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2
Creative Thinking Abilities
INTRODUCTION
Creativity is not some spontaneous act, as oen construed by people who
think it is something only certain people have. e premise of this book
is that everyone has the ability to be creative. Naturally, some people have
certain abilities that are more pronounced and innate than others, but
everyone has creative abilities. rough conscious eort, people can tap
these abilities and augment them over time with experience.
A WORD ABOUT BRAIN HEMISPHERES
Both hemispheres are needed to create, of course. Using one side of the
brain only restricts deploying the output of the right brain into the real
world, the one for turning creativity into innovation. It is not an either/or
proposition between the two. It is more like a Venn diagram where the two
sides overlap to produce something creative and innovative.
Unfortunately, it oen appears that a dichotomous choice is made,
resulting in an unbalanced view of creativity. ink about it. An envi-
ronment completely dominated by a le-brain perspective is one that is
devoid of ambiguity, humor, and challenge; these characteristics hardly
engender creativity. An environment completely dominated by a right-
brain perspective is devoid of focus, practicality, and logic; these char-
acteristics hardly engender innovation. A blend of both sides of the brain
enables an atmosphere of creativity and innovation, resulting in turning
an idea into a reality. In other words, the environment combines the art
and science behind creativity and innovation, as discussed in the succeed-
ing paragraphs.
22 • Creative, Ecient, and Eective Project Management
David Pink, in his excellent book A Whole New Mind, describes the
importance of using both sides of the brain. His view is that for a considerable
time, the le-brain dominants have, for lack of a better word, dominated the
business environment. Today, for many reasons, the right-brain dominants
are coming into their own. Advancements in technology are a major con-
tributor to this shi from le to right brain emphasis. Pink adds that other
factors, too, add to this mental shi, to include material abundance and glo-
balization.
1
He refers to the ability to detect patterns and combine unrelated
ideas as high concept, and emotional intelligence and human interaction
as high touch.
2
Western thought and our educational system have indeed
emphasized le-brain thinking to the exclusion of the right side. Project
management tends to continue this emphasis, resulting in skewing think-
ing on how to approach a project. Fortunately, this dominance is starting to
crack with greater attention toward subjects like the human side of project
management, for example, creativity and emotional intelligence and dier-
ent approaches to projects, such as Agile.
CREATIVE THINKING ABILITIES
Creative thinking requires having certain abilities. ese include the
following abilities:
• Cross-domain thinking
• Having fun
• Listening to your intuition
• Shiing perspectives
• Being an iconoclast, even nihilistic
• Unlearning and relearning
• Looking from the outside, in
• Reverse thinking
• Conceptualizing
• Embracing ambiguity
• Seeing multiple answers
• Dening the problem
• Being observant
• Tinkering
• Determining the essence of something
Creative inking Abilities • 23
• Being self-aware
• Competing and collaborating
• Persevering
• Shiing thinking
• Shiing perspectives
• Suspending judgment
• Tinker
• Communicating
Cross-Domain Thinking
is means being able to shi to, or transcend from, one eld of study to
another, and applying the tools, concepts, and techniques to derive some-
thing creative in the new eld. Essentially, the creative person becomes
interdisciplinary. is ability becomes invaluable when trying to provide
a dierent insight and when overcoming a roadblock in another domain.
Many creations of the past involved people coming from one domain and
pollinating another with new thoughts and ideas. Unfortunately, too many
people, especially in highly specialized elds or in stovepipe organizations,
take the attitude of “not my area,” which hinders their capacity to adopt a
dierent perspective and to generate creative ideas and options.
eir experience enables them to see phenomena and obtain perspec-
tives that ordinary people do not see. ey oen pollinate two or more
elds based on using their knowledge and experiences obtained in other
areas. eir diverse background helps them identify opportunities that
may be blind to others. However, this does not mean that they are ignorant
about the eld in which they are working; it does mean that they oen do
not get drowned in details and emotionally involved. ey can learn about
and play around with dierent topics. With a greater breadth of views,
they can also respond to their environment.
3
Having Fun
e more fun one has when creating, the greater the likelihood something
original will result. If being creative is laborious and burdensome, then
the likelihood of diminishing creativity will occur. It must be enjoyable;
otherwise, too much eort is expended to create, which, ironically, only
inhibits it even more. Having fun oen has an element of craziness that
appears as something less than normal.
