Suzanne Dameron: [00:00:00] Through the studies of creative problem solving, we actually have a lot more tools and we've refined brainstorming. It's just that four principles of separating the generation of options from the selection, and that also moves you from step to step to step each of the four steps.
Podcast Host: The world is changing For most humans, change is uncomfortable and challenging to address financial and political uncertainty. Friction with back to office mandates and challenging hybrid workplace collaboration. Not to forget important environmental social responsibility and governance initiatives.
Combined with the rapid pace of digital transformation and the need for human-centered AI integration, change is happening and fast. This rapid change has highlighted the need for increased speed to innovation and long lasting change adoption in [00:01:00] many organizations. Whether you are a startup working on Agile process or a mature organization, navigating change within existing complex structures, the skillset and need to adapt has never been more vital.
The team from Strategy Table wanna help the wider world understand the need and approach to meaningful and impactful change management. Helping organizations navigate disruption and make change accessible, it often starts with a meaningful conversation. Welcome to Accessible Disruption.
Anthony Vade: Welcome to another episode of Accessible Disruption, where we put change management under the microscope and ask tough questions like, what is creative problem solving? Anyway? Don't forget to subscribe, follow and comment. Share with us what you think about this episode and what does creative problem solving creative change management mean to you, and share this with your community.
We really want to foster [00:02:00] conversations like this so we can all claim our seat at the strategy table. Alright, that's enough self promotion. Today we are talking about a topic near and dear to us, but as I so often do at the start of these podcasts. Tahira, who is this guest to you?
Tahira Endean: You know, this is a very special guest to me because when we started our masters in Creativity and Change leadership, which is of course where Ryan and I met the very first person that I was paired with on our very first exercises where we had to examine our own lives and why we were there was Suzanne.
So Suzanne Jamon, we did so much at the beginning and then we had a little gap. And then we saw you live and you had all these great questions from me. And it turned out that the work we had done at the beginning of our change leadership program stuck. And I was able to answer Suzanne and say, yes, I've changed so many of those things.
This is great. This is a process and the process works. So, and she is just a guru in [00:03:00] change management and one of the smartest women that I know. And we're excited to have you here today, Suzanne. Thank you very much for having. Great. And I also remember those first sessions. Yeah, that was really great.
And we can look back and we can say, so many things have changed so many. Adaptations have had to be made. So much resilience has had to be found. Yes and yes. Now here you are and well, let's just jump right into what you are doing right at this moment because you have just started a brand new company.
Suzanne Dameron: So what I did was I formed a company called The Third Edge Studio to mark the fact that I'm concentrating more on this. I've actually been doing this for several years, and I have moved out from, I did, uh, communications PR work for the. Previous 20 years and it, there was a, like a Venn diagram, there was an overlap.
And now we've moved more fully into creative problem solving processes and [00:04:00] change management and which is, so I'm very delighted to be here with Strategy Table, who is leading the way. And I know when you, you talked about resilience and I think creative problem solving is a process in itself. That inherently has resilience.
It has stood the test of time, and it enables organizations, leaders, and teams to be more resilient in how they move forward.
Tahira Endean: And you also, one of the things that you have really dug into is the foresight work. This is gonna be something that some people listening to this are gonna be really familiar with, and it's gonna be completely brand new to others.
So maybe tell us a little bit about. The foresight process and, and why you feel so passionate about it. The foresight process was
Suzanne Dameron: a,
Tahira Endean: a huge
Suzanne Dameron: step forward for the creative problem solving process, a huge step forward in the kind of outcomes they got. And in order to answer you, I'm actually gonna take a little step back and talk about the creative problem solving process.
And again, for those who might [00:05:00] not be familiar with it, I know a lot of people here will be, but there are four steps. Two, the creative problem solving process, its history is a little bit accordion. It had like fewer steps and more steps, but today we're really relying on a four step process, and those four steps are clarifying, which is looking at whatever it takes to understand the present situation.
Ideating, you're generating ideas, developing. You're taking the best idea and making it workable and implement. You're taking action. So these four steps comprise it. It's not rocket science. It's very practical. One thing to keep in mind is we are already doing it. Each one of us every day is using one or more of these steps unconsciously as we move through the day.
The thing about being humans is we love solving problems. We love it. We were born to solve problems. And even there is some science, a lot of science that suggests that homo sapiens [00:06:00] evolved because of our problem solving skills. So back in the fifties, they came out with how we think through problems.
And you know that history and it's really interesting and we may even come back to that. So we've got this, but it's process and this process, when I talk about it being resilient, this process has stayed with us through the fifties in the nineties. They started looking at what happens to people in the process, what's going on when we do this?
And you know that our advisor, ARD Puo, was the one who really led the way on this, and this is why people go to Buffalo State University to study with him and all the things that he's done. So, and what happened was, and I, I'll just tell the. The story of how this started, which is he had, he was finishing up a session in the problem solving workshop that he had taught for so many, uh, years.
And a gentleman came up at the end of it and said, oh my gosh, that was just exhausting. [00:07:00] I just, I'm drained, I hope. Tell me we're not gonna do any more of this. And a couple of minutes later, a woman comes up and she goes, that was fantastic. I am so energized. Tell me we're gonna do more of this. And what struck him?
Was, how did the exact same process, the same process towards problem solving, how did it affect these two people so differently? One, one is drained and one is energized. And fast forward to today, and a lot of science and research that went into this is what we could now call thinking profiles, and this is the foresight thinking profile that you're referring to, and it's telling us that.
Even though we have these four steps to the creative problem solving process and. We have the capacity, the ability to do all four. We as people have that ability. We are not born with a love for each one of these four. Very few of us do, and they're called preferences and just like we are either right-handed or [00:08:00] left-handed.
We have a preference for clarifying and we have a preference for ideating, thinking of ideas, or implementing and taking action, and these become our instinctual go-to problem solving method. No matter what the problem is, we're left to our own devices. Whatever the problem is, if you're an implementer, you're gonna take action and figure out the details later.
If you're a clarifier, you're gonna do the research and then you'll take action or think about taking action. So it really was a huge step forward for the creative problem solving process when they put the process awareness and people awareness, or even self-awareness because we learned about ourselves together.
I was trained with those two together, so it has been, it's harder for me to separate them and look only at the creative problems of the process, but it did, it did live for it on its own, uh, for quite a while and can do, and can
Tahira Endean: do. What I loved about it was that [00:09:00] I was the optimist. I think there was two of us that were optimists.
That sounds amazing, doesn't it? You're an optimist. What it really means is I'm a pretty low on clarifying and very equal actually across ideating, developing, and implementing. So I like to just get in there optimistically and you know, go for what those ideas are. And I think you're right, like having that understanding that there's always, anytime you enter into a change process, there's always.
We all bring our whole selves and our whole selves are not. Always gonna be good at every step of the process or enjoy every step of the process. And when we're facilitating that change, understanding that everyone's gonna have different amounts of energy that is required. One of my biggest learnings as a facilitator was to.
