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In the last course, we talked about how to change our perspectives so

we could generate insights, inventions, enlightenments, and be creative.

One of the challenges to being creative that we talked about

is this tension between the habit of getting through your day,

and changing your perspective to take a new pathway, right?

But most of the time,

we wrestled with that tension at the level of us as individuals, right?

I'm going about my day, and I'm either doing it as I normally do or

I get creative, change my perspective, and realize I can do something differently.

But then what happens is my day intersects with your day.

[LAUGH] >> Not too often.

>> Not as often as I'd like, but the point is, you get to work,

you get to the office, you work with somebody else.

We're so often doing things not on our own, but with other people.

So the question then is what happens when

all of these discussions about my perspective,

my habit, my new perspective meets the world, and in particular, my group.

>> Right, so here we're going to switch gear a little bit talk about creativity as

it unfolds in teams.

And here the question is, how do you connect minds and

how do you share perspectives?

And how do you, hopefully,

change each other's perspectives in a way that will allow you to be more creative?

And intuitively, people assume that this should be easy.

You just put a group together, and you share perspectives,

and creativity should just sort of flow from that.

>> Yeah, I think the intuition is that it should help.

I mean, if you're in a group, you come with your perspective,

I come with my perspective, we blend our perspectives.

We therefore have some change because you say something, I hear something, whatever.

And you think, synergy, wonderful.

[LAUGH] >> By the way, I hate that word synergy.

You do, too, I'm sure.

It sounds so easy.

>> That's the problem, it does.

>> Yeah, it does sound easy.

And we're going to talk about the promise of teams,

that they really do have the potential to be creative.

But before we get there, we're going to delve into the dark side and

really talk about why creativity in groups is really not as easy as it sounds.

>> It's hard.

>> Teams have the potential to foster creativity,

but another reason we have to grapple with team creativity

is just because teams are everywhere these days in organizations.

>> Right. >> It's just a huge trend.

>> Yeah, it's unavoidable, right?

And it's really part of a broader trend that's taken place over the last two

decades or so, which is that people are just spending less and

less time working alone and more and more time working as part of a team.

>> Yeah. >> And so

it's just a reality we have to deal with.

>> Yeah, we have to get better at it, yeah.

>> Right, and so but just to give you a sense for the magnitude of the shift,

I just sort of for fun, put the word team player into Amazon, and

there were literally hundreds of book titles.

>> [LAUGH] Always dangerous.

>> Right. >> [LAUGH]

>> Some things weren't safe for work.

But there were hundreds of book titles that purport to teach people how to be

better team players, right?

So there is one book that is a guide for

becoming the person that every team wants, right?

And then another one which is how to raise a team player, which is a guide for

parents and which is, if that isn't horrifying, I don't what it is.

>> Wow.

[LAUGH] >> But right, so its-

>> There's really a CEO one too, right?

>> [LAUGH] Yeah, right.

>> How to turn your organization into team player.

>> Or how to turn your three-year-old into the CEO you've always wanted, right?

>> [LAUGH] >> So we could start industry.

>> There you go.

>> But anyway it's really deeply embedded in organizational cultures, and so

we just kind of have to deal with it.

>> Yeah. >> There was another survey that I also

found disturbing recently.

Actually it was a few years ago.

But they asked the CEOs of a number of major corporations what they thought

the most important skills are for getting ahead at work.

And the results kind of disturbed me because what they said was that being

a team player was ahead of knowledge, skill, and ability.

>> [LAUGH] Right.

>> Which means that it's more important to be a team player than actually

know what you're doing, which is really disturbing to me.

>> They like me, they really like me.

[LAUGH] >> So

we're trying to be creative in the context of working in teams and

this sort of team player mentality which will end up playing a big role.

>> Right, so how can we both be a team player but also be creative, too, right?

>> Or how can you resist being a team player and be a rebel, and so

we'll get to that possibility as well.

[LAUGH] >> Even better put.

So one of the classic stories in creativity is the story of Art Fry at 3M

and the invention of the Post-It Note.

So apparently, the way the story goes, at least as I heard it,

is that Art Fry was trying to make some new kind of glue and he made a mistake.

He generated a glue that just didn't stick, right?

>> Yeah.

>> But he persisted, stuck with it and wow,

we have Post-It Notes, and it's an incredible thing.

>> So it seems like a classic story of creativity.

The failure that turned out to be a success, but

more importantly the story of an individual who persisted against all

odds and was eventually lauded for having done it.

>> So individual creativity?

>> Yeah, right, so it's kind of the story of the lone genius, right?

