Practical Wisdom for Leaders with Scott J. Allen, Ph.D.

Fostering Innovation: Creative Problem Solving with Dr. Amy Climer

• Scott J. Allen • Season 1 • Episode 274

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Dr. Amy Climer is a thought leader in innovation, team development, and experiential learning. She teaches research-based practices, tools, and techniques to forward-thinking organizations such as the Mayo Clinic, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the University of Wisconsin. 

Amy holds a Ph.D. in Leadership and Change from Antioch University. Her research led to the Deliberate Creative Team Scale, designed to measure the three critical dimensions of team creativity. Her TEDx talk, The Power of Deliberate Creative Teams, explains her research and philosophies on innovation, and she is the author of Deliberate Creative Teams: How to Lead for Innovative Results.

Amy is the host of The Deliberate Creative™ Podcast. She is the designer of Climer Cards, a creativity and teambuilding tool used by thousands to deepen conversations and generate ideas. In 2016 she won the Karl Rhonke Creativity Award from the Association for Experiential Education. Amy lives in Asheville, North Carolina in the U.S. 

A Few (Awesome) Quotes From This Episode

  • “We’ve known actually since the 1970s that creativity training works. The problem is we rarely bring it into our day-to-day work.”
  • “It’s about being deliberate. You can’t just hope for creativity to happen—you have to follow a clear process and cultivate the right environment.”
  • “If you want your team to be more creative, spend time clarifying the real problem before jumping into ideation. Even five minutes can change everything.”
  • “Creative abrasion is when we can disagree around ideas and still respect each other personally. It’s healthy conflict that leads to better solutions.”

Resources Mentioned in This Episode 

About The International Leadership Association (ILA)

About  Scott J. Allen

My Approach to Hosting

  • The views of my guests do not constitute "truth." Nor do they reflect my personal views in some instances. However, they are views to consider, and I hope they help you clarify your perspective. Nothing can replace your


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Note: Voice-to-text transcriptions are about 90% accurate, and conversations-to-text do not always translate perfectly. I include it to provide you with the spirit of the conversation.

Scott Allen  0:00 

Okay, everybody, welcome to the podcast; Practical Wisdom for Leaders. Thank you so much for checking in wherever you are in the world today. I have Dr. Amy Climer, and she is a thought leader in innovation, team development, and experiential learning. She teaches research-based practices, tools, and techniques to forward-thinking organizations such as the Mayo Clinic, the US Department of Homeland Security, and the University of Wisconsin. Amy holds a PhD in Leadership in Change from Antioch University. Her research led to the deliberate creative team scale, designed to measure the three critical dimensions of team creativity. Her TEDx talk ‘The Power of Deliberate Creative Teams’ explains her research and philosophies on innovation, and her book, ‘Deliberate Creative Teams: How to Lead for Innovative Results,’ will be out in February 2025. Amy is the host of the Deliberate Creative Podcast, and she lives in Asheville, North Carolina, in the USA. Amy, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate your time. What's not in your bio that everyone needs to know about you? 

 

Amy Climer  1:05  

Well, thanks Scott for having me on the show. There's a lot not in the bio, right?

 

Scott Allen  1:08

Yes.

 

Amy Climer  1:09  

It's such a funny little snapshot of us. I think one thing is that I grew up, for lack of a better word, like the adult part of my life, the early adult part of my life was really focused on outdoor education and taking people out in the woods. I've worked for Outward Bound, actually still work for them, and I'm also on their board. That has really informed a lot of what I do today because it's about experience. And so, lecturing has its place, but it's really about, “Hey, let's make this real.” So, I learned a lot from that. 

 

Scott Allen  1:42 

And that gets really, really real when you're doing Outward Bound, and it's, what, a 10-day excursion at times? Some of those programs can get fairly long, right?

 

Amy Climer  1:51  

Yeah. Usually, like 9, 10, days is the minimum. And then, some of them are 21, 28, even a semester long. Yeah. 

 

Scott Allen  2:00 

Really, a semester-long outdoor education experience. That is incredible. I've never heard of that.