Clarify more for those in the room that are the clarifiers. You know, what's the next step? Why are we taking this next step? What do I expect of [00:10:00] you and what can you expect out of it becomes something that is, um, very important for the clarifiers in the room, whereas it's not a natural step, whereas you would find other people with different types of.
Personalities are going to, might be huge clarifiers and, but when you get to the action steps, they're like, oh, those action steps. Hmm. I need to clarify all those action steps a bit more. And that's the fun of facilitating, is understanding that I. Everybody at the party is bringing their own cocktail. So I've
Suzanne Dameron: had people say, well, I'm not really interested in creativity.
It's innovation that I'm really interested in. And it's an impossibility. It's an impossibility because you don't get innovative solutions without creative thinking. Creative thinking is the fuel to innovative solutions. They go together. So that's one. Uh, the other thing, creativity is a. Huge nebulous word and cover so much.
[00:11:00] And I am a student and scholar of the creativity field, which is very vast and very broad. And so I think people are, I think it's fair for people to wonder what all this is about because it is quite extensive. I can tell you I got into the creativity field because I wanted to know what you did at a creativity conference.
What exactly. Did they do? I'm, I know I'm creative. Why would I go to a creativity conference? Anyway, I couldn't believe it because after I spent a weekend at my first creativity conference and I left armed with creative problem solving tools for personal and professional things that were going on, and an interest and inspiration to pursue training in the field because it was so useful and practical.
So I, I now think of creativity. Skills as something that we can learn about, but true creativity is we're applying it. We are actually doing something, we're solving problems. That [00:12:00] problem could be, how am I going to get the image in my head on this canvas? How am I get, get the tune in my head. On paper, how am I going to be a better parent?
How am I going to make a meal with, you know, egg and lettuce in the refrigerator? How is my organization going to build the creative climate so that we can move forward and accomplish the things we want to do? So it's very, once again, I accordion leaps to mind of the versatility and remarkability. Of how creativity serves us.
Anthony Vade: Can we extrapolate a little bit more on those personality preferences? Do any of those personality preferences excel in one area and perhaps struggle in other areas from your experience?
Suzanne Dameron: Well, first of all, I want to thank you for calling them personality preferences because they're not, and it gives me the opportunity to point out that.
This is a cognitive preference that we're talking about. Really, it's how we think. And Myers-Briggs [00:13:00] disc strengths finders, those are personality assessments. They're great. They're wonderful for understanding who we are, how others operate, how we move in the world. They are not going to solve problems.
They help us understand why we may or may not solve them, but they do not help us solve problems. It is the understanding, the how we as individuals think through problems that tell us our preferences. And Taira was talking about that when she said she's low in, she has a low preference for clarifying, but she's pretty strong on the rest.
And in my case, I'm the opposite. I have a strong preference for clarifying and ideating, and yet I have a low preference for implementing and developing. So my go-to for any problem is do the research and get some ideas. Okay. That doesn't lead to action, um, Tahira's approach. And I'm just gonna, and I know her a little and I'm gonna take a guess from what she said is she's gonna do it.
She's gonna [00:14:00] jump in and she's gonna do it, and she's gonna look back and say, oh, I should really learn more about this before I take the next step. And you have written two books, and you did do a lot of clarifying and to write those two books, but I know it comes from your experience. So you did it and then you wrote about it, and so that's not the process of every writer.
No. I guess the, one of the things that is really important to make is, once again, we are born with these preferences just once again as just like, we're like right-handed or left-handed. If you're right-handed, you can throw a ball with your left. It's just terribly awkward. I can implement. But it's gonna take me three times as long.
One of the things about the the Foresight work is that they give you the tools to move and the Well the Creator problem solving process gives you the tools to move through each one of those very distinct problem solving processes. One of the things that we haven't talked about yet is as remarkable as the Creator problem solves process, [00:15:00] is even when fueled with the thinking preferences, it's not the tool for all problems.
And we have within the spectrum of problems, we go from simple to chaotic. Each one of those has a solution. Even the chaotic one where we have no idea how we're gonna solve world hunger, but somewhere there's an answer. But in a complex problem, which is specifically what creative problem solving addresses, you have multiple possibilities, and you are using that process to think deeply and profoundly to.
Decide how you're going to arrive at the decision and what might be three companies could have the same problem with how are we gonna improve customer service, or how are we gonna make it through? This particular time in history with all this change going on around us two and come out with three very different and appropriate solutions for their company.
Tahira Endean: So in the work that you're doing with [00:16:00] Third Edge, I actually wanna go back to the, because it's such a great name, but the name Third Edge, what was the inspiration for you for that? I
Suzanne Dameron: just came across this term and it got my attention right away and I, I looked it up and it referred to the space of transition from one thing to another, and it comes out of anthropology in the twenties, and then it moved over to French ethnography.
And at that time, I think it was. Like a teen would be between a child and adult, no longer a child, but not yet an adult. And I thought, you know, that speaks a lot to the nature of our work in creative problem solving and the space where transformation is happening and you know, changes and shifts and. Uh, then you're on the other side and, but a lot of our work is spent in that space and it's a space of ambiguity and uncertainty, which can be uncomfortable for people, and [00:17:00] I think speaks to why you want to have a facilitator when you're learning this process and when you're facing really complex challenges for an organization.
Tahira Endean: I think there's two things there. So one is that, as you said, this is the idea of the third edge. You know, when we talk about it as sometimes as liminal space, we talk about it in different ways. But, um, that this idea has been around for a long time and you know, we have been, as humans, we will have always faced complex challenges and will always face complex challenges and.
It's okay to ask for help, which is really what facilitators do is help people get through a challenge, whatever that might be, by bringing in different perspectives. And quite often those different perspectives are, it is our job to bring out those different perspectives because it really goes back to me to that idea of all of us are smarter than any of us.[00:18:00]
But quite often we really get stuck in, I have an idea. So, um, or I see a path forward when quite often we would be better to say we see a path forward. And the process again, the creative problem solving process that, that you use, that we've been using, it was also developed. And then refined starting in the 1950s.
This isn't something that just dropped in, you know, out of the sky yesterday, and it's been time tested and shown that yes, for some people it's exhausting and for some people it's invigorating and probably everybody else is somewhere in between. And those are just, you know, it's important to, um. To recognize all of those, all of those things.
Now, you have been facilitating change for a long time. You facilitated your own life changes as you, you know, went from having a successful PR company for a long time and then discovering this space. What are the things that you are most [00:19:00] inspired by when you are facilitating change?
Suzanne Dameron: I probably like other facilitators. Am always inspired by that moment when light bulbs are going off, and it doesn't happen at any one point in the creative problem solving process or in the facilitating process, but at multiple moments when people realize possibilities that they hadn't foreseen and there's always something new.
That comes up and connections are made in different ways. And one thing that we as facilitators know is we have these tools that we can use to deepen thinking in any one of the steps. But we have tools that can really take people deep so much deeper than they can do on their own. And even as, I mean, I've internalized this process quite a bit.