>> Yeah. >> I guess what we forget is he didn't

even invent the glue.

>> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] That was the basis for it.

He actually did, though.

We can give him credit for recognizing that there needed to be something that

didn't quite stick and that could be useful as a bookmark.

Because he used to sing in the choir and

he needed something that he could remove from the page right and then move along.

And so he had this, well, I need this thing.

Is there a glue that does that?

And so one of the ways the context matter is that

at 3M they had a culture that actually valued failure.

And they kept every failed recipe for glue going back decades.

And it was in this vault.

And so it wasn't as though he came up with the glue first of all.

It was that the organization had a way of remembering these solutions, and

that requires a culture and a context that valued failure.

So that was one way.

>> Yup.

>> And another is that he didn't know about the failed recipe for glue.

He only knew about it because he had a lunchtime conversation with colleagues,

one of whom remembered the recipe and then shared it with him, and

then that sent him on his way.

So it was really about connecting different pieces of knowledge.

One person developed the failed recipe for glue.

Art Fry recognized there was a need in the world for something.

His colleagues remembered that there was a failed recipe lying

around that had those properties.

And so really, when you rethink this story, it's less about the lone genius and

more about a collective process of being creative.

And so what does the Post-It Note process really tell us about when teams have

the potential to be creative?

It was kind a particular case

that kind of tells us when teams have the potential to be useful.

>> Yeah, it stands in, I think, for a whole class of cases of two levels, right?

So one is it's a really long complicated process.

>> Right. >> [LAUGH] Right?

So it's not just you sit in your room, a lightbulb goes off, and

then you've got it.

>> And you do everything along the way, right?

Yeah, so it's- >> Well, but there are all these steps

along the way, so I don't know, let say, so someone had to make a glue that failed.

>> Right. >> Right,

someone had to store it in case it would be later useful.

>> Someone had to remember it was there.

>> [LAUGH] I don't even remember where my keys are every morning,

much less the failed adhesive that was there for 20 years.

>> Absolutely, so someone had to think of a use that wasn't being met.

Right, a need.

I have this choir hymn and

I need something to stick to these pages but be removable.

>> Right. >> So that's a fourth thing.

>> Someone had to fund the prototype.

That required a decision making process that-

>> Absolutely.

>> That somebody gets credit for that as well, so.

>> Yeah, and then someone had to hear about one and tell the other.

>> Yeah, that's right.

>> Right, so we have a connector person.

And then, what, I mean, there must of been, okay, they made it, and then what?

>> Yeah. >> Someone had to figure out who

the audience, who the consumer constituency is.

>> Yeah.

>> So the number of- >> So there are multiple parts going,

multiple parts going on here, multiple moving parts.

And really, those are when teams work best, when you have a very complex

problem that requires different kinds of strategies, and different approaches.

And then you have the potential to combine all of these things.

>> Another advantage of teams is that there is the potential to use different

sources of knowledge, as well.

We saw that in that story where there was one person who knew how to make glue.

There was a person who remembered where the failed recipes were.

You had Art Fry who had real world experience that pointed to a potential

use for it.

And you even had the administrative assistants who were the first to actually

have the prototype.

And then they were able to look for creative uses for

it that maybe Art Fry didn't even think of when he was singing in the choir.

And so again, we have not only multiple steps, but

also multiple sources of knowledge.

And when you have situations like that then there at least exists the potential

for teams to be creative by combining all of those things.

>> So if we can break apart a problem, and if we can break apart the kinds of

knowledge for that problem, we could have one person who can do all the steps and

have all the knowledge, but we could distribute it across people.

>> Right. >> And because we have technical knowledge

or parts can be really complicated to do,

that's where teams can play a role because you get that different strength.

I may not have all those strengths, you may not, but together we can do a lot.

>> So it's possible to find that one genius who knows everything, but

it's unlikely, and so we rely on teams.

>> It's much easier to rely on teams.

>> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] We rely on teams.

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>> So the reality is we have to really grapple with team creativity.

For one, there's actually a lot of potential for teams to be creative.

There's at least the potential for people to exchange perspectives with others and

thereby reach creative solutions.

The other reality is that we have to work in teams often,

in organizations, and so whether you like it or not, you're going to be in a team.

And so it helps to know how they work.

And so before we get to the optimistic sort of ideal how do we be

creative in teams, we're going to talk about the pitfalls and the dark side.

And what are the barriers that teams pose in terms of preventing people

from being creative?

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1-1.1 Connecting Minds

Creativity Toolkit II: Creative Collaboration

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