Today more than ever before all organizations, businesses and schools need to Support, Promote, Recognize, Encourage, Apply and Develop the C.r.e.8.n.g. abilities and creative thinking skills of every member, employee, student and teacher. When leaders choose to truly S.P.R.E.A.D. C.r.e.8.n.g. and Creative Thinking they will grow in dimensions never seen before.

Each week thinking of all types can be expanded and enriched if that is the chosen purpose of an organization, business or school. Peter Senge in the Fifth Dimension talked about each organization becoming "Learning Organizations". I am talking about every organization becoming "Teaching and Training Organizations" in which every employee's thinking abilities, specifically creative thinking abilities are expanded and enriched deliberately. Every member, employee, student and teacher can learn to further develop their creative thinking skills through practicing with Creativity Challenges and Creative Thinking Tools and Techniques.

Robert Crawford from the University of Nebraska, Alex Osborn, partner of BBDO and creator of Brainstorming and co-creator of the Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem Solving Process and both the Creative Education Foundation and its annual Creative Problem Solving Institute, E. Paul Torrance, Ph.D., researcher, author and creator of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking have written about the teaching of creative thinking since the 1930s in the United States with their books published in many languages around the world.

In more recent times authors have included: Arthur VanGundy, Michael Michalko, Roger von Oech, James Adams, Doug Hall to name only a few. Each in their books and through their work have demonstrated repeatedly that creative thinking skills can be expanded and enriched through learning and practicing creative thinking tools and traits.

My work focus since the mid-1970's has been to develop methods for helping people to expand and enrich their creative thinking and creative traits in their workplaces from factories to corporations. As a speaker, workshop leader and consultant I have worked with hundreds of companies and organizations. The following paper and presentation made at the conference is based on my observations and analysis of my experiences since 1976.

One teaching tool I have learned to use is to create acronyms that in themselves explain the goal while each letter of the acronym represents and reinforces key points. The challenge of using acronyms is that they do not translate from one language to another easily. This I have discovered working in various countries around the world since 1977. For the purpose of this paper and presentation I will use two acronyms to explain the structure behind my recommendations to you and your fellow managers or educators.

Perhaps you will be able to translate my key points into words that may form valid acronyms in your language. If they do not then I encourage you to focus on learning the six points of each acronym and the order of each and disregard the American English acronyms that they spell.

Major Point One:

Leaders need to choose to S.P.R.E.A.D. C.r.e.8.n.g. and Creative Thinking

throughout their organizations, businesses or schools.

Many books have been written over the past twenty years about leaders and leading and their responsibilities and traits. Among the many that have been discussed I believe that one is a primary one for a leader to truly lead their organization to growth and success. That is providing an environment for the expansion and enrichment of creative thinking in ALL employees.

Based on my reading and studying of many books written about creativity and creative thinking in the workplace added to my professional experiences with many companies I have discovered and created a six factor system for what a leader and an organization needs to focus on for the growth of their people as creative thinkers.

One initial aspect for all leaders is to accept the necessity for ALL employees to become more creative in their jobs at least part of the time, not simply the people who hold traditionally accepted creative jobs. As a general rule I accept that the person who knows a job best, ought to be the person or people who actually do that job on a daily basis. Through the expansion and enrichment of their individual creative thinking abilities and skills they can then be counted on to creatively improve their jobs and work continuously.

My six factors for expanding and enriching creative thinking in ALL employees are:

SUPPORTING, PROMOTING, RECOGNIZING,

ENCOURAGING, APPLYING, DEVELOPING.

In my ongoing study of businesses and organizations I observed examples of each of these. Rarely have I seen organizations that have deliberate functioning systems including all six or that focus specifically on the expansion and enrichment of creative thinking throughout their organizations. In some organizations I have discovered organizational philosophies or guiding principles that included the importance of creative thinking and creativity yet I have not discovered any examples of companies that knowingly in a systematic fashion have created programs for the growth of creativity and creative thinking in more than a few employees or one or two departments or factory locations.

David Tanner in his excellent book, TOTAL CREATIVITY, talks about the excellent work he and his fellow members of the internal OZ Group at DuPont did at their company. It is the closest to a more complete effort I have come across in over 25 years.

Jerry Hirschberg in his book: THE CREATIVITY PRIORITY and Andy Law in his book: THE CREATIVE COMPANY both talk about how they established their businesses based on philosophies of business that focused on the need for creativity. In neither case have they established programs for generating creativity in ALL of their employees.

In many other books that have been printed since Alex Osborn's books: Applied Imagination, Your Creative Power and Wake Up Your Mind; all published initially in the 1950s much has been discussed about the development of creative thinking but not about a system, a learning system. That is the focus of this paper and presentation.

The S.P.R.E.A.D.ng System consists of 6 aspects, factors or emphases that can be applied simultaneously in varying degrees to expand and enrich creative thinking in ALL employees. Eventually such a system will become self developing and then a way of working or a way of living.

SUPPORTING

Leaders need to show complete, open and honest Support of the creative thinking of their employees. Posters, signs, articles in company newsletters or other publications, speeches at regular or annual meetings all are ways a leader can support the creative thinking. These are only a beginning to a list of potential an infinite collection of ways leaders from the CEO to the front line supervisor can show, tell, imply that they support creative thinking in their employees.

PROMOTING

Like showing Support leaders need to also completely, openly and honestly Promote the creative thinking of their employees. Banners, posters or signs again, contests and verbal statements can all be ways a leader can Promote their employees' creative thinking.

