Hotel Michael Burchett has managed to change a whole culture with his staff ‘Hiccup’ policy. When a potentially negative incident occurs, it is labelled as a ‘hiccup’–to indicate that it only needs to be considered as a slight concern in the regular functioning of the hotel, and that if dealt with efficiently and effectively recovery can occur quickly. Positive experiences, which are called ‘Smiles’ are also recorded in the same way. All incidents and follow up actions are recorded so that there is accountability for proactive responses to incidents and also shared learning opportunities. It is interesting to reflect that hotels wanting to increase customer satisfaction and win new business can spend millions on renovations, and yet surveys have shown that only 1 in 5 hotel guests can remember the room and the rate after they leave a hotel, but all of them can remember whether they received good service and good value. A satisfied guest will tell 5 people about their experience, while a dissatisfied guest will tell 10 people. So while heaps of money are poured into the hardware the advertising, it might be more effective to put more of this effort and energy into ensuring that guests have a great experience.

Key Lesson 5: It is important to raise awareness of the impact of negative customer experiences and celebrate positive experiences and to ensure follow up actions became second nature to staff through well established principles and processes.

Many disasters are out of our control, and most customers recognize this – however proactive effective customer service when things turn bad- can often turn a bad story into a good one, stop it escalating further, and may cost a great less in the long run. But for this to happen a holistic approach needs to be implemented throughout the entire organization where people feel empowered to take some initiative, and this happens when people are clear and happy about the values, vision and mission of their company.

by Andrew Grant

You might like to try playing a game with your children next birthday or Christmas – a game where they have to use their brain to receive a present from you! In this game, there are 3 beautifully wrapped boxes under the tree, 2 boxes containing a picture of a goat and one containing a very expensive present from you. You ask your children to choose which box they think has the most expensive present (they are not allowed to shake or feel the boxes). They can point to any of the three to make their choice. Then, before they make their final commitment, you say you are going to make it easier for them. You open one of the boxes which you know does not contain the expensive gift and show them that box only has a picture of a goat, and remove it from under the tree. Now comes the part where they have to think. Ask them whether they want to stick with the original box they chose, or whether they would rather switch to the other remaining box. Tell them that they only get to keep what’s in the box – whether it is the present or the picture of a goat!

Will the children stay with their original choice or switch? This is an old dilemma that has been explored in a number of different ways over the years.

This dilemma has reappeared many times in history, including in a famous TV game show, but originally it was known as Bertrand’s Box Paradox (1889). If you think that your kids just lost the chance to get an expensive present from you, you may be interested to know that when the above statement of the problem and the solution appeared in the magazine Parade, approximately 10,000 readers, including nearly 1,000 with PhDs, wrote to the magazine claiming the published solution was wrong. Even though the facts were made very clear, most people could not go against their initial gut instincts. They weren’t able to open themselves up to other possibilities.

Following are some interesting outcomes from this experiment that can help us to improve our creative thinking and analytical skills:

1. BEING OPEN TO NEW OPTIONS

Sometimes when the facts are shown in black and white, we stick with our gut instinct instead of being prepared to explore other options. We are so convinced that we are right, that we become blinded to where we might wrong. But we can improve processes only if we are actively looking for ways to improve. Too often we settle for where we are at rather than thinking about where we might need to be. Making the jump from what our emotions tend to tell us to the reality of the situation can be difficult. When faced with the above dilemma many people simply freeze up and cannot make a decision – most people stick with what is familiar and do not switch. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely believes that people’s biases are rarely altered even by their vast experience or when the facts are staring them in the face.

2. BREAKING AWAY FROM BIAS

Psychologists call the type of mistake that people make in this dilemma the ‘availability bias’ because in reconstructing the past, we give unwarranted importance to memories that are most vivid and hence most available for retrieval.

When we are in the grasp of an illusion—or, for that matter, whenever we have a new idea—instead of searching for ways to prove our ideas wrong, we usually attempt to prove them correct. Psychologists call this the ‘confirmation bias’, and it presents a major impediment to our ability to break free.

3. FROM PERCEPTION TO ACTION

The way we perceive ideas in our mind makes a huge difference to the extent to which we can connect with them. A picture of a goat may not ignite the imagination – while the anticipation of an expensive present may In order to make the jump from just ideas to reality we may need to visualize the end result. This type of transition from perception to action in the workplace or in personal life can be a challenge for many people, but for creativity to be effective it needs a grounding, a vision, and a directed action. People, teams and organizations not only need to be think creatively but also to learn how to innovate and turn ideas into practical actions through using their imagination productively. .

4. INTEGRATING LEFT BRAIN ND RIGHT BRAIN STRATEGIES

Possessing information offers no advantage in life, as much as our education system may encourage us to believe this. And m emorization is not the most important skill. Instead, it is the ability to use information well which differentiates successful people from others. This requires a combination of both creative thinking and problem-solving, of imagination and focused logic of abstract thinking and analysis : t he ability to use both the left and right brain.
As Dan Pink has said, “When facts become widely available they become less valuable. What begins to matter more is the ability to place these facts in CONTEXT and deliver them with EMOTIONAL impact.”  

