Teamwork - A Better Way

Christian Napier
00:00 - 00:26
♪♪ Well, happy Pi Day, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Teamwork a Better Way. I'm Christian Napier, and I am joined by my amazing, indescribably awesome co-host, Spencer Horn.

Spencer Horn
00:28 - 00:34
Good, a blushing always, You have that effect on me. Thank you, Christian. Good to be with you. How are you doing?

Christian Napier
00:34 - 00:49
I'm doing well. We actually celebrated Pi Day yesterday in our office because most people work a hybrid schedule, not a lot of people in office on Friday. And so We ordered 22 very large pizzas and they were gone in about 20 minutes.

Spencer Horn
00:52 - 00:54
That sounds like a great way to celebrate. Well done.

Christian Napier
00:55 - 01:12
Well, thank you. And what better way to celebrate than have an amazing guest joining us. We've been looking forward to her joining us for a long time Spencer and yeah and I'm so excited for you to introduce her to all of our listeners and viewers.

Spencer Horn
01:12 - 01:49
Absolutely I'm gonna put her up so everyone can see her smiling face when I when I you know read about her here so So this is Dr. Amy Clymer and Dr. Clymer and I have met each other through the National Speakers Association. I was so privileged to actually be in a group, kind of a mastermind group with her and was just absolutely blown away by her creativity, her thoughtfulness, or just her just her experience overall. And when I found out how focused she is based on her education, which I'll tell you about in a second, how how experienced she is in developing high-performing teams.

Spencer Horn
01:49 - 02:26
I'm like, you got to come on the show. So it's taken us since December until now to get her scheduled. That's how in demand this woman is. So I'm going to talk to you a little bit about Dr. Amy Klamer. She holds a PhD in leadership and change from Antioch University and her research led to deliberate creative team scale designed to measure the 3 critical dimensions of team creativity, which she explains in her new book, which we're going to talk about, Deliberate Creative Teams. I'm glad you clarified that it's not the other deliberative. It's deliberate, right?

Spencer Horn
02:27 - 03:06
How to lead for innovative results. Amy's a TEDx speaker, an emcee, and host of the Deliberate Creative podcast and she is the designer of Climber Cards. I've used these Climber Cards. They are fantastic for creating discussion and deep—there you go, yes! They are so cool. So Hopefully you'll explain a little bit about how those work for organizations and teams to really create innovation and creative discussions. Those Climber Cards are a creativity and team building tool that are used by thousands to deepen conversations and generate ideas, which is what I just said, but I wanted to read it.

Spencer Horn
03:06 - 03:21
Anyway, Amy is trained or certified in creative problem solving and immunity to change and the foresight thinking system. In 2016, she won the Carl, I got to say this right, Ronke, is that right?

Dr. Amy Climer
03:22 - 03:23
Yeah, that is right.

Spencer Horn
03:23 - 03:34
The Carl Ronke Creative Award from the Association of Experiential Education, Christian. So you're going to learn all about her today. Welcome, Amy, so glad to have you.

Dr. Amy Climer
03:35 - 03:36
Thank you, it's so good to be here.

Spencer Horn
03:37 - 03:56
Well, I know you're coming to us from North Carolina and love that beautiful place. And here, we just had snow last night and it is beautiful and sunny. I don't know what it's like where you live. You live in – oh my gosh, Asheville, yes, in that area? What's it like there?

Dr. Amy Climer
03:56 - 04:02
Yeah, it's beautiful today, maybe 68 degrees and sunny, so it's awesome.

Spencer Horn
04:02 - 04:37
Oh, it's 33 and sunny here and snow on the ground, so we love that snow. Anyway, you've just written and just really launched this new book and it's going like crazy. I see everybody that I know that is talking about it and deliberate creative teams. 1 of the main things that you do in this book, Amy, is you challenge the belief that … what you say is a common belief that creativity is not just for artists. I want you to really get into explaining what is creativity and why is it important for businesses and teams?

Dr. Amy Climer
04:39 - 05:21
Okay, let's first talk about what creativity is and isn't. So the definition that I use, and this is not something I came up with, this comes from the world of research. Creativity is novelty that is valuable. So novelty meaning different, unique, new, original, and valuable. You can think of that in any sense. Like it could be financially valuable, it could be emotionally valuable, maybe makes you more productive or you build a better product, whatever that looks like, that's what valuable is. So Creativity is novelty that is valuable, which really is about just like finding problems and solving them.

Dr. Amy Climer
05:21 - 06:03
That's all it is. What it's not is your ability to draw. And that's where a lot of people get confused when I ask people like, hey, do you think you're creative? And they'll say, well, no, I can't really draw that well. I'm like, okay, no, no, no. Creativity is 1 thing, your ability to draw is another. Both of these things are skills that you can develop and get better at. So creativity is a skill, we can talk more about that. And I think it's really important because, I mean, for businesses, for individuals, if we are not willing and able to create and be creative and innovate, the opposite is basically just stagnant, and be stagnant.

Dr. Amy Climer
06:05 - 06:37
I feel like we've had some amazing opportunities just in the last few years to find out which companies are willing and able to be creative. The COVID pandemic gave us a great insight into that. And There were a lot of companies who were just like, no, we're not going to make any changes. A lot of them are not in business anymore. Those that did, some of them just thrived in that really difficult time and are continuing to thrive. We need creativity from everyone. So that's a bit about why we need it. We can get more into it if you want.

