Intuitive Intelligence: The New Key to Problem Solving and Decision Making (part 1)

Posted on May 26, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Screen Shot 2015-05-25 at 10.53.00 PMIntuitive Intelligence is a different way to organize and use what we already know and what we are already capable of doing.  It helps us understand how to make use of our inherent abilities and aptitudes in the task of creative problem solving and optimum decision making.  Intuitive Intelligence activates the profound, yet often intangible, interaction between instinct and play.  The four tenets of Intuitive Intelligence are thinking holistically, thinking paradoxically, noticing the unusual, and leading by influence.  Each tenet helps us to complement the dualistic and limited nature of the logical mind with the other parts of our mind, which are much more cryptic, much less articulate, but extremely powerful.

1.     Thinking Holistically.  Holistic means that the totality of a system is more important than the sum of its parts.  It is always interesting to think and focus on a holistic approach because we can gain new perspectives and learn new things from it.

 2.      Thinking Paradoxically.  We know many theories, we have had many experiences; they all contribute to our personal belief system and collective knowledge.  Although there is definitely more of what we don’t now than there is of what we know, culturally we tend to evaluate everything through what we already know.  Embracing new situations and new ideas with an attitude that is as open as it is critical, as candid as it is discriminating, is the only way to enter uncharted territories and conceptualize new ideas.  The unconscious does not follow the logic of analytical reason, yet new ideas stem from our unconscious.  So we need to open our mind to the paradoxical logic of the unconscious to reach beyond common ideas and beliefs, which is exactly the meaning of the word paradox.  To do that is simply requires giving up our need for immediate logical understanding of a situation and trusting our other form of intelligence–at work, for instance when we get insights from our dreams or myths.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011. 

 

Taking Stock of Today’s Business World

Posted on May 17, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Screen Shot 2015-05-16 at 10.44.13 PMThe best business leaders want to innovate, embrace change, and create new business approaches because they recognize the need to evolve.  And yet in business too many leaders still do things by the book and stick to the logic of reason and results to the exclusion of other ways of thinking.  Too many of us think and operate primarily this way, especially during difficult times.  The uncomfortable reality is that disruptive ideas come from the combination of instinct and play, so we’re pretty much thinking backward when it comes to engaging innovation.  We’re rearranging our companies rather than exploring the many ways we could create a completely different kind of company.  Organization has the potential to add the most value when it follows creative imagination possibilities, no when it precedes it.

Popular thought says that by applying more analysis, focusing more on results, and working harder to get those results, we will get to the new and different.  But that is not the case.   This is a forceful approach to change, but it’s not actually a smart approach to change.  It’s certainly not a very creative approach to change. Given this way to thinking, however it’s no wonder that we’ve developed business models that are hard to sustain.  The fragrance industry, the car industry, and the media industry, for example, have all been predominantly operating in the same way for many years, still try to innovate with reason to get results, and still hoping that if they use the same business models and the same management models they will be able to capture the market, keep sales afloat, and maintain margins.  But that is not in the cards.  In fact, the odds have been against it all along.

On an even larger scale, it’s no wonder that we’ve developed economic models that are not sustainable and that contribute to dwindling resources, climate change, and pollution.  The way we’ve been thinking about development has been through the linear, rational management systems.  But life unfolds according to very different principles.  Most likely, if we haven’t integrated the fundamentals of play, intuition, and instinct into our development models, it’s because we haven’t conceived of them in the first place.  Yet they present a huge opportunity.

It’s clear that we have evolved, progressed, grown, and prospered through a model that largely excludes the fundamentals of our ecosystem.  But we’ve reached a place where the disconnect is so big that we have no choice but to think differently–really differently–and innovate radically. Play, intuition and instinct show us how to do just that.  They show how we can think in a way that includes the fundamentals of life, the randomness of play, and the power and adaptive nature of our instinct for survival while responsibly harnessing our propensity for aggression and leveraging our valuable scientific heritage and its instrumental tool called logic.  And if we’re able to do that, then we’ll be able to innovate and change more easily.  We’ll also be able to prosper in a way that is more balanced between cooperation and competition, without compromising our ecosystems, our survival, and our legacy for future generations.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011. 

The Importance of Rituals in the Workplace

Posted on May 11, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Screen Shot 2015-05-10 at 9.56.51 PMRituals are significant and powerful.  Symbols can have a great impact, as they communicate beyond words and convey meanings without explicit explanations. Rituals and symbols play an important role in the success of managing the creativity and innovation because they speak to our subconscious, comfort our unspoken fears, enable us to tap into solution that cannot be found in a linear fashion, and connect us emotionally to our friends and colleagues.

