How to Use Creative Problem-Solving Processes to Maximize Opportunities

By Kate Jones

Today’s crisis is fertile ground for ideas that will redefine our future, yet when it comes to innovation in the workplace, management practices based on control, anxiety, or fear can get in the way of these new ideas. 

The natural tendency of most organizations is to focus on activities that address customers’ needs, promise higher profits, are technologically feasible, and that help them play in substantial markets. 

However, the processes that accomplish those things aren’t always the ones that also nurture new ideas. Innovative thinking often requires fighting those fundamental tendencies - it requires leaders to operate with a growth mindset, cultivate curiosity, and engage their team in a collaborative process. 

This is especially important right now as the onset of COVID-19 leaves us in an uncertain and ambiguous situation.

At sr4 Partners, our current work is focused on supporting organizations of all sizes as they redefine their strategy to address the chaos and uncertainty we are facing. As part of that effort, we developed a three-part forum on Leading Through Disruption where we are tackling the topics of communication, engagement and problem-solving.  

We kicked it off May 14th with The Call for Clarity (see recap here) and followed it on May 21st with The Call for Connection (recap here), hosting 150 leaders from across North America to discuss how to create an effective communication strategy and prioritize employee well-being in times of crisis. 

On May 28th, we facilitated The Call for Creativity, where we discussed 3 big ideas to problem-solve in today’s disrupted business environment (watch the full video here).

1. Develop a Growth Mindset to Overcome Barriers

Carol Dweck’s work on mindset tells us that people with a growth mindset are better equipped to overcome challenges and learn from those experiences, whereas those with a fixed mindset second guess their ability which can cause them to get stuck, distracted, or give up.

Developing a growth mindset will help you become a better person and leader. First, though, it’s important to understand that a growth mindset will help you: 

• Seize opportune moments critical to elevating your business

• Understand how to fuel your own or your organization’s initiatives 

• Better collaborate as you know everyone in your organization is valuable

• Cultivate curiosity with your team and organization

• Accelerate your team's growth to overcome business challenges

These benefits can be especially helpful in determining how your company comes out of today’s disruption.

Adopting a growth mindset can be learned! Yes, it takes practice and hard work, but anyone can develop a growth mindset by recognizing and staying aware of best practices:

• Acknowledge and embrace imperfections

• Face your challenges bravely

• Pay attention to your words and thoughts

• Stop seeking approval from others

• Focus on effort versus output

• Emphasize learning goals

• Reward people for their learning as well as performance

2. Foster Curiosity With Teams

Maintaining a sense of wonder is crucial to creativity and innovation. And, keeping up with today’s opportunities and challenges requires help from curious team members. 

Research points out 3 important insights about curiosity as it relates to business: 

1. Curiosity is important to an enterprise’s performance and leads to better business outcomes

2. Leaders can encourage curiosity with small changes in management style

3. Most leaders unknowingly stifle or diminish curiosity, as 70% of employees (in one survey) said they face barriers to asking more questions at work.

To cultivate curiosity, leaders need to be inquisitive and model inquisitive behaviors by asking questions. (Good) questions have a catalytic quality—they dissolve barriers to creative thinking and channel the pursuit of solutions into new, accelerated pathways. 

Best practices to foster curiosity:

• Model inquisitiveness for your employees and teammates 

• Hire for curiosity (but cultivate it too)

• Let employees explore and broaden their interests, and actively reiterate this in meetings and all-hands

• Get out – continue to mentally escape today’s isolation bubble even when we physically cannot

• Listen up - asking questions is only valuable if you listen to the answers with an open mind

• Stay sharp

• Dedicate time for clarification

3. Produce New Ideas (...With the FourSight Model)

Leaders can turn inquiry into innovation by applying a dynamic and repeatable process for producing new ideas and insights. The FourSight creative thinking model describes four stages of the creative thinking process and outlines how innovation happens. 

Each stage has a divergent thinking component and a convergent one. The more you know about how you personally engage in the breakthrough thinking process, the more effective you can be as a leader in your organization:

Stage 1: Clarify the situation. ”The Clarifier” likes to spend time clarifying the problem, doesn’t like to move too quickly to a solution, and gathers information to fully understand the situation.

Stage 2: Generate ideas. ”The Ideator” looks at the big picture, stretches his or her imagination and takes a more intuitive approach to problem solving. 

Stage 3: Develop solutions. ”The Developer” turns ideas into workable solutions, analyzes and compares potential solutions, and fixates on the perfect solution.

Stage 4: Implement plans. ”The Implementer” gives structure to ideas so they can become a reality and leaps into action (sometimes too quickly).

Best practices for producing new ideas:

• Pay attention to the stage(s) of the process that energize/drain you

• Surround yourself with people who have energy for the stages you don’t

• Develop skills in the areas that align with your blind spots

• Use the FourSight language to breakdown the process, define the mindset, and get the input and feedback you need from others at each specific point in the process

In closing

Disruption is hard and this pandemic is the real deal. Hopefully this development series helped you connect with other leaders and gave you new ideas to help you be more effective in today’s new way of working. 

If you’d like additional support via coaching, virtual team workshops, learning design and training, or our Ignite community for your rising leaders, we’d love to chat with you and get a feel for your organization’s unique goals, challenges, and needs. Get in touch with us here.

sr4 Partners is an organizational health consultancy focused on helping you lead. We understand the importance of high performing leaders and teams - especially in today’s challenging business environment. For over a decade, our work has helped organizations cultivate healthy leaders, cohesive teams, thriving cultures, and inclusive change. We do this through our consulting services and our Ignite Leadership Community.