Spencer Horn
06:37 - 07:10
No, I love that definition. And I love the fact that you talked about that creativity is novelty. And this is based on my experience working with teams all over the world, only about 10 to 12% of teams are high performing. So if you add that element of the ability to solve problems, that is novelty, right? I mean, the ability to perform at a high level sustainably, That's novelty. And so when you can, what I'm hearing you say is that you can apply creativity to create sustainable productivity and problem solving. Is that what I'm hearing you say?

Dr. Amy Climer
07:11 - 07:29
Absolutely. Yeah. And I think there's that like meld of, you know, creativity and high-performing teams is just like really intertwined and that especially your highly creative teams are also probably high-performing teams and probably high-performing teams are also quite creative and innovative.

Christian Napier
07:31 - 08:14
You just mentioned a word there, innovation. And so I wanted to ask you about this because you're right, there's a lot of, I don't wanna use the term baggage in a bad way, but there's a lot that comes in with words, right? So when you talk about what it's not, you said it's not drawing, because we have in our mind, this is what creativity means. But you also use the word innovation. Innovation is used a lot in business. It is used a lot in teams. And I'm curious to hear from you, what are the similarities and their differences between creativity and innovation?

Christian Napier
08:15 - 08:23
Are they the same thing or are there some aspects, how far does the Venn diagram of creativity and innovation overlap?

Dr. Amy Climer
08:25 - 09:10
I would say that's a great way to put it. I think the Venn diagram overlaps maybe almost completely. I think that the terms creativity and innovation, they get confused and muddied a lot, but if you look at the research and what the definitions are of creativity and innovation, they are nearly identical. And 1 distinction that I heard about 10 years ago that I really liked is that creativity or innovation is creativity with financial gain. And we usually use the word innovation when we're talking about business, technology, maybe science or sometimes health sciences. Whereas we use the term creativity when we're talking about art, the humanities, writing.

Dr. Amy Climer
09:12 - 09:45
But if you really break down what are we talking about, it's more or less the same thing. I don't get too caught up in the semantics. I don't really care what you call it, but I think it can be real problematic. And I have literally had CEOs say to me, I want my team to be innovative. I don't want them to be creative. I'm like, wait, what? And I think what happens is there's this idea that creativity is like fluffy and it's going to be about art and goofiness and it's not going to provide value.

Dr. Amy Climer
09:46 - 10:11
But the definition of creativity is novelty that is valuable. And I just go with whatever words, like my clients, whatever words they want to use, that's fine with me. What really matters is what's the process you're using? Are you actually producing results that might be considered creative or innovative? So I don't get too caught up in it, but more or less it's the same thing.

Spencer Horn
10:11 - 10:51
You know, it's so important that creativity and innovation I think go together because if you think about all the uncertainty that's happening with industry and business, and I'm talking to companies all the time and they're struggling with their current business model, it's going to take creativity to create potentially a new J curve that keeps the company growing. That's creating value. That's creating results, whatever it is you're talking about. So at a certain point, if you lack creativity, every company goes through that downward cycle and the only way to get out of it is creativity but if you wait too long to apply those principles, the chances of you pulling out and surviving go down.

Spencer Horn
10:52 - 11:25
You're talking about financial gain. This is very pragmatic. I agree that if you need to use a different nomenclature because that's what your client needs. I can be agnostic about certain things as long as ultimately we want to solve problems and that's what you're trying to help them to do. So let's talk about that for a minute. You say creativity is a system. I believe that teams are systems and you actually have to treat teams as a system. So I'm super curious as to what you mean by creativity is a system. Is that because it's linked to team?

Spencer Horn
11:25 - 11:38
I mean just or some other reason and then you Talk about how that doesn't happen by chance. I know I'm wrapping a few things, so I want you to explain that creativity is a system, and how do you create that creativity? What's the process?

Dr. Amy Climer
11:40 - 12:16
Yeah, it is a system, and it's a process. It's interesting, I think 1 of the confusions around creativity is it's both the process and a product, right? And at the end of the day, we're actually evaluating the product, but it's the process that's gonna get us there. So I'm gonna just maybe zoom out a little bit or zoom back, whatever the word is anyway. And there's some research that I did that helped me understand that creativity is a system. So years ago, 20 years ago, early in my career, I noticed that some of the teams I was on were very creative, some of them not so much.

Dr. Amy Climer
12:16 - 12:57
And often there would be overlap of other people besides just myself. But I was like, why is it that some of these teams are not creative when I know the individuals are competent, capable? Sometimes they're very creative in their personal life. And that eventually led to me studying this in my PhD program. And what I found in my research was that there are these 3 elements that teams need if they want to be creative together. And those essentially create this system. And these elements will not surprise you with your work that you're doing on teams, but they are team purpose, team dynamics, and team creative process.

Dr. Amy Climer
12:57 - 13:30
So teams need to have a clear shared purpose, like what are we doing together? Why do we meet? What are we striving for? They need to have strong team dynamics. So they need to be able to engage in good communication. They need to trust each other. They need to be able to engage in some conflict. So not avoiding all conflict, but also not, you know, always having conflict. There's kind of a sweet spot in the middle. And when teams are able to do these 3 things, oh, sorry, team purpose, team dynamics. And then the third 1 is team creative process.