Ritual is a powerful way to harness the life force the lives deep down in every one of us.  The way rituals impact us is through rhythm (rituals occur at well-defined moments: Sunday mass, birthdays, the end of puberty, end of year graduation) regular repetition (Thanksgiving every year, morning ablutions, Sunday family lunch) and dramatic staging (Christmas tree, sculpted pumpkins, candles for a Valentine’s Day dinner).

Rituals imply a certain level of ceremony and require time, but they are profoundly efficient in both the short and the long term.  For example, think about how football players huddle before they go onto the field at the beginning of a big game.  It is a moment that may include a prayer or words of encouragement from their coach, but most important it is time that they set aside to reach beyond self-doubt and turn fear into audacity by connecting to their guts.  In Rugby Six Nations Tournaments, national anthems are played at the beginning of the game to invoke a sense of pride and responsibility for the success of the team.

Rituals are transformative because they help us deal constructively with the intangible dynamics within us and within groups.  They productively channel instinctual forces into creative powers.  Ritual is what allows us to gather the energy needed to achieve great things, often beyond what we could imagine ourselves capable of.  When managing the creative process, celebrating wins and awards is one effective way to reassure creative teams, whose members often question their own talent.  And one thing is certain:  not celebrating wins can cause a lot of damage to the spirit and motivation of your creative team.

Navigating creative and innovative processes is rarely easy; it often entails a lot of unknowns and a lot of erratic moments.  No matter how seasoned and brave you are, self-doubt and fear are simply unavoidable in the process of creation.  Rituals address fear of the unknown, self-sabotage, and procrastination, which can all happen during any creative process–hence the importance of rituals in southwest management.

There are many ways to spark creativity and establish an atmosphere that resonates with creative teams.  These are effective ways to improve creative output that you can apply to your business.  Consider how many of them you’ve thought about before and how many of them you actually implement in your management.  Leaving these out is not a valid option.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011.

 

Giving up on Uniformity can Increase Creativity

Posted on May 3, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Screen Shot 2015-05-03 at 12.10.30 PMGiving up on uniformity is really about acknowledging in tangible ways the fact that different people require different conditions in order to perform at their best. So rather than requiring everyone to follow the same rules within the workplace, you make allowances that enable all concerned to pursue their responsibilities in the way that best suits them.  Creative people have a tremendous capacity for teamwork, but they can also have a tremendous need to follow their own rhythms or work style.  It is very likely shortsighted to force creative talents to follow rules that inhibit their creativity without adding anything to your company’s goal of generating innovations. For examples, it may be important for everyone to show up to a weekly progress meeting, but is it really important for everyone to show up at 9 a.m. and stay until 5 p.m.?  They may be more productive working at different hours or not coming in at all on some days.  When you manage by exception you honor people’s individual requirements for freedom, and when you manage for inclusion you make sure that everyone feels a responsibility for the collective success (or failure) of the project.  When I was a publisher, my experience in working with authors was that each author was very different and required adaptation and careful attention to approach their creative talent in a unique way.  Over the many year I have worked in the fragrance industry,  I have observed the same thing with perfumers.  Creative talent is rarely separable from the individual’s personality, because it has a lot to do with imagination, sensitivity, and feelings. This is why seeking uniformity is rarely the way to go.  Management by exception will bring much more efficiency.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011.

The Role of Constraints in Creativity

Posted on April 25, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Screen Shot 2015-04-25 at 10.29.01 AMFostering an atmosphere of creativity and innovation doesn’t require business leaders to concede all control or throw all rules out of the window.  In fact, the judicious and clear application of constraints frames the challenges that employees are asked to address.  By setting a goal and laying out the constraints, business leaders can create excitement.  Most people like the experience of overcoming some obstacles; constraints are the obstacles that make the finding of the solution exhilarating.

“It is common knowledge that Cirque [du Soleil’s] designers don’t like budgets, deadlines, and limited resources,”says Lyn Heward, president of their Creative Content Division, but she adds, “Privately however, even they will admit that these ‘constraints’ force us to become more resourceful and more creative!  They require us to come up with solutions we’d never thought of before…and they actually become motivators for getting the job done.  In fact, some of our most inspired ideas arise from moderately Spartan situations.”  Cirque du Soleil enforces very strict budgets, and creative teams have to abide with nonnegotiable deadlines.

