A wider range of skills and knowledge drives creativity further than you could expect.
In previous article the focus was set on Netflix's NoRules organisational culture that is extremely agile. This article expands the understanding of highly creative innovator/researcher based on insights from another book: David Epstein. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World.
Software development, especially the agile way is hard. Requirements and priorities are rarely stable, there is staff fluctuation, external factors that are outside of the area of the team's responsibility and influence such as new government laws or market reshaping. How one could grow in such turbulence? One could broaden the range.
Range
Evaluating an array of options before letting intuition reign is a trick for the wicked world.
The book provides insights into the definition of creative experts and who are they like, Do's and Dont's, and many others.
Also, there are chapters on child education job specialization flipping mostly described as early specializers and late specializers. The latter would focus on the primary field or set of fields later in their career and that fact allows them to innovate much more. Innovation, problem-solving, and mindset are summing up to my review perspective.
Cognitive biases
Before jumping straight to the topic it would be useful to talk about human cognitive weaknesses, which are common and not correlatable to IQ. Mostly these are the things one should always pay attention to during practicing active mindfulness.
It is argued that knowledge cannot be discarded or eliminated in order to make space for the creation of new knowledge. We propose that unlearning is about reducing the influence of old knowledge on our cognitive capacity. (ResearchGate)
In other words, it's hard and unnatural to unlearn some things. And this scales to the organizational level easily as highlighted in Larman's Laws of Organizational Behavior.
What you must learn is that these rules are no different than the rules of a computer system. Some of them can be bent, others can be broken. Understand? (Morpheus.)
Being aware of fundamental flaws in thinking is the first step in making better decisions and boosting your creativity.
There are at plentiful of congitive biases, but for now, we'll start with a few basic ones.
Einstellung effect
Einstellung effect is a cognitive bias that declares a tendency of problem solvers to employ only familiar methods even if better ones are available
Some software companies tend to hardly fix their technology stack as it has once proven to be sufficient. People over and over saying if you could do this with A, why do we need to even think of introducing B?
Some examples are:
- sticking to relational database, platform, language, anything, you name it!
- sticking to the scrum, even if you can't plan and the future is unknown
- extending sprints many times in a row
- wasting time on estimating something that is constantly changing
Functional fixedness
Functional fixedness is a cognitive bias that limits a person to use an object in the way it is traditionally used.
There are no tools that cannot be dropped, reimagined, or repurposed in order to navigate an unfamiliar challenge. Even the most sacred tools. Even tools are so taken for granted they become invisible. It is, of course, easier said than done. Especially when the tool is the very core of organizational culture.
Dropping one's tools is a proxy for unlearning, for adaptation, for flexibility.
One of the examples could be Layered architecture Usage of scrum because everyone does that Usage of Object-Oriented Programming
Under pressure
True character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure - the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character's essential nature. (Robert McKee)
Experienced groups (or teams) usually become rigid under pressure and regress to what they know the best. They behave like a collective hedgehog, bending an unfamiliar situation to a familiar comfort zone as if trying to will it to become something they actually experienced before.
It's quite common that the software development team under pressure would not innovate and rather use already proven technology or framework.
Experts. Who are they alike?
Did you know this fact? Media companies instead of predicting what you might like, examine who are you like, and the complexity is captured therein.
Experts practice an active open-mindedness
- They view their own ideas as hypotheses in need of testing
- They aim is not to convince teammates of their own experience, but to encourage their teammates to help falsify their own notions.
In the sweep of humanity, that is not normal. (One could find this behavior odd).
Practice sparring, not fighting
Ideally, intellectual sparring partners hone each other's arguments so they are sharper and better.
Online interactions are exercises in extremely polite antagonism, disagreeing without being disagreeable. Argument is not what they are after; they are after aggregating perspectives, lots of them.
Approach to problem-solving differently
Successful problem solvers are more able to determine the deep structure of a problem before they proceed that match a strategy to it.
Less successful mentally classify problems only by superficial, overtly stated features, like domain context.
Best performers begin with the typing of a problem. "A problem well put is half-solved".
Make sense, not personalized decision as an authoritarian leader
For the performing creative leader, it's important to view his leadership not as decision making, but as sensemaking. Having that said, you cant compare two ways of decision-making:
- If I make a decision, it's possession, I take pride in it, I tend to defend it at all cost and not listen to those who question it
- If I make sense, then this is more dynamic and I listen and I can change it
Opportunistic mindset of an innovator
Researchers found that the focus of so-called dark-horses, people that are on the hunt for a match quality have the following mindset:
"Here's who I am at the moment, here are my motivations, here's what I've found I like to do, here's what I like to learn, and here are the opportunities. Which of these is the best match now? And maybe a year later from now I\ll switch because I'll find something better Which among my various possible selves should I start to explore now? How can I do that?"
Rather than a grand plan, find experiments that can be undertaken quickly. Test-and-Learn, not plan-and-implement. Constant feedback enriches you with experience and boosts the idea's pool for the future.
Traits of innovators
- High tolerance for ambiguity
- System thinkers
- Additional knowledge from peripheral domains
- Re-purposing what is already available
- Adept at using analogous domains for finding inputs to the invention process
- Ability to connect disparate pieces of information in new ways
- Synthesizing information from many different sources
- They appear to flit among the ideas
- Broad range of interests
- They read more (and more broadly) than other technologists and have a wider range of outside interests
- Need to learn significantly across multiple domains
- also need to communicate with various individuals with technical expertise outside their own domain
Grit
Most of the researchers/innovators have a grit.
Grit is passion and perseverance for long-term goals. One way to think about grit is to consider what grit isn’t. Grit isn’t talent. Grit isn’t luck. Grit isn’t how intensely, for the moment, you want something. Instead, grit is about having what some researchers call an” ultimate concern”–a goal you care about so much that it organizes and gives meaning to almost everything you do. And grit is holding steadfast to that goal. Even when you fall down. Even when you screw up. Even when progress toward that goal is halting or slow. Talent and luck matter to success. But talent and luck are no guarantee of grit. And in the very long run, I think grit may matter as least as much, if not more. FAQ.
You can try to check your grit here.
This self-assessment captures the two components of grit:
- One is essentially a work ethic and resilience,
- and the other is "consistency of interests" - direction, knowing exactly what one wants
Hiring
One should remember, that hiring is also vulnerable to biases and could damage the potential growth of the company.
A mechanic approach to hiring, while yielding highly reproducible results, in fact, reduces the numbers of high-potential (for innovation) candidates.
What can you learn from modern sci-fi
It was extremely exciting to read the project Hail Mary a few months after finishing Range.
The protagonist has indeed opportunistic mindest, he was able to demonstrate the ability to overcome both Einstellung effect and Functional fixedness, and keep you entertained by cold-blooded mind and constant sensemaking.
The curious reader would be able to spot the build-up of the context on fundamental facts, which helps to drive the communication.
Summary
From a psychological point of view the "Ignorance is bliss", but to me, it seems that the range could keep one significantly more joyful and creative in this everchanging world.
Practice extending your range:
- Take your skills to a place that's not doing the same sort of thing.
- Take your skills and apply them to a new problem,
- Or take your problem and try completely new skill.
Further reading
Angela Duckworth. Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance