Simple. Simplex. Simplexity: Interview with Dr. Min Basadur by Dorte Nielsen

Simple. Simplex. Simplexity.

Interview with Dr. Min Basadur by Dorte Nielsen

at the 12^th European Conference on Creativity and Innovation

Introduction

It’s not every day you get the chance to meet a person of Dr. Min Basadur’s stature, let alone be given the privilege of interviewing him face to face. It’s perhaps testament to his talent that he is difficult to describe accurately with one professional title. He’s an Author, Thinker, Inventor, Consultant, Strategist, Innovator, Speaker, Researcher, Professor, Problem Solver and Founding Director of Basadur Applied Creativity Inc. and The Center for Research in Applied Creativity.

In the early 70’s Min Basadur went to the CPSI conference held by the Creative Education Foundation at the State University College at Buffalo. At CPSI (Creative Problem Solving Institute) Min Basadur was introduced to the work of Alex F. Osborn and Sid Parnes. Back at work, at Procter and Gamble, Min Basadur started to apply what he’d learned at the conference, and this became the beginning of his work in the field of applied creativity and problem solving.

Diving deeper into his work as I prepared for the interview I was very impressed, not only by the sheer volume of work, but also by his contributions to the field. He has written more than 30 peer-reviewed articles in leading scientific journals, several book chapters and two books of his own on innovation, problem solving and creativity. As a creativity scholar he has a unique position in the field. He is renowned for bringing together academic research with the practical application of creativity processes, tools and skills working very closely with businesses. What started as the Simplex process almost 30 years ago has evolved into The Simplexity Thinking System – a method of applied creativity that interconnects process, personal style profiles, thinking skills and tools.

I’m delighted to have had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with Dr. Min Basadur at the 12^th European Conference on Creativity and Innovation in September 2011 and I learned a lot about him and his professional achievements. He is an interesting and charismatic man who talked with enthusiasm and professionalism. The interview was conducted in four different parts as different time over a 2-day period.

The story behind the Simplexity Thinking

Meeting the creator of The Simplexity Thinking System, I was keen to hear more about its origins. I asked Dr. Min Basadur to tell me a little about how it was conceived.

“The Simplexity Thinking System was conceived in the real world, based on the way problem solving happens successfully in organizations. It's built on the Osborn-Parnes’ concept, but greatly deepens and expands it, as the Osborn-Parnes process is a limited process, especially in its original form.

When I went to the Creative Problem Solving Institute (the CPSI conference on creativity and innovation), Osborn and Parnes gave us their five step process. It was a start, and meshed very well with my own ideas about creativity and problem solving. I said to myself – I'm going to jump off the diving board and start using what I have learned. When I returned to Procter & Gamble, I began to adapt the process to the many situations we had at the company. I was very uncomfortable at first. Here I was, telling a bunch of very highly qualified PhD Chemists that I might be able to help them. To my surprise, they liked what I did, and I began to realize that I could do something that they couldn't do well, and with that success grew my confidence. I started to work with other people on other problems, and little by little I began to weld it all together. I learned a tremendous amount about how problem solving and creativity works in real organizations. The fact that it was a circular never ending process was one of the most important discoveries. I integrated psychological, educational and behavioral research which I was learning at the University of Cincinnati into my on-the-job experience and out of that came “Simplex” which evolved into “The Simplexity Thinking System”. It's a way of operating. It's a system of thinking (and thinking simply). It integrates the behaviors, attitudes, and thinking skills that are required to make the process work, into a flowing continuous process, a process of adaptability, if you like. It's not a change management process; it's a change-making process. It's proactive and deliberate. And it recognizes that problem finding and problem definition, as well as implementation are critical and difficult for most people. Effective organizations implement such a process of adaptability into their everyday life.”

Key contributions to the field of creativity

Having been given this rare opportunity to get to know Dr. Min Basadur a little better, I asked him what he thought his major contributions to the field of creativity have been.

“Getting my PhD was the biggest joy in my career, although it was quite a hurdle to get to. I did it while I was working at Procter & Gamble, raising a young family, and responding to requests from local organizations to share and present my work. Working on my PhD let me integrate all of the key components I was experiencing into a flow and all my work came together. I wrote an award-winning dissertation in which I showed that people can be trained in creativity by following and building skills in a structured system of problem solving. I converted the dissertation into several published articles.