Dr. Amy Climer
13:30 - 14:07
And that's the area that teams most often struggle with. Like they're like, wait, what? There's a process to be creative? Yes, there's a process that we have codified, that it's been, it was initially codified in the 50s. And it's based on how we as humans naturally solve problems. And if we follow this process as a team, teams will be more creative together, especially if they have strong team dynamics and a clear purpose. And so those together create this system that you can essentially lock in place and what I like to say is you can innovate on demand.

Dr. Amy Climer
14:08 - 14:13
It's kind of remarkable how well it works and very few people know about it.

Spencer Horn
14:22 - 15:04
Christian, I'm sorry, I have 1 more burning thing and I know you've got a question. So this is interesting because you've simplified what I say is important with teams, but you include everything in your 3. I like the 3 because it just keeps things simple, but you said that the process of creativity is something that most teams struggle with the most. In my research, in my experience, what I find is, and I think I have a little different but I think they're linked, that most teams struggle with what's called constructive interaction which is really how you disagree, which is really how you collaborate and how you have ideas bounce up against each other.

Spencer Horn
15:04 - 15:06
I think those are linked, don't you?

Dr. Amy Climer
15:07 - 15:08
Oh, 100%, yeah.

Spencer Horn
15:08 - 15:26
Because in the creativity, you've gotta be able to bounce ideas and people struggle with, you don't like my idea. I mean, because conflict becomes affective instead of cognitive, right? We want to focus on ideas, and when those collide, and when teams don't know how to do that, they can't be creative. Anyway, that's just my observation. I just wanted to hear what you had to say.

Dr. Amy Climer
15:27 - 15:41
Yeah, and in the book, I talk about that, you know, affective versus cognitive conflict, And that we really, that cognitive conflict, we want that. That's really helpful. I mean, to a degree, we don't, you know, don't be playing devil's advocate all the time. That's actually not helpful.

Spencer Horn
15:41 - 15:45
I mean, we're doing it right here, right? You say 1 thing and I'm like, well, what about this, right? Isn't that right?

Dr. Amy Climer
15:45 - 16:26
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, it would be really, you know, and I think the flip side of that is we go into group think where you just agree with everything I say and then, well, that's kind of a boring interview. But it also, in a team dynamic, If there's no disagreement ever, then that would be considered groupthink where the team members are valuing harmony above all else. And they're actually sacrificing performance for perceived harmony. It's not even a real harmony. It just looks like it's harmony. And really bad things have happened because teams were not willing or able to disagree with each other and they felt pressure to agree.

Dr. Amy Climer
16:27 - 17:03
And I talk in my book about the NASA Challenger, the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion back in 1986. And that has been attributed to group think that if the people who are making the decision of whether or not to launch that space shuttle, if they had, if there was a culture that allowed for more disagreement, most likely that shuttle would not have launched and we would not have lost 7 lives. And you know, that's 1 example of many where teams have made really big decisions that because there wasn't an ability to engage in that cognitive conflict, they've caused a lot of harm.

Dr. Amy Climer
17:04 - 17:06
Have you heard about this the shuttle story?

Christian Napier
17:06 - 17:40
Yeah, well it rings true to all of us here in Utah because Morton-Thiokol was the location where the boosters were built, right? And so the, you know, and there were concerns by some of the engineers about how the O-Wings are gonna perform in these sub-freezing temperatures that were experienced in Florida. And so it is near and dear to many of our hearts locally, because there were a lot of local people who were involved in that. I appreciate you bringing that up. I wanna come to your, the title of this book, The Deliberate Creative. You talked about it being a process and and that sounds like an oxymoron right?

Christian Napier
17:41 - 18:07
It's like, well hold on, isn't creativity spontaneity? You know things just like they just pop out out of nowhere And and I mean that's the essence of creation, right? Like it just pops up So so how did you how did you come upon this? Apparently contradictory Approach to creativity where as you say, it's a system not just it just comes out of nowhere.

Dr. Amy Climer
18:09 - 18:42
I think it's interesting, we have so many myths in our culture about creativity just being like, blah, like this light bulb's gonna go off and you're gonna get this brilliant idea that you're going to implement and everything is going to be great. And there are certain stories that we use to perpetuate those myths that actually cause a lot of harm, because that is not how creativity actually works. Behind the scenes, what's happening is there's a process that the individuals or teams are going through. There's a lot of work that goes into creating creative output, creative products or processes or whatever it is.

Dr. Amy Climer
18:42 - 19:20
I'm using products in the broadest of senses. 1 of those stories that you've heard before is Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree back in the 1600s, and all of a sudden this apple falls out of the tree, hits him in the head. He shouts, Eureka! And then all of a sudden he discovers gravity. It's like, okay, hold on a second. That is not at all what happened. He did actually, he was sitting outside under an apple tree. He did watch an apple fall and he did wonder, why did that apple hit the ground and not float or go sideways or go up.

