Unleashing Creativity: Shifting from Problem-Solving to Problem-Defining for Remarkable Results

0:00 The topics and opinions express in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability, explicit or implied shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. What's working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their highest potential. Business can be such a force for good in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we all want working on Purpose. Now here's your host, doctor Elise Cortez. Welcome back to the Working and Purpose Program. Thanks you're doing it again this week. Great to have you. This program has been on air and been provided to you with passion and pride since February of twenty fifteen.

1:12 I'm your host, doctor las Cortes. If we have not met before and you don't know me, I'm an organizational psychologist and logo therapist, speaker and author, and my team and I at Gusto Now help companies to enliven and fortify their operations by articulating their purpose and building inspirational leaders and cultures activated by meeting and purpose to turn those companies from a flatline EKG to a vibrant destination workplace. There people are intrinsically motivated to perform with their best, can grow into their fuller potential, and are committed to stay in dynamically deliver on the company's mission. You can learn more about us and how we can work together at Gusto dashnow dot com or my personal site at least coretest dot com. Now getting into today's program, we have with us doctor Roger Feierstein, who has trained more people to lead the creative process than anyone else in the world. He is Senior faculty and Associate professor at the Center for Applied Imagination at Sunny Buffalo State as president of Innovation Resources in He consults, creates training programs, and runs breakthrough laps, and has created a series of courses for open Sesame How Fun. He is author of several popular books, including Create in a Flash, The Leader's Recipe for Breakthrough Innovation, and the one we're talking about today, Solved the Real Problem. He judges today from Buffalo, New York. Roger, Welcome to Working on Purpose. Thank you, Elise.

2:27 It's a pleasure to be here. Wonderful. We're gonna have so much fun talking about how to talk about creativity and solving the real problem. So let me thank you for bringing these works into the world. This one solved the real problem. Very nice, easy read and just good stuff. And then this one I also read too. Why didn't I think of that? Fantastic? Thank you. They're a joy to do. They're a joy to do. Isn't it wonderful when work is play? It's just a wonderful thing. So more people to do that. Absolutely well, So let's let's just start. One of the things I have just become enamored with in my life and my work, Roger, and my own path is that I and what I've learned is that everyone has some kind of a personally significant experience or set of experiences in their lives that puts them on a path that makes them able to create something that no one else could have seen or created. It's just their special sauce, their mold. So I think it would be really fun if you could start by telling your story of why creat a problem solving is so important to you and where that came from. At least thank you for that. I'm happy to do that. And so the story begins on a farm in northern Colorado, and it's all good stories beginning. It's all good stories beginning. Could be a frib in Kansas, but it's a frivan northern Colorado, right. And I saw I was a farm one and my mother made me take piano lessons. And I hated piano lessons, and so that she made me practice, and she said, someday you'll be glad you took

3:58 piano lessons. Well, every time I see her now, I tell her that that's the case. Because when I was about fourteen years old, administered or a church gave me a little four string guitar. And I'll steal for string guitar. It's held together with scotch tape. There was sand in it, and he said, I think you might enjoy this. Go ahead. Well, for the next three months, my parents didn't see me because I was in the basement practicing and learning how to play guitar. I eventually started teaching at a guitar studio, and I played guitar in rock bands in college and stuff. And then I set off to the University of Northern Colorado thinking that I was going to be a music major, going to be a guitar as and a music major guitar teacher. Well, I got into my first semester, my first year of college, and I became very, very frustrated because as a music major, when you're a freshman, you spend most of your time in a practice room about six by six. You don't talk to people very much, and the whole focus was on technique. You know, how to get better at the instrument. I understand that now, but I wanted to do some creative stuff with us that because when I was growing up on a I was fortunate to build treehouses and build go karts and do all those things that you can do that you might and rafts on ponds and stuff.

5:09 My parents encouraged me to do that, and so here I am. I'm a freshman at the University of Northern Colorado getting really frustrated about my education, and I came across this program called the Individualized Education Program, and essentially it was you take a couple of classes, but then you meet with a faculty mentor every week to design your own education. It was based on the English, the English model, the Oxford model. So I began working with a young anthropologist who's also a musician, a sculptor, a sailor, a horse farmer, my goodness, a piano tuner, just just a real renaissance guy. And I thought I was going to focus on creating guitar studios or something like this. And then I noticed something. I noticed that my younger students were really getting bored playing the guitar, like, you know, two or three notes on the easting. It was just off and for him.

