THE “SET ASIDE” TECHNIQUE: STRATEGIC PAUSING FOR INNOVATION AND CREATIVITY

Source: Vector created by storyset on freepik.com

BY JULIET FUNT

SET ASIDE YOUR NEXT GOOD IDEA

When most people begin adding open, strategic pauses into their work and lives, they first focus on time for rest. Of course, this is needed—and critical—especially now. But it’s usually over time that a second wave of appreciation arises for the generative aspect of pausing. In quiet and unfilled moments, we experience the kind of white space that forms a healthy vacuum where creativity can blossom. It’s a place to hatch and nurture ideas, and one where lightbulb moments have room to arrive. This kind of pause is where we make things in our minds. Here lives time for growth, innovation, and problem-solving. We call it a constructive pause.

THE GREYHOUND VS. THE BUTTERFLY— NONLINEAR THINKING

What’s especially rewarding about this type of pause is the nonlinearity of thinking that comes with it—less like a greyhound dashing in a straight line to the finish and more like a butterfly stopping at unpredictable places before eventually returning with nectar. The process may be fluid and may involve weaving in and out of the topic at hand.

This flexibility is essential to the desired outcome. When we’re stuck on a problem we often keep running through the same associations and options to no avail. By stepping away we engage other mental faculties and experience what are called “incubation periods,” unconscious mental processes that aid in creative problem-solving. Scientists also describe this as “beneficial forgetting.” We can allow ourselves to rewire our thinking, disconnect from unhelpful associations, and replace them with new, unique solutions, which is exactly what we want.

A version of this truth was summed up by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the man who wrote Flow and who is the unrivaled granddaddy of applied creativity. He writes, “In terms of using mental energy creatively, perhaps the most fundamental difference between people consists in how much uncommitted attention they have left over to deal with novelty.”

OPEN AND CLOSED MODES

The legendary John Cleese, cofounder of Monty Python, is the man who brought us the joys of the “Fish Slapping Dance” and “The Argument Clinic” sketches and the antics of Basil Fawlty. I had the honor to speak to him about his use of white space, which fascinated me because not only is he an idol of mine, but he also taught businesses and executives for years with a message that overlapped with mine.

He says there are two types of work, the “open mode” (creative, flowing, unstructured) and the “closed mode” (executing, doing). Cleese believes one must step into the open mode (what we would call a constructive pause) for a healthy chunk of time—ideally ninety minutes—in order for your mind to sift through the first flurry of distractions and then clear the ground for play.

But he also taught me a constructive tool that has been the single most influential for me in my own creative practice ever since. There’s a story that he tells about him and the other Pythons during the rich early days of their creative process. One of the other performers, who he would keep nameless, was someone Cleese noticed had trouble coming up with the same level of ideas that he did. The difference was in their process. When this other performer would come up with an idea, if it was a good, solid idea he would go for it. Not so with Cleese. He noticed that when he came up with a good idea, he would note it, set it aside, and keep exploring. If another idea came, he would note it, set it aside, and keep exploring. As a person who has an itchy trigger finger for deploying my ideas, I’ve found this set-aside process instrumental in my own creative pursuits since I first heard it.

Steve Jobs echoed this instruction through a different lens. He often said that it’s pretty easy to kill bad ideas. But killing the good ones is what’s hard. People are proud of good ideas, and good ideas are tempting to grab onto, but they are not the same as great ideas, and they often take a huge amount of time and bandwidth that prevent the latter from ever manifesting. THE SET-ASIDE TECHNIQUE/PROCESS

In practical use the “set-aside” technique goes like this:

• I am tasked to solve a problem. • A possible solution appears to me. • I have a desire/inclination to grasp the first solution and act on it. (This moment of restraint is the key to the whole process.) • I pause, set it aside, and keep exploring. • I let an hour, a day, or a week pass and choose the best direction. Or I may decide to pause altogether to see if this is the best place to put my time, energy, and creativity.

This process not only changes the timing of acting on ideas but the intensity of my allegiance to them. They begin to appear less perfect and concrete to me, more like drafts than final products. And it slows me down, opening my mind to the number of options possible for every problem.