This is just one of the many paradoxes managing creativity.  As leaders and managers we we need to both establish constraints and free our employees from self-imposed boundaries.  In short, we need to find balance.  Along with budgets, time is of course one of the most obvious constraints.  Deadlines, as daunting as they may seem to creative people, are also their best ally and help them move through the fear of the white page and the unknown.  However, time pressure needs to be handled with a serious sense of balance.  A study by two Harvard Business School professors shows that to develop the creativity of team members it is better in the long run to be careful with excessive time pressure as it easily leads to high levels of stress and potential burnout.  In my experience with creativity, efforts to save time by accelerating the process can sometimes end up costing time.  Creativity often requires patience, because it follow its own rhythm and entails moments of what I call “active inactivity”–moments when creative teams need to lie fallow.  Creativity is quite often about problem solving, and problems by definition have some established factors.  Once the confining factors are clarified, the goal is identified, and balance can be more easily achieved, creative minds are more able to find inspiration to overcome challenges.  A paradox of time management applies:  time constraint is productive, but too much of it, repeatedly, leads to the risk of burnout.  This paradox cannot be resolved by following a fixed rule.  Managing the time of creative teams requires the ability to manage paradox and feel one’s way through it, depending on how your team members react individually and collectively, which talent(s) you are most heavily depending on, and how much leeway with constraints you have in any given situation.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011.

How perfectionism can keep your organization from succeeding

Posted on April 19, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Screen Shot 2015-04-18 at 11.25.57 PMFrom the mailroom all the way to the C-suite, employees have developed an exceptional capacity for reading between the lines.  The boss or the shareholders may say they want innovation, but the unspoken message may be, “but only if it’s risk-free.” If we want innovation, we have to tolerate risk, and we have to make it safe for our employees to take those risks.  When corporate leaders make it clear in their words and actions that employees aren’t expected to be perfect–that “mistakes” are not only acceptable, but are indeed just part of the process of getting to winning ideas and products–then employees can relax in a way that supports their own creativity.  And when employees get creative, innovations can happen.

Cirque du Soleil, which reinvented the traditional slow-growth genre of the circus and in doing so became a multinational company with four thousand employees, twenty simultaneous shows running worldwide, and one hundred million spectators in less than twenty-five years, embraces risk taking and sees occasional failures as simply part of the creative process.  In an interview, Lyn Herward, president of their Creative Content Division, explained that at Cirque du Soleil “employees are offered the protection and support that they need to take risks on the company’s behalf.”  Successes and failures are seen as the result of a team effort, and this reduces the fear or shame that is associated with personal failure.  As a result, individuals feel encouraged to take risks and even protected from adverse consequences.

Making failure an acceptable part of the creative process is also a core value at Mango, a men’s and women’s fashion company.  Founded in 1984, Mango now has the biggest design center in Europe in a highly competitive industry, and is present in ninety-one countries, with 1,220 stores and 7,800 employees.  Mango explicitly promotes, “the practice of a culture of mistakes” in their written policies, or more explicitly, ”our organization encourages a climate of trust and communication, working in teams, and learning from our mistakes.”  They acknowledge that the final design for a dress does not always manifest in the designer’s first draft.  And they go as far as to recognize that not every single final design of the eighty million articles shipped out throughout the globe will necessarily become a success.  Mango executives know it is essential to acknowledge this important part of their business, because not accepting it and denying the possibility of human error can become very stifling to the creative process of fashion designers.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011.

How Your Office Space Can Affect Creativity and Innovation

Posted on April 14, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Space affects moods. Screen Shot 2015-04-13 at 10.57.56 PM A beautiful space can make people happy; a small cramped office can make them feel depressed.  But more important, space also affect behaviors and communication.  Open space offices allow an easier flow of communication among team members and can convey a strong feeling of belonging, but they also can make it harder to focus.  Separate offices allow for more privacy and concentration but can easily create silos that separate people and teams.  Depending on what you’re trying to achieve, you need to be ready to manage space not only from a budgetary standpoint but also from the perspective of what it is your creative teams actually need in order to be creative and in a position to deliver the level of innovation your company needs.  To achieve this, some companies will have to literally give away space–that is, to sacrifice space for its positive impact on the environment, the company culture and ultimately the creative output.