I use it all the time. Um, I use it in all kinds of different ways. But if I were. In an [00:20:00] organization that we were, we were going to make some big changes. I would want a facilitator. I would want someone who is gonna walk me through it so that I'm not trying to stand on both sides of doing the process and then also facilitating others through the process.
I'd wanna be able to, I'd want someone who could stand outside there and lead that and guide that, I should say is a better word for it, because of the team, the group is doing the change. One thing that inspires me, of course, is. The people who are doing it, and I do wanna tell one story about one student that I was mentoring had struggled with social anxiety.
She was in her freshman year and she didn't want to lose the opportunities that come with college. She wanted, I don't know what made her turn to it, but she thought creative problem solving might have a solution and she was interested in doing that as we went on. I. I, I, she had [00:21:00] the, this approach of grit and determination.
I'm gonna beat this thing. I'm gonna get through it. I'm gonna win, I'm gonna master this, I'm gonna conquer it. She had struggled with social anxiety all her life. She was on medication and so this was a lifelong thing that in her head, she was gonna overcome. And I was pretty concerned about the creative problem solving process, whether it was gonna hold up against this mountain.
Of I'm gonna beat this thing. And as a facilitator, I, I maintained, I stayed out of it and I maintained it and I let the process work, but I did have real doubts about whether this was gonna be the one time it didn't work. 'cause it always worked. Anyway, somewhere around that development stage, I suddenly was looking at a different person.
And she had identified concerns and she'd identified issues, and she was coming up with strategies. And the thing is they were coming from her. They weren't coming from a [00:22:00] therapist, they weren't coming from a book, they weren't coming from anywhere but her. And that the person that arrived was so concerned and afraid.
And the person that left was poised and confident and had a list of strategies and didn't downplay any of the issues, but said, this is what I'm gonna do about it. And she was very realistic about it. When I'm tired, I'm going home. When I'm nervous, I'm taking a friend. You know, it was just really.
Practical and I just saw such a transformation in that person and in her outlook about what college was gonna be for her.
Tahira Endean: I think what you just said there is the process always works. It doesn't always feel like it's working. There's definitely times where you can see people, a little bit of disbelief, a little bit of.
Skepticism, sometimes outright resistance to the process, but it always works and it works because we are really helping people get to their [00:23:00] own solutions
Anthony Vade: before we explore. We're gonna take a short break. Of course, if you want to list. To this episode without ad breaks and without interruptions. Head over to strategy table.co.
Sign up for your seat at the strategy table and you can listen to ad free versions, extended versions, and access all of the amazing resources we have available to you on the site. But for now, we'll be back after a very short break.
And so we are back. I really wanna unpack this, this trusting the process, uh, that Tahira was talking about. I like to think of it this way sometimes when we're facilitating creative change management. It's a bit like an organization or an individual or groups come across a wall. There's some sort of brick wall in front of 'em.
They can't see over it, they can't see the potential, but they know that there's a problem they need to get above. And so they start looking for ladders, for ropes, for grappling hooks [00:24:00] to get them over that wall. And sometimes as a facilitator, we are that ladder that brings them and we have to encourage them to climb over the wall.
Uh, but the challenge comes that. Sometimes it's a bit scary to go over a wall. You don't know what's on the other side of, uh, the ladder makes you go high. So you start to get a bit of vertigo. You start to feel uncomfortable as you climb higher and higher and further away from the ground, and the potential of falling becomes intimidating and scary.
And then you get to the top of the wall. And you have to get over the other side. And I've seen organizations do crazy things like give up halfway up the ladder, uh, and now all of a sudden they're stuck in the middle of the problem and too scared to get down or too scared to climb over. Or they only get the facilitator in for the first portion, and then they're stuck perched on the top of the wall, like company dumpty without a rope, a ladder, or another way to get down.
So with that crazy analogy, Suzanne, how do we, how do we understand the role of a [00:25:00] facilitator and how might organizations be brave and suspend the disbelief that they need someone to guide them the whole way through it?
Suzanne Dameron: Well, first of all, skepticism is fair. Right until you try it. Um, I would just say that along with the skepticism, give it a go and it does always work.
I have not seen it not work. If it was ever not going to work, it was with the person I just was telling you about. Um, and it worked there. It, that, that particular, um, experience gave me the confidence in this process always working. I did have a professor who called it a recipe, and you always come out with a tangible outcome and it always is.
It always is well thought through. Um, I have come to learn that apparently there is a question, um, that's more common that I realized is, well, what if I get stuck? You're not going to get stuck because there's sort of an in an inherent movement through the process. The process takes you through the process, keeps going, and of course, having a [00:26:00] facilitator, you're not going to get stuck.
There's another core principle to this process that we haven't talked about. Which is the divergent convergent. And I'm gonna jump back to brainstorming to, to talk about how this works. And so back, going back to the fifties, just like, uh, Tahira was talking about. Alex Osborne called the father of brainstorming, believed alone in the world, believed that creativity could be taught and learned.
The general consensus was, you're either born creative or you're not. He said, no, I think this can be taught and learned, and because of that. As one of the mad men of the advertising world in New York City, he knew his bread and butter depended on brilliant ideas and he, he needed those brilliant ideas when they needed them and not when inspiration stuck.
So he continued to. Learn and look and try and test. And what he came up with and what he learned is what we [00:27:00] know today in brainstorming is think of all the ideas first, and then decide what the best idea is. And when you separate those two processes, thinking of all the possible ideas, selecting the best one, you get a more ideas, many more ideas.
And we know that the best idea comes from more ideas. So those principles have carried on to us in brainstorming to today through the studies of creative problem solving. We actually have a lot more tools and we've refined brainstorming, but the basic principle of all ideas, first, no ideas of bad idea remains, but we found out that in each of the steps.
It's better to separate that process of generating options from selection of options. And so in the clarify stage where we are looking to see what the core problem is, we are generating as many possible [00:28:00] options to consider and our to understand the present circumstances and what our core problem is, and then we select them.
Okay, so ideation. We talked about separating ideas, selecting in development. You take that best idea and you're working to make it workable and usable and functionable. How many ways can that happen? And so you generate as many possibilities for that to be workable, and then you nail down, okay, so what's the most feasible way for us, our organization, to make this happen and implement?
You have an action plan. How many ways, what's, how many options do we have for generating action? Choose one that's the most likely and do it. Just do it as they say. If there's something wrong, then you go back, you maybe try plan B and you move forward. But it's just that core principles of separating the generation of options from the selection, and that also moves you from step to step to step each of the four steps.[00:29:00]
Anthony Vade: I love the simplicity of that, and I think. That combines so beautifully with the thinking preferences that you shared as well, that there's also that level of preference for, am I more open to that divergent, abundant type thinking? Am I comfortable in that space ideating, or am I more comfortable in the refinement, convergent, bringing things to a point, uh, choosing, discerning, clarifying, all of those kinds of elements as well.