When I finished my PhD I came to a crossroads. I had a good job and yet I realized deep down I’d outgrown the company. I was getting requests for consulting from other companies. I was faced with a decision; would I become an independent consultant or a full time professor? It was then that I made the decision that I would do both. I would become a consultant, and I would become a professor and continue my research as well. So when I left Procter & Gamble, I joined McMaster University with a tenure track professorship and formed my own company, the Centre for Research in Applied Creativity. I soon began to get more calls for help from various companies. At the university, teaching has always been my passion; however doing the research was the harder part. At both universities, Cincinnati and McMaster, I built upon the research of Sid Parnes and other academics, which had been done mostly in the laboratory. So I took Sid Parnes’ research and advanced it into the context of real world organizations and situations. I found myself pioneering research in applied creativity in the real world of organizational life. At the time, there was virtually no one else researching creativity in this way. Which was actually a good thing, because I didn't have anybody telling me 'you can't do this, and you can't do that.' I had to discover, analyze and measure new concepts myself.

So my major contribution is that I have combined academic creativity research and my work in the real world to advance the science of applied creativity by doing work 'in the trenches'. I considered every single client as a research partner. While working together, we experimented with new ways of doing things, like the mapping tool 'Why? What’s stopping you?' We’d run an experiment, observe the effect, make a hypothesis, and validate the results. This work has resulted in 30 or 40 published scientific articles and book chapters and two books. My field work has had me working with Presidents, Managers and Shop Workers. The work has resulted in the development of frameworks for understanding creativity, such as a system of key elements including content, process, process skills, cognitive styles and tools such as: Why? What’s Stopping you?, Challenge Mapping, the Creative Problem Solving Profile, and an interconnected circular process. So basically, I strove to give credibility to the science of applied creativity, have developed new ways of thinking in this area and have identified a structured innovative problem solving system that anyone can learn. The work we have done has advanced the field, and I am pretty happy with that.”

Why? What’s stopping you? and How might we?

I was intrigued as to how Dr. Min Basadur came about the now well established tool – “Why, what’s stopping you?” and the expression “How might we?” I asked him if he could elaborate.

“I remember how I invented 'How might we?' and 'Why? – What’s stopping you?' At CPSI we were taught to ask 'Why?' and 'How?' But I found that the 'How?' didn’t work because it puts people into a solution mode rather than diving deeper into the real root of the challenge. So, in 1978 I had a group of Industrial Engineers from different parts of Procter & Gamble coming to a seminar. They each had to bring a problem. I put them into small groups, and they had to tell each other about the problem they came with. One of the groups had moved through problem definition, and they were helping each other define the problem. A gentleman from Sacramento insisted that he didn’t really have a problem. He said, 'I thought I did, but I don't'. I went over to help. They said: 'This guy says he doesn't have a problem.' I said: 'What do you mean?' And he said: 'I came here with a problem. How do we get our plant to move from 8 boilers to 4 boilers? But I have talked to the guy from the Atlanta plant, and they already gone from 8 boilers to 4. So, I don't really have a problem anymore.' So I am thinking, it doesn't really make a lot of sense. To help I said: 'What’s stopping you?' It just came out of my mouth; 'What's stopping you from going from 8 boilers down to 4?' and he said: 'Well nothing, Atlanta already knows how to do it.' So I asked again: 'What's stopping you and your company from doing it?' He replied again: 'Well nothing,' So then I asked him: 'What's stopping you walking out of here now and moving the plant to 4 boilers?' and he said: 'The department managers are not interested in energy conservation'– and that was the real answer to the question! The new 'How might? was 'How might I get the department managers interested in energy conservation?' I'll never forget it. I thought that's it! If you ask people 'How?' - they're just going give you a solution. But the 'What’s stopping you?' forces them to think about the real facts underlying the challenge. It's very difficult for people to think that way when they're used to giving solutions, rather than facts.

'How might we?' came about in 1973 or 74, when I was working at Procter & Gamble. Sid Parnes was using 'In what ways might we?' That was the original phrase. But 'In what ways might we?' is long-winded and is not going to work in a business environment. So we used 'How might we?' which is very quick, much more intuitive, and has consequently proven to work better. It also becomes a battle cry for optimistic problem finding and solving, and a simple concept for culture change."