Office space is an expensive commodity, especially in the world’s most competitive markets, and historically offices have been designed and furnished to maximize administrative efficiency and minimize facility costs (private offices only for senior executives, “cube farms” for lower-ranking personnel).  But today companies are looking at efficiency differently, and consequently they are looking at space differently.  They are looking for ways to maximize the creative output of their employees, and from that viewpoint the most efficient use of space is one that supports creative interactions.  For example, Pixar’s California headquarters–where bathrooms, mailboxes, and meeting rooms are clustered at the center of the building–are designed to ensure that employees from different divisions of the company are certain to run into each other throughout the day.  This facilitates informal and random conversations among diverse team members and allows creative ideas and collaborations to be born.  I once had a client who wanted to close off an open space in their New York City offices; I struggled hard to convince them otherwise.  The company needed more private meeting rooms.  Moving out of their existing facility was not an option, nor was renting another floor, so the president of the company wanted to build elegant glass walls to enclose what in his opinion was wasted space. 

My observation was quite different.  The open space, which offered an inviting round table nestled by a large staircase, was the only place in the office where different members of the product development team would spontaneously sit to discuss their projects.  Account managers would stop there after coming back from client meetings to share the latest developments about those clients and their projects.  In other words, it was the perfect spot for an informal communication and feedback loops.  In the end, the precious open space was saved in spite of financial pressures.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011.

 

Why your organization needs to balance results with play

Posted on April 7, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Screen Shot 2015-04-06 at 11.43.38 PMImagine yourself driving to someone’s house for a surprise birthday party.  Every guest has been asked to arrive at a certain time to keep the surprise a surprise.  You left home late.  You’re in a hurry.  You’re now focused on the road in order not to be late.  You don’t want to miss the face of your friend completely surprised, between tears and laughter.  You’re completely absorbed in one goal:  to get there as soon as possible.  You don’t have “time” to notice the surroundings.  You’re all about the destination.  There’s no real journey, because you’re not taking in what’s around.  And if someone asked you whether on your way over you saw a house under construction a mile away from your friend’s house, chances are you’d say that you had not seen it because you were too focused on trying to be on time.

Now imagine yourself this time driving along the same road.   The road goes through the Colorado Rockies.  You’re here on vacation.  This is the first time you’ve ever been in Colorado.  It’s Sunday.  You don’t have to be anywhere at a particular time.  No real plan for the day besides reaching your next destination at some point, whenever you get there.  You set out early.  You have plenty of time ahead of you.  Chances are this you will enjoy the spectacular scenery, very aware of what’s around you; you’ll notice the particular light on that day, the colors of the mountains, the vegetation, and many other minute details.

Same road, same person, two totally different attitudes; one is about the destination (result): the other is about the journey (play).  So if we accept that creativity is essential in life in order to adapt to change and to keep evolving (whether as individuals or organizations), then we need to allow for and cater to the journey, the playfulness that defines the creative process.  Being obsessed with results leaves out the playful, imaginative dimension of life.  Our tendency is to focus too much on results, because our rational mind tells us that focusing on results is the best way to make good decisions.  This focus also feels more comfortable and gives us a sense of control over the situation we’re in.  This is why we tend to approach efficiency in a linear way.  Yet in a highly complex environment, linear efficiency is not the answer.

It’s really not about results and play being in opposition.  It’s about understanding the need for a collaborative synergy between play and results in order to reach a creative outcome.  Obviously we need to get things done.  But without a balance between the two, we run the risk of either never getting anywhere or getting someplace but not being aware of the changes in our environment.  This is why it is important that in our approach to life, or a project, we keep a dynamic relationship between linear efficiency and the random nature of creativity.

 

The Science Behind Gut Feelings

Posted on March 30, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Screen Shot 2015-03-29 at 8.50.35 PMBecause our instinct is responsible for our survival, it actually makes complete sense for it to be heavily involved in sophisticated decisions.  It has been doing that job for thousands of years.  So it follows that, in important matters that will affect our lives, our instinct should be the first and foremost judge of whether or not a decision is good.  A study conducted by neuroscientists at Princeton University confirms this fact.  The aim of the study was to demonstrate how a gut feeling may rise before a person becomes conscious of what the brain has registered.  In the study, students were

 directed to pick out figures—people or cars—in a series of photos that flashed by on a computer screen.  The pictures flashed by four at a time, and the participants were told to scan only two of them, either those above and below the center point, or those to the left and right.  Eye tracking confirmed that they did just that.  But brain scans showed that the students’ brains registered the presence of people or cars even when the figures appeared in photos that they were not paying attention to….  The brain tallies cues, big and small, consciously and not, it may send out an alarm before a person fully understands why.

 A gut feeling is often the result of some part of our brain taking in and processing information that we are not conscious of having taken in and processed.  This study demonstrates how we sometimes are now consciously aware of all of the information that we in face have already registered at some level—in this case visually.