6:00 So I had the idea. I thought, if I could get my students to get more creative, they might enjoy their music form. And so I started reading about creativity and I think I just kept the University in Northern Colorado bookstore in business in the summer of nineteen seventy six, because I read everything I could possibly find on creativity. And in the spring of nineteen seventy seven, it's April. I'm at my parents' house. As I'm reading through the literature, and look at the bibliographies, there's two names and one place that keeps coming up consistently in the literature. One is doctor Sydney J. Parns, and another is doctor Ruth Noler. And this place called the Center for Apply to Magic or Interdisciplining Center for Creative Studies at the State University College at Buffalo. So I go to the microfiche at the university and I took the microphech to find the phone number of the place. And then it's April and I'm at my parents' house, and so I dialed the phone number. I got the courage to dial the phone number. The rotary dialogue they got it dial the phone number, and I talked to the secretary and I explained to him that what I was interested in, and she said, well, you know, Roger, doctor Parnes is here. Would you like to talk to him? Now? At least I'd never talked to an author before in my life. I mean I'm twenty one, twenty two years old. All the authors that I knew were dead, you know, And so to talk to this guru, this creativity author guy I was. I was ecstatic. I talked with doctor Parnes. We had a wonderful conversation. He said, you

7:31 know, we've got this conference that we host every year, and we're starting this master's degree programming creativity. You might be interested in that. So I hung up the phone. I ran up the stairs. I said to my mom, I said, Mom, I just talked to Sid Parnes in Buffalo, New York. Do you know what she said? She said, what you made a long distance phone call? Phone calls from rural northern because August this phone calls from rural northern Colorado were pretty expensive back then. Well, I went out that summer in April in June to attend the creativity conference and take a course, and I was on fire. And when I got back, my mom and dad said, that's all you could talk about was your work in creativity and what was going on. So I finished up my degree at the University of Northern Colorado, moved out to Buffalo in June of nineteen seventy eight. Got my master's degree in creativity studies in nineteen seventy nine.

8:22 I think I was about the seventh person to do that, and now we've graduated over four hundred folks's and that's gone from there. So I was on faculty from nineteen eighty four to nineteen ninety four and then went part time to work on my consulting business. And now I've formally retired, so I'm associate professor emeritus, but I'm far from retired. And so they don't retire. I don't. This is so much fun. Why would people retire to do stuff that they love to do? Why would you not keep doing this stuff that you love to do? So I'm having the time of my life, and I really appreciate this interview. Lease You're so welcome. What a great way to start. You know, I love it when people are passionate about what they do. And that's such a great story about how you got into creativity and the thing that I find so interesting about your work that why it's so compelling and one of the major reasons I wanted to have you on the program. And I align with this, and this is so interesting. What you say is you say we have been taught to find answers to problems, not to question the problem itself. And I'm so amazed. I mean, even my young people are like, they're like, you know, going to school and they're trying to find the answer. What does the teacher want for the answer? Oh my gosh, that frightens me. So if you could speak a bit to this problem here, this conditioning that we have the traditional way we tend to go about this problem solving. Yeah, well, it's my contention that we're still using the same strategies that we used in elementary school to solve complex, difficult, potentially dangerous problems. And it's because we've been

9:52 taught to find answers to problems, not to question the problem itself. And the example I use is this is like I asked someone, well, what's three plus three? They'll say six? What's the capital of Spain? Madrid? You know, what's the name of the third planet from the sun. They have to think for a minute, But it's Earth, okay. And so the problem has already been set up for us. But what we're faced with today is the problems aren't set up for us. There's there's all these challenges out there all these things that we need to deal with and we don't quite know how to enter to solve the problems. And let me an example of this might be was I did some one of my one of the one of the folks that we talked about in the book, did a study where they combined engineering students and art students. This is the University of Georgia, and they taught and they brought them together because the engineering apartment thought that the that the they, the engineers, need to be getting little more creative.

10:46 And so at the end of the semester, so once one week they taught them engineering skills, engineering problem solving skills, one week they taught them uh, artistic problem solving skills. At the end of the semester, they have their presentation in front of the engineering faculty and the art faculty, and this one young engineer stands up and he says, you know, I don't think I learned anything in here, because we were learned to They taught us to find problems to solve. But when I go out and become a practicing engineer, my clients are just going to give me the problem. I'll solve it. The head of the engineering department, A very distinguished man stands up. My friend says, stands up it and Yelsy goes, No, he goes. If you have found out how to determine or how to find problems, or how to find problems, you've learned probably the most important skill you can learn, Because problems aren't going to be presented to you. You're going to have to discern how to how to break him apart, how to find an every point to solve them. So we haven't been taught that way, and so what this book focuses on is giving you some methods to help you discover what the real problem is m And so then you give us this whole which I want to dive into as much as we can here. But the solution you say, of the you know it is actually problem definition. And so this whole practice of you know, really delving into the problem and then so the creativity that comes with that is fascinating. In fact, tomorrow, Roger, I'm presenting at a diversity, equity and Inclusion summit, and I'm going to talk about how our uniqueness is such a wonderful way to contribute our creativity