How can someone. Especially someone in a leadership role within an organization that's responsible for change. Uh, do you have any recommendations for how they can develop that self-awareness for where their preferences lie? And I'll give you an example of that. Uh, I worked, I worked with a, with a great leader, uh, in recent years who knew that they didn't excel at abundant ideation.
They found, found it very uncomfortable. All they could see was the [00:30:00] constraint. They were very discerning, uh, very, very clarifying sort of style mindset. So they would shoot down ideas constantly and they, they had the self-awareness to go, if I'm in this ideation session, I'm gonna hold things up 'cause I'm just gonna be the no but person.
So how can we become more aware of our preferences, our natural tendencies and strengths to that extent so that we can interact effectively?
Suzanne Dameron: Oh, I, I really love that question because what it suggests, first of all, that's very normal that each of us is aware that we have a little bit of a weakness in an area, but also it, it touches on the underlying, unsaid things that go on in a group.
And one of the things that does get surfaced, and when you talk about thinking preferences, is exactly that. It really brings out our humanity. There's something about. Looking at yourself through the lens of cognitive, [00:31:00] your cognitive approach, your how you solve problems personally, that brings out some of those things and about yourself and your teammates.
Um, and again, when you merge that with the process, so there is an assessment that tells you. How you are most your preferences in this process. And then there are also other assessments that actually can tell you whether you're comfortable with ideation and or not, but you kind of know. You do know that about yourself.
And the answer to that, what a concern, uh. If anyone had a concern about any part of those processes or knowing that they were not terribly good at ideation, um, or very fruitful, there are tools that help them and there are tools that help you with if you're, for example, if you're introverted and you don't, you're not gonna be the person that shouts it out or raises their hand all the time.
There are other tools that are quieter tools that help you. Get to where to contribute in the way you need to [00:32:00] contribute. We all have very specific ways where and how we contribute, and I think when leaders are aware of this and they're aware that once again you're not gonna get stuck because you have these tools that take you deeper.
And when you're working with a group of people, you decide altogether, yes, we're done with clarifying. It is a yes, we feel done. We feel done with ideation, we feel done with this. So it's not like this. You're not being told what happens. You develop your senses and your intuition as you move through. And somewhere in our conversation it might have been tira.
The process invites all of us to the table. There's something I do wanna say, and it's that remarkably the creative problem solving process, I think is the tool of our times. We have so much change happening to us. And it gives you a tool to move forward, to navigate a path forward. And so I just, I find it remarkable how, I know it's [00:33:00] addressed the complexity of every era, but it seems phenomenally built for what we're going through now.
Anthony Vade: Yeah, it's really interesting because we always talk about unprecedented and we talk about uncertain and all these un words. Uh, to, to your point, I can't think of any other process, methodology, approach that is better tailored to exactly that. Being agile, being adaptive, being resilient, and in its very nature, being collaborative to address those kinds of challenges.
And we see. The rise of artificial intelligence now and everybody who gets excited about that. And we've had episodes where we talk about it. And in those episodes what we discovered is it's the humans coming together to discuss those topics that really create that impact and really help us address the uncertainty and the not knowing and the rapid pace of change.
And it's so comforting to know that there's a process out there that's [00:34:00] not only tried and tested over. Decades upon decades. Admittedly new in that respect, but it is structured to exactly do those things. I don't know if you want to build on that either of you. Where do you see that sort of sitting within the business culture moving forward given all those other influences?
Suzanne Dameron: Yes, I, it seems to step up no matter what that complexity is. It seems to be able to address it and to handle it. And so I think that is something that leadership would be interested in. And it's, it's a tool for, it's absolutely a tool for our times. It's a tool to manage change and find your way forward, whether you're an individual or a group or an organization.
There's another thing that I think about that I don't really hear that's commented upon too much. But I think it brings out the best of being human. We are not great at solving problems on our own, as we have seen in the human history. But give us a process. [00:35:00] Give us a tool, give us some intentionality.
And we're actually really good at it. It also brings out the best of us. It brings out our ability to collaborate. It develops resilience. It builds our listening skills. It helps us hold and tolerate ambiguity and deal with uncertainty. And when you really learn this process, you are learning human skills the best, how to be a really a better human being, I would say.
Anthony Vade: I was running a workshop just the other day and we were talking about a very specific problem that they were trying to solve for, uh, within their organization. And so I was providing some frameworks to help us navigate solving that. To your point, there was tools. Yeah, we have a process, but there's tools within that process to enable that conversation to happen.
And one of the participants turned to me and said, actually, I think I might use this for my family. If only I could get my husband doing these things and thinking this way, then we probably wouldn't have some of that conflict at home. And I said, well, you can have it for free. [00:36:00] The company's paying me. But that little wedded bliss that you're gonna get to have now, that one was a gift from me.
That's really
Suzanne Dameron: good.
Anthony Vade: We've covered so much. Interesting information here and, and unfortunately we have come to time, but I know for a fact we're gonna have you back and we're gonna explore more about how you got into this and the path that you are blazing into the future. Uh, but as is customary at the end of all of the accessible disruption episodes, I'm gonna ask, in fact, I'm gonna start with you, Tira.
Do you have a call to action? What is something that our listeners can take away from this conversation and have immediate impact?
Tahira Endean: My call to action is when you are frightened of nervous about change, consider a facilitator. It's just something that a lot of people have never thought about.
Anthony Vade: Amazing.
Suzanne, what would be your call to action to our listeners?
Suzanne Dameron: My call to action would be if you don't know anything about it, to research more about creative [00:37:00] problem solving and thinking preferences, and there was a book published last year that does an amazing job covering years of study in both in a very readable and accessible format.
It's called Good Team Bad Team, by the Managing Partners of Foresight, and it has lots of stories about what they've learned and how they've learned it. Very, very readable Forbes. Called it one of the best business books of the year last year.
Tahira Endean: Also, don't you like how in those calls to action, she clarified and I just jumped right in.
Anthony Vade: Yeah.
Tahira Endean: What's yours, Anthony?
Anthony Vade: I love both of those. I think. From this conversation, there's been a lot around self-awareness and understanding your team more deeply. So my call to action for all of our listeners would be to jump over to strategy table.co. Uh, sign up for a seat at the strategy table and start looking at some of the educational resources we have.
In there on the topic of applying a process, leveraging your [00:38:00] team's, uh, expertise, uh, their personalities, their thinking preferences, and start to start to develop a plan for how you are going to bring about real collaboration with that team. Once again, head on over to strategy table.co where you can find all those resources, uh, and of course get your seat at the strategy table to continue this conversation.
'cause really. That's all this is. It's a spark to get you thinking about how we apply creative problem solving. And with that, we are gonna wrap this up for another episode of Accessible Disruption. We'll be back with you real soon.
Podcast Host: Accessible Disruption is written and spoken by Tahira and Dean Ryan Hill, Anthony Vade, and their guests. All content is developed in collaboration with the team at Strategy Table Pathways Inc. Podcast production by experience design change. Find more information at Strategy table dot [00:39:00] go.
