The Creativity Leap: Unleash Curiosity, Improvisation, and Intuition at Work

More Praise for The Creativity Leap

For any of us who feel forced to choose between our creative and analytic selves, this book is a gift, a balm, and an inspiration. Natalie’s unique approach to rigor and wonder makes her a wise and relatable coach for building creative competency exactly where we are.

—Amy Whitaker, author of Art Thinking

"In The Creativity Leap, Natalie Nixon seamlessly weaves together stories from her personal history with deep insights born from her research to expand on the definition of a ‘creative type.’ This book offers a new paradigm to those who desire more expansive thinking, imaginative outcomes, and game-changing results for themselves and their organizations."

—Valerie Jacobs, Chief Insight and Innovation Officer, LPK

"The Creativity Leap is wondrous in its deft blending of insights from sources as different as jazz musicians and GE Healthcare to shed new light on the process of true innovation. Nixon is rigorous in laying out a practical approach that should convince even the most analytic reader of the business value of creativity."

—Derek Newberry, Behavior and Culture Specialist, Boston Consulting Group

"In her book The Creativity Leap, Nixon invites us to bring our whole selves to work and to create with curiosity, improvisation, and intuition. Leaders that want to take the professional development of their team personally and see greater innovation in their organizations should read this book."

—Erica Keswin, Bestselling author of Bring Your Human to Work

Through insightful stories from her life and innovators across every field, Natalie Nixon shows us how we can build practices that enhance our innate creative competency and provides a valuable reframe on the nature of creativity as the dynamic tension between wonder and rigor. A must-read.

—Sarah Brooks, Design Director, IBM

"Imagine a world where creativity is exponentially magnified. The Creativity Leap applies methods and insights for creativity in clear, understandable language. Natalie Nixon is a master teacher and has introduced me to that world."

—Stephen Spinelli Jr., PhD, President, Babson College

"With this long overdue book, Natalie delves deep into skills and perspectives necessary for success in a disrupted and dynamic world. For anyone with a desire to construct artful, impact-driving solutions people choose to lean in to, The Creativity Leap is a must."

—Esther Franklin, Executive Vice President, Managing Director, Global Strategy and Cultural Fluency, Spark Foundry

"The Creativity Leap quickly gets below the buzzwords of innovation to help leaders develop the necessary practices to uncover growth opportunities unleashing new customer and business value."

—Saul Kaplan, founder and Chief Catalyst, Business Innovation Factory

"In The Creativity Leap, Natalie Nixon does something brilliant and heretical—she declares that creativity is a teachable phenomenon. Nixon describes creativity as equal parts structure and looseness, focus and ambiguity, rules and no rules, guiding us to an understanding of this most critical ability and daring to suggest that we all have it in us."

—Alan Greenberger, Distinguished Teaching Professor, Drexel University

"We know that creativity is key to success in business, yet few companies actively encourage it, and few individuals in the corporate world really know how to develop it. The Creativity Leap is a guide through the process, citing current examples of it in practice and the benefits it brings to individuals and corporations alike."

—Sass Brown, eco-fashion writer

THE CREATIVITY LEAP

THE CREATIVITY LEAP

UNLEASH CURIOSITY, IMPROVISATION, AND INTUITION AT WORK

NATALIE NIXON

The Creativity Leap

Copyright © 2020 by Natalie Nixon

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

Ordering information for print editions

Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the Special Sales Department at the Berrett-Koehler address above.

Individual sales. Berrett-Koehler publications are available through most bookstores. They can also be ordered directly from Berrett-Koehler: Tel: (800) 929-2929; Fax: (802) 864-7626; www.bkconnection.com

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Distributed to the U.S. trade and internationally by Penguin Random House Publisher Services.

Berrett-Koehler and the BK logo are registered trademarks of Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

First Edition

Paperback print edition ISBN 978-1-5230-8825-6

PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-5230-8826-3

IDPF e-book ISBN 978-1-5230-8827-0

Digital audio ISBN 978-1-5230-8828-7

2020-1

Book producer: Linda Jupiter Productions; Text designer: Kim Scott, Bumpy Design; Cover designer: Irene Morris, Morris Design; Interior illustrator: Pixel Parlor; Copy editor: Elissa Rabellino; Proofreader: Mary Kanable; Indexer: Pamela Erwin

To John, for being my steadfast source of encouragement

through the writing of this book.

And for your daily supply of wonder—and rigor.

Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.

—Pablo Picasso

CONTENTS

Introduction

What Is a Leap?

Why Creativity Leaps Matter

Creativity Is a Competency

Why I Wrote This Book

Who Should Use This Book?

Why Me?

My Audacious Goal

CHAPTER 1 Create Like Your Life Depends on It

Why Creativity Matters

Why Do We Dismiss Creativity?