Dr. Amy Climer
19:21 - 19:59
But when he was asking these questions, he already had degrees from Cambridge. He had already was a physicist. He had invented calculus at this point in his life. And he then studied this idea of, you know, why do things move the way they do? And 21 years later, he produced, he wrote a book called Principia that explained the universal laws of motion, including gravity. So we look at point A and Z, and we ignore everything in between. And then we get really frustrated that we're not doing what Isaac Newton did. Because you're like, but wait, he just was sitting there, and then he discovered gravity.

Dr. Amy Climer
20:00 - 20:43
No, he didn't. And so I think it's really, really important for us to understand that creativity is not accidental. It's not magic. It's not mysterious. It's actually comes about from some very intentional hard work, But it doesn't have to be hard in the sense of painful. It's just work, right? Which a lot of times, at least in my opinion, work can be a lot of fun. And in the book, I lay out a process that teams can follow in order to be creative together. And we have research since the 1970s that shows creativity is teachable, it's learnable, when you follow this process you'll be more creative together.

Dr. Amy Climer
20:44 - 20:46
It's pretty much indisputable at this point.

Spencer Horn
21:02 - 21:45
You know, I love the observation that sometimes teams prioritize harmony over, you know, just having an uncomfortable conversation. And that's a personality. I mean, there's a lot of behavioral types that people want harmony. They feel unsafe when they are challenged or when the environment seems conflicting. I mean, some people were very uncomfortable with what we saw on television. We know there was conflict at a political level. I'm like, you know, sometimes that's a good thing, right? Better outcomes can actually come from that. But they're, you know, oh, that's so disrespectful. No, I mean, sometimes it's actually necessary.

Spencer Horn
21:45 - 22:19
And 1 of the things that you point out in the book is that in order to do that so in the case of the of the space shuttle you said people were not willing to speak up and it's perhaps because they didn't feel safe disagreeing or You know ringing the bell saying alarm. We got a problem because they would be called, you're not a team player, or you're a, you know, you're a whatever, an internal terrorist. I mean, that's, there is, you know, corporate terrorism that I'm talking about just, just trying to create chaos within an organization.

Spencer Horn
22:22 - 22:29
So you talk about the role of psychological safety. Would you talk about that and how do you create that? Why is that important?

Dr. Amy Climer
22:30 - 23:13
Yeah, So psychological safety is a term that describes how comfortable we feel with a group of people. Very closely related to trust. How much do I trust my team members? And I don't need to trust my team members the level I might trust a spouse or a really good friend, but I need to trust them enough that I know if I put an idea out on the table, I'm not going to get smacked down. Now the idea might, but I know that it's an environment where I can throw out an idea, and even if it's not that good of an idea, even if it's ridiculous, that we're going to focus on that idea, and I'm not going to get attacked.

Dr. Amy Climer
23:16 - 24:00
And on 1 hand, this might sound really fluffy and like, oh, you know, I don't need to be like caring about each other's feelings. I kind of feel like, you know what? Get set your own risk because all the research shows that when team members develop this trust, develop this psychological safety, their performance goes up. So their creativity goes up, they become a high-performing team. I can't even really fathom what a high-performing team would look like without trust or without psychological safety. It's pretty important. So the thing with creativity is there's a risk, right? You're taking a risk by trying something new because we already established creativity is novelty that is valuable.

Dr. Amy Climer
24:00 - 24:34
And so you don't always know what's going to work. And if you're putting out ideas or you're trying new things, it might fail. And if there's an environment within the team that says, do not speak up unless you are absolutely sure about what you're going to say or how it's going to, you know, impact the problem, then I'm not going to speak up because how could I be 100% sure? And so if you want an environment where people are, you know, focused on creativity and trying new things, you got to create an environment that's safe enough for people to take risks.

Spencer Horn
24:35 - 25:14
You know, I couldn't agree more. You know, I'm sure you've heard in your research the discipline of teams by John Katzenbach and Doug Smith. 1 of the things that they talk about is high performing teams have team members that are deeply committed to each other. And there's a level of commitment that they have. And so, Amy, you and I may disagree about things, but because I care about you as a team member, I honor you by being open to your ideas. I was just talking with a project team leader that has a company in Ukraine.

Spencer Horn
25:14 - 25:51
I was trying to do some help with we forget about what's going on over there. And so III did some, some support and you know, this, this team leader has 20 people, IT team on her, on her team. And 1 of the, 1 of the team members is like, you know, I, We do not need to be spending any time talking about personal anything our teams need to be transactional Because I don't want to talk about myself I don't want to hear about your crap and they have a struggle right now with team engagement and with turnover on the team There's so much stress you add what's going on the uncertainty of war and everything that's happening, and the team is starting to crumble.

Spencer Horn
25:52 - 26:08
And this is exactly the opposite of creativity because we're completely transactional. I just do my job. I work in a silo. It's like a golf team, right? I put in my score, you put in yours, but there's no collaboration. There's no interaction and therefore there's no opportunity for creativity.

Dr. Amy Climer
26:09 - 26:49
Yeah. I think that's a really common problem. Years ago I was working with a team and we did this exercise to help them like kind of bring that personal into work a bit and get to know each other at a deeper level. And 1 of the team members shared that she had cancer and she had been going through treatment and no 1 on the team knew except for 1 person who was really close to her. And I'm thinking, wow, like she just didn't feel comfortable sharing it until this day. And then actually the CEO did something that was like just not in reaction to that, but just during this activity where he was unwilling to share anything about himself.