Podcast Host: The world is changing For most humans, change is uncomfortable and challenging to address financial and political uncertainty. Friction with back to office mandates and challenging hybrid workplace collaboration. Not to forget important environmental social responsibility and governance initiatives.
Combined with the rapid pace of digital transformation and the need for human-centered AI integration, change is happening and fast. This rapid change has highlighted the need for increased speed to innovation and long lasting change adoption in [00:01:00] many organizations. Whether you are a startup working on Agile process or a mature organization, navigating change within existing complex structures, the skillset and need to adapt has never been more vital.
The team from Strategy Table wanna help the wider world understand the need and approach to meaningful and impactful change management. Helping organizations navigate disruption and make change accessible, it often starts with a meaningful conversation. Welcome to Accessible Disruption.
Anthony Vade: Welcome to another episode of Accessible Disruption, where we put change management under the microscope and ask tough questions like, what is creative problem solving? Anyway? Don't forget to subscribe, follow and comment. Share with us what you think about this episode and what does creative problem solving creative change management mean to you, and share this with your community.
We really want to foster [00:02:00] conversations like this so we can all claim our seat at the strategy table. Alright, that's enough self promotion. Today we are talking about a topic near and dear to us, but as I so often do at the start of these podcasts. Tahira, who is this guest to you?
Tahira Endean: You know, this is a very special guest to me because when we started our masters in Creativity and Change leadership, which is of course where Ryan and I met the very first person that I was paired with on our very first exercises where we had to examine our own lives and why we were there was Suzanne.
So Suzanne Jamon, we did so much at the beginning and then we had a little gap. And then we saw you live and you had all these great questions from me. And it turned out that the work we had done at the beginning of our change leadership program stuck. And I was able to answer Suzanne and say, yes, I've changed so many of those things.
This is great. This is a process and the process works. So, and she is just a guru in [00:03:00] change management and one of the smartest women that I know. And we're excited to have you here today, Suzanne. Thank you very much for having. Great. And I also remember those first sessions. Yeah, that was really great.
And we can look back and we can say, so many things have changed so many. Adaptations have had to be made. So much resilience has had to be found. Yes and yes. Now here you are and well, let's just jump right into what you are doing right at this moment because you have just started a brand new company.
Suzanne Dameron: So what I did was I formed a company called The Third Edge Studio to mark the fact that I'm concentrating more on this. I've actually been doing this for several years, and I have moved out from, I did, uh, communications PR work for the. Previous 20 years and it, there was a, like a Venn diagram, there was an overlap.
And now we've moved more fully into creative problem solving processes and [00:04:00] change management and which is, so I'm very delighted to be here with Strategy Table, who is leading the way. And I know when you, you talked about resilience and I think creative problem solving is a process in itself. That inherently has resilience.
It has stood the test of time, and it enables organizations, leaders, and teams to be more resilient in how they move forward.
Tahira Endean: And you also, one of the things that you have really dug into is the foresight work. This is gonna be something that some people listening to this are gonna be really familiar with, and it's gonna be completely brand new to others.
So maybe tell us a little bit about. The foresight process and, and why you feel so passionate about it. The foresight process was
Suzanne Dameron: a,
Tahira Endean: a huge
Suzanne Dameron: step forward for the creative problem solving process, a huge step forward in the kind of outcomes they got. And in order to answer you, I'm actually gonna take a little step back and talk about the creative problem solving process.
And again, for those who might [00:05:00] not be familiar with it, I know a lot of people here will be, but there are four steps. Two, the creative problem solving process, its history is a little bit accordion. It had like fewer steps and more steps, but today we're really relying on a four step process, and those four steps are clarifying, which is looking at whatever it takes to understand the present situation.
Ideating, you're generating ideas, developing. You're taking the best idea and making it workable and implement. You're taking action. So these four steps comprise it. It's not rocket science. It's very practical. One thing to keep in mind is we are already doing it. Each one of us every day is using one or more of these steps unconsciously as we move through the day.
The thing about being humans is we love solving problems. We love it. We were born to solve problems. And even there is some science, a lot of science that suggests that homo sapiens [00:06:00] evolved because of our problem solving skills. So back in the fifties, they came out with how we think through problems.
And you know that history and it's really interesting and we may even come back to that. So we've got this, but it's process and this process, when I talk about it being resilient, this process has stayed with us through the fifties in the nineties. They started looking at what happens to people in the process, what's going on when we do this?
And you know that our advisor, ARD Puo, was the one who really led the way on this, and this is why people go to Buffalo State University to study with him and all the things that he's done. So, and what happened was, and I, I'll just tell the. The story of how this started, which is he had, he was finishing up a session in the problem solving workshop that he had taught for so many, uh, years.
And a gentleman came up at the end of it and said, oh my gosh, that was just exhausting. [00:07:00] I just, I'm drained, I hope. Tell me we're not gonna do any more of this. And a couple of minutes later, a woman comes up and she goes, that was fantastic. I am so energized. Tell me we're gonna do more of this. And what struck him?
Was, how did the exact same process, the same process towards problem solving, how did it affect these two people so differently? One, one is drained and one is energized. And fast forward to today, and a lot of science and research that went into this is what we could now call thinking profiles, and this is the foresight thinking profile that you're referring to, and it's telling us that.
Even though we have these four steps to the creative problem solving process and. We have the capacity, the ability to do all four. We as people have that ability. We are not born with a love for each one of these four. Very few of us do, and they're called preferences and just like we are either right-handed or [00:08:00] left-handed.
We have a preference for clarifying and we have a preference for ideating, thinking of ideas, or implementing and taking action, and these become our instinctual go-to problem solving method. No matter what the problem is, we're left to our own devices. Whatever the problem is, if you're an implementer, you're gonna take action and figure out the details later.
If you're a clarifier, you're gonna do the research and then you'll take action or think about taking action. So it really was a huge step forward for the creative problem solving process when they put the process awareness and people awareness, or even self-awareness because we learned about ourselves together.
I was trained with those two together, so it has been, it's harder for me to separate them and look only at the creative problems of the process, but it did, it did live for it on its own, uh, for quite a while and can do, and can
Tahira Endean: do. What I loved about it was that [00:09:00] I was the optimist. I think there was two of us that were optimists.
That sounds amazing, doesn't it? You're an optimist. What it really means is I'm a pretty low on clarifying and very equal actually across ideating, developing, and implementing. So I like to just get in there optimistically and you know, go for what those ideas are. And I think you're right, like having that understanding that there's always, anytime you enter into a change process, there's always.
We all bring our whole selves and our whole selves are not. Always gonna be good at every step of the process or enjoy every step of the process. And when we're facilitating that change, understanding that everyone's gonna have different amounts of energy that is required. One of my biggest learnings as a facilitator was to.