You can try the “set-aside” process alone or with a team. In group settings, it’s a great way to make space for the quieter members of a workgroup to voice their thoughts before the first idea runs the show.

Set aside your next good thought and see if a great one follows.

This article was also published on Juliet Funt’s LinkedIn.

JULIET FUNT

Juliet Funt is the founder and CEO at JFG (Juliet Funt Group), which is a consulting and training firm built upon the popular teaching of CEO Juliet Funt, author of A Minute to Think.

Source: Vector image is from freepik.com by @storyset

BE ALERT AND READY TO ADAPT

BY MICHELLE GIBBINGS

BE FLEXIBLE, RESILIENT AND ADAPTABLE FOR WHATEVER COMES NEXT

The world is awash with predictions, forecasts and expectations about the stock market, economy, politics, world affairs and society (to name a few).

For example, Forrester’s research suggests that automation will strip out approximately 1.5m jobs from the local economy. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs 2020 report concluded that technology-driven job creation would outpace job destruction (over the next five years). Yet as history has proven many times, it’s hard to predict the future. At one point, cars and electricity were considered a fad. Predictions about the stock market, economy, and community trends have frequently been spectacularly wrong.

This AFR article reported on a memo to investors at Oaktree Capital by Wall Street investor Howard Marks. He wrote “…these days, it seems as if investors hang on every forecaster’s word, macro event, and twitch on the part of the [Federal Reserve]”.

Our brain craves certainty. It wants to know what to do. Consequently, clinging to predictions and believing we know what will happen in the future (and even control the future) provides comfort. Yet, all predictions are based on perspectives, models and often bias, which means they may be unhelpful and even misleading.

The only sure thing is that change is inevitable and that humans are, as researcher Dan Ariely said, “Predictably irrational”. His book, of the same title, explains how we believe we make decisions rationally. However, our decisions are driven by assumptions, heuristics and past experience.

Much of our decision-making is based on emotions we can’t quite explain. And feelings can arise when they aren’t expected.

A perfect example…

Upon hearing the news of the death of Queen Elizabeth II, I was immediately sad. And, to be frank, almost weepy. This reaction surprised me, and if someone had said to me the day before that I would react this way emotionally, I would have scoffed. I couldn’t predict my emotional reaction. It was a reaction, not a response because it was immediate and without conscious processing.

We react to so many things around us. There are signs and interactions that we react to and signals we need to tune into to help us better understand ourselves, others and society.

In 2009, Paul Shoemaker and George Day, writing for MIT Sloan Management Review, highlighted the criticality of making sense of weak signals. This is one of my all-time favourite articles. It’s not about predicting the future; it’s about improving your ability to understand what could happen by improving your peripheral vision, elevating self-awareness and minimising bias. It’s making sense of weak signals. They define a weak signal as “A seemingly random or disconnected piece of information that at first appears to be background noise but can be recognised as part of a significant pattern by viewing it through a different frame or connecting it with other pieces of information”. Shoemaker and Day outline three phases: scanning, sense-making, and probing and acting. In the first phase, you actively surface any weak signals by tapping into information sources, expanding your network and seeking out data. In the second phase, you test hypotheses, canvass wisdom from a range of people and develop diverse scenarios. Diversity of thought and participation is crucial. Lastly, in the third phase, you probe further and clarify what could happen. In this phase, you confront the reality of the situation and encourage constructive dialogue.

For all of this to happen, you need space to reflect and think, and time to generate insights and make sense of what is happening.

Finding that time doesn’t happen by accident. It takes deliberate planning and conscious thought. It’s recognising the value that stems from what can appear like ‘doing nothing’ on the outside. You also need to be willing to challenge yourself and the assumptions that underpin how you think and decide.

You can’t predict the future. However, you can plan for it! Essential to planning is the willingness to be flexible, resilient and adaptable, so you and your workforce are best prepared for whatever comes next, even when that future is unpredictable.

Republished with courtesy from michellegibbings.com

MICHELLE GIBBINGS

Michelle Gibbings is a workplace expert and the award-winning author of three books. Her latest book is ‘Bad Boss: What to do if you work for one, manage one or are one’.

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