 

Amy Climer  2:07  

Oh, it's amazing. I have not led a semester, the longest I've done is 21 days, which was good. I'm not aiming for the semester. But, yeah, it's an amazing experience for the students. The one they do in North Carolina, it starts in North Carolina, then you go down to Florida, then you go to Patagonia down in Argentina. So, you're getting… 

 

Scott Allen  2:27 

Wow. Okay. So, there's all these networks of trails throughout the United States. I always forget the names of these networks of trails, but you could probably just start the Appalachian Trail, and just go all the way up to Maine, and just have that be the semester. (Laughs)

 

Amy Climer  2:39  

You absolutely could. Because I think if you're doing it quickly, it's three months. Maybe some people do it in two, but yeah.

 

Scott Allen  2:47 

That would be the best semester ever. Your physics professor’s walking alongside you talking about equations, and you're just hiking.

 

Amy Climer  2:58  

Totally. I also spent a semester working for a program called Semester at Sea. Are you familiar with them? 

 

Scott Allen  3:04

Yes. 

 

Amy Climer  3:05

And it is like that. And then, you're on this huge ship, and you're traveling around the world with your professors, and visiting all these countries, and you're learning physics, or English, or whatever it is. Yeah, super fun. 

 

Scott Allen  3:17 

And then your professor’s out at the pool just hanging out, having a [Inaudible 3:20] after class. 

 

(Laughter)

 

Amy Climer  3:23  

There's a lot of blurred lines there. “Okay, we're not in class so you can have a drink.”

 

Scott Allen  3:29 

That's so awesome. It's so fun to have you on. You are an expert in something I am not an expert in by any stretch of the imagination, but I have so much respect for your area of expertise. Your book, ‘Deliberate Creative Teams: How to Lead for Innovative Results,’ it came out in February, and I think where I want to take the conversation because I have not had a chance to read the book yet, Amy, what I would love to do is I want to explore a little bit… Let's entice the listeners. What do they need to know about the book? What's the impetus? And then what are two or three things that kind of stand out for you as why this is an important piece of work? Can we go that direction?

 

Amy Climer  4:11  

Sure. Sounds great. So, the book is for leaders who want their teams to be more creative, but they don't quite know where to start. The big premise of the book is that creativity or innovation is a system. If you want to be more creative, I introduce a system or model that you can follow, and it works. We've known, actually, since the 1970s that creativity training works. In fact, one of the things that I stumbled upon in the book, and this is like one of these geeky research points, but in the late 1970s, I think it was, there was a study, a meta analysis, of 142 studies. They looked at all these studies that were saying, “Hey, does creativity training work?” And they found that it does work. So, like, “Wait, we knew this all the way back to the 1970s and we're still barely doing it?” That's the big picture premise that creativity is a system. 

 

Scott Allen  5:04 

Okay. And you have the deliberate creative team system that you have in the book. Tell us a little bit about it.

 

Amy Climer  5:09  

It's a three circle Venn diagram, if that helps you visualize. And there are three critical elements or critical dimensions that teams need if they want to be creative together. Those are team purpose, team dynamics, and team creative process. First, I'll just back up and say the reason I even studied this or figured this out is I had these experiences, and you probably have had these too, Scott, where I had been in many teams in my career, and some of them were super creative. Where I felt like we were doing this awesome work, we were being really innovative. The meetings were fun. I was engaged. And then there was the other teams where I felt like I just sat down at the table and I became less creative just being there, like, it was so dry. And I did spend the beginning of my career at universities, so you probably know, like, the committees. 

 

Scott Allen  6:05

Oh, yes. 

 

Amy Climer  6:06

Every once in a while though, some of them are really good. And I was curious what's the difference? Because, oftentimes, there was overlap, not just me, but some other colleagues. So, that was really the driver of how come some teams are creative and others aren't. And so, I dug into this research and came up with these three elements that teams need. And yeah, when I look back, I'm like, “Oh yeah, those teams that weren’t creative, we didn't have those three elements there.” 

 

Scott Allen  6:32

Okay. So, team purpose… 

 

Amy Climer  6:33

Yeah. Should we get into them? 

 

Scott Allen  6:35 

Yeah. Let's do that, unless you want to start somewhere different than team purpose.

