Learning to be creative in strategy by being creative in the learning of strategy

Bethany Dalton-Kash (www.alexkash.com/bethanyart.html)

A group of 16 MBA students at the Graduate School of Business, Cape Town, elected to do a self-designed and evaluated course in “Strategy, design and creativity”. The elective is described as a master class for MBAs who have completed all MBA core courses, yet is essentially a ‘social learning experiment’, comprised of presumably intelligent and driven adults.

The process of emergence: From chaos to order MBA learning typically engages deductive, left brain cognitive processes. The MBA ‘Strategy, design and creativity’ elective allows students the opportunity to develop a deeper awareness and understanding of emergent, inductive learning processes. Ironically, even though most of life’s learning is emergent, this journey was new for many.

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Each student had unique expectations based on their understanding of:
· The terms ‘Strategy’, ‘Creativity’ and ‘Design’ and how these elements relate to each other
· The most effective learning methodology in this context. (Some sought to undergo an experiential awakening of their own creativity whilst others preferred an observer’s inquiry into other’s creative processes. And in this way, better understand how to manage creative people and/or innovation processes within organisations)

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Levels of awareness/ consciousness of ‘the self’, ‘the group’ and the ’process’ were initially very diverse. All students questioned their own right brain cognitive development, and what they could contribute to the group. In grappling with the process, some reacted to ‘working in the dark’ by imposing their views/parameters or opting for avoidance behaviour. These reactions presented an opportunity for boundaries within the group to be established.

As ‘the mist’ cleared, some saw that: in a creative process, elements move from a state of disparity into a merging of combined elements of similar substance. In the same way, members of the class moved through the ‘chasm of chaos’ by forming cliques with people of similar views and levels of insight. By drawing understanding and security form each other, cohesion and order started to develop.

Some students were able to perceive the ambiguity of being both an element within a creative process, and yet also an artist who, through collaboration, can create order from chaos, and thus purpose through process, and meaning from intention.

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It became apparent that rigid mental models inhibited us from truly listening to each other. Also, that effective communication demanded practise skill over the use of words and language to convey meaning to others. We practiced listening and questioning techniques and started to learn communication methods that empower ‘the other’ instead of just gratifying the self. This helped the interview technique and enhanced the interviewee’s experience of engaging with the class.

Richard Seel (http://www.new-paradigm.co.uk/culture-complex.htm)Figure 2—Emergent process: a system of diverse agents (A), richly connected (B), gives rise to an emergent pattern (C), which feeds back down into the system (D)

Common Vision: Learning methodology The community decided on a double-loop leaning methodology that investigated the boundary question, “What fundamental patterns
(tacit and hidden), beliefs, characteristics and behaviours, tend to enable productive creative outcomes?” Mini-groups will make sense of their interviews by using systems thinking methods. It is hoped that a theory may emerge through our subsequent analyses of 'the basket' of casual loop diagrams. The robustness of our theory will then be tested in our next university module in October.

During this interview and analysis process, this blog has been created in order to invite a greater community of ideas into this realm of experimentation and discovery. Each week, a new topic of discussion will be posted and we look forward to engaging in dynamic debate with people from across the globe.

Our questions: What factors are necessary to influence/facilitate the creativity process? Is it necessary to implement boundaries initially and do these boundaries become more rigid and prevalent as the the process of creativity proceeds?