Creative Conspiracy. Leigh Thompson

creatively leads to more dishonest behavior.

      Some of the best practices I suggest might seem straightforward; however, some will be at odds with common wisdom. So, we will let the data decide. Bottom line: this book is heavily research based. I present empirical facts to support the best practices it outlines. This is what is known as evidence-based management. What does this mean exactly? Just like the hard sciences (e.g., chemistry, biology, genetics), the data should answer questions—not superstition, hearsay, or personal beliefs. In this regard, I encourage leaders and managers to treat their organizations like a scientific laboratory. Collect evidence. Do experiments. And choose best practices based on hard evidence. For example, in one of my courses, the managers were skeptical that groups are less creative than individuals. So, we designed an experiment in which we compared the creativity of managers, consultants, and investment bankers working alone versus in groups. We randomly assigned people to work alone or in groups. The individuals generated more ideas, and more unique ideas.

      Before you are tempted to read this book cover to cover, consider doing the following:

      1 Decide which chapter topic is most relevant to what you are struggling with this month, this week, and today with your team. Go directly to that chapter. For example, one of the leaders who we worked with was building a new team. The leader was concerned that group members establish a systematic way of providing feedback to one another, so he used a version of the peer feedback system presented in chapter 4 with his team.

      2 After reading that chapter, make a personal commitment as to what is going to be different about your leadership going forward. Do at least one thing different today at work. Why? Active learning increases the likelihood of actually applying what we learn. People who learn passively (by watching others) are less creative than people who learn actively (by doing).

      3 Then, have the resolve to announce your plan to the people you care most about. Tell them you are on a mission. And that you are open to accepting feedback.

      4 Hand those people this book and ask if there is anything that they want to focus on—and tell them that you willing to collaborate with them.

      By following these four steps, you have just engaged in the art and science of collaboration!

      A Word About Me

      When I joined the Kellogg School of Management in 1995, I was not experienced in executive education. So, during my first thirty days, I slyly inserted myself into an executive education classroom and seated myself in the last row, ready to take the pulse of the leaders and managers in the room. The fellow to the left of me apparently did not realize I was an undercover professor when he nudged me and said, “Do you think that anyone is going to actually use the stuff we are talking about in their company?” His innocent question launched me on a fifteen-year research program on knowledge transfer from the classroom to the real lives of managers, leaders, and executives. I made a pledge to myself that day to never do any research project unless I could bring the results back to the classroom and help managers and leaders derive meaningful best practices to use in their actual business situations.

      Today, I am the director of the Leading High Impact Teams course and codirector of the Negotiation Strategies for Managers course at the Kellogg School of Management. I work with more than twenty-five hundred executives, leaders, and MBA students each year. They come from around the globe—Hong Kong, Germany, Israel, Latin America, Canada, and the United States. In any given week, I spend two to four days in the Kellogg executive center and engage in dozens of spirited conversations about the challenges of teamwork, creativity, conflict, and collaboration. It is these conversations that have shaped my research and this book.

      When not in the classroom, I’ve conducted hundreds of research investigations inspired by the questions and dilemmas that managers bring to the classroom. The main thing I have learned from these managers is that leading teams is the most complex and the most important part of being a leader, and leading creative teams is challenging, risky, but ultimately the most rewarding. I’ve also learned that some of our intuitions about creative collaboration are valid, but many are not. Of all topics, creativity is the most elusive because our intuitions don’t seem to square with the scientific studies. Consequently, the research questions I have investigated have focused primarily on collaboration, team creativity, learning, and win-win negotiation.

      I should mention that when I’m not in the classroom, I am on my bike. I started training seriously in 2007 with the goal of doing local time trial races. Let me be honest—until 2007, I would have never referred to myself as an athlete. I certainly did not play any sports in high school or college. So my goal of becoming a bike racer at my age was somewhat preposterous. Once I did some local time trial races, I set my racing goals higher. In 2008, I won the USA Cycling Masters National Time Trial championship in my age category, and in 2010, I won the UCI World Masters Time Trial Championship in my age category. None of these things would have been possible without my coach, John Hughes, who set the stage for me through intense workouts that brought me to the point of physical and psychological failure, yet inspired me to keep training and collaborated with me on the building of a dream.

      Until recently, I used to think that that cycling was a far stretch from the executive classroom. However, eventually the lightbulb went on for me, and I began to see the relationship between managers’ work goals and their extracurricular goals. The managers who simultaneously want to be better parents, triathletes, and neighbors are also the ones who want to be better mentors and leaders in their own organizations. My coach helped me realize that no one ever achieves anything without three key things: (1) a clear goal; (2) passion; and (3) discipline. When you read this book, you will notice that it is extremely goal-focused and it will go deep in terms of exploring your passion and testing your discipline. The pace will be fast. The questions will be blunt. But I promise you will find strengths in yourself that you never imagined—just like I did on the bike and in the classroom.

      Now, on to chapter 1, in which we’ll debunk some common creativity myths—and where you’ll do a Creative Collaboration Assessment to gauge your current team competence.

      CHAPTER 1

      Debunking Myths About Creativity

      Several years ago, I made a research presentation to a group of scholars and a few consultants. My opening statement was, “Several decades of research have unambiguously found that teams are demonstrably inferior to individuals when it comes to brainstorming and idea generation.” I thought that such a statement in the presence of academics would not cause too much commotion. I was wrong. One of the scholars was a lead consultant for a major Silicon Valley company that prided itself on creative idea generation, particularly in teams. This led to a spirited debate between the two of us that lasted through the evening and the next couple of months. I eventually dug up more than fifty peer-reviewed articles and put them on his desk. Every single article indicated that teams were inferior to individuals when it came to brainstorming.

      I’d like to say I won the debate. However, companies do not want to stop brainstorming, even in the face of the evidence. Studies have included sophisticated methods for ruling out the effect of different personalities, differences in intelligence, and differences in industry experience. Further, the results have been replicated several, if not dozens of times and they show a clear causal pattern. To summarize succinctly in the words of organizational psychologist Adrian Furnham, professor of psychology at University College London, “The evidence from science suggests that business people must be insane to use brainstorming groups.” But the research evidence—as powerful as it is—is not well disseminated.

      When I work with clients, companies, and students, I find that they often operate with very specific beliefs about human creativity—some of which are correct. But many are wrong—at least according to scientific studies. In this chapter, I expose several of these key myths about creative teamwork. As you read, think about which of these myths is central to the way you work with your creative team and how you might better structure your team so as to capitalize on the strengths of the team members. Many of the messages in this chapter