The Creative Problem Solving Profile

I went on to ask Dr. Min Basadur to elaborate on the origins of The Creative Problem Solving Profile and how that came about.

“In 1981 I was asked by the Ford Motor company if I could do some work with them and come up with something that people could share with their colleagues or family after participating in Simplexity training or problem solving workshops. So that's where I created the profile styles that match with the Simplexity four stage, eight step process. The styles are based on different combinations of the mental operations of Guilford’s landmark Structure Of Intellect (SOI) model. From then on, when Ford Motor Company participants came in for a workshop, they filled out a form identifying their style profile, and then took a fresh form home to involve a spouse or colleague in sharing their process and skill learnings in a 'learning by doing way'. It worked very well! It was then that I began to realize how powerful this tool was. The Ford Motor company said to me: 'This profile is probably the most important thing you've done.' And I’d have to agree."

Simple, Simplex, Simplexity

Dr. Min Basadur then went on to talk more about The Simplexity Thinking System and how it’s developed over the years.

“Right from the beginning people have asked me: What is it you do? and How do you do that? So I had to give it a name… Simplex was the idea of simple with an X. Over the years I have been asked, what I do, so many times that I realized what we really are doing is helping people solve problems. That's it! The problems will vary, but the approach in solving problems stays the same. Because of globalization and cross cultural integration of international commerce the problems are getting more and more complex. So a good way of communicating what we do for people, in a way that will engage them, is to describe it as: We make complex problems simple – Simplexity. I wish I'd thought of the name Simplexity twenty five years ago, but I’d have to admit that I wasn’t one hundred percent clear in what I was actually doing back then. I thought that I was just helping people generate ideas, break through barriers and think outside the box. But little by little I began to realize, it was much more than that. We help people work together and collaborate. We understand that problem solving has a huge amount of emotion in it. We know how to get people to converse with each other, and not to be afraid. We can get senior people to admit to their mistakes, which can be very challenging. But we know that, if we can get people to speak in simple language and follow the simple steps of the Simplexity Thinking System we can make even their very complex problems very simple.

We are branding everything as Simplexity now. Simplexity is a system. It involves a process, which we call Simplexity. It requires process skills, which we call Simplexity Process Skills. We have Simplexity Tools, and Simplexity Styles. I would like to establish Simplexity Thinking as the new highest-level managerial skill obtainable. Higher than Design Thinking, which I understand is the current buzz-word. It is our goal to make Simplexity Thinking the most recognized brand when it comes to problem solving and innovation. I can understand it if people still call it Simplex though. After all, we've been working hard for so many years to establish that brand. Although, strictly speaking, it should now be called The Simplexity Thinking System.

The key to our success has been building self-sufficiency. If you come to us as a client, we won't just help you solve your problems. We will train you to do what we do, and we will train you to teach others what we do. We are very comfortable in making agreements where there's something in it for us, and something in it for them. We give our clients all the knowledge, materials and skills they require and we want them to use everything. It's in our interests to make them successful. When they're successful, they tell other companies. They say: 'Phone this outfit. They can teach you how to solve your problems.' So that's the way we work.”

New publications

I was also keen to hear about Dr. Min Basadur’s current projects. I asked him what he was working on at the moment.

“My most recent publications are about increasing awareness about the need for a process and subsequently the skills needed to drive the process in creativity, problem solving and innovation in the real world. Those skills are attitudinal, cognitive and behavioral. It’s what I believe that Sid Parnes and Alex Osborn were trying achieve ; it’s what we call creative behavior. Creative behavior is more than having a process you use briefly to solve a problem over in some corner. Rather, it's the way we behave all the time, 24/7/365. We're trying to induce creative behavior, and raise it beyond a process. That's what I mean by system. Creative thinking is what you want as a way of life in your organization. Ultimately, we want people coming in every day eager to solve problems. Not to say: 'This is not my job, I've got to run the machine (or track sales)'. There's process, there's tools, there’s behavioral, attitudinal, and cognitive skills, and styles. When you have everyone applying them every day, you have got yourself a culture of creativity.