5. THINKING BOTH CONVERGENTLY AND DIVERGENTLY

As Merriman and Bronson explain in The Creativity Crisis, “Creativity requires constant shifting, blender pulses of both divergent thinking and convergent thinking, to combine new information with old and forgotten ideas. Highly creative people are very good at marshalling their brains into bilateral mode, and the more creative they are, the more they dual-activate. When you try to solve a problem, you begin by concentrating on obvious facts and familiar solutions, to see if the answer lies there. This is a mostly left-brain stage of attack. If the answer doesn’t come, the right and left hemispheres of the brain activate together. Neural networks on the right side scan remote memories that could be vaguely relevant. A wide range of distant information that is normally tuned out becomes available to the left hemisphere, which searches for unseen patterns, alternative meanings, and high-level abstractions.”

6. SYNTHESIZING DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF CREATIVE THINKING

Many companies like to talk about creativity. What company these days would say they are NOT creative or don’t innovate? Creativity is embraced because it sounds like fun (and appears to be low cost). But if you open your mind too far, it used to be said, your brain will fall out! So companies embrace creativity (ideas) and hope that innovation (action) will happen by osmosis.  (Richard Watson). To foster real creativity companies need to allow the ambiguity of individuals and teams to embrace both their creative and analytical skills: when they do, the results can be amazing.
Every time we run our simulation, ‘The Chocolate Factory’ we watch a team redesign a process (left brain) using their creative skills (right brain) and the end result is a 200 %+ improvement in revenue and increased morale. Helping people to see beyond what they think is just one of the many advantages of embracing creativity, even for analytical processes. Creativity helps people see beyond what is assumed. We can improve processes only if we are actively looking for ways to improve AND if we can seamlessly jump between the analytical and creative parts of our brain.

Learning to deal with ambiguity and address the perception biases we tend to experience is critical to creative problem solving. When it comes to coming up with the best solutions, thinking outside the box suddenly takes on a whole new meaning.

PS: IS A GOAT SUCH A BAD GIFT?

By the way – is receiving a goat as a present actually all that bad? We just gave a goat to our daughter for her birthday, and she said it was the best present she had ever received. Why? Because the goat was for a village in Africa. Did you know that giving brings more happiness than receiving? Something to think about when you next need to give a gift. So it seems all 3 boxes can bring happiness! (Give a goat for your next present http://www.oxfamunwrapped.com.au/gift-94-goat )

The answer to stay or switch with a full explanation and even a chance to try it yourself can be read below.

References Derren Brown, ‘Tricks of the Mind ‘
The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives
Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely
Also see http://www.archimedes-lab.org/monthly_puzzles_61.html#co3

In this second part to the two part article we interview Matt to find out more about what he has learnt about leading and working in teams under stress from his experiences in the wild. Matt is a special guest keynote speaker and facilitator for Tirian's On THIN ICE program, where his experienced contributions create an incredible authentic learning experience "The Expedition Challenge Part 1: Lessons for survival" can be found here.

TT: What happens to team motivation under stress, and how can you maintain good morale?

MM: It is easy to get a false sense of security and camaraderie in the team during the initial stages of an expedition. The first 30 minutes on our boat were sheer jubilation for the team as we sailed out through Sydney Heads bound for Antarctica. After months of preparation, the expedition was finally under way and the mix of excitement and relief put everyone on an emotional high. As a result, the team was motivated, engaged and getting along well. But by day 11, morale had hit a real low. The euphoria was smothered by repetitious work and monotony and got worse as the reality of the task at hand set in. The impact on the team was that we withdrew into ourselves, trying to live off our own resources till we reached the Pole. We acted like 5 individuals instead of a team. But it wasn't working. Eventually we had to break through our personal barriers and get the conversations going to act like a team again. We started to realize that if we were going to make it through to the end of our journey, we couldn't just wait till we got there to celebrate – we had to recognize success along the way. We needed to celebrate the little achievements – invisible markers of progress on the open ocean like certain lines of latitude or reaching specific coordinates. We had to find ways of paying attention to what we were doing well rather than focus what was still left to do.

TT: You mentioned that you had to get the conversations going again for the team to function well. Why are these conversations so important?

