Mosaic Business Mastery

Creative Problem Solving: The Four-Step Process to Team Innovation

• Laura Wagenknecht • Season 3 • Episode 2

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Ever feel like your team is stuck in a loop, talking about the same old ideas and running into the same roadblocks? What if you could ignite a creative revolution in your business, unlocking potential you didn't even know you had?

Get ready to have your entire perspective on creativity transformed. In this game-changing episode, I sit down with the incredible Dr. Amy Climer, an expert in team innovation who works with elite organizations like Mayo Clinic and Stanford University, and the author of the new book, "Deliberate Creative Teams."

We demolish the myth that creativity is a rare gift for "artistic types" and reveal the truth: creativity is a fundamental business skill that can be learned, practiced, and measured. Dr. Climer breaks down her powerful, research-backed framework for innovation, showing you exactly how to guide your team from a spark of an idea to a fully implemented, game-changing solution.

In this episode, you will discover:

  • The surprising definition of creativity that will make you realize you are far more creative than you think.
  • The four essential stages of creative problem-solving: Clarify, Ideate, Develop, and Implement.
  • Why your team's natural tension between "talkers" (Clarifiers) and "doers" (Implementers) is actually a secret weapon, if you know how to use it.
  • The critical difference between divergent thinking (generating ideas) and convergent thinking (evaluating them), and why your brain physically can't do both at the same time.
  • Four simple rules for brainstorming that will banish judgment and lead to a flood of wild, innovative ideas.
  • A powerful, real-world example of how a manufacturing company used these exact principles to reclaim significant production time and boost their bottom line.

If you're ready to move beyond frustrating meetings and unleash your team's true innovative power, you cannot afford to miss this conversation.

Ready for a deeper dive? Check out Dr. Amy Climer's new book, "Deliberate Creative Teams: How to Lead for Innovative Results," and connect with her on LinkedIn or at ClimberConsulting.com.

#TeamCreativity

#Innovation

#Leadership

#CreativeTeams

#BusinessInnovation

#ProblemSolving

#UnlockCreativity

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Speaker 1:

Just like a mosaic is made up of individual pieces that create a beautiful mosaic, your business is a tapestry of interconnected parts On the Mosaic Life. We'll explore those parts of a business, from marketing to finance, to mindset and innovation. I'm your host, laura Wagner-Kanesh, and together we'll discover how to arrange those pieces to create a thriving and fulfilling business. Welcome and thank you for tuning into the show. To reach me, contact Laura at mosaicbusinessconsultingcom. And I got to tell you I have been waiting for this interview for I don't know how long, it is so exciting to have her on board.

Speaker 1:

So today my guest is none other than Dr Amy Clymer, and she teaches teams and organizations how to increase their creativity so they can maximize innovation. She works with forward-thinking organizations such as the Mayo Clinic, stanford University and the US Department of Homeland Security. Yeah, very small low-ball hitters I can see. Yeah, uh-huh. Amy is now the author of a new book Deliberate Creative Teams how to Lead for Innovative Results. I love it. Put it back up there. She is also the host of the Deliberate Creative Podcast it's a tongue twister where she shares practical advice and strategies for leaders to build innovative teams. Amy has a PhD in leadership and change and is a certified speaking professional not an easy feat and then today she is going to share her research on creative teams. So welcome to the show, amy. It is so great to have you here.

Speaker 2:

Oh, thank you so much, Laura. I'm excited to be here.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm just thrilled. And you know is creativity, and why is it people like me think we have none and why is it that you people like you think we have some?

Speaker 2:

so, okay, let's start with what it is, with the definition. So there's definitely a lot of confusion and a lot of myths around creativity. So the definition and I didn't make this up, this comes from the research literature is creativity is novelty that is valuable. So what that means is, you know, novelty meaning new, original, unique, different, and then valuable. It could be something financially valuable that's usually where we go first, but it also could be emotionally valuable, intellectually valuable, it could just be fun. So creativity is essentially doing something new that adds value in some way. You're basically solving problems.

Speaker 1:

So you're also saying, when we play and we're having fun in a way we haven't had fun before, that is creative.

Speaker 2:

Sure, absolutely, that could be. In fact, that's actually that's where, as kids, we learn to be creative is through play. It's actually a really important part of our development. But even as adults, we still need it is through play. It's actually a really important part of our development.

