#18: Cre8—Get N2It

Introduction to Concept:

Professor Weston Agor at the University of Texas asserts that because we live in a fast-changing, megatrend world, creative intuition is probably more important to survival today than it ever was in the past. What is “creative intuition”? What does he mean by “logical” intuition and how can you tell if you have it?

Let’s begin with a definition of intuition itself: “The ability to perceive or know something without conscious reasoning.” We can either be “logically” intuitive or “creatively” intuitive. Logical intuition assists us in analyzing what we do know, from direct or indirect experience, and using that knowledge to weigh the validity of our intuitive feelings. Creative intuition often begins in whimsy or fantasy and ends with an idea that we feel, intuitively, will work in a given situation.

Worksheet #18-1 presents you with a number of scenarios, some of which are true and others that are completely fabricated. Working with others in your group, you will discuss, logically, the likelihood that the scenario is true and indicate your choice (“true” or “false”) beneath each scenario. Later, I will share the results that will tell if your team is, as a whole, logically intuitive or not. [Distribute the worksheet now.]

Procedure:

1. Divide the class into an even number of small groups and distribute the worksheet. After participants have finished it, share the answers with them: All the scenarios are true except #3. Point out that if the groups were consistently correct, they probably have a collective logical intuition. If consistently wrong, they may be too closed in their thinking.

2. Ask each team now to look around the room and to select one other group with whom they will partner. [Each group should have a different partner group.]

3. Tell the teams to look at their partners and think about what they know or have perceived about the members of the partner group so far. The teams will then begin to work on this task, which you will share with them as follows:

Based on what you know or have perceived about the thinking styles of the individuals in your partnership team, would they be more likely to think an unusual story is true or false? Use your intuition and your hunches, as there really is no way of telling how a given group will respond to a given scenario. We can only predict. As a team, you will use your intuition to predict the way the other team is most likely to vote. Use your creativity, too: actually imagine them reading your unusual story. How might they react?

After discussing and agreeing upon the more likely vote (“true” or “false”) in response to a story, your team will do the opposite of the vote. In other words, if you intuitively feel the partner team would vote “true,” then you as a team will fabricate, in writing, a very unusual story, perhaps like the ones you read about or like the urban legends you may have heard about. But if you feel your partners would vote “false,” then you are to record a true story or experience that one of you has had.

4. When the stories are complete, have the teams exchange them and vote on the stories they receive. Poll the teams to learn whose intuition (about how the other team would vote) was correct.

Extending the Activity:

1. Ask if anyone feels he or she is especially intuitive. [Note: If no one admits to it, give this short quiz anyway.] Explain that the “intuitor” would have no way of knowing the answers—you simply want to give him or her a chance to use hunches in response to certain questions. Get the volunteer or appointed intuitor to stand. Give the test aloud, in front of the entire group, and have the intuitor say the answer out loud. Then go back and reveal the correct answers to the entire group. Determine how intuitive the intuitor actually was.

1) For every one person on earth, how many insects are there? (7 million)

2) What is the height of Mount Kilimanjaro? (19,340 feet)

3) Students of what subject yawn the most? (calculus students)

4) How many students graduate from American high schools each year unable to read the words on their diploma? (700,000)

5) What is the annual cost of medical bills resulting from smoking? ($52 billion)

(You could collect other such questions, particularly those related to the subject matter being presented, and use an even longer test with the entire group.)

2. To further test participants’ powers of intuition, choose ten unusual words from the dictionary and create a test with two false definitions and one real one.

Workplace Connections:

1. Suggest that participants keep a log for a three-week period to determine if they should place more or less reliance on their gut feelings.

2. Encourage participants to be especially attuned at future staff or team meetings to those individuals (including themselves) who say something akin to “I just have this feeling that it will work.” Participants will then keep track of the outcomes of collective decisions that are made—some that go against the intuition of the person who had this feeling and some that concur with the person’s feeling. Over an extended period, participants will have sufficient data to give the team or co-workers a summary of the validity of these intuitive reactions to proposed courses of action.

Questions for Further Consideration:

1. Can you recall times when you were glad you relied on your intuition?

2. Can you recall times when you wish you had or hadn’t?

3. Do you believe there is such a thing as “woman’s intuition?”

4. What role do you think intuition plays in the hiring process? In the process by which you were hired?

5. What process do you use to make decisions?

Directions: Your collective task is to analyze each of these scenarios to the fullest extent possible and assess the likelihood that they are “true” or “false.” Write your decisions on the blank lines.

#1. Ben Blumberg, a power systems engineer from Sunnyvale, California, has solved the energy crisis with a stationary bike attached to a small electric generator. If every person in the country pedaled in his or her spare time, our nation would soon be self-sufficient in energy, saving 100 million barrels of oil each year—equivalent to the output of 40 nuclear power plants.

True or False: _______________

#2. The first airline stewardess was Ellen Church, whose maiden flight on United Airlines was on May 15, 1930. She served fruit cocktail, undigestible fried chicken, rolls, and a beverage. She trained seven other unmarried nurses to serve as stewardesses. However, the pilots’ wives organized a campaign to have the stewardesses replaced by men.

True or False: _______________

#3. The movie Jaws was based on a true experience. Author Peter Benchley was once attacked by a shark while vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard. He lost two fingers from his left hand, but that did not prevent him from writing a fictional account of the frightening event. Benchley’s book sold 24 million copies.

True or False: _______________

#4. The phrase “flying saucer” was first coined in 1947 by American pilot Kenneth Arnold to describe strange flying machines he had seen over the mountains along the West Coast. His exact words were, “They flew like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water.”

True or False: _______________

#5. Flight sergeant Nicholas Alkemade was 21 years old when he made his thirteenth bombing mission over Germany in World War II. He was attacked by a lone Junkers 88. He bailed out 18,000 feet above Berlin without the parachute that had gone up in flames just before he jumped, and survived.

True or False: _______________

#6. The prototype for the game of Monopoly was created by a clergyman’s daughter, who called this first American board game “Mansion of Happiness.” It remained a popular reminder that good deeds lead to eternal happiness until 16-year-old George Parker converted the game in 1883 from a religious theme to a banking theme.

True or False: _______________

#7. The rickshaw, so prevalent in Japan, was invented in the 1860s by an American Baptist minister named Jonathan Scobie. He devised the two-wheel carriage in order to get his physically handicapped wife out of the house without having to carry her on his back.

True or False: _______________