Once upon a Time … Creativity Mythology
There is probably more mythology surrounding creativity than nearly any other topic in social science. Many companies have constructed fairy tales about what sparks human ideation that are completely misguided. Here are a few beliefs about creativity that have been endorsed by people in the business world. When you read these statements, think about whether you believe each is true or false.
1 Teams are more creative than individuals.
2 If you want to enhance creative teamwork, get rid of rules, guidelines, and norms.
3 Striving for quality is better than striving for quantity.
4 Active brainstorming is necessary to generate ideas.
5 Brainstorming teams should work closely together and tear down boundaries.
6 Team members should first brainstorm as a group to get the creative juices flowing, then work alone.
7 People who are pro-social (team-oriented) are more creative than those who are pro-self (individually oriented, or just downright selfish!).
8 Deactivating moods (e.g., peaceful reflection, relaxation, serenity) lead to more creativity than activating moods (e.g., anger, fear, happiness).
When Myth Becomes Pseudo-Science
If you are like most people, you have probably agreed with about 75 percent of the statements above. In fact, all of them are false. At this point, you may be ready to throw this book on the floor and get back to running your business. Before you do, pick the statement above that you hold closest to your heart and read the research. (I’ll point to some of this.) You can test your creativity competence by reading the rest of this chapter, where we’ll delve into each of the myths above—myths that have morphed to become pseudo-science in the business world—and which I do my best to debunk.
Myth #1: Teams are more creative than individuals.
As I touched on in the introduction, the assertion that groups are more creative than individuals has been scientifically tested more often than a great many claims in social science. We know that it is controversial to argue that teams are less creative than individuals. There is not a person who has ever been on a team who has not had the feeling or the experience that creative magic has indeed happened in their group. Yet, the data are painfully clear on this all-important question. So, why are so many teams and their companies under the powerful illusion that they are more creative? Well, for most of us, it just feels good to be part of a team, and so we think that magical things like creativity must be present when we are working with our team.
This myth of team creativity all began when an enterprising businessman named Alex Osborn published a book, Applied Imagination, in which he coined the term brainstorming. Osborn was a staunch believer in the power of teams. He was convinced that if teams did four simple things—express ideas openly, not criticize others, focus on quantity, and build on the ideas of others—they would easily outperform individuals. Apparently, this sage advice was enough for most organizations to adopt his belief and institute it into their best practices.
Sometime later, the academics asked for proof. Since Osborn did not have data, much less conduct controlled experiments, a flurry of research programs were launched on the question of whether teams or individuals were more creative. As I noted in the introduction, hundreds of studies were conducted that compared intact, face-to-face brainstorming teams with the same number of people—nominal groups—working completely independently. Nominal groups outperformed real groups in terms of quantity as well as quality.
Many executives and managers reject these ideas outright. But as previously observed, this is akin to dismissing the surgeon general’s report that smoking causes cancer. In one recent simulation my colleagues and I conducted, the nominal groups generated over 20 percent more ideas and more than 42 percent more original ideas! It is nearly impossible to not get this effect.
The reason people think teams are more creative is that they believe in synergy. They believe that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. But this does not appear to be the case—at least under typical conditions. It is certainly possible that synergy can take place in teams, but more often than not, it does not. For example, teams that build on each other’s ideas don’t create more ideas, and the ideas are not better.
What are the implications? Well, on nearly a daily basis, leaders and their companies make decisions as to whether to assign group projects or individual projects. This raises the question of whether we are efficiently using the talents of people in companies or whether we are falling far short of our potential by insisting that people work in groups when they might be well advised to work individually on a problem—at least for some period of time.
The solution, however, is not to dismantle teams, which are essential to reach organizational objectives. Rather, we need to rethink and restructure how teams work creatively. Left to their own devices, teams are usually poorly structured for the creative process. However, with a few key insights and simple best practices, teams can dramatically improve their performance and generate a creative conspiracy.
Myth #2: If you want to enhance creative teamwork, get rid of rules, guidelines, and norms.
Let’s face it. Most adults don’t like rules. We got fed up with them in grade school and looked forward to the day when no one would tell us what to do or when to do it. We embraced the idea that no rules freed our minds. Well, unfortunately, we were probably better off in grade school—or at least more creative in grade school. The data in this case are unambiguous. Groups that don’t have rules or guidelines are distinctly less creative than those that have rules and guidelines.
How do we know? Paul Paulus and his team at University of Texas, Arlington, contrasted teams that followed guidelines with those that were set free to guide themselves. Teams with instructions and rules humbled the laissez-faire teams when it came to creative output.
There is also evidence that groups have difficulty functioning without rules. So, they often respond by making rules. For example, in one provocative field investigation, James Barker conducted a long-term study of the effects of removing rules and regulations in a team. The well-meaning CEO of ISE Communications made a commitment to restructure the organization into self-managing teams. Literally overnight, he reconfigured the physical workspace and created several work teams called Red, Blue, Green, Orange, and so on. Before the change, three levels of managerial hierarchy existed between the vice president and the manufacturing workers. After the restructuring, the reporting rules were removed with the idea that this would empower workers and ideas. However, over the following four years, a curious thing happened: the teams spontaneously developed more rules similar to ISE’s old bureaucratic structure (e.g., if you are more than five minutes late, you’re docked a day’s pay). The social rules were even more rigid. And workers nostalgically recalled the good old days of bureaucracy. Barker’s groundbreaking study points to two simple truths about rules and creativity: first, removing rules in no way liberates people; and second, some rules are actually adaptive for groups.
The principle seems to hold for individuals, as well. Lilach Sagiv and colleagues compared how “intuitive” people and “systematic” people behaved under “structured” versus “free” conditions. Structured conditions involved presenting people with a form and challenging participants to find a creative way to use it; in contrast, others were given complete freedom to generate a creative form. Overall, creativity was higher under “structured” task conditions.
Myth #3: Striving for quality is better than striving for quantity.
We’ve been told all our lives by everyone—teachers, employers, friends, and family—that quality trumps quantity. To test this assumption, one study examined four different types of instructions: no stated goal, a quality goal, a quantity goal, as well as a joint quantity and quality goal. The results? Those who had the quantity goal generated more ideas and better ideas than any other goal.
What’s the problem with focusing on quality to the exclusion of quantity?