Part of my ongoing research continues to be improving the Creative Problem Solving Profile, that is making it psychometrically tighter and tighter, and showing that it connects meaningfully to the real world. I established the first Profile version in 1982, and it has been significantly improved five times. I have a son who is studying for a PhD right now in Chicago in the same area. Because of his interest, I've completed even more research than normal in the past five years. My son is carrying my work forward and connecting it with newer concepts like social networks and regulatory mode theory and explaining the complex motivation – creativity process relationship. I’m in the lucky situation, were I can continue to work, experiment and learn with help from many others. Our system and Profile has been translated into more than ten different languages. So again, it's another example of how I've taken the theoretical work of Sid Parnes and Alex Osborn and taken it into the real world.

I'm also writing a new book now, called 'What's missing?' That may not be the final title. It's about why people have come to me over the last 30 years. Why are they coming? Why can't they do it themselves? What can't they do? Why does the Simplexity System provide the answers? What’s missing in our educational systems? I’ve have experiences and story after story to illustrate deficiencies in skill, which we're transforming into a structured book.”

Connection with the International Center for Studies in Creativity

As Dr. Min Basadur’s found a lot of his early inspiration in the work of Alex Osborn and Sid Parnes, which grew into The International Centre for Studies in Creativity, Buffalo, I was keen to hear what his connections with the Center were today.

“I am very closely connected with the Centre especially with department chair Dr. Gerard Puccio. We're partners. I help him with research, and he helps me. Gerard's very open minded and a very good scientist and researcher. In recent years, he has started to discover the basic research I had done in my early career, where previously very few were interested. I have presented for Gerard and Sid Parnes at the Center at conferences, and teaching workshops. Several students from the Center have been using our instruments such as the Ideation-Evaluation Preference Scale in their training and research. Several years ago I shared my Creative Problem Solving Profile inventory with Gerard, to help him validate his own work on styles."

The Guilford connection

Finally Dr. Min Basadur talked enthusiastically about his connection with the work of J. P. Guilford:

“I am a big fan of Guilford. He was one of the people who added structure to creativity. I had lunch with him when I was looking for ideas and inspiration for my dissertation.

My Creative Problem Solving Profile is based on the mental operations of his Structure Of Intellect model: Cognition, Divergent Production, Evaluation and Convergent Production.

Now, if you look carefully, Cognition is one way of learning. As children we learn by doing. We touch. We feel. The opposite is learning by Convergent production. People give us problems at school, and we have to converge to the right answer. It's a way of thinking, which converges to the right answer from a given set of information. So it's producing knowledge by thinking, as opposed to producing knowledge by doing. When we take kids into school, we make them switch. We force them how to learn by thinking, when they're so used to learning by doing. Individuals have personal preferences for learning one way or the other. You can see this reflected in one of the two bipolar axes (vertical) of the Profile. (See Basadur’s Profile Overview). The other bipolar axis reflects how individuals differ in their preferences for how they use their knowledge however gained. On the horizontal axis, one side is evaluation and the other side is divergent production. If you combine the mental operations in various ways, you've got the different styles. So the first style is learning by doing and using knowledge for diverging. That's the Generator. The next one is learning by thinking and using knowledge for diverging. That’s the Conceptualizer. So that's when you get people to understand. It is when they can see the whole picture. It makes sense to them. It comes together. The third style is the Optimizer. They think abstractly. And they evaluate. It's got to make sense. They want the single best solution. Finally, you get to the Implementers. They also learn by doing, but they're always evaluating but always eager to get something finished. They're coming through, and they've got to implement. And that's the way the combinations go. I am just so pleased, that I could make something that Guilford did become so useful to people.”

And finally, an admission.

Finally, I asked Dr. Min Basadur, if he could tell me something about himself and his professional life, that nobody else knows… He thought for a while, and with a smile he replied:

“After all these years, I still have to work very hard to defer judgment. I have to work at not being too impatient. Most might not know my struggle. People would probably say: 'He just does that so naturally, but I must admit that I have to work hard at it.”

Dorte Nielsen is an Associate Professor at the Danish School of Media Journalism, where she is Head of Department and a Course Leader of ”Creative Communication” a BA education for Art Directors and Conceptual Thinkers. Dorte teaches creativity and creative thinking, and is the author of numerous books and articles on the subject. In recent years Dorte held the position of Chair of Creative Circle, the Danish society for the creative industries.

