Creativity is a slippery thing to define, but we all know it when we see it.
It cannot really be taught, although it can be encouraged.
Creative people tend to be successful problem-solvers who contribute more than the average to team projects and may rise to become ‘Top Talent’ as businesses like to identify the people who drive positive outcomes in their organizations.
We also make a habit of suppressing creative people. Without in any way coming from a malicious or even intentional place, there are many spoken and unspoken influences that shape how a creative person acts in given situations, and the pressure to conform and ‘be like everyone else’ can teach them not to speak up, act out, or think different, which are the outputs that make creative people special and —not to put too fine a point on it— valuable to organizations.
There is a thought experiment about creativity I heard from a Lockheed Martin executive, although he claimed he first heard it from a schoolteacher, so this really is a conversation about creativity that applies to anyone and everyone, not just aerospace engineers.
The executive said this thought experiment has been worked through with students of different ages, and the results are especially interesting because while very young children often display real flashes of creativity, the best answers fall away as children become adolescents and young adults. When the thought experiment is conducted with university students, the engagement almost always becomes cynical as people wait for the trick or gimmick rather than responding freely. They worry about the opinions of their instructors and fellow students to the point where they would rather not engage or do so in a very guarded manner that is acceptable to everyone even if it does not produce anything that might be considered, ‘Creative.’
Shall we do the thought experiment together and see how you do in the comfort and privacy of reading this blog post? It’s called The Ship Test, and it is meant to measure your creativity. There is an element of timing to it, which in writing we will duplicate with some blank spaces in the text that you will need to scroll down through so you cannot skip ahead.
Are you ready?
The Ship Test
Take 15 seconds and name all the kinds of ships you can think of off the top of your head.
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Now the vast majority of people are probably very happy to have produced a long list of boats: Freighters, tugboats, luxury liners, aircraft carriers, clippers, tankers, lakers, schooners, cruisers, maybe even the odd canoe or rowboat or kayak.
Congratulations. This is a perfectly acceptable answer that demonstrates you are a reasonable person who is engaging in The Ship Test honestly and fairly. It also doesn’t demonstrate one iota of creativity. You were asked to generate a list of ships, and you created a list of vessels that float on water. No one mentioned floating on water. That’s a rule you imposed on yourself independent of The Ship Test. You gave the answer you hoped was expected of you, and that no one could fault you for giving. Creativity never factored into your response at all, did it?
Now take another 15 seconds and see what you would want to add to your list.
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Let’s be honest: You all added submarines, and probably spacecraft. Some of you may have made the leap to airships. You know blimps and dirigibles and zeppelins are called airships —so those are definitely a type of ship— and maybe you debated whether or not an airplane or a helicopter could be considered a ship. You all felt really comfortable with submersibles and rocket ships, though.
Again, congratulations. You were given an opportunity to revise your list, and you did so in a rational way, but again you did not really get creative, did you? You were told, “No one mentioned floating on water” and so you removed that particular mental constraint, but you immediately imposed another unspoken one. No one said the ship had to be a conveyance of any kind. Your submarines and spacecraft —and, yes, airships— are all still vessels with people inside. They are all nouns. They are all created by human beings to do a specific task.
Do you want to take another 15 seconds and try to revise your list now? There has not been an obvious prompt where to go next, so there is an opportunity for genuine prompted creativity here, and I honestly do not know what you will do with the next 15 seconds. Your answer will be yours, and yours alone. Ready?
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Again, I have no idea what kind of ships you may have added to your list. Did you add any? There are a lot of answers if you remove the constraints you placed upon yourself at the start of The Ship Test.
Here are a few.
Relationships. Ownership. One-upmanship. Companionship. Brinksmanship. Musicianship. Amidship. Leadership. Township. Worship. Shipmates. Shipping. Shipmaster. Shipwreck. “Shipshape and Bristol Fashion!”
You are allowed to feel a little cheated. Was the right answer, “Words with S-H-I-P in it?’
No, of course not. There was no right answer. Whatever you put down in the last 15 seconds is as worthy as any of these offerings. The point is that not too many people when asked, “Take 15 seconds and name all the kinds of ships you can think of off the top of your head” are going to come up with One-upmanship or Amidship or Worship, are they? You only had 15 seconds, and there was obvious low-hanging fruit to answer the question that was going to be perfectly acceptable, and no one would think you misunderstood the question if that is what you offered.
But if you do The Ship Test in a room of 100 people, wouldn’t you think the one person who came up with, “Leadership” as a type of ship in the first 15 seconds was pretty creative?
Returning to the students, Kindergarteners and First Graders often blurt out all kinds of things that are not vessels floating on water in the first 15 seconds, either because they did not think to put rules on their answers, or because they viewed the whole exercise as a game where ‘winning’ was surprising their classmates. By the time those children are in college or university, they have been well trained not to waste anyone’s time with facetious answers. They offer a curated list of obviously right answers and then wait to be guided further if need be.
They had the creativity trained out of them.
There is no right answer to The Ship Test. It really is a thought experiment, and you can play it yourself for as long as you like, and you are succeeding as long as you can continue to surprise yourself with new answers.
