Creative Diversity – How Do I Manage It In My Organization? Sandy Cormack interzon@comcast.net

Creative Style Defined Creative Style = Thinking Style Theory explores the way people solve problems All people need to manage change successfully All people solve problems and are creative, but not in the same manner

Adaptors and Innovators Characteristics of the INNOVATIVE creative style: Need for less structure Solves problems by breaking, modifying, eliminating, replacing the current paradigms Prefer radical, transformational change ‘Do Things Differently’ Characteristics of the ADAPTIVE creative style: Need for more structure Solves problems by refining, extending, improving the current accepted paradigm Prefer incremental, predictable change ‘Do Things Better’

Descriptive Summary

The KAI KAI developed in the mid-80s after 20 years of creative style research Inventory of 33 questions Yields a score between 32 and 160 (general population range is 45-145) Places individuals on a continuum from ‘Highly Adaptive’ to ‘Highly Innovative’

National KAI Distribution Mean = 95, Standard Deviation ~ 20

Creative Style is NEVER a Pejorative All people problem-solve and are creative Adaptors and innovators can be equally good or bad at problem solving – they just do so differently It takes a wide range of styles to solve all problems Do not tolerate creative style differences – welcome them ME YOU

Style is Relative An individual may be more innovative or more adaptive, relative to others in the group More adaptive than… More innovative than…

Problem A - Problem B When I solve a problem by myself, I am faced only with the problem at hand (Problem A) When I ask for your help at solving a problem, I am now faced with two problems: The problem at hand (Problem A) The problem that lies between us because we have different creative styles (Problem B) A A B

Managing Creative Diversity Managing diversity is the key to managing change To be effective, we have to MANAGE Problem B, so that we can FOCUS MAXIMUM ENERGY on Problem A B

Narrow Diversity A group with narrow creative styles tends to communicate, work together and trust one another well (i.e. naturally minimize Problem B)…. BUT… …prefer Problem A to fall within their ‘narrow range’ Problem A Range Problem B

Wide Diversity A group with widely dispersed creative styles can solve a wider range of problems BUT… …have more trouble managing Problem B Problem B Problem A Range

Group Training Diversity Audit – Perform KAI on a group and Ask members how diversity can be immediately used Ask members what can be used in the future and how Train them to accept and welcome creative diversity Ask members to consider the costs of failing to accommodate diversity Explore with them the relationship between managing diversity and managing change Train them techniques to simulate different creative styles