 

Amy Climer  6:39  

Yeah. It's at the top. The good thing is it's the one that most teams do have figured out, not all, but team purpose basically just means that we have a shared purpose that we all understand, we all are interested in, we all buy into it. It could be as simple as a short conversation, “Hey, does everybody know what our team purpose is?” And then you're talking through that. It doesn't have to be complicated. It doesn't have to be a fancy mission statement or a charter, but it's just we all know why we're here, and we're all kind of heading in the same direction. So, that's team purpose. Team dynamics is the behaviors and interactions between team members. So, how do you show up in a team meeting? What are your conversations like? How do you show up in the hallway after the meeting or before? Specifically, underneath team dynamics is trust; our ability to trust each other, at least at a moderate level. “I don’t even trust my team members as much as I trust my wife, but, at least, I'm comfortable enough that I can put some ideas out of the table and not be worried about being smacked down by it.” So, moderate level of trust, communication. We can communicate well with each other, that one's pretty obvious. And then that we can engage in a type of conflict called creative abrasion, where we can disagree around the ideas around the work, but we're not disagreeing due to personality or identity. 

 

Scott Allen  8:07

I like that phrasing. 

 

Amy Climer  8:09

Yeah. That comes from Jerry Hirshberg, who was one of the leaders with Nissan, and he was charged with this challenge of meshing the Japanese culture and the American culture in order to create higher quality, more innovative cars. And he realized that if we're not having any disagreement, that's a problem. And obviously, too much disagreement, then you're not getting anything done. So, creative abrasion. And then the last circle there in that Venn diagram is team creative process, and that's the process, the tools, the techniques that you're using to actually be creative together. And that's the circle that most teams don't even think about. 

 

Scott Allen  8:52 

Say more about that. Let's go into that one a little bit. This is really interesting. 

 

Amy Climer  8:57  

Have you heard of design thinking? 

 

Scott Allen  8:58

I have. Yeah. 

 

Amy Climer  8:59

Okay. That's an example of a creative process. There's many of them out there; design thinking, creative problem solving, human-centered design. There's one called TRIZ that comes out of Russia. They're all very similar, and they're all good, in my opinion. It doesn't matter a whole lot which one you use, but the key here is to use something. Have some sort of clear process that your team wants to actually solve a problem and use creativity. Don't just show up in meetings and talk about it, actually follow these stages. The output will then be more innovative. Process that I teach most often, of all those I listed, is creative problem-solving. It's the one that I think it's very accessible, it's easy to understand, and it's based on how we as humans approach problems naturally. And all of the different processes are based on that, more or less. So, here's creative problem solving, four stages. You've done this before, whether you realize it or not. First stage is clarify: What's the problem? What's going on? From there, when you get a clear sense of what the real problem is, you generate ideas. So, you ideate. Once you have a bunch of ideas, you're going to select the top ones and then you're going to develop them further. So, develop is a third stage. And then take those developed ideas into implementation, and that's the last stage. So, clarify, ideate, develop, implement. Very simple. We've all done this. The challenge we have as humans is that we each have a preference for one or more of those areas. 

 

Scott Allen  10:33 

So, I like to exist in one of these phases a little more than the others?

 

Amy Climer  10:37  

Yeah. And there's an assessment tool called Foresight that measures which of these stages is your favorite. Which ones do you gravitate towards? So, I know that I am a high ideator and a high implementer. So, what happens, for me, is, if I have a problem, I just want to jump right in with ideas. But really, what's better is if I can just slow down a bit, better understand what the real problem is, because, you know how it is. Sometimes you think the problem is in one point at A, and it's really at B, or C, and if you solve for A, you have done nothing. This happens all the time. And even five minutes can make a difference. Like, five minutes of clarifying can change how you approach the problem. So, my tendency is to skip clarifying, and I've learned; just slow down, ask a few questions, and then I can go to my favorite stage, which is ideate. Love ideation. And then, I have an idea, and I'm like, “Cool, let's go. Let's get started.” And then, I usually trip over myself because I don't know what to do because I haven't developed any of the solution. And so, that's where you're developing your plan or your approach. And it's interesting for me, I have found that if I'm procrastinating, almost always it's because the next thing I need to do is develop, and that feels a little draining to me. And so, if I can just sit down, “All right, I'm gonna just work through this.” Sometimes it's only 15 minutes, it doesn't have to be a long time. And then I can move forward. 

