The Tools: Transform your problems into courage, confidence, and creativity. A Book Review by Graduate Student Ian Rosenfeldt.

I came across The Tools in the Cultural Studies section of the bookstore. After flipping through, it looked appealing enough to investigate. The premise is straightforward - outlining five tools to be used to develop one’s self actualization. It occurred to me that there are plenty of cognitive tools to guide creative thinking and yet I hadn’t come across many whose purpose was to guide our thoughts so as to optimize our mindset for creative thinking. How do we suspend judgement? How do we accept opinions even if we disagree with them? Since the elements of courage and confidence are fundamental to developing creativity, perhaps The Tools, developed by Phil Stutz and Barry Michels, would show a path to do just that and more?

Chapter one is written in call-and-response style from each author. One talks about his experience as a psychotherapist, encountering challenges with patients and looking for answers himself. The other talks about being approached by a young patient who was searching for answers. Not to why she thought the way she did, but on how to change her way of thinking. This led Barry Michels on his own quest to find tools that could do just that. The historical perspective on how the authors came to be acquainted with each other and the Tools made for an easy an engaging read and heightened my anticipation for more.

The tools are a way to bring positivity to your consciousness and to connect you to something called the Higher Power (and yes, it’s capitalized in the book). When first reading about the Higher Power, skepticism came naturally. The authors invite skepticism and ask only for one thing - for the reader to practice the tools. Given that simple request, I read on with an open mind, curious about what lay behind these Higher Powers. By inviting skepticism, the reader is forced to examine the book from deeper perspectives, to be open minded and yet look for cracks in the process.

Each of the next five chapters, one for each of the tools, starts with a story from their experiences - giving personality and context to allow the reader to identify with. They present situations that would prompt you to use the tool, the higher force that you will connect with, the process on how to use the tool (with simple illustrations), how the tool works and what the benefits are. The authors also address frequently asked questions they’ve had for each tool before ending off with a summary. This layout works very well. As I progressed through each chapter, I was trying to identify how I would use each tool. As each chapter summary drew near, there were additional examples given and alternative uses offered. Many of my own questions were addressed.

Thus far, I was grateful for finding The Tools and yet, the chapter on Higher Power was yet to come and my skepticism alarm started to chime. Turns out the Higher Power is not meant as a concept to challenge or replace anyone’s god, religion or spiritual belief. It offers a way of explaining how the power of happiness and confidence is actually a never ending well that we can tap into...only it comes from inside of us and not from external sources. To paraphrase the authors - these tools are a means of defeating inner enemies, using the weapons that enable us to believe in and experience higher forces without sacrificing our mental freedom to anyone or anything.

Despite my skepticism, I realized that the perspective presented isn’t revolutionary or even that scary. What is unique about this book is how the tools and this unique perspective of Higher Powers are presented, in an easily digestible way with simple and plain language that is not steeped with cultural, religious or spiritual dressings.  I found its simplicity and presentation refreshing, and after some short term practice I can say that these tools have had a positive impact on me. More practice is in the cards, most definitely.

The concluding chapter espouses practice and has us consider what might happen if more and more people tapped into these Higher Powers - how we as a society could benefit from the resulting positivity. One theme underscoring the entire book is that Western society is hell bent on consumption as a route to happiness, as if the latest and greatest will allows us to harness our creativity and confidence even better than before. What Stutz and Michels stress, however, is that along with developing a more positive mindset we each have the limitless power to develop our own creative selves. In effect, creating is more powerful than consuming.

Reading between the lines, it is not a far cry to draw connections to humanistic psychologists such as Rollo May or Abraham Maslow. The field of positive psychology is there as well, with the elements of motivation that could have easily referenced Teresa Amabile and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and even psychologist Viktor Frankl.

Reaction

The tools seem like mantras, images and stories to be repeated and experienced repeatedly in one’s head. What is most interesting is that we’re not being told what specific images to use (i.e. not of someone else's creation) but scenarios to create ourselves, based on our own experiences, insecurities, goals and wishes. It takes imagination to visualize these future scenarios and The Tools calls upon our metacognitive efforts to practice them.

The authors mainly draw upon their experiences as psychotherapists in developing these tools. It was disconcerting as a reader to have no references to draw upon, and yet a core tenant of the book is that having faith in a process despite not being able to prove it, doesn’t detract from its effectiveness. Getting through the book is pretty easy, so I encourage a temporary suspension of judgement while you read it. Once through the book, having gained an understanding of the tools themselves, the concept of Higher Powers may be easier to digest and reformulate in a way that makes more sense to you.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is craving an infusion of fresh perspective to their stale inner dialogue. If you’re looking for techniques to be used to top up your positivity, courage and confidence then The Tools is worth further investigation.

