Presentetion Creativity

Leading for Innovation and Creativity Dr. Douglas Reeves

Creative Leadership Solutions

Dr. Douglas Reeves is the founder of Creative Leadership Solutions. He has worked with education, business, nonprofit, and government organizations throughout the world. The author of more than 30 books and more than 80 articles on leadership and organizational effectiveness, he has twice been named to the Harvard University Distinguished Authors Series. Dr. Reeves was named the Brock International Laureate for his contributions to education. He received the Distinguished Service Award from the National Association of Secondary School Principals, the Parent’s Choice Award for his writing for children and parents, and the Contribution to the Field Award from the National Staff Development Council. His keynotes speeches have reached live audiences of more than 8,000 people and many times that size through television and internet broadcasts. His presentations are highly interactive, with audience members providing live Tweets, Texts, and E-mails throughout the presentation. Reeves also provides proprietary research and assessment projects for clients, assessing organizational climate, communication, and the “implementation gap” – the difference between organizational strategies and reality. In addition, he works with leadership teams and provides confidential one-to-one executive coaching. Dr. Reeves can be reached at [email protected] or 1.781.710 9633. He lives with his wife and family in Boston, Massachusetts.

© 2015 by Creative Leadership Solutions All rights reserved. Copy only with permission.

Page 1

Leading for Crea-vity Douglas Reeves, PhD Crea-veLeadership.net

[email protected] @DouglasReeves (781) 710-‐9633

Fundamental Research Findings

•  Crea3vity is essen3al for society and the planet

•  Crea3vity is valued by businesses, schools, and governments

•  Unfortunately, …


Page 2

Enormous Gap Between Inten3ons and Reality

Student grading systems deliberately undermine the essen3als of crea3vity: trial, error, feedback, and improvement. The “average” punishes every experimental error.

Teacher evalua3on systems undermine experimental approaches to teaching, learning, and engagement because they punish failure.

Enormous Gap Between Inten3ons and Reality

Crea3vity Is Systema3cally Devalued

The most crea3ve students were the least popular with students and teachers; the least crea3ve students were the most popular.

(Research results from Union College and Skidmore College study of Albany, NY

elementary school teachers, 2012)


Page 3

Crea3vity is some3mes associated with anxiety, an3-‐social behavior, and substance abuse.

1.  Personal beliefs 2.  Personal experiences 3.  Collec3ve experiences 4.  Systema3c comparisons

5.  Preponderance of evidence

Levels of Evidence

More Bad News

•  Emula3ng crea3vity (such as Google’s 20% of free 3me) is incredibly difficult when people already have full-‐3me jobs.

•  Evalua3on systems punish the errors that are an inherent part of crea3vity and risk taking.


Page 4

How to Assess Crea3vity?

•  Torrance Tests of Crea3ve Thinking – the most widely used crea3vity test in the world

•  40 languages •  Systema3c assessment of validity – the rela3onship between student scores and later adult crea3ve produc3on, over four decades

Crea3vity Is Declining for Individuals

•  Crea3vity among students has declined significantly in the past 20 years.

•  The biggest decline is in “crea3ve elabora3on” – the ability to develop and elaborate on ideas with detailed and reflec3ve thinking.

(Kyung Hee Kim, College of William and Mary, afer analysis of nearly 300,000 American adults and

children based on the Torrance Tests of Crea3ng Thinking (TTCT), October 2010.)

Crea3vity Is Declining for Organiza3ons

•  Fewer than half of companies surveyed said their corporate culture robustly supports their innova3on strategy.

•  But most organiza3ons make decisions based on avoiding mistakes rather than embracing risk and innova3on.

(Booz & Co., Global Innova3on 1000, InnoCen3ve, 2013)


Page 5

What’s New for 2015? The Seven Virtues Of Crea2vity

•  “Crea3vity is not just the way that the great geniuses of the past have used to enrich and give meaning to our culture, but it is an obliga3on we all have to enrich and give meaning to our own lives and the lives of our community.”

—Reeves & Reeves, The Seven Virtues of Crea2vity (Solu3on Tree, 2015)

A Working Defini3on of Crea2vity

•  The process of experimenta-on, evalua-on, and follow through, which leads to a significant discovery, insight, or contribu-on

•  Note what it doesn’t say: original, novel, superstar, ….