 

Scott Allen  12:12 

I just really, really appreciate this conversation because, for years, Amy, I've even done sessions on creative problem-solving, and I wasn't in any way intentionally using this process. Maybe a variation of, “Define the problem, let's choose several ideas or potential paths forward.” But I just love the fact that, okay, so there's these… It's almost, I think, of like the Suzuki method of learning the cello or the violin. There's all these different flavors of how we can get to the process we can use. It really depends on what is the process you prefer, or what's the process we agree upon, and then we follow this process. And do you find that the process, as long as there's awareness of individuals in maybe their styles, where they like to spend their time a little bit more, and we can have that kind of creative abrasion, I believe, was the phrasing that you used. And that the processes oftentimes yield the desired results. What do you think? The process, is it really just, if we follow this, we're going to get to, generally speaking, a good place?

 

Amy Climer  13:19  

Yes. And there's all this research that backs it up. 

 

Scott Allen  13:22

Really? 

 

Amy Climer  13:22

If you follow the creative process, you will be more creative. I don't even know how many studies there are on that, but hundreds. And it breaks my heart a little bit that we aren't more intentional in teaching this because it's so accessible if it's broken down well. And we need it so badly, I think, just as a country, as a world, and we are, naturally as humans, we are very creative. We're very innovative. The fact that we're even having a podcast conversation from different states, like, humans made all of this. We’re completely capable. And there's a lot of problems we have on this planet that I believe we have the human capacity to solve if we can tap into our creativity and if we can collaborate well. A couple of years ago, maybe a little more than that, few years ago, I watched this film called ‘Where There Once Was Water.’ The main photographer is Brittany App, who happens to be somebody I know. She's an amazing photographer, amazing videographer. And so she did this whole film about the water crisis in California, which I know very little about because I live in Asheville, North Carolina, where there is plenty of water. In fact, sometimes too much water. And so, I'm watching this film, and the biggest thing that struck me was, “Wow, there are plenty of solutions available, we're just not actually collaborating enough and working together enough to implement these solutions at scale.” I think about, “Wow, if there were teams and organizations that could use this deliberate creative system of team purpose, team dynamics, team creative process, and they can work better together, and just think of the problems we could solve.” 

 

Scott Allen  15:05 

Yeah. Well, and like so many other topics, I don't know that we're training leaders to guide their teams through this process. Again, if I've been studying this topic for 20 years, leadership, and been really immersed in it and love it, and this is one of the first times I'm hearing about more of the formal study of problem-solving and the process. I've read the literature of Paul Nutt, and I know that you know Paul Nutt from Ohio State and some of his decision-making studies, which kind of dances around some of what you've just said, of why people make bad decisions, oftentimes they didn't do some of what you just said. But again, it fascinates me because, to your point, just a lot of bad decisions are being made. You've been in the meeting where you walk in and you think it's maybe a brainstorming session, but the individual who's in authority knows what they want to do. There's a little theatrical performance, and then we, 45 minutes later, walk out and it wasn't a team system at all.

 

Amy Climer  16:05  

Yes. Actually, in the book, I wrote a little short vignette about that. Early in my career, I was working at a university, which I won't mention, but we were talking about before we started recording. The unit that I worked in was excellent, great team. Loved the team that I worked with. And one day, the dean came to our team meeting and he said, “Oh, hey, I'm here because I want to talk to you about da da da, this thing we're doing, and I'd love to get your input and your ideas.” I was like, “Oh, cool.” So, he starts explaining a little bit more of what he's looking for. And I'm kind of a doodler, so I'm doodling, I'm taking some notes, jotting down some thoughts that I have. About 15 minutes in, I look across the table at a friend of mine who is also in the team and I'm trying not to laugh. We make eye contact, and when I can tell we're both thinking, “When is this guy gonna stop talking? He said he wanted ideas from us.” And I had to look away, I was about to burst out laughing. And then, no kidding, Scott, 55 minutes in, he was still talking. He wraps it up, and he says, “Thank you so much. I really appreciate all your input.” And then he left.