Facilitating Creative Thinking in the Art Room

Written by Graduate Student Jamie Sanchez

Introduction

“How nice it must be to teach art,” and, “It must be so much fun to draw and paint all day!” As an art teacher, I have heard these statements or something to their effect from others at least once every school year. In a way, they are right. I love my job and it is a lot of fun. However, I don’t just teach students how to make art, draw, and paint. Being an art teacher is so much more than that for me. My lessons dabble in math, science, social studies, character building, and most of all creativity.

It is common for people to feel that art and creativity go hand-in-hand. I agree that, often to be artistic, you must have the skills to think creatively. This is not always the case, though. Not every student that enters my art room possesses equal proportions of both artistic and creative abilities. They may be strong in one and need growth in the other. Many times, someone who seems to be a very talented young artist who is able to manipulate art media and duplicate images ends up staring blankly at his/her paper, unless explicit directions are given or a picture is made visible by the teacher. Students often have difficulty creating an original or expressive idea on their own. I feel that part of my role as their teacher is to facilitate both skills. They can build off of each other. It is possible to teach creative thinking through teaching art. It is one of my teaching goals to facilitate creative thinking through my lessons.

Creative and Critical Thinking Skills

Like the term “art”, the true definition of what creativity is has been disputed for many years; however, there exists a consensus that creativity is the generation of new, useful, and original ideas. For more than 60 years, researchers have progressively become more interested in creative thinking and how schools are preparing their students for the world’s increasing demand for creative thinkers. Hurson (2008) defines creative thinking as being generative, nonjudgmental, and expansive. He states that in the process of creative thinking, partially formed ideas are generated, the ideas are not judged, and therefore many more ideas are created.

Time and time again, we have heard of the importance of critical thinking. Hurson (2008) stated that critical thinking is analytic, judgmental, and selective. Many schools instill critical thinking into their curriculums and build students’ abilities to dig deep into content. That is a great skill to have and will prove useful in the students’ futures, but what about taking the next step with creativity? We need the next generations to “one-up” us and to challenge what we have already established. It is important for them to build on old ideas and to generate new ones. Without their creativity, there will be no growth.

We can still teach students critical thinking skills, but we must not leave out creativity. Hurson (2008) stresses the importance of using both creative and critical thinking. He cites that we should alternate between the two. We can use critical thinking as a building block for creative thinking skills.

Using Visual Thinking Strategies to Strengthen Critical and Creative Thinking

There are various ways to strengthen students’ critical thinking skills, as well as an ever-increasing number of methods for fostering students’ creative thinking skills. One technique that I have found particularly successful with my students is the use of Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS).

Since the 1990s, VTS has been used in classrooms and museums around the United States and parts of Europe and Asia. It started as a program to increase aesthetic development in children. According to the Visual Thinking Strategies website (2011), VTS has become “a research-based teaching method that improves critical thinking and language skills through discussions of visual images”. It allows for students to create their own interpretations and dig deeper into the content of the artwork, through a question-and-answer process framed by the teacher. The interactions that take place in this process encourage students to analyze and evaluate the artwork in a way that they may not have done without prompting.

During the process of VTS, the teacher sits the students in front of an artwork or reproduction and asks a series of questions that are designed to spark their curiosity and strengthen their thinking skills. The teacher first asks, “What is going on in the picture?” This question prompts them to investigate the image. The second question, “What else can you find?” guides them to discover more than what they originally noticed. The second question, as well as the question: “What do you see that makes you say that?” are repeated as multiple students contribute. Students begin to build off of their peers’ answers. They are given the opportunity to formulate new perspectives.

In the beginning of the process, students take a critical thinking approach, in which they analyze the artwork and make connections with their own experiences. They then listen to the ideas of their peers while deferring judgment, and they build on those ideas by generating a variety of thoughts. This part of the procedure simulates the creative process during which many new ideas are produced. The learning process continues when students independently use VTS while viewing artwork and create conversations with their classmates. VTS cofounder Philip Yenawine (“Thinking Through Art”, n.d.) stated that VTS strengthens thinking skills of students that are considered necessary in the classroom such as observation, elaboration, drawing conclusions, making inferences, arguing evidence, and revision. According to the authors, “VTS is easy to learn and offers a proven strategy for educators to meet current learning objectives.”

