Inventors have held a fascination for me ever since I was five years old and first tried to build a TV set out of a light bulb, a pair of pliers and loose wire. (I don’t recommend this for other youngsters.) I never succeeded in the TV set endeavor, but the questions still endured. How do inventors do it? Where do they come up with all these ideas and how do they make them work?
Twenty years later, I learned of an inventor who held upwards of 50 patents in various fields. When asked how he did it, the inventor’s answer was simple, yet insightful. He said the most important thing is to have a real interest in a particular topic. "Once I’m interested in a topic, I try to find the seminal thinkers in that area, and I begin to read their books and their articles. I try to identify all of the universal truths, the general bottom-line assumptions they made in their field," he continued, "I then go about systematically violating every one of those assumptions, and it’s in that violation that I come up with my breakthroughs, my insights, my newness and that’s my simple process."
Sure, it’s okay for an inventor to break the rules. After all, inventors are supposed to be creative. But what about people who work in the "real" world? What would happen if they embraced creativity outright and flouted assumptions and traditions? Would they be committing organizational suicide?
A few years back, Kraft Foods in Glenview, Illinois offered creativity training to some of its divisions. Debra Giampoli, director of consumer promotions with the New Meals Division at Kraft participated in that training and has since become a poster child for the creative cause.
Walking into her office, there’s no question about where she stands on the issue of creativity. Toys and multi-colored gadgets line her bookshelves. Hand drawn pictures and various art pieces hang on the wall, creating an energetic and vibrant feeling in her office. But, according to her, this hasn’t always been the case. "I used to think that work was not a place to be creative, that creativity was only for the weekends," she admits. What accounted for the change in attitude?
One contributing factor was the four days she spent learning to facilitate the Creative Problem Solving process with Blair Miller & Associates, a Chicago-based training and consulting firm. Since that time, she has found herself in high demand for her facilitation services at Kraft. "I think they are coming to me because there is a tremendous need for creative process, and there are not many people who know how to do it comfortably," she says. Working mainly on marketing and promotional projects, Deb has successfully guided groups of 10 to 20 people through the creative process enabling them to break the mold and become inventors of new concepts and ideas.
Then, last August, things took on a larger scale. The vice president of marketing and consumer promotions, knowing her reputation, called her into his office. Aggressive profit goals made it necessary for the division to get creative about ways to reduce expenses. He had arranged an off-site meeting in two weeks. Her assignment was to structure a division-wide brainstorming session for 300 people that would deliver millions of dollars in savings during the remaining months of 1998 and throughout 1999.
Rather than sequester the cost cutting to the offices of a few high-level directors, the leaders of the New Meals Division took a vastly different approach. "We wanted to rally all the troops," Deb says, "One of our division values is leveraging the value of teams and individuals. We really wanted to hold a division-wide session to address this genuine business need."
Deb had two weeks to figure out how to pull it off. "It never crossed my mind that I would try to facilitate this massive brainstorming session. In fact, I was thinking I would probably need to bring in Blair and six of his friends to do it," Deb laughs. But Blair and his principal partners were unavailable on the designated date. Never one to shy from a challenge, Deb called Blair back and said, "Okay, you can’t facilitate the whole thing. But, can you help me train some people in just the basics?" The two of them designed a three-hour crash course in Creative Problem Solving for 29 hand-picked facilitators. "I didn’t want to diminish Creative Problem
Solving to something that could be done on the back of a match book," says Deb, "but I thought, even if I can teach them just one tool, it will make them more productive than they would be if I sent them out with nothing at all."
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The crash course, delivered just days before the meeting, went off without a hitch. The 29 facilitators, chosen on the basis of leadership ability, energy level and demonstrated creative sense, received a brief introduction to Creative Problem Solving and a few techniques to help them lead small group brainstorming sessions. Blair and Deb assembled facilitator kits with post-its, masking tape, toys and handouts to help the neophyte facilitators lead groups to crack open cost savings ideas. Deb and her team’s ultimate creative coup was the theme for the event. This corporate meeting would not be a meeting at all, but rather, "The Battle of the Bands."
On the morning of the event, Deb and her team made a deliberate effort to establish a playful atmosphere that would be energetic, engaging and productive. Each facilitator became the leader of a band such as the Doobie Brothers, INXS, the Rat Pack or the Rolling Stones. (One disgruntled participant, it’s rumored, refused to participate unless he could name his group the Beatles.) "We gave them musically themed graphics to hang on the walls in their rooms. They all had their own boom box and CD’s, and music played freely," she says.
There were 29 rooms, one team per room, and Deb floated in and out, encouraging participation and acknowledging the participants for their efforts. Deb and the team she worked with also put together a significant prize pool worth thousands of dollars. Awards included the Best Album for 1998, which went to the team with the highest 1998 saving idea, and the Lifetime Achievement Award for the team with the highest saving idea that would be ongoing year after year. Every participant got a gift certificate for a free CD at Best Buy.
Sounds great, but whatever came of the thousands of ideas they generated? The ideas went through a feasibility screen manned by director-level managers whose job was "to reality check them," says Deb, "because we didn’t want to be awarding prizes to people for ideas that we would never be able to apply." Even after a critical screening, the ideas totaled up to millions of dollars in potential savings. Unfortunately, the group fell short of its year-end target for 1998. "There just wasn’t enough time left in the year to generate the savings," says Deb, voicing the general consensus. But the 1999 cost cuts were a different story. "The whole day was considered a huge success," she says. The group more than doubled the targeted amount for 1999. "People had an incredible amount of fun, and all the facilitators did a great job," Deb says. And the division, in one day, pocketed ideas worth millions in potential savings.
Looking back, Deb admits, "I was scared to death about trying to pull this off, and Blair just kept saying, ‘It will work. Just trust the process.’" She did, and the day resulted in both tangible savings and intangible benefits. Participants who were exposed to the Creative Problem Solving process have begun to share a common language of invention and possibility in the division. Many of the facilitators felt really comfortable with what they learned and have gained the confidence to use it again. Now, sitting amid the Toobers & Zots on Deb’s bookshelf is a small, commemorative plaque. It’s the ABCD Award, a division-wide honor for performances Above and Beyond the Call of Duty. Explains Deb, "I won the award for pulling this whole thing off, and I feel like Blair’s the one who should get an award."
When asked what contributed to the day’s success, Deb credits the Creative Problem Solving Process, saying, "It got us to a place where we could identify some potential that had pretty big numbers associated with it. The reason we like this process better than some of the more tactical brainstorming approaches like Synectics is that Creative Problem Solving starts sooner and ends later. So it is more than just techniques for brainstorming, it’s techniques for solving problems."
Who knows? A process that powerful might even take a five year old all the way from the light bulb to a TV set.
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