also studied music, and a Master's degree in Chinese studies and economics from the John Hopkinds School of International Studies (SAIS) in Washington DC. Alison shares with us her ideas about the creative process, avoiding groupthink and how we can put envision creativity in our approach to work.

HRM : What do you see the creative process as being about?
Alison : It’s about allowing our brains to travel without the usual impediments our ego places on us. Our brains work by association, and because each of us has different experiences, they make associations particular to our own life stories. Even if we’ve been educated similarly, we may have traveled to different places, read different books, and spoken to different people. Beyond this, we’ve also felt differently about these things than others. Allowing ourselves to be creative requires fighting our ego’s tendency to worry that our ideas are different from our friends’ or colleagues’. Once we’ve done that, and feel freer to think in our own way, we can allow our brains to make their own beautiful, natural associations.

HRM : In creating an environment that fosters creativity, does one focus on an inspiring workplace, on listening more effectively or on providing adequate play areas?
Alison : I think that to have an inspiring workplace you’d need all of these things. There are some people who, in their study of creativity, believe that the ONLY way to make sure it happens is to develop the right type of environment. They believe that you can send someone to the best creativity workshop in the world, but if you make them go back into their beige cubicle afterwards, you won’t see a return on your investment. Similarly, however, you can design the most stimulating office but ruin people’s willingness to be creative by criticising their ideas all the time.

It’s important for managers to remember that people spark off each other’s ideas and enrich each other’s thinking. I can come up with all sorts of ideas by myself, but if I sit down with you and we share ideas, my brain will be encouraged to make even more associations by listening to your ideas, and vice versa. If our manager puts us in a grey room with no windows and fluorescent lights to do this, we will be physically dulled by the experience. If the room is pleasant and bright and the air is fresh, our eyes and our bodies will be happier, and our brains will function better, and we’ll stay there a bit longer. We’ll be more creative. Next time you are tasked to come up with ideas with a colleague, fight the norm. Don’t go into a meeting room to do it. Go for a walk.

HRM : How do you suggest stimulating teams and individuals who are not so much lacking a sense of creativity but rather lacking the impetus to engage themselves in the issue, be it a service they provide or a product they are creating?
Alison : The first step must absolutely be to find out why they are not inclined to engage. There can be so many reasons. Are they afraid of the head of the department? If so, the department needs to work on communication, and creative expression is likely to follow. Are they by nature lazy? I’m not sure there’s a remedy for this. Are they carrying around baggage from a previous job? Many people are once burned, twice shy. Do they really want to be a dancer but took this job to please their parents? Encourage them to dance.

I believe it is not possible to find one way to motivate a team. Each person has his or her own goals. While it’s time-consuming to learn more about each individual on your team, the payback is enormous, since you’ll figure out what will engage them.

HRM : How do you see organisations avoiding groupthink in a situation where there may be insufficent diversity in people, within a team environment or the culture is such that people perceive that their ideas may not be welcomed ?
Alison : How to avoid groupthink in a situation where there may be insufficient diversity? Hire more diverse people. Employees need not be blamed for a lack of diversity when the employer has not prioritised this in the hiring process.

When an organization recognises that people perceive that their ideas may not be welcome, they’ve taken a great first step. The second step is to ascertain if they have consistently hired timid people, or if their leadership is too quick to judge. Most organisations experience a bit of both, in fact. However, in my experience, you can encourage timid people to offer ideas by helping management communicate better. You cannot encourage timid people to offer ideas by working on their creativity and courage but doing nothing about how management behaves. I’ve run too many creativity workshops where people have said to me, “These are such wonderful tools. But I just can’t use them in my office.”

HRM : What do you know about the sources of creativity and innovation in people?
Alison : Human beings are born creative. It’s part of our survival. Pablo Picasso put it so well: “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” Think about it. When we are small, once we’ve started being able to build things, to put things together (rather than just knock them down), we’ll build with anything. We’ll put our carrots in our milk, and our broccoli on our napkin, even if we plan to eat it afterwards. We’ll involve Dad’s hiking boot in our tower of blocks…until we’re told not to. Our little brains are constantly asking, “What if I do this? What if I do that?” And then a parent says to us, “Don’t do that. Hiking boots aren’t for building.”

To children, anything is for building. Parents, school, and eventually other friends, continually limit the associations we feel we are allowed to make. When we’re small children, we have none of these limits in our minds. Anything goes with anything.

HRM : Could you outline one technique that managers could begin to use immediately in fostering more innovation and creativity in their teams?
Alison : One of the most powerful techniques I teach is the Disney Creativity Strategy. In order to get his creative staff to feel as free as possible in offering their ideas, Walt Disney knew that he had to let them dream without the worry of criticism. So in this creative process, there are times and places for Dreamers, times and places for Realists, and finally, for Critics.

If a manager wants to encourage creative thought, the people involved must know that they are safe. Tell them that it’s time to be Dreamers, and that while they are dreaming, no one is allowed to offer an opinion on the ideas they are offering. The goal will be simply to get everything everyone in the team thinks about a subject out on the table. Whether or not the ideas are viable is irrelevant.

Once they feel that all the dreaming is done, it is time to be Realists. Shifting to this type of thinking means that people are now free to consider whether or not, given the current budget or market situation, the ideas can be used. The beauty of this process is that, while only some of the ideas on the table will be appropriate for the present situation, there are others that can be saved for the future, and the people who had those ideas, who were allowed to dream like this, feel validated even though the time isn’t quite right for them yet.

When the group has established which ideas look appropriate, then, and only then, can they become Critics. At this point, being a Critic is a very positive thing. Critics are necessary, to prod an idea and see where it is weak, not so that it can be trashed, but so that it can be strengthened. Critics, at this point in the process, are absolutely necessary. But too early in the process, they can be de-motivating at best, and at worst, destructive.

This strategy is very flexible in terms of time and space. You can have three different rooms, to help people make the shift from Dreamer, to Realist, to Critic. Or you can have different times: dreaming on Monday, realistic on Tuesday, criticising on Wednesday. In my creativity workshop we don’t have tons of time, so we give each stage 20 minutes each. It can also be done by assigning the roles to people: “Carla, you dream for a while. Rob, you be the realist. Sok Har, because you’re so good at seeing where the problems are, you criticise…when it’s your turn.” You can go even through this process on your own. I highly recommend that you do, actually, since you’ll see how quick you are to judge your own ideas. Even if you tell yourself to spend a half hour dreaming, I’ll bet that you start hearing your inner critic piping up pretty early in the process. Learn to make it wait. Critics aren’t necessarily bad. In fact, they are essential. They just have terrible timing!