VTS takes students beyond the interpretation of images (Housen, 2002). It allows them to seek new perspectives and view artwork in different ways. It also enhances students’ abilities to communicate, to formulate advanced questions, and therefore generate more meaningful answers. The process reinforces the students’ critical thinking skills and builds upon their creative thinking skills.

Currently in My Art Room: Empathy and Expressive Art

In collaboration with the lessons my students are learning with their classroom teachers, I have formed art lessons around empathy. This topic is from a character-building program called Second Step. Like with VTS, I begin by presenting visual images to the students. Using the questioning technique of VTS, I guide the students through photographs of people experiencing heightened emotions. The students identify the emotion(s) in the image and investigate the clues that tell them how the person feels. I have found that some students will begin to formulate creative stories behind the pictures. I then introduce various reproductions of artworks and repeat the process with the students. They are able to recognize the artist’s expression behind each artwork and identify which techniques they used to create the mood.

The students’ critical thinking is strengthened when they analyze the clues in the images and artworks. Subsequently, the students produce many thoughts and stories. They are urged not to be judgmental of others’ comments and especially not of their own. In this environment, the students feel free to express their opinions and are therefore able to continue the discussion for quite some time generating ideas. This is creative thinking. Their minds are flowing at this point, and they can now transfer this current into their art. I instruct them to create a piece of artwork that expresses an important emotion to them. I ask them, “What would that look like?” Their pencils move quickly and there aren’t any students staring blankly at their papers.

Conclusion

Art can be used as a tool to strengthen creative thinking skills. As an art teacher, I facilitate my students’ learning and create an environment to foster this. Critical thinking skills are important and should be taught in schools. However, further emphasis must be placed on teaching creative thinking skills; they are vital for the development of our future. We could use a few more innovators like Thomas Edison, Leonardo da Vinci, and Steve Jobs. VTS is only one tool that can build both critical and creative thinking, but there are many others. Skills gained through the use of techniques like VTS could easily be transferred into other subjects like creative writing, math, and science. “How nice it must be to teach art.” Let’s rephrase that: How nice it would be for all students to possess the creative thinking skills that can be taught through art.

References

Housen, A. C. (2002). Aesthetic thought: Critical thinking and transfer. Visual understanding education: 100 arts and learning research journal, 18(1), 99 – 132.

Hurson, T. (2008). Think better. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Visual thinking strategies. (2011). Retrieved from http://www.vtshome.org/

Yenawine, P. (n.d.). Thinking through art [video file]. Retrieved from http://www. vtshome. org/what-is-vts

Book Review: Walk Out Walk On

Book Review written by Ginny Santos

Do you yearn for inspiration of what is possible? Walk Out Walk On, by Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze, is sure to give you a renewed sense of hope in the creativity and resilience of human kind, and in the ability of local and transnational communities to work towards creative change. Walk Out Walk On is more than a book. It is an experience, an opportunity to witness creativity skills in action and an opportunity to practice your own creative abilities. As the authors put it, this is “a learning journey into communities daring to live the future now”, and literally, it is a journey.

Written in a similar style as ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books, Wheatley and Frieze are your hosts, introducing you to a series of creative leaders and communities as you travel around the world. But first, they prepare you for the journey while heightening your anticipation of what you are about to experience. In doing so, they urge you to bring along all your courage, your awareness of your beliefs and any assumptions that might get in the way of staying open to the new. They start by giving you a small glimpse into each of the seven regions you will visit: Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Zimbabwe, India, Greece, and the United States.

As you begin each new adventure, they help you richly visualize your surroundings, the history and complexity of the problems faced by the local people, and the social interactions you may have as you meet new people. But these are not ordinary interactions. In these unexpected interactions you meet local creative leaders who are not necessarily charismatic heroes, but hosts of change. As you learn about the ways they confront complex problems without waiting for any foreign aid, governmental intervention or heroic leaders, you are filled with renewed optimism, passion for change and endless curiosity. As you are exposed to the unexpected, the authors also bring your attention to any resistance and disbelief that may be arising in you, thus encouraging you to practice your ability to tolerate complexity, to stay open, and to look at it another way. For example, I will share with you the last paragraph from one of the first chapters, which concludes your journey to Mexico:

Before you descend from this misty highland village, the Zapatistas will make one request of you: Will you remember their story? Will you let it remain in your heart and provoke your imagination? Will you tell it to others? For that is the reason they accepted your request to visit their village and learn about their work. As you look back into the eyes of the Zapatista woman who gazes at you from behind her black ski mask, she wants to know, will you recognize that she is you? (p. 41)