12:18 and our in contribute to innovation so anyway, so if you could speak a little bit about this notion of problem definition, Yeah, so, and back back to the whole diversity. Creativity thrives on diversity. The more diverse the group, the more innovative the ideas. And we have a we do. We have stuff built kind of around that as well. So talking about the whole thing and problem definition, Well, so the way we free define problems is we ask questions. But we don't just ask any kinds of questions. We ask creative questions. So, for example, let's try this. We don't have enough money, it's too expensive. That's not a question, that's a statement, right, And when you say those things that blocks your thinking, that sends a message to your that there aren't any ideas out there, So why bother looking for those ideas? We try this? How might we reduce the cost, How might we find the funding for the ideas? How might we get other people involved in the project? Those last three are creative questions, and they tell your mind to go to search for some answers to solve it. And we use the word might explicitly because it's not how can we how might we? Because might ask you to speculate to think of about what might be. We don't know yet, but what might be. And the other thing is not just one creative question, not just two creative questions, but fifteen twenty thirty creative questions. And the idea is the more the problem you see is the problem that you solve. The problem that you see is the problem that you solve. So if you're able to see many problems, then you can pick the best problem to solve. And as a matter of fact, when we were working on the book, we played around with

13:50 the title a little bit and one of the words that we use was to solve the best problem. And folks don't quite get that. So a good friend of mine advocated for solving the real problem, and so that's what the title of the book was. Interestingly enough, is that we don't know if it's the real problem until we solve it, right, But we're miles ahead if we come up with a whole bunch of different problems, des finishes, or creative questions, as opposed to taking the first creative question or the first problem that comes to mind. So, yeah, it's so delicious. And what I like about this too delicious? It is so delicious and What I love about this is that I think, well, and I'll even put myself in this camp, Roger. I mean, for the longest time, I didn't like problems or accounting problems, because problems gets in the way of achieving things, and I like achieving things. Right, But then there's this thing of you could take delight in actually finding the problem and then actually looking for various ways to solve it. And now that's fun. That's fun. Yeah, And a problem is just a gap from where we are to where we want to be and from where we are want to be, and we don't grow on. JP Gilford, one of the great psychologists that ever lived, said, we grow by solving problems. We grow intellectually by solving problems, and that's what makes us human. We solve problems and they don't have to be these big, huge, daunting things. But one of the things that we find is that if we take these big, huge daunting things, come up with some creative questions, we can find an entry point to begin to solve them and move the move it forwards. Well along those lines, you

15:26 might be glad to know, Roger, that I am quoting you in my presentation tomorrow. Oh wonderful one. I opened the conversation. I'm quoting your quote of to be creative is to be human. So, sir, you are kicking off the presentation tomorrow. Woh, thank you, thank you. Recorded. I want to see it all right. Let's take our first break. I'm your host, doctor Earlei's Cortez. We're in there with doctor Rogers Feirestein. He's a senior faculty and associate professor at the Center for Applied Imagination at Sunny Buffalo State, then president of Innovation Resources, Inc. Where he consults programs and runs Breakthrough Labs. We've been talking a bit about where his love of creativity came from, and we're starting to talk about how we can start to look at finding the real problem and going about looking at it from that direction. Stay with this, will be right back. Doctor Elise Cortes is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author.

16:36 She helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization. Please visit her at elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is Working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to a lease A lisee at elisecortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose. Thanks for stating with us, and welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor release Cortes. One of the things that is a wonderful benefit about hosting this program is because I read my guest's books cover to cover, and I'm a researcher. What that does is that means that about every year or so, I find myself getting another book out.

17:37 So my latest book came out in March of twenty twenty three. It's called The Great Revitalization. How activating meeting a purpose can radically enliven your business. And I wrote it for leaders to help you understand the lay of today's workforce lang what do they really want from their work and their leadership? And then I give you twenty two best practices to be able to fold that into your culture, to actually create that for them. Can find the book on Amazon or at my website at least Cortes dot com if you are just joining the program today. My guest is doctor Roger Feierstein. He's the author of several popular books, including Create in a Flash, a leader's recipe for breakthrough innovation, and the one we're talking about today, Solve the Real Problem. So, before we get into a little bit more of the of the ingredients of how you go about this, Roger, I think it would be good for you to situate for us from your perspective, why you believe that creative problem solving is so essential for progress and fulfillment in today's world. Yeah, if, as you've read, we teach a process for creativity, and it's a first, identify a goal, get the data, figure out what the problem is, generate ideas, refine and put them into action. And so if I was to give you the book definition of creative problem solving, it would be something like, creative problem solving is a repeatable, simple way to take on new challenges and develop innovative solutions that create productive change. Pretty good.

19:02 Okay, However, how I was going to say, I think you can do better than that. I think we can too, all right, And as a result of my work and over these years, I believe that creative problem solving is a life giving process because it helps you to see possibilities that you can never have imagined. And that's really where I'm at with the work right now. It's this is a way to dramatically help people live better, more fulfilled lives. And when you take a course with me, we don't work on case problems or anything like that. We work on stuff that's important to you. And so you'll go through this creative problem solving process. You'll learn this process, but you'll also maybe develop a new business, you know, make your relationships better, find a better ways to work in your community, and of course come up with new products or services those sorts of things.