Page 6

The False Dichotomy Between “Big C” and “Likle c ” Crea3vity

Big C: –  The creator as rock star, or at least a Nobel Prize winner

–  Social, ar3s3c, or scien3fic recogni3on

LiNle c: –  Insights that are func3onal, ofen based on previous major insights

Assessing Crea3vity Assessments

•  100+ crea3vity assessments, including K–12 and college, evaluated on 8-‐dimension scale, with four points on each, for >3,200 data points

•  >95% inter-‐rater reliability •  Maximum score of 32 (Level 4 on all eight dimensions)

•  The results …

Dimensions of Crea3vity Assessment ‒ % Proficient +

•  Research basis – 42% •  Mul3disciplinary perspec3ve – 49% •  Source material – 34% •  Clarity of guidelines – 52% •  Product – 17% •  Process – 41% •  Collabora3on – 9% •  Prac3ce and error – 20%


Page 7

Dimensions of Crea3vity Assessment ‒ Exemplary

•  Research basis – 0 •  Mul3disciplinary perspec3ve – 9 •  Source material – 2 •  Clarity of guidelines – 3 •  Product – 8 •  Process – 3 •  Collabora3on – 0 •  Prac3ce and error – 0

Unpacking the Dimensions of Crea3vity

Applying the Research

Workshop on “Assessing Crea3vity” applies the meta-‐rubric used in today’s research to three anonymous crea3vity rubrics. You are welcome to apply this meta-‐rubric to crea3vity rubrics within your schools.


Page 8

Overall Rubric Scores

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

25-‐32 17-‐24 9-‐16 1-‐9

Elementary

Secondary

K-‐12

Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths: •  Mul3disciplinary orienta3on

•  Product requirements

Weaknesses: •  Research basis •  Collabora3on •  Trial and error

A Few Research Footnotes

•  Posi3vely biased sample ‒ These were publicly available and willingly shared. Don’t be disappointed if your ini3al results are lower.

•  Don’t try this alone. Checks for inter-‐rater reliability are essen3al for meaningful results.

•  Use this meta-‐rubric as a star3ng point—not the ending point. When there is disagreement in applying a rubric, the rule is, “The enemy is not one another; the enemy is ambiguity.” Rework the rubric un3l you achieve 80% agreement.


Page 9

Everybody Knows Crea3vity Is Important, but …

•  We’ll get to it afer standardized tests are done.

•  It’s really the responsibility of the art and music teachers.

•  Crea2vity is just a code word for poor discipline, and if you ask me, kids need a lot more discipline than they need crea3vity.

•  I’ll wait un3l I see the evidence that crea3vity helps achievement.

•  Great, just what we need—one more ini3a3ve.

A Working Defini3on of Crea2vity

•  The process of experimenta-on, evalua-on, and follow through, which leads to a significant discovery, insight, or contribu-on

•  Note what it doesn’t say: original, novel, superstar ….

Big Ideas


Page 10

Crea3vity can and must be assessed.

“Crea3on is unlikely to emerge in the absence of some disciplinary mastery and, perhaps, some capacity to synthesize;

it's not possible to think outside the box unless you have a box.”

—Howard Gardner, Five Minds for the Future, 2007

Crea3vity is some3mes associated with anxiety, an3-‐social behavior, and substance abuse.


Page 11

The “good girl” effect—we effec3vely undermine the crea3vity of half the planet.

(Reeves & Reeves, The Seven Virtues of Crea2vity, 2015)

Prac3cal Guidelines for School Leaders

Time for Assessment and Scoring


Page 12

Decision Discipline – Mutually Exclusive Alterna3ves

Non-‐Linear Gains – Beware of the “Likle Bit Beker” Impulse.

Ban the Average – for Students and Teachers.


Page 13

Encourage Risk – “Evalua3on-‐Free Zones” for 50% of

Observa3ons

Costs and Benefits of Change

Q1. Change Costs

Q4. Change Benefits

Q2. No

Change Costs

Q3. No

Change Benefits

CURIOSITY


Page 14

Suppor3ng Curiosity

•  Confidence in the value of failure, including public displays of “I used to think …, and now I think …. (Elmore, 2011)

•  Replacing supreme self-‐regard with rigorous self-‐examina3on

•  Social media as an echo chamber •  Ques3on assump3ons •  Making guesses before heading to Google •  Being aware of punishing curiosity

The “Good Girl” Effect – Na3onal Honor Society Membership

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Women Men Kristof, “The Boys Have Fallen Behind,”

New York Times, March 27, 2010)

From 2014 Interviews With Successful Girls and Women

“There were many 2mes I knew that a colleague was wrong, but I didn’t speak up because it was inappropriate to challenge someone else.”

