The podcast by project managers for project managers. The creative problem-solving process is far beyond simply generating ideas, and the project manager’s role is critical in the process. Dr. Amy Climer shares how to increase creativity to maximize innovation. Hear how to facilitate the clarify/ideate/develop stages of the creative problem-solving process to a successful implementation.

Table of Contents

02:43 … Meet Amy04:00 … “I’m Not Creative!”05:29 … Practice Creativity06:42 … Strengthen Problem Solving Skills07:46 … Solving the Right Problem11:30 … Be Willing to Change Your Mind12:26 … Facing Resistance15:59 … Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem Solving Process17:38 … Creative Problem Solving and The PM22:05 … Kevin and Kyle23:25 … Divergent and Convergent Thinking27:49 … Initiating Ideas28:48 … Suspend Judgement29:30 … Seek Wild Ideas30:09 … Going For Quality31:51 … Convergent Thinking33:06 … Be Deliberate33:53 … Be Affirmative34:31 … Consider Novelty35:01 … Common Mistakes Made in the Process37:51 … Associations and Climer Cards41:27 … Get in Touch with Amy43:42 … Closing

AMY CLIMER: ...an important skill of being more creative is being willing to change your mind.  And if you get so fixated on like this is the solution and you ignore all the data that might be coming in, or you don’t want to pay attention to this conversation, then you’re not open to this possibility.  So being open-minded to different perspectives, different solutions is a huge piece of being able to be more creative.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Hello, and welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  My name is Wendy Grounds, and in the studio with me is Bill Yates Just a quick thanks to our listeners who reach out to us and leave comments on our website or on social media.  We always love hearing from you.  We know you’re also looking for opportunities to acquire PDUs, your Professional Development Units, towards recertifications.  And you can still claim PDUs for all our podcast episodes.  Listen up at the end of the show for information on how you can claim those PDUs.

Our guest today is Dr. Amy Climer, and we’re very excited to talk with her.  She teaches teams and organizations how to increase their creativity so they can maximize innovation.  She works with organizations such as the Mayo Clinic, Stanford University, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.  She has a Ph.D. in Leadership and Change from Antioch University, and she’s developed the Deliberate Creative Team Scale to help teams understand how to increase their creativity.  Amy lives in Asheville, North Carolina, and she’s also the host of The Deliberate Creative Podcast, and we recommend you check that one out.  She shares practical device and strategies to help leaders build innovative teams.

BILL YATES:  Wendy, we are so excited to have Dr. Climer on this episode because I think all project managers are looking for a process, a set of steps to go through problem solving.  A creative problem-solving process is what she’s going to walk through with us.  Problems just occur.  They’re going to happen probably every day on our project.  We’ll have some really full risk register, and then one of those risks will occur, and we’ll look at our plan, and we’ll say, “Hey, we thought that was going to happen, and it happened.  We’ll start following that plan.”  And then the plan fails.  And we’re like, okay, all hands meeting.  The team has to get together.  We’ve got another problem to solve.  We need a process to go about that, and Amy’s got great advice for us.  I’m excited about this.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Hi, Amy.  Welcome to Manage This.  Thank you for joining us.

AMY CLIMER:  Thank you.  I’m very excited about our conversation.

Meet Amy

WENDY GROUNDS:  I know.  We’re looking forward to this.  This is a topic I’ve been wanting to talk about for some time.  So I’m glad we found you.  And I first want to find out how you got into this whole subject of creative problem solving.  Give us a little of your history.

AMY CLIMER:  Yeah.  So I’ve been kind of fascinated by the topic of creativity, honestly since high school.  And I can’t actually point to, like, one thing.  But I remember in high school being really frustrated when I heard friends of mine say, oh, I’m not creative.  I don’t have a creative bone in my body.  And I was like, “What?  Yes, you do.”  And I would get really emphatic with them.  And anyway, you know, as an adult I started digging more into creativity. 

Then in 2011 I actually started a Ph.D. program that was focused on leadership and change.  But I went into that program very specifically with the goal to study creativity from like the leadership perspective, the team perspective.  And then I stumbled upon the Creative Problem Solving Institute, which is where I got trained in really understanding creative problem solving, which I know we’ll talk about.  I’ve been working with teams and organizations, helping them be more creative, since about 2009.  And I’ve just worked with all sorts of amazing groups, and I love what I get to do.