Speaker 1:

But even as adults we still need it some. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Like those board games or Jeopardy or whatever it is right. Yeah. So what do you tell somebody like me who thinks oh, I'm not creative at all, I simply copy everybody else? What do you tell me?

Speaker 2:

Well, I think some of it is just understanding what creativity is. You know, like we just talked about that, you know, if you're copying somebody else, you're taking what they did and hopefully you're doing it in a slightly different way. So we're not talking about plagiarism per se. I'm assuming we're talking about, you know, taking some inspiration from another business coach or another company and saying, oh, I like what they did, I'm going to do something similar, but I'm going to add my own twist, I'm going to add my own perspective, and this happens all the time in the world. This is how I mean. Like anything that you can think of is probably been iterated by different people. Like anything that you can think of has probably been iterated by different people, right, I mean even the fact that we're using Zoom to make this recording. Yeah, Zoom didn't invent this concept, right, there was Skype before that and all these other companies that created this like video thing, and it's just been iterated and improved, and so there's a certain aspect of that copying that is a normal part of us as humans.

Speaker 2:

I think people get confused about creativity because they think and we were talking about this before we started the recording is creativity, has to do with our ability to draw and it doesn't. It has nothing to do with that and I don't know quite the source of that. I mean, I know most of us have had experiences as kids where you know we had bad experiences, told we weren't creative because we couldn't draw. So maybe it gets all confused in our head. But as adults, I mean, unless you are a professional artist, your ability to draw is actually not that important, nor is it directly connected to your ability to be creative.

Speaker 1:

Right. And so when you're thinking about it in terms of teams, which I think you're talking about it, I'm wondering, like the various aspects of creativity within a team or even as the whole company, because when you're talking about a Mayo Clinic, I mean it's huge right, and you have departments that might be teams. So you know, what are some of the things we want to think about when you're talking about incorporating that creativity into a team that's a larger, maybe a larger company, and then we can shrink it, if you don't mind larger, maybe a larger company, and then we can shrink it, if you don't mind.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I think that there's sort of maybe just a little bit of lingo. When I think of a team, I am thinking of a small group of people. So generally three to 15 is a good size. Sometimes maybe it's up to 20. If it's more than that, then I would consider that an organization or like multiple teams that are together. Now, let's say you have 50 people in the room and they're being referred to as a team. The reality is they're probably sub teams.

Speaker 2:

Right, you know little siloed teams yeah exactly, you know, and they might do a really great job of communicating and collaborating with each other. But yeah, so I think there's like that organizational level which is important, but then there's also that team level. A lot of my work happens at that team level and I get really jazzed about that Because I mean, you know, an organization is made up of a bunch of individual teams, right, and there's a lot of power in the teams and basically teams are the number one source of innovation in organizations hands down, and so I think there's a lot of that's really important. The teams are super important.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and you talk about innovation again, and you also talk about the team size, which I think is fascinating. And so when we think about, let's break that down to give people context. If we're thinking about, let's say, a marketing team, you might have somebody for graphics, another team that's working on the website, another team that's working on social media or content development or something like that, but they're sub-teams of that, that 50 plus people that you were talking about. And then, secondly, I'm thinking about that innovation. I liked how you mentioned that here we are on a Zoom call that is allowing us to see each other live video streamed, but video didn't come around. It had iterations to get to that point, and so we're talking about a camera that switched to something else, that switched right. And so when we think of innovation, why is it that so many of us get stuck in that if it's not new enough or big enough, then it's not innovative? What can we do?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, I think that's just, you know, again like a lot of myths and misunderstanding about what innovation is and what we, what we call innovative, and but I think if we, most of us, if we will also say most of us probably don't think about innovation that much, if we, most of us, if we will also say most of us probably don't think about innovation that much, I think about it sort of a ridiculous amount, but when we really think about it, it makes sense that things are more iterative. There's sort of these phrases. We sometimes use the phrase in the creativity research of evolutionary innovation or evolutionary creativity, and then revolutionary creativity. But the reality is, even if you're looking at something revolutionary, if you pull back the curtain and break it down, it's just all these little steps. I mean even something like the iPhone, which you know we really put up on a pedestal.