Clarify more for those in the room that are the clarifiers. You know, what's the next step? Why are we taking this next step? What do I expect of [00:10:00] you and what can you expect out of it becomes something that is, um, very important for the clarifiers in the room, whereas it's not a natural step, whereas you would find other people with different types of.
Personalities are going to, might be huge clarifiers and, but when you get to the action steps, they're like, oh, those action steps. Hmm. I need to clarify all those action steps a bit more. And that's the fun of facilitating, is understanding that I. Everybody at the party is bringing their own cocktail. So I've
Suzanne Dameron: had people say, well, I'm not really interested in creativity.
It's innovation that I'm really interested in. And it's an impossibility. It's an impossibility because you don't get innovative solutions without creative thinking. Creative thinking is the fuel to innovative solutions. They go together. So that's one. Uh, the other thing, creativity is a. Huge nebulous word and cover so much.
[00:11:00] And I am a student and scholar of the creativity field, which is very vast and very broad. And so I think people are, I think it's fair for people to wonder what all this is about because it is quite extensive. I can tell you I got into the creativity field because I wanted to know what you did at a creativity conference.
What exactly. Did they do? I'm, I know I'm creative. Why would I go to a creativity conference? Anyway, I couldn't believe it because after I spent a weekend at my first creativity conference and I left armed with creative problem solving tools for personal and professional things that were going on, and an interest and inspiration to pursue training in the field because it was so useful and practical.
So I, I now think of creativity. Skills as something that we can learn about, but true creativity is we're applying it. We are actually doing something, we're solving problems. That [00:12:00] problem could be, how am I going to get the image in my head on this canvas? How am I get, get the tune in my head. On paper, how am I going to be a better parent?
How am I going to make a meal with, you know, egg and lettuce in the refrigerator? How is my organization going to build the creative climate so that we can move forward and accomplish the things we want to do? So it's very, once again, I accordion leaps to mind of the versatility and remarkability. Of how creativity serves us.
Anthony Vade: Can we extrapolate a little bit more on those personality preferences? Do any of those personality preferences excel in one area and perhaps struggle in other areas from your experience?
Suzanne Dameron: Well, first of all, I want to thank you for calling them personality preferences because they're not, and it gives me the opportunity to point out that.
This is a cognitive preference that we're talking about. Really, it's how we think. And Myers-Briggs [00:13:00] disc strengths finders, those are personality assessments. They're great. They're wonderful for understanding who we are, how others operate, how we move in the world. They are not going to solve problems.
They help us understand why we may or may not solve them, but they do not help us solve problems. It is the understanding, the how we as individuals think through problems that tell us our preferences. And Taira was talking about that when she said she's low in, she has a low preference for clarifying, but she's pretty strong on the rest.
And in my case, I'm the opposite. I have a strong preference for clarifying and ideating, and yet I have a low preference for implementing and developing. So my go-to for any problem is do the research and get some ideas. Okay. That doesn't lead to action, um, Tahira's approach. And I'm just gonna, and I know her a little and I'm gonna take a guess from what she said is she's gonna do it.
She's gonna [00:14:00] jump in and she's gonna do it, and she's gonna look back and say, oh, I should really learn more about this before I take the next step. And you have written two books, and you did do a lot of clarifying and to write those two books, but I know it comes from your experience. So you did it and then you wrote about it, and so that's not the process of every writer.
No. I guess the, one of the things that is really important to make is, once again, we are born with these preferences just once again as just like, we're like right-handed or left-handed. If you're right-handed, you can throw a ball with your left. It's just terribly awkward. I can implement. But it's gonna take me three times as long.
One of the things about the the Foresight work is that they give you the tools to move and the Well the Creator problem solving process gives you the tools to move through each one of those very distinct problem solving processes. One of the things that we haven't talked about yet is as remarkable as the Creator problem solves process, [00:15:00] is even when fueled with the thinking preferences, it's not the tool for all problems.
And we have within the spectrum of problems, we go from simple to chaotic. Each one of those has a solution. Even the chaotic one where we have no idea how we're gonna solve world hunger, but somewhere there's an answer. But in a complex problem, which is specifically what creative problem solving addresses, you have multiple possibilities, and you are using that process to think deeply and profoundly to.
Decide how you're going to arrive at the decision and what might be three companies could have the same problem with how are we gonna improve customer service, or how are we gonna make it through? This particular time in history with all this change going on around us two and come out with three very different and appropriate solutions for their company.
Tahira Endean: So in the work that you're doing with [00:16:00] Third Edge, I actually wanna go back to the, because it's such a great name, but the name Third Edge, what was the inspiration for you for that? I
Suzanne Dameron: just came across this term and it got my attention right away and I, I looked it up and it referred to the space of transition from one thing to another, and it comes out of anthropology in the twenties, and then it moved over to French ethnography.
And at that time, I think it was. Like a teen would be between a child and adult, no longer a child, but not yet an adult. And I thought, you know, that speaks a lot to the nature of our work in creative problem solving and the space where transformation is happening and you know, changes and shifts and. Uh, then you're on the other side and, but a lot of our work is spent in that space and it's a space of ambiguity and uncertainty, which can be uncomfortable for people, and [00:17:00] I think speaks to why you want to have a facilitator when you're learning this process and when you're facing really complex challenges for an organization.
Tahira Endean: I think there's two things there. So one is that, as you said, this is the idea of the third edge. You know, when we talk about it as sometimes as liminal space, we talk about it in different ways. But, um, that this idea has been around for a long time and you know, we have been, as humans, we will have always faced complex challenges and will always face complex challenges and.
It's okay to ask for help, which is really what facilitators do is help people get through a challenge, whatever that might be, by bringing in different perspectives. And quite often those different perspectives are, it is our job to bring out those different perspectives because it really goes back to me to that idea of all of us are smarter than any of us.[00:18:00]
But quite often we really get stuck in, I have an idea. So, um, or I see a path forward when quite often we would be better to say we see a path forward. And the process again, the creative problem solving process that, that you use, that we've been using, it was also developed. And then refined starting in the 1950s.
This isn't something that just dropped in, you know, out of the sky yesterday, and it's been time tested and shown that yes, for some people it's exhausting and for some people it's invigorating and probably everybody else is somewhere in between. And those are just, you know, it's important to, um. To recognize all of those, all of those things.
Now, you have been facilitating change for a long time. You facilitated your own life changes as you, you know, went from having a successful PR company for a long time and then discovering this space. What are the things that you are most [00:19:00] inspired by when you are facilitating change?
Suzanne Dameron: I probably like other facilitators. Am always inspired by that moment when light bulbs are going off, and it doesn't happen at any one point in the creative problem solving process or in the facilitating process, but at multiple moments when people realize possibilities that they hadn't foreseen and there's always something new.
That comes up and connections are made in different ways. And one thing that we as facilitators know is we have these tools that we can use to deepen thinking in any one of the steps. But we have tools that can really take people deep so much deeper than they can do on their own. And even as, I mean, I've internalized this process quite a bit.