4
24 • Creative, Ecient, and Eective Project Management
Naturally, the joy of creating provides the opportunity to self- actualize
in a way that seems to stop any sense of time or other constraint (other
than the laws of physics) when engaged in the creative act. ey become
totally consumed in what they do while simultaneously nding themselves
rooted in reality. Creating becomes a release from the trials and tribu-
lations of the moment. Time seems to y when they are literally having
fun. is experience is referred to as ow, whereby people experience a
match between their consciousness and the act of creation. Less energy
is expended as time and self-consciousness seem to dissolve.
5
ey are
involved in the moment.
Listening to Your Intuition
Being logical requires operating on a presumed set of valid assumptions.
Logic and reasoning require agreement, or at least consensus, over assump-
tions, if for no other reason than to have a dispassionate discussion over
an issue or problem. Using the basic assumptions (items presumed factual
until proven otherwise) as premises, logic becomes structured.
e downside of simply relying on logic may lead to a paradigm or
mental model that intellectually makes sense but does not t reality. e
model is out of sync with what exists in the real world. It presumes that
assumptions are valid, absent of facts and data, which can result in intol-
erance of anything that does not support a paradigm; that is, ambiguity,
unpredictability, and invalidation of a logical construct, for example, a
model. Ambiguity oen plays a signicant role by causing uncertainty,
which challenges the very premises behind logical reasoning.
Being intuitive is one of the most recognized capabilities of the right
side of the brain. It is commonly referred to as instinct, gut feel, or inner
voice. It is what some people refer to as the emotional capability of the
brain. e emphasis is less on facts and algorithms and more on a subcon-
scious belief on how something should or does work. Naturally, it is quick
and requires less eort than using logic and calculations.
It is that gut feeling or sense, frequently unconsciously derived, that
tells you that perhaps you should try or do something dierent.
6
Intuition
is oen cited by inventors, artists, writers, and so on, as an important
ability to tap during their creative pursuits. Too much emphasis on logic
oen sties one’s sense of intuition. Hence, many creative people are
oen not even cognizant of their mental processes when creating, and
rely on the subconscious and intuition.
7
Daniel Goleman agrees, noting
Creative inking Abilities • 25
the importance of the unconscious in creating in the early stages of the
creative process.
8
Logic oen overrides the unconscious and intuition,
however, restricting creativity and, hence, options and perspectives. Logic
dispels inconsistency and contradiction, two catalysts to creativity. To
some extent, it is a conict between the inner and outer voice, the former
being akin to the identity, and the latter to the ego or superego—if one is
taking a Freudian perspective.
Yet, a great degree of creative thinking is spontaneous.
9
Spontaneity allows
creative people to shi gears, moving from one perspective to another, sim-
ply because they have an independence of mind. eir observation skills
facilitate abandoning assumptions and biases using facts and data. Closely
tied to spontaneity are exibility, adaptability, and eectiveness when cir-
cumstances dictate them.
10
Also tied to spontaneity is the ability to free the
unconscious to allow the former to arise. If unable to free their unconscious,
they will struggle to allow spontaneity in their thinking simply because the
mental gates in their minds are shut.
Creativity therefore requires that people pay attention to both gut
feelings and logical thinking. ey can discern when a creative opportu-
nity may exist and determine whether it is worth pursuing. Being intuitive
does not mean, of course, foregoing logical thinking and simply relying
on emotions. Rather, it means listening to intuition, and at the same time
applying logic to creative thinking. Intuition, though, has the upper hand
and oen does not involve logic.
11
Inventors know this, as Jacob Rabinow
notes: “Inventing is not a logical process. It’s only a logical process aer
the fact.”
12
Shifting Perspectives
When you shi perspectives it enables the ability to see a problem from mul-
tiple vantage points. By doing so, creative people can step beyond their own
paradigm, which is oen a restrictive viewpoint, and open their minds to
new possibilities. In other words, they can broaden how they see a problem
so that they generate and evaluate their ideas more eectively. Dierent per-
spectives also increase their knowledge and awareness about a specic topic.
Dierent perspectives can come from a delade, point of view, angle,
or macroscopic level to a microscopic one.
13
e mind is oen the big-
gest constraint when viewing the world as it pertains to creativity. As
noted earlier, Gerard Nierenberg says that our ego aects how we perceive
and respond to the world around us, some of the phenomena radically
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