19:53 But in the meantime, you begin to realize that you have resources insides you that you never really tapped before. And you also realize how important it is to work with a diverse group of people so that you can come up with a diverse bunch of ideas. And so that happened. That being the case, when people leave a workshop or you know, one of the programs that I do, you can and the reason why I still do this work is because you can see the light bulbs going on. Yeah, and so and I. And when I was teaching full time with the university, I taught the entry level graduate class because I wanted to see the student's light scope. The light bulbs go on in student's eyes, and that's where this stuff works. And so that's why I'm so passionate about it because it can make such a great difference in people's lives. We think differently. Well, so what you're doing than Roger is you're turning people on. You're actually turning people on. I love that someone's inspiring. I wanted to be able to situate that before we got into more of your system of methodology because I wanted people to see the promise, the excitement, the possibility for themselves. It's life giving. Yeah absolutely. Yeah. Okay, well, let's share with them your creative problem solving pit stop methodology, if you will. There's four steps.

21:11 Will you talk us through? Yeah? So the first step, let me talk you through the four steps. Then let me talk talk about what makes it happen. Okay, Yeah, So the first step is clarify the problem. Let's figure out what the problem is. Once you've clarified the problem, generate ideas. Once you've generated those ideas, developed those solutions. Once you have developed solutions, put those ideas into actions. So clarify the problem, generate ideas, develop solutions, plan for action. Now, that is sort of a natural pattern of thought. That's kind of the way we think. And if we go back and take a look at the early studies of creativity, that's kind of the way it shook out. Figure out what the problem is, get some ideas, make the idea better, put into action.

21:53 What we're able to do now is do that deliberately and explicitly. And so if you take a look in the book, we have little diamond diagrams of cause yes, yeah, and those indicate diverge, come out with lots and lots, and then converge. So when we clarify the problem first, we just kind of identify a goal and we use the phrases it would be great or I wish, And we use those phrases it would be great if or I wish, because that moves you forward, if it gives you a forward focus. It's like boy, I wish I could I wish I could write a book that everybody loved Okay, okay, great, you don't know how to do it yet, okay, but that's what you want to accomplish, and language plays a big part of this. So we gather a little bit of data about it. Then we generate a bunch of creative questions.

22:37 How to, how might, how to? How amight? Fifteen, twenty, thirty forty? Okay, you can do that in five minutes, by the way, we can talk about that. And then we select the best of those creative questions, so we converge in we kind of can we gently take a look at what's the best looking creative questions. Once we've got the base of the best looking creative questions, we generate lots of ideas for solving that. We then select the best of those ideas. Then we refine those ideas using a technique called pluses potentials concerns, which is looking at what's good about the idea, the potentials and the idea any concerns we have about the idea before we launch it. Then we generate a whole bunch of possible action steps dive hurting out again. Then we converge on the key action plan.

23:18 So that's the process. But the thing that drives it is this whole idea of thinking first, divergently lots and lots of stuff, don't judge, strive for quantity, and then gently coming in and converging. First just taking a look at the ideas that sort of sparkle at you, that are interesting that you can move forward, and then moving them into more more concrete, concrete concepts. So yeah, that's the process. It's wonderful and I really appreciated that you use. I think you encourage to find forty different ways to clarify the problem for which you know, which obviously is you know, takes a little bit of reach after a while. And I like that though. And you even say that oftentimes that the bottom third are the more interesting ones, the more useful creative ones. Yes. Well, one of the research and some of the research that we've done, we counted the number of ideas the groups came up with, and then we kind of took a look at the nature of those ideas, and about the first third were the usual ideas.

24:19 These are the ideas that people had thought of before. Okay, we got those, Okay, great. The second third people get a little goofy, you know, they've lost you know, they're into different new territory now, and those can be kind of the goofy ones that might create some breakthroughs. But it's the third third when people start to build off of the other stuff. That's where then the innovation comes. That's where the new ideas come from. And so I tell a group, if you're sitting around generating ten or twelve ideas and you think you're getting creative, you're not, because creativity comes in the stretch. Innovation comes in the stretch. So yeah, it's not difficult to do that. I mean, five minutes is easy to generate forty to fifty ideas. So well, and that's where I wanted to go next. Is one things that I also found really encouraging as somebody who tends to be a little impatient, and I like, my to do list is always way longer than how much time do I have to do anything? Right, So one of the things I appreciated. You talk about fallacies in your book, and one of the fallacies you talk about is that it takes a long time to find a real problem, and you go on to say, no, it doesn't, you know, so you talk about really even just five minutes just taking that those five minutes to be able to just go through this process makes a huge difference. Yeah, and I'm so glad you brought that up. And what that is based's based on a research study. And as I was putting the book together, I began to do a lot of take a look at the academic research on this. And in this study, what they did was they compared They took one group of students, they gave instructions for a problem to solved. They said, go solve the problem. Okay,

25:51 they want to solve it. Another group of students, they gave them the problem. They said, take whatever time you need to redefine what the problem is. Just go ahead, and once you've redefine it, then go ahead generate ideas. Well, the group that redefined the problem generated much more original, interesting, useful, creative ideas as opposed to the group that just went right to work on it. And so when I read the study, at least it was like, well that's interesting, but how much time did they give these people to redefine the problem? And I knew the researcher, and so I emailed Mark and I said, what was the timeframe on this? And he said, well, Roger, he said, we really didn't give them a timeframe. He said, we said, take as much time as you need, whatever you need. But in actuality, those students took between five to six minutes to come up with alternate definitions of the problem.