I use it all the time. Um, I use it in all kinds of different ways. But if I were. In an [00:20:00] organization that we were, we were going to make some big changes. I would want a facilitator. I would want someone who is gonna walk me through it so that I'm not trying to stand on both sides of doing the process and then also facilitating others through the process.
I'd wanna be able to, I'd want someone who could stand outside there and lead that and guide that, I should say is a better word for it, because of the team, the group is doing the change. One thing that inspires me, of course, is. The people who are doing it, and I do wanna tell one story about one student that I was mentoring had struggled with social anxiety.
She was in her freshman year and she didn't want to lose the opportunities that come with college. She wanted, I don't know what made her turn to it, but she thought creative problem solving might have a solution and she was interested in doing that as we went on. I. I, I, she had [00:21:00] the, this approach of grit and determination.
I'm gonna beat this thing. I'm gonna get through it. I'm gonna win, I'm gonna master this, I'm gonna conquer it. She had struggled with social anxiety all her life. She was on medication and so this was a lifelong thing that in her head, she was gonna overcome. And I was pretty concerned about the creative problem solving process, whether it was gonna hold up against this mountain.
Of I'm gonna beat this thing. And as a facilitator, I, I maintained, I stayed out of it and I maintained it and I let the process work, but I did have real doubts about whether this was gonna be the one time it didn't work. 'cause it always worked. Anyway, somewhere around that development stage, I suddenly was looking at a different person.
And she had identified concerns and she'd identified issues, and she was coming up with strategies. And the thing is they were coming from her. They weren't coming from a [00:22:00] therapist, they weren't coming from a book, they weren't coming from anywhere but her. And that the person that arrived was so concerned and afraid.
And the person that left was poised and confident and had a list of strategies and didn't downplay any of the issues, but said, this is what I'm gonna do about it. And she was very realistic about it. When I'm tired, I'm going home. When I'm nervous, I'm taking a friend. You know, it was just really.
Practical and I just saw such a transformation in that person and in her outlook about what college was gonna be for her.
Tahira Endean: I think what you just said there is the process always works. It doesn't always feel like it's working. There's definitely times where you can see people, a little bit of disbelief, a little bit of.
Skepticism, sometimes outright resistance to the process, but it always works and it works because we are really helping people get to their [00:23:00] own solutions
Anthony Vade: before we explore. We're gonna take a short break. Of course, if you want to list. To this episode without ad breaks and without interruptions. Head over to strategy table.co.
Sign up for your seat at the strategy table and you can listen to ad free versions, extended versions, and access all of the amazing resources we have available to you on the site. But for now, we'll be back after a very short break.
And so we are back. I really wanna unpack this, this trusting the process, uh, that Tahira was talking about. I like to think of it this way sometimes when we're facilitating creative change management. It's a bit like an organization or an individual or groups come across a wall. There's some sort of brick wall in front of 'em.
They can't see over it, they can't see the potential, but they know that there's a problem they need to get above. And so they start looking for ladders, for ropes, for grappling hooks [00:24:00] to get them over that wall. And sometimes as a facilitator, we are that ladder that brings them and we have to encourage them to climb over the wall.
Uh, but the challenge comes that. Sometimes it's a bit scary to go over a wall. You don't know what's on the other side of, uh, the ladder makes you go high. So you start to get a bit of vertigo. You start to feel uncomfortable as you climb higher and higher and further away from the ground, and the potential of falling becomes intimidating and scary.
And then you get to the top of the wall. And you have to get over the other side. And I've seen organizations do crazy things like give up halfway up the ladder, uh, and now all of a sudden they're stuck in the middle of the problem and too scared to get down or too scared to climb over. Or they only get the facilitator in for the first portion, and then they're stuck perched on the top of the wall, like company dumpty without a rope, a ladder, or another way to get down.
So with that crazy analogy, Suzanne, how do we, how do we understand the role of a [00:25:00] facilitator and how might organizations be brave and suspend the disbelief that they need someone to guide them the whole way through it?
Suzanne Dameron: Well, first of all, skepticism is fair. Right until you try it. Um, I would just say that along with the skepticism, give it a go and it does always work.
I have not seen it not work. If it was ever not going to work, it was with the person I just was telling you about. Um, and it worked there. It, that, that particular, um, experience gave me the confidence in this process always working. I did have a professor who called it a recipe, and you always come out with a tangible outcome and it always is.
It always is well thought through. Um, I have come to learn that apparently there is a question, um, that's more common that I realized is, well, what if I get stuck? You're not going to get stuck because there's sort of an in an inherent movement through the process. The process takes you through the process, keeps going, and of course, having a [00:26:00] facilitator, you're not going to get stuck.
There's another core principle to this process that we haven't talked about. Which is the divergent convergent. And I'm gonna jump back to brainstorming to, to talk about how this works. And so back, going back to the fifties, just like, uh, Tahira was talking about. Alex Osborne called the father of brainstorming, believed alone in the world, believed that creativity could be taught and learned.
The general consensus was, you're either born creative or you're not. He said, no, I think this can be taught and learned, and because of that. As one of the mad men of the advertising world in New York City, he knew his bread and butter depended on brilliant ideas and he, he needed those brilliant ideas when they needed them and not when inspiration stuck.
So he continued to. Learn and look and try and test. And what he came up with and what he learned is what we [00:27:00] know today in brainstorming is think of all the ideas first, and then decide what the best idea is. And when you separate those two processes, thinking of all the possible ideas, selecting the best one, you get a more ideas, many more ideas.
And we know that the best idea comes from more ideas. So those principles have carried on to us in brainstorming to today through the studies of creative problem solving. We actually have a lot more tools and we've refined brainstorming, but the basic principle of all ideas, first, no ideas of bad idea remains, but we found out that in each of the steps.
It's better to separate that process of generating options from selection of options. And so in the clarify stage where we are looking to see what the core problem is, we are generating as many possible [00:28:00] options to consider and our to understand the present circumstances and what our core problem is, and then we select them.
Okay, so ideation. We talked about separating ideas, selecting in development. You take that best idea and you're working to make it workable and usable and functionable. How many ways can that happen? And so you generate as many possibilities for that to be workable, and then you nail down, okay, so what's the most feasible way for us, our organization, to make this happen and implement?
You have an action plan. How many ways, what's, how many options do we have for generating action? Choose one that's the most likely and do it. Just do it as they say. If there's something wrong, then you go back, you maybe try plan B and you move forward. But it's just that core principles of separating the generation of options from the selection, and that also moves you from step to step to step each of the four steps.[00:29:00]
Anthony Vade: I love the simplicity of that, and I think. That combines so beautifully with the thinking preferences that you shared as well, that there's also that level of preference for, am I more open to that divergent, abundant type thinking? Am I comfortable in that space ideating, or am I more comfortable in the refinement, convergent, bringing things to a point, uh, choosing, discerning, clarifying, all of those kinds of elements as well.