—Helen, an Ivy League graduate

(Reeves & Reeves, The Seven Virtues of Crea2vity (Solu3on Tree, 2015)


Page 15

“The playground hasn’t been updated for six years and some of it is dangerous. I’d like to write a story for the school newspaper, but I don’t want to cri2cize the teachers or school leaders.”

—Jessica, an excep3onal student


“Being a good girl got me good grades in high school and college, but when I went to an elite MBA program as one of two women in the class, it took more than a semester for me to have elbows as sharp as the guys.”


VERSATILITY


Page 16

Versa3lity: Applying New Perspec3ves

•  The “ab ini2o” fallacy •  Unless you observed the Big Bang, stop claiming originality.

•  Examples: From plane geometry to mul3dimensional sta3s3cal modeling

Building Blocks Vs. Plagiarism

•  Same tools, different applica3on

•  Illegal copying requires instruc3on and reassessment ‒ o  First, let me break into your locker and steal your stuff.

o  Second, write another paper and credit everyone from whom you stole.

DISCIPLINE


Page 17

There is no contradic3on between crea3vity and academic discipline.

•  In fact, disciplinary knowledge is essen3al for crea3vity.

“Crea3on is unlikely to emerge in the absence of some disciplinary mastery and, perhaps, some capacity to synthesize; it's not possible to think outside the box unless you have a box.”

—Howard Gardner, Five Minds for the Future, 2007

The Elements of Discipline

•  Focus •  “Beginner’s mind” •  Deliberate prac3ce •  Incremental prac3ce •  Recording progress

o  From the basketball court to cogni3ve behavioral therapy


Page 18

Professional Prac3ce and the “What the Heck?” Effect

•  “If I miss a prac2ce day, then I might as well give up.”

•  But what does the evidence say?

Performance With Daily Prac3ce

100

105

110

115

120

125

130

135

140

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35

Miss Two Days of Prac3ce

100.00

105.00

110.00

115.00

120.00

125.00

130.00

135.00

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35


Page 19

Miss Every Third Day of Prac3ce

98 100 102 104 106 108 110 112 114 116 118 120

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35

Stop and Process: Enhancing Crea3vity With Discipline •  Measure crea3vity goals ‒ number of ideas generated, number of experiments conducted, or other meaningful metric

•  How can you prac3ce ac3vi3es related to the goal? For example, for at least one of the next three Board decisions, consider mutually exclusive alterna3ves with “construc3ve conten3on.”

•  What is the recovery plan if or when you miss goals?

COLLABORATION


Page 20

Some Prac3cal Steps for Crea3ve Collabora3on

•  Splizng the cake •  “Yes, …, and?” •  Challenging the illusion of collabora3on in the classroom

EXPERIMENTATION

Encouraging Experimenta3on

•  If you already know the answer, then it’s not an experiment. •  Disconfirming hypotheses is as important—ofen more important —than confirming hypotheses.


Page 21

•  Experiment with games: o  Rock, paper, scissors … water o  Replace the Monopoly B&O Railroad with the TGV.

•  Experiment with media ‒ every adver3sing and poli3cal claim is a hypothesis to be tested.

Tenacity

Assessing Tenacity

•  How has your governing board agenda changed in the past 20 years? • What is the ra3o of board-‐ and cabinet-‐level 3me from presenta3ons to delibera3on? How has that ra3o changed?


Page 22

•  How have “class rules” changed in the last 20 years? •  How does your evalua3on system reward tenacity and perseverance in the face of failure? • What happened with a recent failure in your school—was it rewarded or punished?

Encouraging Crea3ve Tenacity

•  Culture of mul3ple akempts before a final product is accepted

•  Require construc3ve conten3on, debate, and dissent.

•  Ban the use of the average for evalua3ng students, teachers, and administrators.

•  Celebrate the right kind of failure.

Guaranteed Ways to Ensure Zero Crea3ve Opportuni3es for Students

•  Have them drop out of school because they lack sufficient literacy skills to survive high school.

•  Have them repeat courses, so that they have no room in their schedules for visual and performing arts.


Page 23

How We Discourage Crea3vity Among Teachers

•  Discourage taking risks and failure. •  Punish feedback and dissent. •  Use the “average” in mul3ple teacher observa3ons.