26:37 So the question is can you spend it? Can you afford to spend five minutes to find the real problem? And the flip side of that is can you afford to spend five minutes or can you not do so? Can you afford to spend five minutes to solve the real problem, find the real problem? Or can you not to? And it's just five minutes just stepping back for five minutes, So as pause, I found that just really really compelling need. I needed to hear that just from me, Roger, So thank you. Anybody else get any benefit, great, but I needed that me too, at least. I mean, and it's because we've been taught that, you know, the faster you solve the problem, that smart you are. Oh and that's where I wanted to go next, my friend, I wanted you to tell the story of little Roger. I love the picture in your book. I remember how old you were about you know you're in elementary school math class. Tell that story and why that's important to what we're talking about today. So one of the third fallacies. I have the book here, I'm going to read just a little bit from it, so as written by the author. And so we had a lot of fun. There's a picture of me here in third grade and I weighed sixty six and a half pounds, so boy, not even close to that now. So the third fallacy is the faster you can solve the problem, you smarter you are.

27:41 And so here's the city scene. I'm eight years old, I mean toaser, I mean third grade in Missus Tollenberg's class at Toser Primary School in Windsor, Colorado. The year's nineteen sixty four, and so now it's time for math and to get the class actively involved in learning, Missus Tollenberg has this game called trap and it uses flash cards. And so the way it works is one student stands up next to another person's desk card. Missus Toleenbrik puts the card out there. The person that gets the answer first is the winner, and they get to travel to the next person. Okay, and so you know what's two blos two four? Whoever can blurt out the answer first is the winner and they get to travel around the room and they get similar prize. Right. I was horrible at that game, all right, absolutely horrible. And once in a while I could beat the person that was next to me, but I wouldn't mind Bobby Bobby, Robby, Bobby, Bobby, Bob what what are we name? Bob Bobby Bobby Gilbert oh Man.

28:38 So this guy could go all the way room the room two or three times. And so in my child mind at third grade is because I wasn't good at travel or getting the answer really quickly. In math, I wasn't good in math, and so that was it with my head. I made it through tenth grade geometry. That was it. Then I go to graduate school and you have to take statistics, and at least I was terrified, Oh my god, oh my god. Well I found that when I was taking statistics, I kind of liked it and it made sense to me, and you could take time to figure out what the real problem was and you could solve them. And so when I graduated, I actually ended up with a graduate minor in statistics. So, but the fallacy is is the faster you can solve the problem this more you are, And that's absolutely not true at all. It's just that he was better at math in a quick way.

29:33 Doesn't mean that he was better at math. He was just better at coming up with the answer quicker. And so you know, you just needed a little bit more time to come up with the answer. And so we fall in with this trap that we have to solve the problem immediately. No, five minutes, just start with five minutes. Now, when we work on big organizational challenges, we'll spend and this is really interesting, maybe twenty minutes redefining the problem. But to do that, we have a group of folks doing this facilitate it. We bring in folks from the outside called creative catalysts, and in twenty minutes we can come up with one hundred and sixty hundred and fifty different creative questions and then the client can select the ones that work the best, and then we can go and blow out and get more ideas because they're trained in using this process. But you know, Bobby Gilbert, I'm telling you always beat me at Traveler and he beat just about everybody too, so but yeah, so that was the story. Don't have to get the answer fast to be to be good at something. Yeah, I also, I guess I want to take a moment to reinforce you know, inadvertently the teacher, you know, gave you the message that you weren't good at math. She was trying to engage people and get them going totally unintentional.

30:41 However, that unintended consequence, It can happen all the time inside organizations with leaders and so you know, being mindful of how you're stewarding this creativity process and encouraging people and such, so so so important. And yeah, to her credit, I mean, she was trying to do her best to engage students with using what she had at that time. You know, it was engaging, But I wonder what happened to what about what the kid thought that never got to stand up exactly? Who never got to stand up, you know, and what's going on with their exactly exactly exactly. That's that's the point I was trying to make. So I just appreciate. I'm so grateful that you found statistics later on in life so that you could have that improper mindset or belief eradicated or reviewed or rewritten. So we all need that, as you know, we need to rewrite our tapes. Yeah, and we need to unlearn things too. Yeah. Unlearned things. Absolutely, that is critical. We talk about it in this program quite a bit. So on that note, let's let our listeners and viewers think about what they might need to unlearn while we take our last break. I'm your host, doctor Release Cortes. We got on the air with doctor Roger Feierstein. He's a senior faculty and associate professor at the Center for Applied Imagination at Sunny Buffalo State and the president of Innovation Resources, where he consults, creates training programs, and runs breakthrough labs. We've been talking a bit about his methodology to getting to the real problem into generating ideas, etc. After the record, we're going to continue on. We're also going to talk about a way to get this inside in an organization in a way that really really lives and informs the culture.