“I’m Not Creative!”

BILL YATES:  Wendy, this is so funny.  She’s already hit on it.  We have some of our listeners who will swear to you, Amy, “I’m not creative.  I’m not hired to be creative.  I’m hired to get things done.  Somebody else comes up with the ideas.”  You know, what do you say to those people who swear they’re not creative?

AMY CLIMER:  A couple things.  The first is that creativity is something that we naturally as humans have.  And if you just look around wherever you are, unless you’re out on a nature hike while you’re listening to this, but everything you see we created; right?  Like even microphones, podcasts, the table, the chair I’m sitting in, like we just honestly can’t help ourselves.  And I think we’re a pretty unique species in that way.  So even – and creativity wouldn’t happen without the implementation.  So project managers are actually really critical in the creative process.  Creativity is far beyond just generating ideas, which I know we’ll get into that.

The other thing I would say is that creativity is a skill.  And it’s a skill that can be and must be nurtured and developed over time.  So the people that you know, if you think about the people who are just highly creative that you know, if you really started looking at them and asking questions about their lives, they probably have been working at that for years, decades, maybe even from the time they were little kids, you know, some maybe with more intention than others, but they’ve been working on being more creative.  And so, yeah, it’s a skill you can develop, just like any other skill.

Practice Creativity

BILL YATES:  That’s funny.  That reminds me of one of the things I loved about Jerry Seinfeld the comedian, about his kind of that match of creativity and rigor, or practice, if you will, or habits.  You know, he has that healthy habit of writing every day.  And he has a calendar laid out, and he wants to see that X mark or that green check, whatever he does on his calendar every day showing that he wrote something.  It may be trash.  He may never even try that joke out.  There’s some funny observation or something that he did. 

So there’s that match of when I think of Jerry Seinfeld I think, oh, that guy’s so creative.  How can he walk into a room that’s just kind of a boring, mundane, everyday setting, and he finds something funny.  Why don’t I see that?  He’s creative.  I’m not.  But there’s a method to that.  And so, yeah, yeah.

AMY CLIMER:  Absolutely.  Yeah, and I’m really glad you brought that up.  Any book you read about how to write a book or how to write poetry or whatever, it says “Do this every day.”  You know, write a little bit every day.  If you wait for inspiration to strike, you will be waiting a very long time.  And professionals – Steven Pressfield is another great creative who’s written about this in his book “The War of Art” and other books.  And it’s like, yeah, you want to be creative?  Sit down and do the work.

Strengthen Problem Solving Skills

WENDY GROUNDS:  Going on from that, what are some other personal skills that our project managers, project leaders can strengthen so that they can become more adept at problem solving?

AMY CLIMER:  I think one of the biggest things is just understanding how creativity works, and understanding the creative problem-solving process, which is the process that I mostly teach.  It’s very similar to design thinking or human-centered design.  There’s a bunch of them out there.  In my opinion, I don’t know that it really matters which one you know or understand.  They’re all so similar.  But understanding one of those and using it can be really, really powerful.  So that would be one skill that I think is important to develop.

BILL YATES:  That’s good.  I can relate to that.  If I feel like, okay, this is something that I actually need to get better at, I need to be a better facilitator for these brainstorming sessions that our team has, where my sponsor’s present, or I have other vendors, you know, that are present, I need to get my act together.  It brings me comfort to hear you say “There’s a method to this.  There is a process.”  So I’m excited we’re going to walk through that.

Solving the Right Problem

WENDY GROUNDS:  There’s a quote by Steve Jobs.  He says:  “If you define the problem correctly, you almost have the solution.”  It doesn’t make sense to generate lots of ideas if you’re solving the wrong problem.  So we first have to find out what is the right problem.  Can you talk a bit about that?

AMY CLIMER:  Yes, absolutely.  So this is a key piece of the creative problem solving process.  So there are four stages of the creative problem solving process.  The first stage is clarify, and what is the problem, really identifying it,