Speaker 2:

They didn't invent smartphones, they didn't invent cell phones, they just did it, they iterated and did it a pedestal. They didn't invent smartphones, they didn't invent cell phones, they just did it, they iterated and did it a little better and a little better, and they had some standards they were meeting. And so I think a lot of it is that unless you're really digging into the creativity and the innovation, it can just look like a black box and we don't see it. It's very much you know, and I'm sure you see this in your work is you know the businesses that just like exploded overnight, like this overnight success? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, they're not an overnight success. They've been working their butts off for 10 years, right, or 15 years, and all of a sudden, yeah. So I think it's more of a almost like a marketing or a PR thing, a problem that it is. You know, that's just perpetuating that misunderstanding and it's flashy. It's cool to think like, oh, we did this like revolutionary thing and but it's maybe not. And so that's something I would just encourage listeners don't get caught up in that hype. That creativity is really, at the end of the day, it is about sitting down and it's doing the hard work and maybe that's go ahead. I apologize, well, and I was gonna say maybe that's the the. The challenge with it is that it does require hard work, which, well, that's hard at times exactly, and I do think you're talking about a process that we all need to go through.

Speaker 1:

But it also seems to me that there has to be not just the mythic or myth barriers that we have to creativity, but what are those barriers to creativity? What's blocking us from our ability to think we're creative or to be creative?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's a good question. So I think part of it is that creativity is a skill and so it's just like you know, if you want to be a better leader, then you would study leadership. You might read some books or go to some trainings, get some feedback and you'd practice these skills. And creativity is the same way, but the problem is we're not teaching that very often. But the problem is we're not teaching that very often. So what would be ideal this doesn't happen is if we were to teach creativity in school.

Speaker 2:

You know, like in middle school, high school, if we start teaching students how to be more creative, helping them understand, there's a process that I teach is called creative problem solving. There's four stages to it, and if we understood that, we'd actually be able to produce more creative, innovative results. But instead what happens is we go to school K-12 education and we are taught information where we take multiple choice test questions, and then we become an adult and I can't think of a single time in my entire life where a boss came to me and said hey, could you please solve this problem and please select choice A, B or C? Right, Like it never happens. Instead, we are asked to do something, something. There's usually many right ways or many good ways, and so it's this disconnect between the way we were taught growing up and then now, as an adult, what, what we're expected, and I think it creates a lot of confusion and, yeah, yeah, I could see that and and it's explained some of that idea that you talked about a four step process.

Speaker 1:

What is that four step process? You talked about to becoming creative, or you know what is it for us? To tap into our creativity, if you will.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, so it's called the creative problem solving process and there's some other. There's a bunch of processes out there. At least you know half a dozen or a dozen of them. They're all very, very similar. This is the one that I teach my clients.

Speaker 2:

There's four stages. The first stage is clarify, where we've got a problem and we're trying to clarify what's the situation, what are we trying to do? What's, what, do we need to change? It's a time where you're generally asking a lot of questions, doing some research, kind of figuring it out. So there's a clarify stage.

Speaker 2:

The next stage is ideate, where you're generating lots of ideas to solve that particular problem you just figured out. So clarify, ideate. Now, in that ideate stage, hopefully you generate lots of ideas. I'm not talking like two, three, four ideas, but dozens, maybe hundreds, depending on the scale of the problem. And some of those I would say many of those ideas will not be worthwhile, but maybe 10% of them. And so let's say you have, uh, the you can do. You can generate 100 ideas, which doesn't take as long as you would think. You now have 10 ideas that are really good or really potentially viable. We don't know if they're good yet, but they're like, okay, these have some potential. Take those 10 ideas into the next stage, which is develop, where you develop those ideas a bit further, see, okay, do we think this will work? If so, what might it look like? And then, finally, you're implementing. And that implementation might be your prototyping, your testing, you're piloting something out.

Speaker 2:

I always encourage my clients what's the smallest scale you can start with, instead of building out this huge thing? What can you do in a very short time to just see if this might work? So, clarify, ideate, develop, implement. And the challenge with this is well, first let me back up and say this is based on how we, as humans, naturally solve problems. So this sort of came about in the 1940s and the researchers who were looking at it they didn't like invent it, they didn't make it up, but they just observed people and realized, oh, this is what we naturally do. So it's innate in us to do this.