How We Discourage Crea3vity Among Leaders

•  Annual (or end of contract) performance reviews •  Strategic plans that elevate execu3on over crea3vity •  Micromanagement

•  Unclear job descrip3ons

How We Discourage Crea3vity Among Policy Makers and Board Members •  Standardized agendas •  One administra3ve recommenda3on submiked for up-‐or-‐down votes

•  A culture of congeniality over discussion and debate

•  Discussion and debate is more than cri3cism and contradic3on.


Page 24

You cannot expect cri3cal thinking in the classroom or faculty room if there is not cri3cal thinking in the board

room.

The Seven Virtues of Crea2vity

CURIOSITY


Page 25

VERSATILITY

DISCIPLINE

COLLABORATION


Page 26

EXPERIMENTATION

TENACITY

Synthesis


Page 27

I Used to Think … and Now I Think ….

For a complete set of crea3vity resources, please email:

[email protected]

Crea-ve Leadership Solu-ons


Page 28

Creativity, Risk, the Classroom, and the Economy: Three Ideas to Get Creativity Back on Track

Douglas Reeves, PhD

Thanks to Ken Robinson’s work (most recently, Finding Your Element: How to Discover Your Talents and Passions and Transform Your Life, 2013) and 30.5 million YouTube hits for his presentation “How Schools Kill Creativity,” many educators have heard the argument that creativity can be nurtured or destroyed, particularly based on the willingness of people to take risks and learn from failure. The ways in which we evaluate students, teachers, and administrators actively discourage risk-taking and hence reduce the opportunity for creative output. I find relentless teacher bashing, cheap laugh lines, and broad generalizations in the video a bit tiresome. Moreover, encouraging students and teachers to be more creative is unhelpful without some very specific support. Nevertheless, I must take note of recent evidence that supports Robinson’s basic thesis—that creativity among young people is declining. This downward trend was well documented by Professor Kyung Hee Kim of the College of William and Mary after she examined data from more than 300,000 students over twenty years. Most recently, this trend was directly reflected in a stark reduction in the entrepreneurial ambitions of people under thirty. Ruth Simon and Caelainn Barr reported in The Wall Street Journal on January 2, 2015, that “The share of people under age 30 who own private businesses has reached a 24-year low, according to new data, underscoring financial challenges and a low tolerance for risk among young Americans.” It’s not entirely clear that schools are to blame for this. Rather, one must recognize that the shock of the biggest economic decline since the Great Depression caused today’s students and recent graduates to witness their parents’ retirement funds lose half their value in 2008–2009, with many families occupying homes that have lost significant value. While the economy surely has improved since then, with unemployment at the lowest levels in more than a decade, the economic crisis left an indelible mark on a generation and probably reduced its tolerance for risk and failure—essential ingredients in creativity and entrepreneurship. So, what do we do now to restore an environment of appropriate risk-taking and creativity in schools and among young entrepreneurs? First, actively encourage “learning failures” in which teachers and students experiment with new ideas, such as innovative student engagement practices and alternative grading policies. “What do we do if an experiment fails?” a client asked me recently. The answer is that unexpected results are not failures if those results are shared widely and used for continuous improvement. Failure comes from concealing results and penalizing risk taking. One method for promoting “learning failures” is the instructional science fair (see Reframing Teacher Leadership, ASCD, 2008, for examples). Teams of teachers present simple three-panel displays that show the challenge, the intervention, and the results. Second, celebrate disciplinary learning. Too much of the rhetoric surrounding creativity creates a divide between disciplinary learning (the proverbial box) and creativity (outside the box). But scholars, including R. Keith Sawyer (Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation, 2nd ed., 2012—one of the most comprehensive summaries of creativity research since the groundbreaking work of


Page 29

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) and Howard Gardner note that exceptional degrees of creativity can take place within the boundaries of academic disciplines. Indeed, math, science, history, and engineering are fields that have clear rules, but also celebrate creative breakthroughs. They do not belong at the opposite end of the creative continuum from music, art, and literature. Third, require collaboration—both modeling by teachers and active practice by students. The words “require” and “creativity” rarely appear in the same sentence. Consider the idea that creativity is not a mysterious gift of the muses but a skill, like dancing and playing the piano. Both include elements of artistic interpretation, but also include disciplinary fundamentals of steps and notes. Similarly, an essential fundamental for creativity is collaboration. The “lone genius” myth has been widely dispelled, but we have failed to replace it with a conscientious effort to help students learn to collaborate. Small wonder, as students rarely have the opportunity to observe collaboration among their teachers and administrators. In a recent Marshall Memo summary (www.MarshallMemo.com), Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher, writing in the January 2015 issue of Principal Leadership, quoted a high school student as saying, “I feel like my teachers don’t ever talk to each other. Do they even know what I do when I’m not right in front of them?” It’s a fair question, and one that deserves an answer from every educator and administrator who values collaboration and creativity among students. If we expect students to collaborate effectively, then we must require it, practice it, assess it, and systematically improve the collaborative efforts of students and adults. It won’t take another thirty million YouTube hits to convince us that creativity and risk taking are important. The hard part is putting specific ideas into action. Stay tuned for more of these ideas in the weeks ahead on the ChangeLeaders.com blog. --------- Douglas Reeves, PhD, is the author of more than thirty books and eighty articles on education and leadership effectiveness. He was named the Brock International Laureate for his contributions to education and received the Contribution to the Field Award from the National Staff Development Council (now Learning Forward). He can be reached at [email protected] or at (781) 710-9633. He is a founding partner of Creative Leadership Solutions.