How can someone. Especially someone in a leadership role within an organization that's responsible for change. Uh, do you have any recommendations for how they can develop that self-awareness for where their preferences lie? And I'll give you an example of that. Uh, I worked, I worked with a, with a great leader, uh, in recent years who knew that they didn't excel at abundant ideation.
They found, found it very uncomfortable. All they could see was the [00:30:00] constraint. They were very discerning, uh, very, very clarifying sort of style mindset. So they would shoot down ideas constantly and they, they had the self-awareness to go, if I'm in this ideation session, I'm gonna hold things up 'cause I'm just gonna be the no but person.
So how can we become more aware of our preferences, our natural tendencies and strengths to that extent so that we can interact effectively?
Suzanne Dameron: Oh, I, I really love that question because what it suggests, first of all, that's very normal that each of us is aware that we have a little bit of a weakness in an area, but also it, it touches on the underlying, unsaid things that go on in a group.
And one of the things that does get surfaced, and when you talk about thinking preferences, is exactly that. It really brings out our humanity. There's something about. Looking at yourself through the lens of cognitive, [00:31:00] your cognitive approach, your how you solve problems personally, that brings out some of those things and about yourself and your teammates.
Um, and again, when you merge that with the process, so there is an assessment that tells you. How you are most your preferences in this process. And then there are also other assessments that actually can tell you whether you're comfortable with ideation and or not, but you kind of know. You do know that about yourself.
And the answer to that, what a concern, uh. If anyone had a concern about any part of those processes or knowing that they were not terribly good at ideation, um, or very fruitful, there are tools that help them and there are tools that help you with if you're, for example, if you're introverted and you don't, you're not gonna be the person that shouts it out or raises their hand all the time.
There are other tools that are quieter tools that help you. Get to where to contribute in the way you need to [00:32:00] contribute. We all have very specific ways where and how we contribute, and I think when leaders are aware of this and they're aware that once again you're not gonna get stuck because you have these tools that take you deeper.
And when you're working with a group of people, you decide altogether, yes, we're done with clarifying. It is a yes, we feel done. We feel done with ideation, we feel done with this. So it's not like this. You're not being told what happens. You develop your senses and your intuition as you move through. And somewhere in our conversation it might have been tira.
The process invites all of us to the table. There's something I do wanna say, and it's that remarkably the creative problem solving process, I think is the tool of our times. We have so much change happening to us. And it gives you a tool to move forward, to navigate a path forward. And so I just, I find it remarkable how, I know it's [00:33:00] addressed the complexity of every era, but it seems phenomenally built for what we're going through now.
Anthony Vade: Yeah, it's really interesting because we always talk about unprecedented and we talk about uncertain and all these un words. Uh, to, to your point, I can't think of any other process, methodology, approach that is better tailored to exactly that. Being agile, being adaptive, being resilient, and in its very nature, being collaborative to address those kinds of challenges.
And we see. The rise of artificial intelligence now and everybody who gets excited about that. And we've had episodes where we talk about it. And in those episodes what we discovered is it's the humans coming together to discuss those topics that really create that impact and really help us address the uncertainty and the not knowing and the rapid pace of change.
And it's so comforting to know that there's a process out there that's [00:34:00] not only tried and tested over. Decades upon decades. Admittedly new in that respect, but it is structured to exactly do those things. I don't know if you want to build on that either of you. Where do you see that sort of sitting within the business culture moving forward given all those other influences?
Suzanne Dameron: Yes, I, it seems to step up no matter what that complexity is. It seems to be able to address it and to handle it. And so I think that is something that leadership would be interested in. And it's, it's a tool for, it's absolutely a tool for our times. It's a tool to manage change and find your way forward, whether you're an individual or a group or an organization.
There's another thing that I think about that I don't really hear that's commented upon too much. But I think it brings out the best of being human. We are not great at solving problems on our own, as we have seen in the human history. But give us a process. [00:35:00] Give us a tool, give us some intentionality.
And we're actually really good at it. It also brings out the best of us. It brings out our ability to collaborate. It develops resilience. It builds our listening skills. It helps us hold and tolerate ambiguity and deal with uncertainty. And when you really learn this process, you are learning human skills the best, how to be a really a better human being, I would say.
Anthony Vade: I was running a workshop just the other day and we were talking about a very specific problem that they were trying to solve for, uh, within their organization. And so I was providing some frameworks to help us navigate solving that. To your point, there was tools. Yeah, we have a process, but there's tools within that process to enable that conversation to happen.
And one of the participants turned to me and said, actually, I think I might use this for my family. If only I could get my husband doing these things and thinking this way, then we probably wouldn't have some of that conflict at home. And I said, well, you can have it for free. [00:36:00] The company's paying me. But that little wedded bliss that you're gonna get to have now, that one was a gift from me.
That's really
Suzanne Dameron: good.
Anthony Vade: We've covered so much. Interesting information here and, and unfortunately we have come to time, but I know for a fact we're gonna have you back and we're gonna explore more about how you got into this and the path that you are blazing into the future. Uh, but as is customary at the end of all of the accessible disruption episodes, I'm gonna ask, in fact, I'm gonna start with you, Tira.
Do you have a call to action? What is something that our listeners can take away from this conversation and have immediate impact?
Tahira Endean: My call to action is when you are frightened of nervous about change, consider a facilitator. It's just something that a lot of people have never thought about.
Anthony Vade: Amazing.
Suzanne, what would be your call to action to our listeners?
Suzanne Dameron: My call to action would be if you don't know anything about it, to research more about creative [00:37:00] problem solving and thinking preferences, and there was a book published last year that does an amazing job covering years of study in both in a very readable and accessible format.
It's called Good Team Bad Team, by the Managing Partners of Foresight, and it has lots of stories about what they've learned and how they've learned it. Very, very readable Forbes. Called it one of the best business books of the year last year.
Tahira Endean: Also, don't you like how in those calls to action, she clarified and I just jumped right in.
Anthony Vade: Yeah.
Tahira Endean: What's yours, Anthony?
Anthony Vade: I love both of those. I think. From this conversation, there's been a lot around self-awareness and understanding your team more deeply. So my call to action for all of our listeners would be to jump over to strategy table.co. Uh, sign up for a seat at the strategy table and start looking at some of the educational resources we have.
In there on the topic of applying a process, leveraging your [00:38:00] team's, uh, expertise, uh, their personalities, their thinking preferences, and start to start to develop a plan for how you are going to bring about real collaboration with that team. Once again, head on over to strategy table.co where you can find all those resources, uh, and of course get your seat at the strategy table to continue this conversation.
'cause really. That's all this is. It's a spark to get you thinking about how we apply creative problem solving. And with that, we are gonna wrap this up for another episode of Accessible Disruption. We'll be back with you real soon.
Podcast Host: Accessible Disruption is written and spoken by Tahira and Dean Ryan Hill, Anthony Vade, and their guests. All content is developed in collaboration with the team at Strategy Table Pathways Inc. Podcast production by experience design change. Find more information at Strategy table dot [00:39:00] go.