32:15 Stay with us, We'll be right back. Doctor Elise Cortes is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at eliscortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Alise alisee at eliscortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose. Thanks for staying with us, and welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes. As I mentioned in the last break about my latest book that came out in March of twenty twenty three, The Great Revitalization.

33:34 What I did for you is I created a three page assessment that you can pull off my website Gusto dashnow dot com, and you can then use that to determine the extent to which your workforce is for your workplace is ready for today's standards, to the extent that it really is a destination workplace. So you can find that there if you are just joining us. My guest is doctor Roger Feierstein. He's the author of several popular books including Creed in a Flashader's Recipe for Breakthrough Innovation, and then when we're talking about today, solve the real problem. So before we go further, I was going to ask you this earlier, and then I got excited about some of your stories, but I did think it would be good. You know that you talk a little bit about the rest of the system here, that after you generate these many creative questions, then you move to selective creative questions using this process of hits, cluster and restate. I think that's very useful to help our listeners and viewers. Just add a little bit more bolt on more of your process.

34:29 Yeah, yeah, happy to do that. So here's the reasoning behind that a lease. So let's say you've generated thirty creative questions. Well, it doesn't make a lot of sense to go over and say, well it's that creative question that one, because if that's the case, why have you taken all that time to generate all those thirty creative questions? Anyway, so this is the converging stage of the process where we talk about this gentle converging. So the first thing we do is we go through and take a look at all the creative questions, and we use post its. Thank goodness for post its. I love my post it man. I was in this business before we were using post its. And that's why my handwriting is so bad. That's one excuse. Sorry. And so if you're a doctor, that's the other. Yeah, that's and so so let's see, Hey, you have a flip chart with twenty five or thirty post its on it. We give people a little color dots and so well, I'll give you a so we're working on your challenge. You go up and you just dot the hits.

35:25 And these are creative questions that provide a new insight, indicate a promising direction, capture the problem for you. Nail it feels good in your gut because creative, No, there's no problem I've ever worked on, no matter how technically clip up a purist, it appears that there isn't some intuition about it. There isn't some feeling about it. Either. You're frightened about it, you're excited about it. And that's going to influence the kind of creative questions you choose. So go through the list first, put a dot on the idea on the creative questions that are new insight, a new direction, feels good, nails it for you. The next step is is to relate those hits together into themes. So we cluster them. We asked the question, which of these hits relate to each other? And then we label that cluster with a new creative question. And then from there what we do is we generally we'll come up with like, if we have thirty creative questions, we'll probably maybe have four or five clusters. And then I would ask you, I say, okay, at least right now, what's the creative question that you want to get some ideas on right now? What's the most important creative question? What's the creative question that if we were going to make progress on that, that would help you to solve your goal that you're going after.

36:31 And then we generate ideas for that. So it's a gentle converge. First, mark the hits, cluster the hits together, restate the cluster, then choose the creative question. The beautiful thing about that is if you make progress on one creative question, great, and you still need to work on the other creative questions, you don't have to go back to the entire process. You can just start at the end of clarifying the problem saying, okay, let's get some ideas for this creative question now. But no, no, let's get some ideas for this creative question. Bub them so you don't have to begin the process again because the questions are all they have for you already. The problems are already given to you. In that case. In some ways, Roder, it reminds me a lot of the the coding an analysis process that I did for my meeting and work and identity research. Just the way that you describe that. It just especially when you talk about you know, the hits, the clusters, and the restates very interesting. So of course that gets my juices going. Is that inductive reason or deductive?

37:28 That's inductive? Inductive? Yeah, thank you, yeah, so inductive. Yeah. Anyway, so that's what was going on in mind Don't we only cover the exciting things in this program only we're talking about inductive reasoning? Well okay, so now then let's go on even more fun. You know, this whole notion I mean, for me, mindset is a really really interesting idea, well pun intended, But you talk about four problem solving mindsets and I think that's really interesting to talk through and kind of this discern maybe which you know, might be useful for whatever you're working on. So let's talk about those next. I would love to so the way we did the book, and if we get time, i'll talk about the genesis of the book.

38:14 But the way to answer this question, the way we did the book is I interviewed people from business, medicine, education, aeronautics, aviation, manufacturing, finance, everyday life, and I asked them one question, I said, can you give me an example of a problem that you were working on that really wasn't the problem at all? So they were proving the wrong problem. And the folks that I interviewed were just gracious, they were wonderful with their time, and we came up with all these wonderful examples, and so we can talk about a couple of those of life. But when I analyzed the responses, I found that they fell into sort of four mindsets, and one was challenge your assumptions. You know, don't assume that you know what the problem is. Challenge you assumptions. The second one is to get an outside perspective. And the way you solve that is that is you get other folks involved, you build on the diversity that you're talking about. So challenge your assumptions, get an outside perspective. Now, the other two kind of use a visual example. So one is see the big picture, look broad, and then the opposite of that is look for all the details.