 

(Laughter)

 

Scott Allen  17:16 

“I have really appreciated this conversation with you all, you have great ideas.”

 

Amy Climer  17:21  

“Thank you for letting me pontificate for 55 minutes.”

 

Scott Allen  17:26 

Or another version of that meeting is, at minute 55 the person's like, “Well, what do you all think?” “Just let us out of this room, we don't.” But you always have that one person in the room who keeps it going.

 

Amy Climer  17:41  

“You clearly don't really want to write news, so why go through the motions?”

 

Scott Allen  17:45 

Exactly. What else? Observations, maybe, clarifications in your own mind? The process of writing a book is so fascinating. Are there a couple of other things that you want listeners to know about just even your own observations or a piece of content that you thought was really fun and innovative? Just what stands out for you? 

 

Amy Climer  18:03  

I think the biggest thing that will be helpful for leaders is to think about the deliberateness or lack of that they're approaching creativity or innovation. Before that is, do you want to be creative? Most people say they do, and then very few actually do anything about it. I'm talking about the organizational level. But, of course, this could apply personally as well. In a team, in an organization, I think it will be really helpful to look at, what are you doing to be more creative? What are your team meetings like? Do you have a structure for generating ideas? I often ask even teams that are considered creative, like the creative marketing team, I'll ask them, “What process do you use to generate ideas?” Sometimes they'll say, “We do have brainstorming sessions.” Sometimes they look at me like I have two heads. Even if they say they use a brainstorming session, I'll say, “Okay, what techniques are you using?” And then they'll be like, “What do you mean? We just brainstorm.” “Oh, okay.” Which makes sense because that is what everybody knows, but brainstorming is one technique, and there are many techniques to generating new ideas. We can really get deep into the research on brainstorming, but it works in some contexts, it's not always the best approach. 

 

Scott Allen  19:20 

Yeah. I saw some studies recently, but you can validate this if it's true or not. listeners might be interested in, but, oftentimes, it's more effective, and this is generalizing, if people come in having responded to some things, and they come in with their ideas already. It's not like an on-the-spot discussion, because we can be free a little bit from bias or authority or some other things. Is that accurate? Is that what you're talking about? 

 

Amy Climer  19:47  

That's one of the pieces. Yeah. If people know in advance what the conversation's about, what the topic’s about, that is definitely helpful. And even just one simple thing that leaders could do is, do you have an agenda for your team meetings? I would say it's like half and half. At least, the clients that I work with, many of them do, but also many of them don't. Even that, just, “Hey, we're going to have this conversation around X topic, and what we're really looking for in this conversation is ideas.” And then we'll say, like, “Okay, week one, we're going to have a conversation about ideas. And then the following week, we're going to come back and we're going to take those best ideas and develop them further. And then the fourth week, we're going to look at what are we actually going to do.” And actually, of course, just that example I skipped clarify because I tend to skip clarify. So, really, week one would be really just talking about the problem. And usually, in teams, when you start talking about the problem, people say, “Well, what we should do is, da da da…” Well, instead say, “Okay, all we're doing is understanding the problem. You can't offer any ideas, we're only looking at understanding it for 15 minutes.” And that alone is going to shift a lot. 

 

Scott Allen  21:03 

Because those folks whose minds quickly, they want to jump and exist in that space. And so, here's a quick question for you, what are the different approaches people use to get to those ideas that make the cut, so to speak? Any research around that, on the best practices? I imagine, at times the leader just chooses. I think of a creative process like on Saturday Night Live, I think Lauren Michaels stands at the board and kind of decides which skits are going to get on. The leader decides. But are there voting systems that have been shown to be the best? How does that work? 