Speaker 2:

But there's a big problem, and that is because each of us has a preference for one or more of those four areas Right, and we want to stay in that space as long as we can because it feels really good, and then we don't want to move to the next stage or we want to hurry up and get to that last stage. If we love implementing and there's a measurement that you can measure, you test yourself. It's called foresight. I'm trained in this and I use it with my clients and as an example. I love ideating and I love implementing. I'm not the best at clarifying and developing idea of something I want to do and I'm like all right, cool, let's go, let's get started, and it's, it's fun, it's energizing for me. But then when I go to get started, I'm like um wait a minute Like why am I doing this?

Speaker 1:

And it's so funny you say that because I I'm similar in that regard like this idea. Oh, now I've got to develop a process. Not only do we stop things, but we have the doers, we have the thinkers, we have the strategizers. You want all of them. But there's another block that I think you're not talking through. Think you're not talking through and I sense that that might be part of this is communication and how we don't necessarily talk on the same level. Right, we're talking around each other, over each other, under each other, unintentionally just having conversation, and we're thinking well.

Speaker 2:

Of course they think that because that's what I'm thinking right in conversation and we're thinking well of course they think that, because that's what I'm thinking, right, right, I know we all, we often think that everyone else thinks the way we do. But you know, life teaches us. That's not, that's not exactly, and I'm thinking about the brainstorming, right.

Speaker 1:

So we're all throwing out and spitballing ideas and stuff like that and somebody's idea over here might connect really well with somebody's idea over here and the two of them together could be that perfect solution. But how do you get people past their egos, past their challenges, to communicate and articulate what they're trying to do?

Speaker 2:

Yeah Well, first I'll say you've nailed it Like this is exactly the challenge with teams, right? Right, and you've also. Not only is it the challenge, it's the strength, right that, yeah, I love when I get to work with clarifiers and developers, because together we're going to be rock stars, you know Exactly. Yeah, with clients around. This issue is one of the first things is we do this foresight assessment so they can see where their preferences lie, and that create a problem solving process. And then, you know, I could put up a graph of the entire team, or even the entire organization, depending how big we're going, and that's really cool to see that sometimes you'll have organizations like I just worked with the manufacturing company.

Speaker 2:

They have a lot of clarifiers and implementers, and so they had people that were asking good questions and then they wanted to get started, but they had two ideators out of 55 people and so they weren't generating like a lot of new ideas.

Speaker 2:

But now that they know that they can also recognize okay, let's slow down, the implementers don't want to talk about it, they want to get started, where the clarifiers want to talk about it a lot and don't before they get started.

Speaker 2:

And so, even if you just look at those two groups and they can understand each other's perspective. They can slow down a little bit and think, okay, let's start with clarifying, let's give the clarifier, let's ask some questions, because even implementers need to clarify, yes, and then let's tap into the ideators and see if they can help generate some more ideas. And then you go to develop and implement and so forth and see if you can slow that down and you recognize where you are in the process. If I'm a strong implementer, I know, okay, we're clarifying right now, my time will come. I can be patient, I can participate, I can engage in this and I'll know that once we get to my stage, I'll get to, like, hit the ground running right Versus. Before you go through understanding, foresight, you're just butting heads because you don't get the whole process.

Speaker 1:

Well, not only is that true and that, I think, is also part of the challenge for larger organizations, where the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing, but additionally, I'm thinking about this idea that there's a thought that clarifiers are the naysayers, if you will. They're the people who are picking things apart and saying, well, can we do this? If you know, if this, then that kind of an approach, and they're they're saying, well, we don't have a mechanism in place, or if we have a mechanism in place, it's not very effective or it won't help, or you know. And so I think that there's also that, like you have the go go, go, go go people and you have the well, wait a minute. Uh, hello, what about what if? Um, so how do you encourage both voices to be heard and recognized and appreciated and valued but, at the same time, recognize that there's going to be frustration and potential conflict there?

Speaker 2:

yeah, this is a great question and this is one that most teams struggle with at some point, if not regularly, yeah, and so the first thing I try to explain is this concept, uh, between divergent thinking and convergent thinking. And so divergent thinking is what you know we think of, the classic brainstorming, where we're generating ideas, we're thinking broad and bold and we're might be a little bit all over the place. And then there's convergent thinking, where you're evaluating the ideas. You can, you can almost think of divergent as like throwing stuff in a bucket or funnel and then converging is pushing it through that funnel to what's the best idea for this context. Now, what happens in our brains is that we physically can't do both those at the same time. I know, right, a huge bummer, multitasking doesn't actually work, right. We all know that by now. So, so when you're in, when you're trying to generate ideas, you're trying to be creative, you want to let the team know, okay, we're going to be in some divergent thinking, of divergent thinking mode for five minutes, 10 minutes an hour, whatever it is, and then we're going to move into convergent thinking and we're going to select the best ideas. And if teams understand that and they know well, I'm not so sure about that idea, but let me just hang on because I know I'll have that opportunity, so that is super helpful.