Dr. Amy Climer
26:49 - 27:29
And it really shifted everything. I was like, oh, this team is never going to be strong because they're not willing to show at least the CEO. But ironically, there's no connection, right? And the company is now out of business. And I just, there's such a correlation. And I would say to leaders, if you are not comfortable sharing a bit about yourself or hearing about the people you work with, maybe take a close look of why. Because when you can integrate, because you are, like you said, Spencer, you're getting this like very transactional, like 1 plus 1 equals 2.

Dr. Amy Climer
27:30 - 28:08
But with collaboration, you can get like 1 plus 1 equals 3 or 10 or like it's just exponential. And I mean, 1 thing I think about is think about like all the things humans have created through teams. I mean, just like look around wherever you are, you know, there's, I mean, in my office, there's all sorts of stuff here. I got a couple of plants, but other than that, I would guess every single thing in my office was created, designed, invented by a group of people. And I just think, gosh, imagine what the world would be like if we didn't have teams collaborating.

Dr. Amy Climer
28:09 - 28:23
We might not have gotten pretty far past the wheel. Like we just, I think collaboration is what defines us as humans. We have to have this if we're going to be innovative.

Christian Napier
28:25 - 29:13
All right, so this brings me to a question that You mentioned earlier the examples here about the CEO or the team member not sharing information because perhaps there was a lack of trust or for whatever reason. And the result of that is that the folks in the organization don't have a clear, complete picture of what's going on. And you end up with fragments of information and then you base decisions on some incomplete information filled in by assumptions, which could lead to some disastrous choices if we're not careful. Your bookshelf behind you I think tells all kinds of interesting stories.

Christian Napier
29:13 - 30:05
You've got black and white on top. You've got the full spectrum of color underneath it from the visible light spectrum, from the reds all the way to the violets. And I am very curious, you know, as you work with organizations, Do you find a lot of organizations that are looking through limited lenses, right? That they're not seeing the full spectrum of light. They're not seeing clear. And so their ability to make the creative, innovative choices are limited because they're not seeing the full picture. So I'm just wondering if you can talk about that a little bit, how important it is to actually see things through the entire prism of light, the entire spectrum, rather than just focusing on a single band in that color spectrum, so to speak.

Dr. Amy Climer
30:07 - 30:48
Yeah, I love that analogy, Christian. I definitely think that's true, where a lot of times leaders or teams, even the entire team might be looking at something through a very limited lens. And this is where a creative process can be incredibly helpful. The process that I usually use with my clients is simply called creative problem solving. I did not invent this. It's been around since the 40s. It's very similar to design thinking, human-centered design. There's many more out there. They're all very similar and the ones I've seen are all good and they all work. But in that initial phase in creative problem solving, it's called clarify.

Dr. Amy Climer
30:48 - 31:30
So you're going to this clarification process. And what's ideal is if you are able to look at the problem from a lot of angles. And when I'm working with clients, I often lead either 1 day or multi-day trainings with them where we are looking at real problems. I'm guiding them through this process. And this 1 training that I did years ago for the Mayo Clinic for a group of their leaders, they had a problem that they were looking at And I said, okay, so during this clarification phase, we're going to take 30 minutes and you're going to go off and make some phone calls to people within your organization who are part of this problem and just do a quick 10 minute interviews with them and then come back and we'll digest everything.

Dr. Amy Climer
31:31 - 32:07
And they're like, oh no, Amy, we can't do that. We are an organization that is highly scheduled. You can't just, the culture here is you can't just call somebody and we really need to talk to the CEO of the Arizona location and that's just not appropriate. And I said, well, just try, like just call his office and see if he happens to have 10 minutes. He might, you never know. Well, 30 minutes later, I could not get them to come back to the main room because they were buzzing with excitement. They called the CEO, he talked to them for 10 minutes, gave them all this information.

Dr. Amy Climer
32:07 - 32:45
They called some frontline leaders. So they got these perspectives that they didn't have within their team and they really needed in order to solve the problem. And they came back and started digesting it. And that took 30 minutes. And ideally, if we weren't in this structured training, it would have been, take a couple of days to have these conversations. But the value of looking outside of that little team and asking questions and finding the people who are involved in the problem or who are affected by the problem. It's phenomenal. And I think we often forget to do that.

Spencer Horn
32:55 - 33:19
I'm so glad you actually gave a live example. I was going to ask you to do that. That was perfect. So you work with some really cool organizations, including Department of Homeland Security. Can you give us any more real life experiences that you've had that really shows how this process of creative, deliberate teams can create positive outcomes.

Dr. Amy Climer
33:21 - 34:01
Yeah, I can share a little about what I do at U.S. Department of Homeland Security. This was a number of years ago. And they, at the time, I don't think they're still doing this, but at the time they had a summit that they were doing every year specifically focused on the future of aviation security. So trying to foreshadow like, okay, 10 years out, what do we need to be thinking about in relation to aviation security. And what was really cool is they got a very diverse group of people in the room who had all these different angles from, you know, people who worked for the government, people who were vendors, people who worked for, you know, had the perspective of TSA.

Dr. Amy Climer
34:03 - 34:13
And then my job was to facilitate a process. We were there for a day and we did use Clamour cards, which I can talk a little bit about. And we looked at their questions.