About Ian

Ian is an energizing facilitator of deliberate creativity, team training and Creative Problem Solving. He is a specialist in coaching for success, providing the tools to optimize creative thinking and facilitating diverse groups through their unique challenges.

Ian is a current Masters student at Buffalo State College, studying creativity, innovation and change leadership. He pursues optimal experience in the mountains (not often enough), on bikes of all sorts and behind two turntables. 

The Ten Faces of Innovation

This is a summary of the Ten Faces of Innovation which was prepared for the Current Issues in Creativity class, held in the summer of 2008.

Tom Kelley is the general manager of IDEO, which is, at this point in history, a highly successful and well-known design/innovation firm that works around the world. His book, The Ten Faces of Innovation, articulates his ideas about the types of roles people in organizations need to play in order to bring new products and services to market.

The book is predicated on a key observation: that the role of “Devil’s Advocate” is one of the most frequently played roles in business (and other organizations) today; in fact it is often played with a mantle of pride. When ideas are being presented, often a participant in the project will proudly say, “I’d like to play devil’s advocate for a moment”, at which point most people smile enthusiastically and play ready to listen and respond.

Kelley presents us with a variety of other roles he feels, from his experience at IDEO, need to be played in order to bring new ideas to market. He presents us with ten roles, or personas, that he sees as critical. He groups these 10 roles into three categories. Essentially the categories and roles are these (Kelley et al, 8 – 11).

1. Learning Personas:
1. The Anthropologist: observes human behavior and delivers new insights.
2. The Experimenter: prototypes ideas quickly and continuously
3. The Cross-Pollinator: explores cultures and metaphors outside of the business’ purview and makes new connections which are valuable to the enterprise.
2. The Organizing Personas:
1. The Hurdler: overcomes obstacles and roadblocks along the path
2. The Collaborator: knows how to bring together different people and groups; often “leads” from the middle of the pack.
3. The Director: knows how to gather a talented crew and help them be their best
3. The Building Personas
1. The Experience Architect: builds experiences that connect with consumers on a deep level
2. The Set Designer: creates environments that facilitate success
3. The Caregiver: anticipates consumer/customer needs and meets them.
4. The StoryTeller: builds awareness, morale, interest via compelling narratives.
5. 
   

Kelley has credibility in the business world and his book is highly readably. I was struck by how his ideas link with many of the concepts we read about in the study of applied creative thinking, yet he has re-arranged these ideas in a new way – one that uses personas that become the de facto archetypes needed for innovation.

For example, he talks about playing these roles like deBono talks about his six hats. The six hats represent a thinking style and encourage people to play different roles in the process by thinking in different ways. Similarly Kelley’s personas ask people to play different roles – at different times – or to invite different role-players onto innovation teams.

Similarly, Kelley’s book addresses the different types of thinking that are explored in the FourSight model that defines different thinking style preferences. The Building Personas are “implementers”, the Experimenters and Cross-Pollinators are similar to Ideators. The Anthropologist is a clarifier; and the Director can be compared to a facilitator of creative problem solving. While the models are not tightly aligned, the overlap is noticeable.

On another level, Kelley’s personas provide a new way to bring alive the principles of creativity. Certainly, he builds these personas as a way to illustrate the need - and technique – for deferring judgment. He encourages seeing with new eyes via roles like the Anthropologist and Cross-Pollinator. The Hurdler uses his/her guiles to identify and overcome obstacles. The Collaborator and Director focus on bringing together – and facilitating – diverse teams. The storyteller “makes meaning” of new ideas and builds the emotional/values-level connections.

In fact, without necessarily meaning to, Kelley takes on – and reframes – the 4P model of creativity. He links people and process in the form of a persona; together, the personas address, challenge and re-order the “press” in order to create and bring to life a new “product”. And he accomplishes this without ever (or rarely) using the word “creativity” or “creative thinking”.

In summary, while Kelley’s book is clearly commercial, and has provided him with a brilliant platform from which to deliver his message through multiple media, its message resonates with much of the academic thinking and research that we encounter in the study of creativity. He treads a fine line with a fair amount of ease and grace.

Book Review: Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation. Prepared by: Mark Hylton, CRS 625, Current Issues Class, Summer 2008

Sawyer, R. K. (2006). Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation. New York: Oxford University Press.