 

Amy Climer  21:37  

I think that, actually, there's obviously a lot of different approaches. And one of them where the leader decides may be completely appropriate. And, in other cases, maybe it's the team that makes that decision. Either way, what's most important is the people in the room know which method it's going to be in advance. I think what is so demoralizing is when a team thinks that they're making a collective decision. And so, they go to this conversation, and they have that in their mind, and then, at the end, the leader says, “Okay, thanks. I'm going to make the decision now.” And that's okay if the leader's going to make the decision, as long as they say that up front, like, “I want to have this conversation. At the end of the conversation, I'm going to choose, but help me think through this.” Fully appropriate. Now, if it is going to be a collective decision, and there's even layers to this, but if it's going to be more of collective input, then, okay, let's say you've got 50 ideas up on the wall. I'm a big fan of Post-it notes, so you get your ideas on Post-it notes, they're all up on the wall. And then, I often will give leaders, team members, just like three to five little stickers, like sticky dots. And I'll just say, “Okay, you have…” If I do four, “Everybody has four dots, you can think of this as four quarters. You can put your money wherever you want. If there's an idea you're super excited about, you could put all four on that one. If you think you want to spread it out and vote on four different ideas, that's fine too. However you want to place your bets.” And then, from there, okay, let's say you got 10 team members each have four stickers. So, you have 40 different dots on the… Most likely, many of them have several dots. And then you look at, okay, what are those that are the highest ranking? I don't actually care which is the highest, I just want to pull what are the top five ideas. And let's take all of those top five ideas into the develop stage, spend a little bit time on each one developing them, and then make that decision. Don't make that decision right away because, when an idea first comes out of our mouths, it's usually about as developed as what will fit on a Post-it note. It's like a couple sentences, there's not much to it so how can you decide if it's any good yet? So, I'm a big fan of, yeah, using that sticker dot method just to see what rises up, and then pull those aside, dig into those, and then make that final decision. 

 

Scott Allen  24:00 

But even as you were just speaking, it really highlighted for me why it's critical that pre-work is being done. Because I think probably where a lot of leaders find themselves, at least I've been in these meetings, Amy, you likely have as well where the leader didn't really set it up well with parameters. We're probably not adding staff. They're probably not giving everybody a 10% raise next year. You have to couch that first part really well so that the ideas that are elevating and emerging are within the constraints of what we're working in. Otherwise, now you do have to be the bad person to say, “We aren't going to do seven of those 10 ideas you just had.”

 

Amy Climer  24:40  

Okay. I want to push back on this a little bit. 

 

Scott Allen  24:44

Please. 

 

Amy Climer  24:44

Okay. So, obviously there's parameters, there has to be. However, it can be helpful to not set those up in advance and actually to set those up at a different stage. All right, so when you're generating those ideas, there's some classic brainstorming guidelines that you may have heard before. By the way, brainstorming comes from this guy, Alex Osborne, from 1948. He published this little book called ‘Your Creative Power.’ In that book, he described what he called the storming of the minds, where people come together, they generate these ideas. And that book, basically, went viral in the 1940s, ‘50s. And sold 300,000 copies, which is great. He also happens to be credited with the person who developed the creative problem solving process. Anyway, so his guidelines that he created, we still use today, that when you're in a brainstorming session, basically, you want to suspend judgment. So, we're not judging the ideas yet, we will get to that. And judging the ideas is very important, but just not in this initial phase. So, suspend judgment. Build on each other's ideas, combine and build on ideas. Go for wacky ideas, wild ideas, whatever you got. And then, the fourth one is aim for quantity because quantity leads to quality. 50 to 100 ideas in a short brainstorming session or short ideation session is very realistic. After those ideas are created, then taking those best ones and developing them. And in that develop stage, no idea is perfect. So, maybe the idea is like, “Gosh, we really need another staff member.” Basically, your budget's what your budget is. We don't have more money for a staff person. So, then, in the develop stage, you're asking some more questions like, “How might we bring in another staff person given our limited budget?” So, maybe you get a corporate sponsor to fund the staff person. Maybe you do some sort of trade with another organization. There's like a zillion ideas you could come up with which how you could fund that staff person that might be the perfect solution to the problem. But if you limit it up front, it's not going to happen. Does that make sense? 

 

Scott Allen  27:06 

Yeah. That makes perfect sense. And so, then, at some point, the leader's going to have to say, “We're working within these constraints, how could we potentially make it happen? How could this work?” Fascinating.