39:22 And so those mindsets work together. But if you can kind of if you can use say, look, am I can I challenge my assumptions here? Or am I looking at the big picture? Am I seeing all the details? You can sort of ask yourself that am I? Am I really getting an outside perspective? And so those those who were how those mindsets settled in. And so that's how we organize the last half of the book, and we tell stories that focus on challenging your assumptions, you know, getting looking at the big picture, getting all the details. You know. Okay, so I want to dial I'm going to dial into two pieces here. One thing that I really want to want to call out under the get an outside perspective that I thought was really useful and I want to champion here for our listeners and viewers, is you talk about how some organizations in order to make sure that they create that diverse sort of workforce, the diverse sort of perspectives.

40:15 They hire twenty five percent of their new workforce without industry experience. I can't tell you how often in my early recruiting days twenty five years ago when I started, and they don't always say, oh, they don't have telecom experience, we can't hire them. I'm just crazy. So I want to just want to bring that home, as you know, hire outside your industry. If you want to creative, you want, if you want creativity and innovation, start there. Then know what can't be done? They don't. Yeah, right, they they and they don't assume they haven't been taught all the ways that it can't be done. Can't, can't, can't, can't, can't write. Okay, now you've got to tell the story. I love the story of the Boeing engineer and the wiper windshield wipers. You got to tell that story. I love that story. I love that story. So the story goes like this. In the nineteen seventies, a young engineer named Scott Kempshaw it's a job for the Boeing Cock goes to work for Boeing and he's assigned to the seven forty seven cockpit crew. And on the fourth day of work, this mechanism lands on its desk and it's got an arm sticking out on a windshield wiper, and there's some some motors and stuff, and it was the windshield wiper for the seven forty seven. Now, the interesting thing about the seven forty seven is that's that big beautiful airport that's got that big hump up there in the front. Now, what happened because of the design of the airplane when the seven four to seven would take off, what the airflow over the hump would essentially blow the windshield wipers off the wind show so the pilot could not see the runway on takeoff and landing in rain or snow, A very very bad thing for the pilot of a seven forty

41:50 seven not seen the river, and so Scott's John. So the way this mechanism worked was it took it measured the air speed, It actuated a motor the tighteness bring that then would hold the windshow wipersent. Each piece cost. Each of these mechanisms cost ten thousand dollars each for a total twenty thousand dollars. They each weighed twenty pounds, which is an additional forty pounds to the aircraft. You don't want to add weight to the aircraft. And because the mechanism was complicated, it would need to be replaced about every ten years. So to replace this mechanism, you had to take the airplane out of service for ten days, pull the whole front of the airplane off to get in just to replace the Winshow wipperpaganism. Okay, it's Scott's fourth day of work, right, He's getting a tour of the Boeing plant. And he said, he said, Roger, he said, I walked into the seven forty seven assembly building. He said, first off, the buildings are so big.

42:40 The clouds formed the scening of these things. I remember you saying that that was amazing, Yeah, amazing. And he said, Roger, you said, I was just awestruck. Here's a seven four seven just about ready to come off the line. And another one, and another one, and another one and another one, another one. So here's young Scott Kamshaw walking through the planet with this guide and he comes upon this bin of scrap metal and he says, he said, they were kind of curved and they kind of looked like a little scoop to me. And so he asked his guy, He said, well, what are these? And his guide said he said, well, we had a railing that was a little too long in the design. We'd had to clip this off and so this is just scrap. And Scott goes, well, can I take a couple of those? And this guide goes, yeah, we're just going to scrap this stuff.

43:20 So Scott said, he said he had an idea, and he said they looked like little scoops to me. And he said and so he said if if, and so what he did was he mounted it on the windshield wiper and they then they put in the wind tunnel and he said if they looked like little scoops because and his idea was as the air pressure would go over, it would push this little scoop or this little sail down on the window. Tried it once, tried it, tried it didn't work all right, tried it another time, didn't work. Finally he adjusts these little scoops, these little pieces of scrap metal on the windshield wipers. And he said, we tried rain, we tried snow anything. We could not get them to raise off the windshield wipers. So this was a scrap piece of metal. It's called a flow spoiler, all right. It is on just about many most commercial aircraft right now because it's so effective and it looks kind of like a little sale. It sits on the windshield wipers of the seven four to seven And now when the air airplane takes off, the air pressure just naturally pushes it down. So so if we run, if we run the numbers out and I'll it's something like, you know, to change the lifespan of the airplane was thirty years. They've only made about fifteen hundred of these, so if it takes about it takes every about ten years. You have to replace the mechanism. So that's about three hundred dollars a mechanism. Three hundred thousand dollars a mechanism. The number in nineteen eighty dollars is like four hundred and eighty million to replace the windshield wipers in the fleet. Now it's like one point four billion dollars just to replace the windshield wipers in the fleet.