When a gut feeling arises before a person becomes conscious of it, it can enrich their ability to make a decision.  Not only that, but sometimes logical problem solving is simply not the best option.  Sometimes the best way to come up with an appropriate answer to a logical problem is to base it on a gut feeling.  Dr. Gerd Gigerenzer, a psychologist who has studied the limits of rational thinking in decision making explains that, contrary to popular wisdom, sometimes there is no optimal strategy attainable to solve a problem.  He gives the example of a presidential candidate who has to plan a fifty-city tour.  The candidate would like to start and end in the same city and obviously cover the shortest distance.  The candidate would like to start and end in the same city and obviously cover the shortest distance.  There are so many possible itineraries that not even the fastest computer can optimize the candidate’s choice in a lifetime, a century, or even a millennium.

When optimization is out of reach we must rely on our gut feelings instead of logical deduction.  And this applies to any situation in which rules are not completely explicit, uncertainty is prevalent, or rule breaking is an option.  This obviously pertains to winning a negotiation, leading an organization, marketing a new product, investing in the stock market, or training executives.  Of course, for every one of these endeavors good enough strategies exist, but for us to find and choose these valid strategies we need to resort to what Gigerenzer calls a “rule of thumb,” which he defines as the product of a mental process that tries to identify the most important information and ignore the rest, taking advantage of an evolved capacity of the brain to do so.  For Gigerenzer, expert of the intelligence of the unconscious, “it would be erroneous to assume to intelligence is necessarily conscious and deliberate.” He adds, “We know more than we can tell.”

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011.

Prejudice Against Instinct and Intuition

Posted on March 23, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Screen Shot 2015-03-22 at 8.59.17 PMMany of us—even when we experience success—are uncomfortable with the idea of using our instincts as a guidance tool. We are embarrassed to say that we follow hunches, we mistrust the sometimes-cryptic messages that our instincts send to us, and consequently we diminish our capacity to leverage the power of our own instincts when we need them most. Our discomfort with the idea of relying on our instinct is based on millennia of cultural prejudice.

Leaving all commentary on the value and importance of religion aside, we can still make the observation that most Judeo-Christian religions arrived, in one way or another, as the conclusion that our often crude instinct-driven impulses for food, pleasure, and aggression can stand in the way of spiritual growth and ascension. Think of the common phrase, “We are not like animals.” It tells us that the assumed difference between humans and animals is humans’ ability to reason with our instinctual impulses, and the unspoken message is that reason is a higher and better quality to possess. The thing is, not only are we like animals, we are animals. However, we are animals with the distinct advantage of having both instinct and reason at our disposal. So we don’t actually have to reject either morality of instinct, rather, we have the capacity to honor and call upon both.

What’s more, as much as we may associate “animal instinct” with predation or violent “dog-eat-dog” behavior, the truth is that animals also have an extraordinary capacity for collaboration and playfulness, even with partners who are their enemies (or their lunch) in the animal kingdom. Dr. Stuart Brown has observed animals at length. His research shows an extraordinary series of photographs taken in Manitoba, Canada, by a photographer who captured a chance encounter between a 1,200-pound wild male polar bear and a pack of huskies, the beautiful domesticated dogs that are typically used to pull sleds. In the first frame, the polar bear is seen approaching the huskies with a distinctive predatory gaze. In the next, we see one husky come forward toward the polar bear in what Dr. Brown calls a “play bow,” wagging her tail. In subsequent frames we see the polar bear’s attitude toward the husky transform from predation into playfulness. He withdraws his claws and softens his gaze. They begin to play together and dance around. The polar bear allows the husky to playfully bite his jaw, and the husky allows the polar bear to playfully bite her bared neck. The sequence ends with the polar bear cuddling the husky under his neck.

Instinct can level an otherwise unlevel playing field, as it did with the polar bear and the husky. The husky’s playful approach was the first step in shifting the polar bear’s approach from predatory to conciliatory. With instinct, a quantifiable power advantage can be disabled, which is both a fantastic realization and simultaneously daunting responsibility. What we can take away from this is that instinct is about relationships and instantaneous adaptation to circumstances, and it is about reproduction, territorial protection, and aggression alike. What matters is intention and choosing how we use instinct. As humans, it is our duty to channel our instinctual powers and put them to creative use. Repressing them or devaluing them in the name of logic, or assigning instinct roles it cannot fulfill (such as to be analytically predictive or rational) are not appropriate answers. Play is an incredibly inventive way to leverage instinct.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011.