 

Amy Climer  27:19  

Yes. And actually, another thing I would suggest. Instead of saying, “How could we make it work?” It's, “How might we make this work?” The word ‘might,’ I like to say ‘might’ is a mighty word. It's really powerful. And so, to move from ‘how could we,’ ‘how should we,’ ‘how will we,’ to, ‘how might we,’ it's now inviting this sense of possibility where if you ask me, “How should we do this?” I know you're looking for the one right answer. But if you say, “How might we do this?” Oh, you're looking for a few ideas. Okay. And my brain just responds differently with that one little word. 

 

Scott Allen  27:59 

Yeah. It keeps me in a place of multiple potential. That's fascinating. 

 

Amy Climer  28:04  

Yeah. It's really fun. 

 

Scott Allen  28:07 

Amy, anything else before we begin to wind down that you want listeners to know about the work? 

 

Amy Climer  28:12  

Yeah. I think the biggest thing is just think about it. And look at how might you change what you're doing to help your team be more creative. In the book ‘Deliberate Creative Teams,’ I have lots of activities and techniques that the leaders can use, that they can implement, really, the next day in their meetings.

 

Scott Allen  28:28 

Well, it's a critical topic that, again, is not given the time that it's due likely. And it's so incredibly important because the quality of decisions we're making have incredible ramifications for our teams, for our organizations. It's a fascinating topic, so I love that you're bringing this to the fore. I'm going to put, for listeners, a whole bunch of links in the show notes. So, you'll have a link to Amy's TED talk, you'll have a link to the book, you'll have a link to other resources that we have discussed. Wouldn’t that be cool to be the guy who coined the term ‘brainstorming’? Now, you know, everybody, this is cool stuff. So, I always, Amy, wind down our conversations by asking a question, and that is what have you been reading, listening to, streaming, consuming? What's caught your attention in recent times? It could have something to do with what we've just discussed, it may have nothing to do with what we've just discussed. But what's kept your mind cooking lately?

 

Amy Climer  29:24  

Oh, yes. There's always so many things. I just started reading the book, in fact, I'm only a chapter or two in the book ‘Awe.’ Have you heard of this book? 

 

Scott Allen  29:36

No.

 

Amy Climer  29:36

The subtitle is ‘The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life.’ And it's really about just this concept of where we're amazed by something. You see the northern lights, or this beautiful sunset, and how we're just like, “Oh, wow, that's amazing.” And it's about finding that in the everyday. And I guess there's a strong connection between awe, and, don't quote me on this, but it's like happiness or being, and our sense, our ability to find that awe can really increase our well-being.

 

Scott Allen  30:12 

So cool. I just had a conversation yesterday about gratitude and some of the benefits of… It feels like a little bit of a close cousin. Like, in those seemingly mundane moments, can I just be overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude? There's a lot happening in that. And so, I think of this ‘Awe’. I'll look into that. I'll put a link to the show notes in there. I need to read your book first before I read ‘Awe.’

 

Amy Climer  30:40  

Yeah. Check out ‘Deliberate Creative Teams.’ 

 

Scott Allen  30:44 

I do. Amy, thank you so much for being… We'll do it again. We'll have another conversation. This is so much fun because I think it's a topic that I have not covered on this podcast. It's a topic that's critical to effective leadership, and so you are helping leaders be more successful. I am on board with that. That's awesome. Thanks for your good work. Thanks for being with me today. How fun was that conversation? And, of course, I do admit in there, I've been leading problem solving sessions for years, but admittedly, I have not explored that literature to the level I probably should have. I have been in design thinking sessions, I have been in creative problem-solving sessions, but am I an expert in actually leading that process? I think no. Is it critical that leaders are able to lead that process? Yes. Very critical. It's kind of, in part, their jam, being able to identify our best path forward, especially with a number of these complex adaptive challenges that organizations are confronting. So, creative problem solving. Go pick up Amy's book, mine is in the mail. And I am excited to jump in, and I'm excited to explore and learn. Take care, everyone. I appreciate you. Amy, I appreciate you. Bye-bye.

 

 

[End Of Recording]