Spencer Horn
34:13 - 34:19
Show us those as you're talking about. We'd love for people to see, cause they're so cool, Kristen. I don't know if you've seen them, but keep going. Sorry to interrupt.

Dr. Amy Climer
34:20 - 35:01
Okay, awesome. So basically we looked at the problem. They had some very specific questions they were looking at and in small teams, they spent some time clarifying, which I just talked about a minute ago. And then we started generating ideas. And usually when you start generating ideas, there's the typical ones that come up. The first 5 or 10 ideas are pretty typical. And then you might start running out of ideas, and you need basically some new inputs or new inspiration to get more ideas. And so we use this product that I created called Climber Cards and it's this deck of they look like playing cards in the sense they're about that size and shape.

Dr. Amy Climer
35:02 - 35:43
And just pull these out here. But there are all these little drawings that are very simple, kind of iconic. There's a telephone, a candle, bicycle, grocery bag, farm. And we spread these out on the table and then say, okay, use these images to spark more ideas. And that's when the ideas really start getting a little wild and wacky, which is excellent. That's what you want. And a lot of times I've had leaders say to me, oh, no, I don't want any of these crazy ideas. I want us to stay realistic. Yes, that makes sense, but not yet.

Dr. Amy Climer
35:44 - 36:13
In that ideation phase, that's when you do want to bring in those wild, wacky ideas because sometimes they lead to other ideas that you wouldn't have had if you just stuck with the realistic, safe ideas. Now, in the end, when you're evaluating these ideas and you're trying to figure out, okay, which of these actually makes sense for us to move forward with, that's when you want to bring in that lens of, okay, what's realistic, what's within our budget, which makes sure none of these laws, none of these ideas break the law, those kind of thing.

Dr. Amy Climer
36:14 - 36:47
But initially you want to get a bit wild and wacky and Climber Cards are a really good tool to help that. And you can get them on my website, climbercards.com. That's 1 of my websites, but yeah, that's an example. So anyway, at the end of the day with this, at the Future of Aviation Security Summit, they had hundreds of new ideas to look at and they had started picking some that they thought, okay, these might be things we need to explore more. And then, you know, that was the end of my work with them. And then they went off and looked at, okay, what do we need to implement?

Dr. Amy Climer
36:48 - 36:53
And yeah, there's so many ways that you can use this process to apply to real problems.

Christian Napier
36:57 - 36:59
Do I get to ask another question?

Spencer Horn
36:59 - 37:03
Sorry, Christian. I've been very rude. You go ahead, ask the rest.

Christian Napier
37:05 - 37:25
Okay, you said that with creativity, 1 plus 1 doesn't have to equal 2. It could be 3, it could be 05:10, or whatever. So as you've worked with organizations to help them become deliberately creative. What are the impacts that you're seeing with the clients that you've been working with over the years?

Dr. Amy Climer
37:26 - 37:56
I love that. And I wanna, I'm gonna flip through the book here cause I wanna show you this model and I should know what page it's on. If I can find it relatively quickly. It's basically called the Deliberate Creative Team Spectrum. Here it is. It's on page 37. So this shows the impact of like how creative a team is versus, you know, what impact they're having. So let me see if I can make this. Okay. So how's that look? Can you see that?

Christian Napier
37:56 - 37:58
We can see it perfectly.

Dr. Amy Climer
37:58 - 38:31
So at the bottom you have destructive teams all the way up to, so destructive, stagnant, sporadic, sustainable, and scalable. And as we move up this spectrum, teams become, they become more creative, but they also have a greater impact. And the way I think about it is that, let's say you have a team that's not creative at all. And not every team has to be creative. Some teams, that's not really appropriate for them. So there is a time and a place for creativity. I want to add that. But if you have a team that's not creative at all, they're stagnant.

Dr. Amy Climer
38:32 - 39:07
The impact that they're having on the organization from an innovation perspective is basically 0. If you move down a notch, you could have a team that's destructive. Not only are they not creative, but as ideas come in and percolate up through the team, other people shoot them down and they never move forward. And I like to say that that impact is a negative 1 X. So I say X because it, who knows, you know, every, Every company is different of like, what's a lot of money for that company, right? So it could be $5, 000 to 50, 000 to 5 million.

Dr. Amy Climer
39:08 - 39:33
But those destructive teams are, let's say $50, 000 is how much a new idea would generate or save for the company. So a destructive team is costing the company $50, 000 in lost ideas or in not willing, like basically shutting down good ideas. So you have destructive, you have stagnant, and then you move up and you have, gosh I just forgot the name.

Christian Napier
39:35 - 39:38
Scalable. You got sustainable and scalable. Sporadic.

Dr. Amy Climer
39:38 - 40:18
So you have sporadic next. And sporadic are those teams who, I like to say they're a positive 1 X, where they are producing creative ideas, but they don't know why or how that's happening. Like they're producing these ideas, they're able to implement them. And they're like, that's cool. We just made the company $50, 000. That's amazing. We're not really sure how we did that. And we don't know how to replicate that, but that's the ideal. So then from there, we move up and we have sustainable. So these are the teams who they're producing and implementing creative ideas, and they know how that works.