Would you like to hear one more example that will surprise you and illustrate just how far The Ship Test can generate creative answers?
What if I told you an acceptable answer is, “A Lie You Told Your Mother.”
Now how could that be? Where’s the Ship? Take 15 seconds and try to think about how this is a correct answer, because I promise you it is as worthy a submission as Battleship while taking a lot more original thought to generate. Ready? Go!
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I have no way of knowing what you came up with, but if you have any answer at all, it must be a creative one. You were not given much to work with, and there is not really an opportunity for you to self-impose limits. Whatever you came up with, well done. Here was how I meant, “A Lie You Told Your Mother.”
“No, Mom. I didn’t swear. I said, Ship!“
Silly? Yes. An acceptable answer? Also yes, and a creative one besides. How many people at the start of The Ship Test would have come up with “A Lie You Told Your Mother” in the first 15 seconds? The first 30 seconds? Even the first 45 seconds? It is a genuinely creative answer to the prompt.
What Can We Take from This?
Now what does all this mean in a business environment?
This blog is for all sorts of readers working in all sorts of industries, but all of you hope to find creative solutions and approaches to the challenges and opportunities your companies are facing. What should you be learning from The Ship Test?
Probably the biggest takeaway should be that even when we want creative answers and outside-the-box thinking, one of the first things we do to ourselves and expect of others is that we should impose some ‘obvious’ rules to channel our thinking in an acceptable way, which is going to produce predictable outcomes. That works exactly contrary to producing the unique ideas and original thought we hoped for in the first place.
Having a conversation about The Ship Test or a similar, “Let’s put aside the rules” discussion can be enormously helpful to skipping the first rounds of problem-solving that work through the normal answers.
While an open conversation about, ‘Different is better than okay. It’s good!’ removes the fear of failure to conform, we also need to encourage creativity when it does present itself. A culture of regular brainstorming sessions where anyone gets to advance ideas will encourage more and more contributions as peers see that different kinds of input are all welcomed and treated as worthy and important. Making this a regular exercise with lots of positive reinforcement where there are no wrong answers is the best way to generate risk-free great ideas, one of which will end up being the best fit.
To be clear, deciding which idea to move forward with should generally not be part of the brainstorming session beyond perhaps an examination of pros and cons in a free and friendly group dialogue. Informed decision-making to select the right course of action from the list of creative ideas generated is an additional step outside the purview of this week’s blog post that we could not explore in a meaningful way at the moment without introducing a lot of specifics into the current broad hypothetical.
Returning to the brainstorming session, it should also be recognized that some people are genuinely better at outside-the-box thinking than others; leaders should spend less time worrying about making sure everyone contributes equally; instead focusing on encouraging the people who ‘get it’ to start the ball rolling and keep it rolling. The example of the early contributors may well inspire others to opt in as the comfort level rises, and no one can know at the start of a brainstorming suggestion whose idea will come out as the best one in the end, or when the best idea will present itself. The person with a lot of good input at the beginning may set someone else quietly thinking for a while. That quiet thinking may look a lot like a lack of engagement to a leader, but the temptation to urge them to participate must be resisted. Forcing contributions will not make them good contributions. Let the quiet person think, even if they end up not contributing to this particular session. Creativity works best when it is allowed to work free of imposed constraints.
So, if encouraging creativity cannot mean everyone equally all at once from the start, what does encouraging creativity actually look like?
Some people will get it from the very beginning, and other people work up to it, and still others may just not have something creative to offer to this particular session. All of those have to be acceptable outcomes for a creative space to feel safe and become productive.
The specifics of how to remove constraints, run a brainstorming session, encourage contributions, and reward original thinking are going to vary from company to company and project to project. The important thing to remember is creativity flourishes where it is allowed to work in its own way, and creativity withers when asked to conform to preset expectations required of everyone. Let people know it is okay to not come up with the right answer. Build a culture where sharing and bouncing ideas around is normal and celebrated. Allow contributors to do things at their own pace.
The results will surprise you, and that is the point.
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Geoff Micks
Head of Content & Research
Executive Platforms
Geoff joined the industry events business as a conference producer in 2010 after four years working in print media. He has researched, planned, organized, run, and contributed to more than a hundred events across North America and Europe for senior leaders, with special emphasis on the energy, mining, manufacturing, maintenance, supply chain, human resources, pharmaceutical, food and beverage, finance, and sustainability sectors. As part of his role as Head of Content & Research, Geoff hosts Executive Platforms’ bluEPrint Podcast series as well as a weekly blog focusing on issues relevant to Executive Platforms’ network of business leaders.
Geoff is the author of five works of historical fiction: Inca, Zulu, Beginning, Middle, and End. The New York Times and National Public Radio have interviewed him about his writing, and he wrote and narrated an animated short for Vice Media that appeared on HBO. He has a BA Honours with High Distinction from the University of Toronto specializing in Journalism with a Double Minor in History and Classical Studies, as well as Diploma in Journalism from Centennial College.