Speaker 2:

There's actually these rules that we use for divergent thinking to help us understand, like, hey, we're just going to hang out in this space. It's a little weird but it's OK. And those rules are suspend judgment you get to judge the ideas. Just not yet, cause judging ideas is very important because, well, there are bad ideas in the world, right? So suspend judgment, um, combine and build on ideas. So you know, laura, you share an idea, I share an idea. A third team member might like say oh yes, let's take both those and do this. That's awesome. Go a little wacky and wild, go for wild ideas. And then the fourth one is go for quantity. So quantity leads to quality.

Speaker 1:

That's the concept that I see, that's the concept that I see.

Speaker 2:

You're not going for the first or second idea necessarily, let's just. Let's just make a list, you know, pull out the flip chart, pull out the post-it notes, whatever you need, and get as many ideas down as you can, and you can set a timer and literally in five minutes you can get quite a few ideas. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

And then from there, like, okay, we got all these ideas up. Let's now start evaluating and judging them with the businesses that you've worked with as far as their return on investment or as far as their growth as an organization or their expansion of creativity and innovation.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I will say, one of the challenges I have is I'm often with businesses, kind of on that front end, and then they go off and implement whatever we've come up with and I don't get, I don't know. But I can still share with you a little bit Some examples of things I've worked with. Just recently I worked with a manufacturing company and we had about 55 people in the room. We spent a day and a half together. They were in about 10 different teams and each team was looking at a different problem within the organization. We had a total of five problems, so two teams per problem, and they walked away with some excellent ideas.

Speaker 2:

And these were things like. One of the problems was a 24 hour manufacturing facility and one of the issues they had is that when a new shift would start, there was about a half hour or so of just dead time, like nothing was happening in the plant, and they were trying to figure out how do we make this a little smoother, a little quicker? I mean, obviously there's gonna be some downtime, but does it need to really be 30 minutes? Can we make this 10 minutes, 15? And, and there was, it was just yeah. So they came up with some new ideas to address that problem and if you multiply the numbers of, let's say, they got 15 minutes more of productivity out of three different shifts. So 45 minutes a day multiplied by 365. It was a 24, seven plant. Yeah, I don't know what that number is, but it's in the billions.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's insane. That's fantastic. Yeah, not only improve productivity and efficiency, you've also, then saved the company so much more because they're producing and not sitting around. Yeah, so they're not spending money, they're, they're producing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so they're not just saving, they're making money.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's a great combo. That's fantastic. Well, so if people want to get in touch with you, how can they contact you? I know we could keep going, but you know there is a limit, unfortunately there is a limit. So if people want to reach out to you, how can they contact?

Speaker 2:

you. You can certainly find me on LinkedIn at Amy Clymer, dr Amy Clymer. My website is Clymer consultingcom, which is C-L-I-M-E-R consulting. You can also check out my brand new book. It just came out February 2025. It's called Deliberate Creative Teams how to Lead for Innovative Results. I'm really excited. I share the process that we just talked about, as well as this model I created on the three elements teams need if they want to be creative together, and there's some good stories in there as well. So, yeah, check it out. I'm very excited about it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I know we didn't get to that and I would love to keep talking because there there were. Those three steps are really fantastic and yeah, so I'll just have to have you back. Yeah, so I'll just have to have you back, so maybe we can do that another time.

Speaker 2:

But I really appreciate human brain is and how amazing and innovative we are, that AI cannot be Exactly. Yeah, I think that creativity and innovation this is what sets us apart as humans, and as we have incredible capacity as humans, I really believe we can pretty much solve all the problems on the planet, which most of them we created in the first place. But I think we have that capacity if we're able to tap into our collaborative creativity.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so great. Well, thank you so much for your time, amy. I really appreciate it. Thank you, laura, thank you, the audience, for listening to the Mosaic Life. Thanks so much for listening. Have a great rest of your day.