44:50 And with Scott's design it can be replaced in about two hours for two thousand dollars. So it saved the airline aline industry billions of dollars. And the other thing is it kept three and a half billion people safe. Yeah, let's not underestimate that. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. Well so the moral of the story there, right, and fresh eyes, fresh perspective, and he was given and that's where I want to go next. He has given the rain to do this, given the opportunity to go and work on this, and that's where I want to go. I love what you talk about in this book. But in order for this to be able to happen, in order for that bo for Scott, the Boeing engineered to be able to do this, there had to be the right air in the in the in the organization to do that. And you talk about four aspects of that, and that's I want, since we also do a lot on the show, to be able to help develop organizations and leaders to create them. As such, let's talk about how do we make the air right? How to make the air right? And we can talk a little bit more about what we mean by making the air right if we have time. Yes, But there's four things. And one of the things that we did is we use this when we helped Demosdam Motor Manufacturing USA put their plant online in the late nineteen eighties and save them about sixty million dollars in plant startups. So there's there's there's there's several things. One is, first, people need to have creativity skills. They need to know how to be creative, like what we're talking about. And then there's the environment. So you can't just give creativity skills and say, okay, here, just go. You have to create

46:22 an environment that supports that. So one is a commitment to improvement. And so what happens most of the time is when people are hired for a job, it's like, here's how to do the job. Go do it. It's not like here's how here's how we do the job now. But your job is to make it better, to it better, make it quicker, okay, improve in the job. So a commitment to improvement is part of the environment, a mistake friendly attitude. If you take a yeah, if you take a look at Scott, he made a mistake of first few times, and the second time, the third time, and the fourth time, and maybe the tenth time. But when he tried it out, eventually the thing works and it still works. Values, Employee input, insights, organization people want to feel valued and they want to see that they make a difference in the organization. And so to first you need creativity skills in an environment that supports that, which consists of a commitment to improvement, mistakes, friendly attitude values, employee attitude insights, and then application. Once you apply that to an organization, the output is an innovation output. But you have to have all of those things there to make it work. Oh, that's just so important, and that's part of what I'm talking about to Marok this conference is to be able to create an environment like that where people can feel like I can bring my individual unique self to bear on this issue, this opportunity, this problem, to be able to innovate or to creatively solve it.

47:45 Yes, yes, absolutely, well it happens fast, Roger. We're already in the show. Yeah, we're already in the show. So the show, as you probably know, is listened to by people around the world who are who care about trying to get into a place where they can They are in these destination workplaces where they can realize their potential. They're led by inspirational leaders that lead them to their greatness. We do business a better is the world what would you like to leave them with. I'd like to leave them with this, just really simply that we are all creative and we can learn to be deliberately creative, and so it's not a myth, it's not something possessed only by a gift of few, because that's what makes us human.

48:25 And we can actually turn on our creativity at will instead of waiting for ideas to just happen. We're all creative, we can all all can be deliberately creative, and we can turn on our idea ideas it will instead of just waiting for them to happen. That's what I'd like to leave with you, folks. What a brilliant way to finish. Roger. It's a delight to know you and to learn from you and to share you with my listeners around the world. Thank you for being on working on purpose my pleasure, at least my pleasure. Listeners and viewers. You're going to want to learn how to connect with this man and follow his work or even check into his resources or his courses. So the best way that you can find him it's just his personal website. It's rogerfiresteam dot com. Let me spell that for you.

49:05 Roger rog e Er fire Stein is a little different FI R E S t I e N rogerfiresteain dot com. Last week, if you missed the live show, you can always catch up be recorded podcast. We were on with Jerry Koluna, the former venture capitalist and now executive coach, talking about his beautiful new book, Reunion, Leadership and the Longing to Belong. He helped shed light on why a sense of belonging is so profoundly important to human thriving and how leaders and team members can help nurture a sense of belonging in the workplace. It was an incredibly elevating conversation, really really beautiful, and yes he did move me to tears once. Next week we'll be on the air again with doctor Raj Sisodia. He's the co founder of the Global Conscious Capitalism movement, this time talking about his thirteenth new book, Awaken, The Path to Purpose, Inner Peace and Healing. It is his most personal and vulnerable book yet and shines a light on how we can achieve this kind of life for ourselves. See you there and remember it. Work is one of the best adventures and means of realizing our potential and making the impact we crave, so let's work on Purpose. We hope you've enjoyed this week's program.

50:12 Be sure to tune into Working on Purpose featuring your host, doctor Elise Cortes, each week on W four CY. Together we'll create a world where business operates conscientiously. Leadership inspires and passion performance and employees are fulfilled in work that provides the meaning and purpose they crave. See you there, Let's work on Purpose.