Background and context
R. Keith Sawyer is Associate Professor of Education at Washington University. He is the author of many books on creativity, including Pretend Play as Improvisation (1997) & Creating Conversations (2001). His latest book, Group Genius: The creative power of collaboration (2007) extends some on the ideas of collaboration that are first explored in this book. His topics of research include business innovation, organizational dynamics in work teams, children's play and preschool, artistic and scientific creativity and language and conversation research.
It is fair to say that Sawyer’s perspectives on creativity builds on the sociocultural work of Amabile and Csikszentmihaly. This view requires not only understanding individual inspiration but also social factors like collaboration, networks of support, education and cultural background.

Organisation of the book
Sawyer breaks down the book into five main sections. He begins by exploring conceptions of creativity, including a whole set of culturally based creativity myths.

Part II examines individualist approaches to creativity starting with Guilford’s APA address in 1950 and moving on to the second wave of cognitive psychology. The contributions of biology, neuroscience and then computational approaches to the study of creativity are also explored.

Part III takes a contextualist approach which beings to introduce the sociocultural model of creativity. Essentially it is moving up from the individual to look at social factors and collaboration. This approach includes culture and history.

Part IV explores types of artistic creativity, ranging from painting to music and theatre performance, while Part V explores everyday forms of creativity, including science and business. Sawyer considers not only the psychological processes that lead individuals to be creative but also the social and cultural properties of groups that lead the group to be collectively creative.

Each chapter takes an interdisciplinary approach using both individualist and contextual evidence with the aim of moving beyond psychology to incorporate sociology, anthropology and history. The final chapter attempts to bring all this discussion together into advice on how to be more creative.

Distinctive features of the book
Sawyer is quite clear that he considers performance creativity to be one of the most important examples of human innovation. Unlike products, such as books, devices, paintings etc, that can be reproduced and sold, performance creativity is ephemeral; there is no product that remains. The audience participates during the creation and watches the creative process in action; when the performance is over, it’s gone, remaining only in the memory of the participants. Another feature of this book is that Sawyer claims it is based on solid scientific research.

What’s most interesting about this book?
I think there’s a very important viewpoint expressed in this book which is about viewing creativity as it happens, in real time. This is an important distinction to previous research on creativity, which was mostly post-hoc rationalisation about the process. Sawyer focuses more on experience in real time as a basis to understand creativity without relying solely on raw anecdotal evidence from famous creators. Sawyer builds on Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory by examining how emergence occurs by studying improvisation. Since there is not a final creative product to focus on in improv (e.g. theatre, jazz), the process is the product, he studied what was happening as it happened. He concluded that all creative process is emergent from complex social interactions.

Sociocultural View of Creativity
In addition to psychological studies of creativity the book includes research by anthropologists on creativity in non-Western cultures, and research by sociologists about the situation, contexts, and networks of creative activity.

It brings these approaches together within the sociocultural approach to creativity pioneered by Howard Becker, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and Howard Gardner. The sociocultural approach moves beyond the individual to consider the social and cultural contexts of creativity, emphasizing the role of collaboration and context in the creative process.

How is this book relevant to you? Sociocultural advice for creativity
A good book needs to make a connection with you as the reader. I found a lot of connections; my favourite is the view that creativity requires improvisation, collaboration and communication. The advice of the book supports this view and provides a way of increasing your own everyday creativity. This advice does go against the more common creativity myths but does have some similarities with Torrance’s (2006) manifesto for a creative career (e.g. do what you love and can do well).

Choose a domain that’s right for you
Turn your gaze outward instead of inward
Market yourself
Don’t try to become creative in general; focus on one domain
Be intrinsically motivated
Don’t get comfortable
Balance out your personality
Look for the most pressing problems facing the domain
Collaborate
Don’t worry about who gets the credit
Use creative work habits
Be confident and take risks

You might notice then that this advice concentrates is aimed at the individual – how to make yourself as the individual more creative, which surely was not the aim of the book? There’s much less advice on how to access group genius, or how to encourage improvisation, communication and collaboration. Although Sawyer does go into more detail in this subsequent book on Group Genius.

Further readings and connections
This book is part of a recent growth in sociocultural approaches to creativity and the belief in the creative power of groups or teams. If this area interests you then I would recommend looking at the following books:

Sawyer, R. K. (2007). Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration. Cambridge, MA: Basic Books.

Duggan, W. (2007). Strategic Intuition: the creative spark in human achievement. New York: Columbia Business School Press.

Surowieki, J. (2004). The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few. New York: Doubleday.

Johansson, F. (2006). The Medici effect: breakthrough insights at the intersection of ideas, concepts, and cultures. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business School Press.

Rheingold, H. (2002) Smart Mobs: The next social revolution. Cambridge, MA: Basic Books