Dr. Amy Climer
40:19 - 41:01
And now we're getting at a 3X. So $150, 000 a year from this team. Then we have the very top teams that are sustainable, where, or excuse me, scalable. Scalable teams are the ones who are, they know how it works, they're able to replicate that on their own, but now they're actually spreading this process out through the rest of the organization. And so they're able to influence other teams and other products. And so now we're looking at at least a 5x, which is 200. Yeah, in this example, $250, 000. And I actually think these numbers, the multiplication of 1, 3, and 5, I think these are really conservative.

Dr. Amy Climer
41:01 - 41:23
I think it could actually be much higher, but I also didn't wanna over-inflate. And so I think like, yeah, the more creative and innovative team, the more creative teams are, and they're following this process, they're able to produce these innovative results that make a real tangible difference in the organization.

Spencer Horn
41:28 - 41:34
Gosh, sorry, I went to do a sounder and it didn't work. And this is what you get when it does that. It just freaks out.

Christian Napier
41:34 - 41:36
Oh, we got twin Spencers now.

Spencer Horn
41:36 - 41:46
We get 2 of me and it's the worst. Yay! So I'm gonna try to go back and see if I, there we go. Christian, keep going. You got great questions, I know I've.

Christian Napier
41:46 - 42:36
Okay, well, I wanna look ahead to the future. In the last couple of years, generative AI has been all the rage in our organization when we pull people on their use of generative AI ideation and brainstorming are consistently in the top 4. I'm curious to hear from your perspective, what are some of the potential benefits, as well as drawbacks of these new tools that are available that can help surface some things, but also maybe could be perceived as a bit of a cheat code, or actually they don't surface anything new. They're just generating a bunch of stuff based on all the old stuff that they've consumed to train their models.

Christian Napier
42:36 - 42:43
So what's your view of the future? And I'm sorry I had to throw my AI question in there, Spencer.

Spencer Horn
42:43 - 42:45
No, it's a brilliant question.

Dr. Amy Climer
42:46 - 43:15
Yeah, it is a good question. And Kristen, you know more about AI than I do. I mean, I've used it to some degree. What I have found, there's been a few times where I've tried to generate ideas from AI. Like 1 of the things, I actually don't like naming things. I'm not very good at it. That's not a place where my creativity really shines. And so I have tried to use chat GPT, like, oh, help me name this thing, this new product or whatever. And the results are honestly kind of lame. And I try to ask it in different ways.

Dr. Amy Climer
43:16 - 44:00
And so what I... And I think it's going to hit or miss of what AI is producing. And obviously, it's a lot about what questions you're asking and how you're asking the questions. But I still think that there's this element that is missing from AI, which is this human piece where a big part of creativity is being able to connect the dots between these different things, right? Like for instance, Every Nobel Prize winner, my understanding is, of any category, they also have a hobby that has nothing to do with their profession. Chemists are also woodworkers.

Dr. Amy Climer
44:01 - 44:39
You got physicists who are also musicians. And I think that our ability to learn a lot about different things enables us to make these connections and be more creative in a way that it'll be really interesting. So far I'm not seeing AI is able to do that at the level and the quality that humans can. I actually think this is probably moving forward going to be the differentiator between humans and AI because I mean I've used a I use chat GPT quite a bit to do things like, hey, I got to write this proposal. Here's what I want to put in it.

Dr. Amy Climer
44:39 - 45:12
And here's the things that I want it to say, but just make this look good. And I hate writing proposals. So this is really great because now I can free my brain up to do the creative stuff that I can do uniquely that AI can't. At least what I've seen it can't. So I think that's the real value of AI is like, let's use it to do those tasks that aren't in our strengths or that just feel really painful to do and then free ourselves up to be more innovative in other ways.

Spencer Horn
45:25 - 46:03
I love that answer and that's something I've been talking about for years is how do we create more value for ourselves by differentiating ourselves from the machines who are doing all the repetitive type of work. And that's exactly creativity. And it's interesting that you talked about some of the great performers and minds and thinkers have different hobbies. And 1 of the things that, you know, my wife's name is Jana, you know, Christian knows Jana. You know, I love to read business books and she's like, you need to read other literature. You need to read art and you need to read stuff that is just not in the same lane that you're always in.

Spencer Horn
46:03 - 46:35
And she's exactly right. So I'm doing just that. And we just finished this book together, unbelievable. It's just awesome. It's called Project Hail Mary, literally about saving the planet. The guy who wrote The Martian, And it's so, so good. But my point is that just the enjoyment of life, just the ability to create. And so 1 of the questions that I have for you is what's the individual's responsibility to come to the table ready for creativity. I mean, did I ask that the right way?

Dr. Amy Climer
46:36 - 46:50
I think that makes a lot of sense. Before I answer that, can I ask you, I'm curious, first of all, I love what your wife told you to do? That's brilliant advice, So kudos to her. And how has that impacted you or has it yet?

Spencer Horn
46:50 - 47:36
Well, you know, I've just started and so I'm reading like Pillars of the Earth right now and I've been reading other just novels that I have kind of put on the back burner for a long time. And I'll tell you how it's affected my personal relationship with her. Like I just came back from a business trip yesterday and she was sharing some, she is a prolific reader, But she's able to tell me the stories and we talk about them and we just have great conversations. So there's connection again. So just being able to talk about things that aren't always the same allows you to connect with a broader group of people so that you can then deepen those connections which bring in the trust and the psychological safety and the ability to actually bounce ideas up against each other.