Making Creativity Accessible

Creativity Is How We Leap Forward

CHAPTER 2 Flow between Wonder and Rigor

Wisdom Begins in Wonder

Wonder and Creativity

Rigor and Rules

Rigor and Creativity

The Wonder Rigor Paradigm

Wonder and Rigor Make Creativity Accessible

CHAPTER 3 Inquire: Ask a Better Friggin’ Question

Why We Don’t Ask Better Questions

Inquiry Is the Messy Process of Moving from Why to How

Trust Is the Foundation of Inquiry

Normalizing Inquiry within Your Organization

Inquiry Sparks Discovery

CHAPTER 4 Improvise: Leverage Organized Chaos

The Future of Work Is Jazz

Designing Improvisational Organizations

Life (and Work) Is Chaordic

CHAPTER 5 Intuit: Put Bravery before Mastery

The Ins and Outs of Intuition

Intuition as a Tool for Strategy

Intuition Is a Data Point

Intuition and Wicked Problems

Intuition Puts Bravery before Mastery

CHAPTER 6 Commune: Come Together to Create

Tribes Are the Foundation for Creative Community

Why Community Is Essential for Creativity

Designing Community for Creativity

Zoom In, Zoom Out

CHAPTER 7 Forecast: Amplify What Is Uniquely Human

The Future of the World Depends on Creativity

Creativity in the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Preparing Organizations for the Future

Hybrid Thinkers Welcome

CHAPTER 8 Remix, Reframe, Repurpose

There Is Nothing New under the Sun

Archetypes Are Patterns

Think Like a Fashion Designer

Use What You Have

CHAPTER 9 Get Out of the Building: Final Thoughts on Increasing Your CQ

See Things Differently

Be a Translator

Play

Leap!

Appendix

21 Questions and Suggestions to Jump-Start Your Creativity

WonderRigor Game

Glossary

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

About the Author

INTRODUCTION

WHAT IS A LEAP?

If you’ve ever made a running leap, then you are aware that there are several things at work. First, there is vision. You must have your eyes on a prize, somewhere off in the not too far distance. That prize is close enough to be almost within your reach. Second, you have to leap versus just walk or even run to that desired prize, because there is some barrier or impediment that you need to span. Third, leaps often require a running start. A kinesthetic, active motion is needed for you to gather momentum and propel yourself forward. Fourth, leaping requires that you suspend judgment. After doing all the analysis, gauging, and estimating of what it will take to make that leap, faith and intuition must take over. And fifth, leaping only moves you forward. It is impossible to leap backward. You can fall backward, but you cannot leap backward. Leaping requires exorbitant amounts of energy and trust in the unknown—and it always propels us into new territory.

WHY CREATIVITY LEAPS MATTER

Like a physical leap, a creativity leap is essential for crossing boundaries; it is also an active, dynamic process that honors intuition. Creativity leaps are needed to bridge the gap between the churn of work and the highly sought-after prize called innovation. This holds true on both the individual and organizational levels. Creativity leaps matter because creativity is the engine for innovation.

How often have you heard people mutter, Oh, I’m not a creative type? Perhaps you’ve thought this yourself. This is a falsehood because to be human is to be hardwired to be creative. To be a phenomenal lawyer, manager, doctor, engineer, or plumber requires immense amounts of creativity. Yet our educational system teaches out creativity, and our boardrooms reference it as an afterthought. This is why so many people who are pursuing innovation fail to actually innovate. They expect to generate the new and the novel via systems, structures, and processes that do not honor the uniquely human creative impulse.

Sadly, creativity has been ghettoized and siloed in the arts. This is not fair to artists, and it isn’t beneficial to our society at large. People’s quality of life is at stake. Employees are experiencing a slow death in their office cubicles, while students are made to sit quietly and absorb massive amounts of information passively in classrooms still modeled after schooling in an agricultural economy. Currently, we have a tech crush. We are obsessed with big data, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality while forgetting that humans are at the beginning and end of all those data points. We are forgetting that creativity is the nonnegotiable ingredient in developing the most amazing tech app, healing the sick, and leading dynamic enterprises.

We live in a complex world where there are many shades of gray. Navigating this uncertain and ambiguous world is not easy. But it doesn’t have to be so complicated, either. Let me explain. The important thing to note here is that complication and complexity are not synonyms; they are two distinct concepts.

Complication is change that is difficult to control, yet ultimately that control is within our reach. By definition, complication has clear entry and exit points. You can find your way out of a complicated mess. Take, for example, the internal machinations of a wristwatch, the navigation screen in the cockpit of an airplane, and the electrical wiring infrastructure throughout the United States—these are all examples of complicated systems. If we zoom out to the 30,000-foot level, we can identify an underlying order and logic. Complicated systems have patterns that we can detect, and their conundrums can be resolved with the help of experts. They are predictive.

Complex systems, on the other hand, do not have obvious entry and exit points. Complexity abounds in our lives. Our brains are complex systems full of diverging and converging neural pathways. The American health care system is also extremely complex, confounding patients every day in their attempts to navigate it and get clear answers on what ails them and even how to pay their bills. We are embedded in complex systems today that are not predictive, are hard to manage, and require perspective and regular experimentation.

Complexity requires expansive perspective and multiple vantage points in order to see a full and complete picture. Imagine you are a tourist in Midtown Manhattan, standing on a busy street corner. Consider the sensory overload coming at you: the sounds of car horns honking, music from the jumbo screens, crowds of people walking rapidly past you, the smells from food trucks, and signage on the entry staircase to eight different subway lines can be