In another journey, you are invited to witness the power of play, playing to make the world a better place. Starting with a small community in Brazil called Paquetá, where poverty, unemployment, drug abuse, murder, and homelessness are the norm. Here, one of the authors shares her experience:

The purpose of this game was to discover how play unleashes everyone’s creativity, how it invites us to see what’s possible rather than what’s so. In this game, it would be the residents of Paquetá who would discover and build their dreams. I would have the privilege of playing alongside, learning how a community becomes healthy and resilient, not when it gains access to power and wealth, but when it discovers that its creativity and capacity were there all along. (p. 52)

Every one of the seven journeys has something unique to teach you about creative change. What you take away from them, really depends on who you are and how open you are able to stay while reading. One interesting learning for me occurred in the visit to South Africa, specifically in Joubert Park. Joubert Park is a place, as the authors explain, where a deep history of racial oppression is only one diabolical piece of the puzzle: “It is heartbreaking, a hopeless place where dreams crumble into the dust left behind after all the gold has been stripped out” (p. 83). A place where the complexity can be overwhelming and you may not think that the community can have any influence. And as we know from the creative problem solving process, you must have influence in order to tackle a problem. However, the authors challenge you to think twice. They begin with a difficult series of questions:

Do you want to try to fix this place? Let’s see, which problem would you like to solve first? [...] How about HIV? One in every four people in this neighborhood is infected with the disease. Crime? South Africa has among the world’s highest per capita rates of murder, rape, robbery and assault. […] Or perhaps you’d rather start with poverty? Urban decay? Drugs? Child rape? Teen violence? Lack of schooling? Illiteracy? (p. 83)

They then introduce you to some inspiring people and how they have found the starting place that is just right, a place where they do have influence, one that relies on their local strength, which is togetherness and interdependence. My learning here, is that when it comes to complex, seemingly overwhelming social problems, creative and lasting change comes from the bottom up, starting from where the people do have influence, and not expecting to create an artificial list of priorities, a plan with a beginning and end. As they show at Joubert Park: ”Start anywhere and follow it everywhere” (p. 85), because what really matters is who is involved in solving the problem, the interconnectedness, the relationships, and the creativity inherent in the people who live what’s happening day to day.

‘Returning Home’ is the second last part of the book. It is an invitation to embrace your learning and allow the experience to bring change to your own life while tolerating the ambiguity that this might include. As the authors review the highlights of your journey one last time, they invite you to reflect. My reflection begins with a wide-open, “Wow”! and a sigh of relief as I now see and feel impressed by what the authors so clearly demonstrate: “scarcity has been replaced by abundance, a mindset that declares: We have what we need. Our creativity produces infinite wealth” (p. 222).

Walk Out Walk On is so vividly rich that it is impossible to truly summarize it’s contents. The most this review can accomplish is to give you a glimpse into what it has to offer. As said earlier, it is not just a book, but a beautiful set of glossy pages filled with vivid and colorful photographs, enchanting language, and poetic prose. It is a learning journey, an opportunity to grow, and an invitation to join something bigger. In fact, you can stay connected to the people you meet in the book, continue to learn about their ongoing work, their successes, failures and learnings by visiting a website that accompanies the book: www.walkoutwalkon.net.

Wheatley, M. & Frieze, D. (2010). Walk out walk on. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

BIO

Ginny Santos is a creativity facilitator and trainer currently completing her Master’s of Science in Creativity and Change Leadership at the International Centre for Studies in Creativity, State University of New York. She uses Creative Problem Solving (CPS) to help leaders and groups focus and improve their thinking through the use of creative facilitation tools in order to reach innovative solutions and work towards positive change.

Ginny has over 10 years of professional experience working with diverse groups. She has quickly gone from being a student leader, social justice activist and community organizer to leadership and management positions in the non-profit sector. She has a strong and proven commitment to diversity, consensus, and authentic leadership and believes that people can have fun at work.

Ginny is originally from Spain, she moved to Canada at 17 and had never planned on staying. But as plans always change she is now a Torontonian, an occasional dance performer, a cyclist, a mother, an enthusiastic learner and a creative planner.