Spencer Horn
47:36 - 47:53
I just made that up, but that's what I feel like is potentially the connection. And so far, I mean, I just need to be more disciplined and spending less time on things that are not productive and more on just reading and enjoyment and hopefully filling my soul and my brain.

Dr. Amy Climer
47:54 - 48:35
Yeah. And I think that that's part, I love that. I love that you shared that. And I think that is part of our responsibilities as humans and as team members as co-workers is What can we do individually to help ourselves be our best? Not gonna be your best every day, but I think you know 1 of because I'm also a an avid reader. I don't know how it compares to your wife, Spencer, but last year I read about 50 books, all genres. Probably I've noticed about 75% fiction, 25% nonfiction. The fiction stuff is just pure escapism, exploring things.

Dr. Amy Climer
48:36 - 49:20
It just is a way that I relax. And I feel that that's actually really important, that my ability to relax and do things not related to work Help me be refueled and recharged so that I can do better work, producing new products or new things that I'm putting out in the world. I think that that's the responsibility of all of us. It varies in how well we're able to do that, or we all have different stressors in our lives or different responsibilities that can be challenging. But yeah, I think that the more we can work on ourselves individually, the more that's going to affect the team, the better a teammate will be able to be.

Dr. Amy Climer
49:21 - 49:34
Personally, this is not the typical comment on a business podcast, but I am a big fan of therapy. Go get therapy if that makes sense for you and because it's really- No, no, no.

Spencer Horn
49:35 - 50:15
I'm going to agree with you. So I actually had a client that was a leader of a design team in an architecture firm. And oftentimes There's conflict that naturally exists, natural tension between departments. For example, sales and operations. Sales is out pushing, pushing, pushing and the design team is like, we cannot deliver on all those promises and just the stress and anxiety in this 1 individual just in order to be able to show up every day with his very best, absolutely went to therapy. You have to figure out the team dynamics on top of it, but therapy by itself might not be enough, but it certainly can help.

Spencer Horn
50:15 - 50:18
So I just wanted to add my testimony to yours.

Dr. Amy Climer
50:18 - 50:48
Yeah, I love it. And I do think we're starting to talk about this more about going to therapy and people being more open to it. And I think that the end is just collective improvement of us as people and as humans. And yeah, like the better we can work through our stuff, our baggage, which we all have, right? We all have baggage from our childhood or young adult experiences or even current situations we're in. Yeah, the more we can figure that out, the better.

Christian Napier
50:50 - 51:39
So my takeaways from that, Amy, are 2 things that we individually can do to really up our game in terms of creativity is to get to know ourselves and to get a hobby. I don't say it lightly. I think it's great. We're close to an hour and we could just keep going on, but I wanna make sure that we're respectful of your time. So I'm wondering if you can just maybe leave us with a final thought when it comes to deliberate creativity and also share with our viewers and our listeners, if they've got questions, if they want to learn more about creativity, how you could potentially help them, what's the best way for them to reach out and connect with you.

Dr. Amy Climer
51:40 - 52:24
Cool, thanks. I think the final thought I would leave you with is what has become my mantra, which is be deliberate to be creative. It won't happen by accident, and there has to be an intention around it, a deliberateness if you want to be innovative together. And If you want to help with that, I'd be happy to help you. You can find some good information here in my book. That's a great place to start. And I also work with organizations all over in all different genres, essentially, from manufacturing, healthcare, government, nonprofits. I, yeah, it's actually, that's 1 of my favorite things is just working with all sorts of different organizations to help them be more innovative.

Dr. Amy Climer
52:25 - 52:48
If you want to reach out to me, you can find me at climberconsulting.com. That's my website. You can find this book, Deliberate Creative Teams, How to Lead for Innovative Results Anywhere Books Are Sold, definitely on the big websites online. And if you are curious about getting a deck of Climber Cards, then you can find that at climbercards.com.

Christian Napier
52:51 - 52:55
We can put those- All right, fantastic. I apologize, I didn't give you a chance to ask a final question.

Spencer Horn
52:55 - 53:06
No, no, no, no, no. I am happy with you having a final question. I will put those links, a couple of those links in the show notes. Christian, I yield to you, my friend.

Christian Napier
53:07 - 53:19
Well, Spencer, you've been doing work with teams, helping to create high performing teams for decades. What's the best way for people who are interested in building their teams and their organizations to reach out and contact you.

Spencer Horn
53:19 - 53:29
I love it. Just reach out to me on LinkedIn, Spencer Horn. And it is a great place to find me. And Christian, what did I tell you, Amy? Isn't he great?

Dr. Amy Climer
53:29 - 53:37
He is great. You both are. Thank you so much for having me on this show and for the good questions and the good conversations. This is awesome.

Spencer Horn
53:37 - 53:46
Well, we are so glad to have had you and thank you. And Christian, how do people find you and to all the good work you do around the world.

Christian Napier
53:46 - 54:07
Oh LinkedIn's fine, you know Christian Napier just looked me up on LinkedIn. Amy, thank you for spending an hour of your time with us this beautiful Friday, Pi Day, wherever you are. We really appreciate you and we appreciate listeners and viewers. Thank you so much for joining us today. Please like and subscribe to our podcast.