Thursday, November 21, 2013

Linda Naiman's Whole Brain Thinking workshop

This week I am attending Linda Naiman's "Whole Brain Thinking: Cultivate 21st Century Creativity & Leadership" at Royal Roads U. It is a full two-day workshop examining creativity, neuroscience and the enterprise, starting with change at the personal level.

We started with the statement "If you always know everything, you never learn." It is challenging to seek out your own assumptions and biases at the best of times. When it comes to the personal space of creativity, where many feel insecure, emotional ties to ideas can run high. To then attempt to bring a holistic mindset of possibilities into an organization can seem like career suicide.

Yet disruptors - technology, visionary, social - mean the 21st century is a marketplace about possibilities. To not explore innovative and alternative ideas /mindsets /approaches is the real bringer-down-of-thrones.

I am not entirely sure what an enterprise model for innovation and creativity could look like from a practical standpoint. It will need to be begin with changing behaviours and expectations that imagination should be part of our job descriptions in every case /level /industry. Our concepts of R&D need to be challenged. We need a common lexicon. We might both say "blue" (innovation) and see different shades /meanings. The model will need buy-in at the top and bottom. It will require trust and autonomy. It will mean guidelines and not rules.

Just thinking about the possibilities is making me itch to figure it out!

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