Page 30

Creativity and Assessments: Mortal Enemies or Potential Allies?

Douglas Reeves, PhD

Professor Yong Zhao’s latest shot across the bow, Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon: Why China Has the Best (and Worst) Education System in the World (Jossey-Bass, 2014) received a rave review from Professor Diane Ravitch in The New York Review of Books and a laudatory blog post from creativity expert and author R. Keith Sawyer. These are three people I respect and admire, even if I don’t always agree with them. When we met a few months ago in Minnesota, I asked Professor Young Zhao, “Do you mean that even literacy should not be a priority?” His response was emphatic: “What if a student prefers music or athletics—who are we to say that literacy is more valuable?” Then I asked, “But what about students in the inner city who might lose future opportunities if we fail to have literacy standards and assessments?” His riposte was, “You don’t want to make the rest of the nation like Detroit; you want to make Detroit like the best schools in the nation.” The twin evils of standards and assessments, he claims, are the mortal enemies of creativity. Ravitch, well known for her attacks on the corporate testing complex that has benefitted economically from state-mandated testing, and Sawyer, a thoughtful advocate of creativity, echo Yong Zhao’s position. I believe that the truth about creativity, standards, and assessment is a bit more nuanced. First, distinguished creativity advocates such as Howard Gardner and Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi have documented impressively the connection between creativity and discipline. As Gardner said in Five Minds for the Future (Harvard Business Review Press, 2009): “Creation is unlikely to emerge in the absence of some disciplinary mastery and, perhaps, some capacity to synthesize; it's not possible to think outside the box unless you have a box.” Grant Wiggins’ article in wordpress.com addresses the question directly: “On Assessing for Creativity: Yes You Can, and Yes You Should.” Second, creativity is not merely loosening the chains of external authority, but the result of trial, evaluation, error, and resilience. Creative geniuses—from the Ming Dynasty to Michelangelo to Mozart to Mark Twain—have thrived in an environment in which their work was judged, often mercilessly, and often discarded. When we only study the greatest work of the greatest masters, we lose sight of the fact that many great artists discarded most of their work. If we aspire to help our students be more creative, we would do well to have them study not only the greatest works of the greatest masters, but also the failures of the masters. The execrable writing of some of Twain’s books are preserved, but most of the failures of other great artists are lost to history. Half of the original manuscripts of Bach’s cantatas were used to wrap bacon in a butcher shop, so convinced was he that they had less value as musical masterpieces than pork preservatives. Third, almost all creative people must have literacy skills in order for the artists and their art to survive. If our societies truly valued creativity, then we would subsidize artists, much as the Medici’s did in Florence, the United States did during the Great Depression, and the McArthur Foundation does today. But the reality for the vast majority of working artists is that they must work at least part of the time earning a living in order to engage in their creative pursuits. If we fail to give our creative artists the survival skills necessary to put food on the table and pay the rent, then we will have failed as educators and advocates for creativity. Tomorrow’s great creative artists depend on today’s educators—not just those in the arts, but educators who teach them to read, communicate, and collaborate.


Page 31

Let’s replace some of the rhetorical heat about the worst practices in standards and assessment with some light, acknowledging that the antidote to bad practice and policy is not the absence of leadership for creativity, but a dedication by leaders and educators to establishing creative and collaborative learning environments. --------- Douglas Reeves, PhD, is the author of more than thirty books and eighty articles on education and leadership effectiveness. He was named the Brock International Laureate for his contributions to education and received the Contribution to the Field Award from the National Staff Development Council (now Learning Forward). He can be reached at [email protected] or at (781) 710-9633. He is a founding partner of Creative Leadership Solutions.


Page 32