When we become insular and stop communicating, we begin to bottle things up inside with dangerous results, as I found out myself. Being on watch in the Southern Ocean is a test of psychological and physical endurance. The temperatures are freezing and the seas are huge, crashing over the boat day and night. You are alone on deck while others are cozy in their bunks below. We took one hour shifts on a fixed roster, as that was about the limit for survival. At the end of my shift, my replacement continually turned up a few minutes late. I was annoyed but didn't say anything, but after a few days, I began to feel resentment as I tallied up in my mind the amount of time down below that he had robbed me of. Soon I had begun to despise him and despise everything he did as well. I even remember feeling infuriated by the way he ate and hating the way he slept! I wanted to throw him off the boat. In one particularly bad storm in temperatures of minus 25 degrees, my anger boiled over. When he came up on shift a few minutes late again, my anger unleashed and I grabbed him, and yelled that I wanted to throw him overboard for being late. To my surprise, he immediately apologized. He had thought that the turn of the hour was the time to put his wet weather gear on. He was completely unaware that he was late and didn't even realize the consequence of his actions. It was all just miscommunication. It taught me the importance of the critical conversations for teams to work – talking about small issues before they get big.

TT: How big a factor is alignment on an expedition team – ensuring all participants are on the same page?

MM: On the real polar caps alignment is not a luxury, it's a necessity. We had assumed we had good alignment in the team because we all had the same objective – that is, we wanted to reach the South Pole. As the story above shows, we weren't as aligned as we thought. Alignment MUST be achieved in a team as much as possible before the journey begins – not just for good teamwork but also for safety reasons. Once the journey starts, miscommunication or differing motivations can lead to catastrophe if people are not aligned. It is critical to keep analysing the current state and the desired state during the journey to look for gaps and holes in team alignment, so when the crisis hits, the team pulls together rather than tears itself apart.

TT: How important is flexibility in teams and team members?

MM: In extreme environments, constant adjustments are needed, and almost every new situation you face is unique – it's a one off. Change is the one constant. You can learn principles and approaches before you go, but you need to adjust to what the environment throws up at you. At the North Pole, the ice cap is constantly drifting and changing. I once spent 12 hours to walk just 1.8 km over the ice, only to wake up the next day 8 kms behind where I went to bed because of the ice shifts. I didn't plan for that but I did adapt and continued on. You need to be flexible to assess strategies and direction, and to be willing to change if it isn't working out.

 So what can we take away from Matt's experiences?

1. Recognize success along the way: Honour the little achievements to maintain morale. Don't leave the celebrations till the objective is achieved, but find markers along the way to highlight. Focus on what has been achieved, not just on what is still to do.
2. Have the critical conversations: Don't bottle up your questions or concerns. Seek an appropriate opportunity to talk issues through with the person(s) concerned to keep team dynamics productive and to help the team achieve a better, more well-rounded result.
3. Be aware of how your behavior affects the team: In virtual teams, small actions can have big implications. Delaying a conference call may work for you, but how will that affect the person that got up at 3:00am in another time zone, and now has to wait another 30 minutes for it to start, and then has to be back at work at 9am?
4. Get alignment before you start: Ensure the team has a shared goal and values. Agree on methods of operation and communication. Perhaps develop a team code of conduct to capture your agreed behaviours.
5. Continue investing in the team to adapt to change: Change is usually thrust on us – whether in the form of changing customer preferences or a new GFC or something else. The team that is flexible and willing to change can better meet the challenges and take advantages of the opportunities. This time and energy is not a distraction from the task, but time well-spent in reaching a better outcome.

Hopefully these simple steps will help you to cope better with the daily adventures life challenges us with!

The ICE experience in real life:

The scenes of jubilation in Chile captured the hearts and imaginations of people worldwide in the past few weeks as all 33 miners were rescued after 70 days trapped underground . A key concern throughout the rescue has been how the extended time in an in isolated and confined environment would effect the miners both emotionally and psychologically. It was fascinating to see the research at the heart of Tirian’s On Thin ICE program put into practice in the care and support of the miners both during and after the rescue, to manage interpersonal dynamics and help the miners function as an effective team for their survival. The Chilean Government brought in experts from NASA, who leads the research in this field in its efforts to find ways for a team to function well on extended space missions. Why not try the On Thin ICE analysis on your team to see how the discoveries of the NASA research can work for you.

At the age of 22, Matt McFadyen joined the crew of a 43-foot yacht to cross the most dangerous ocean on earth in order to reach Antarctica. Having to navigate fields of icebergs while beset by storms of mammoth intensity, Matt was forced to draw on every ounce of courage and perseverance he could muster as nature tested his personal resolve and his team's resourcefulness. The eventful trip involved dealing with waves of up to fifty feet high that often swept across the yacht and knocked it down, and on many occasions the crew was forced to fight for their lives. This harrowing experience brought on a startling appreciation of the raw power of nature and its ability to challenge us, and it inspired Matt and motivated him to continue the journey with further adventures. He has since become the youngest Australian to ski to the North Pole unassisted, and only the second Australian to accomplish this amazing feat three times. In his second expedition, which he completed in April 2006, Matt had to negotiate one of the harshest Arctic seasons in years to reach the top of the world. Matt is a special guest keynote speaker and facilitator for Tirian's On THIN ICE program, where his experienced contributions help to create an incredible authentic learning experience.

The part 1 of this article, "The Expedition Challenge Part 1: Lessons for survival" can be found here >.