RECOGNIZE

Supporting and Promoting creative thinking alone can make a major difference in helping employees want to be creative in their daily work. When leaders deliberately Recognize individual and group or team creatively publicly they further extend its generation. Rewards, awards, prizes, public recognition, newspaper articles, television announcements, plagues, trophies, money are all ways leaders can Recognize the creative thinking of their employees.

ENCOURAGE

Supporting, Promoting and Recognizing creative thinking are all ways leaders can indicate that they encourage their employees to be creative. I believe that there are additional ways that leaders can encourage their employees: personal thanks, letters or notes to the employees, inviting the employees to present examples of their creative thinking to other employees, customers, or in other forums such as meetings in the company or professional association meetings or conferences or conventions.

APPLYING

This is the approach I have seen most companies use because they expected their employees to be creative because it was necessary in their work. Most of the time this approach was implied subliminally or subconsciously and not overtly or deliberately. I suggest that leaders write creative thinking skills and creative thinking into all job descriptions and add creative thinking skills and creative thinking to the list of ways employees are evaluated and measured on a regular basis: weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually.

DEVELOPING

Consciously developing, teaching or training creative thinking skills, tools or techniques in the workplace is an approach I have seen in many companies over my 25 years of observations and in most of the reading I have done. The problem has been that the developing, etc. was done sporatically or only in isolated situations or locations with limited numbers of people or departments and not throughout entire companies. When it has been offered it has generally been an extra and not a specific part of the daily or regular activities of the business or organization.

Major Point Two:

C.r.e.8.n.g. and Creative Thinking skills, tools and techniques

need to be practiced.

Since first becoming aware of creative thinking skills, tools and techniques I have discovered through my own experiences, experiences of my clients and through reviewing studies by others that these each need to be practiced. They need to be practiced to become more effective as all other intellectual and physical human skills. The goal of practice is to develop an instinctive knowledge level so that we use them automatically when they are needed.

Major Point Three:

We each need to warm up our Creativeness to generate creativeness on demand when we require it.

As with athletes, singers, dancers and other entertainers who need to warm up prior to performing or competing, we typically need to warm up our Creativeness when we are attempting to be creative on demand. This is especially true when we have many pressures and stressors in our lives at the time. Warm up exercises can be intellectual, physical, emotional, social or psychological. The key behind each of them is help us to focus more on being creative and less distracted by external influences. The intellectual can consist of word or graphic puzzles, idea generating, imagining, or simply using a mix of intellectual skills or our senses in unusual and focused ways. The emotional can consist of relaxation exercises, meditation, simple physical exercises such as stretching or walking. The emotional can consist of releasing exercises such as writing down all external pressures or challenges on a large sheet of paper and deliberately destroying it or focusing on happy and good memories and goals for the future. The social can consist of doing a series of supportive exercises with others. The psychological can consist of a simple exercise of writing two lists: good aspects versus challenging aspects of our lives. The general thread of all warm-up exercises is to direct and focus our efforts: intellectually, physically, emotionally, socially and psychologically on being creative for a specific purpose.

Major Point Four:

There are many creative thinking tools and techniques that can be matched to individual and team thinking styles.

My experiences with varied forms of personality, thinking style, communication style and behavior instruments has convinced me of the importance of matching specific creative thinking tools and techniques to individual preferences and strengths based on our uniquenesses. My doctoral research was designed to examine the significance and potential beneficial effects of matching teaching style, learning style and type of creative thinking tool and technique. The results showed that such matches enhanced the results. Since 1983 I have continuously discovered matching results when matching or deliberately mis-matching creative thinking tools and techniques with participants' thinking style preferences or strengths.

Using a basic questionnaire, M.I.N.D. Design™, that I designed based on the results of a study I did with several different instruments I have discovered that we can increase the potential results of creative thinking production by matching creative thinking tools and techniques using a minimum of four preferences: 1) preference for the use of logic and rational thinking, 2) preference for highly imaginative and exploratory thinking, 3) preference for highly interactive, supportive, feeling based group thinking and 4) preference for specific systems that integrate a "safe" mix of rational, exploratory, feeling and traditional thinking.

Major Point Five:

There are a minimum of 20 creative thinking traits that can be continuously enriched and expanded in all people.

The research of E. Paul Torrance, Ph.D. since the early 1950s using a mixture of experiments and his internationally renown TTCT (Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking) has produced a list of 20 creative thinking traits that may be measured, taught, coached and counseled in individuals and groups. My ongoing work with a mixture of people from varied occupations has also indicated that we can individually or in teams or organizations enhance and expand these 20 traits to further enrich our natural or existing creative thinking.

The 20 traits are…

fluency generating many ideas

flexibility generating many different types of ideas

elaboration generating additional details

originality focusing on the generation of unique, novel, new ideas

abstractness of approach

openness or resistance to early closure or resolution

change of context

combination of ideas

breakthrough of current limits (known or unknown)

unusual viewpoints

internal perspective

humorous perspective

richness & colorfulness of detail

feelings and emotions/empathy

fantasy

movement & sound - sense addition or change

multiple idea combination

macro/micro scale perspective

provocative viewpoints

future or past orientation

Major Point Six:

Being creative is a personal choice that we must each choose.

My ongoing study of creativeness in people has shown me through the research of many people, my own work and my own personal experiences have continued to show the importance of personal choice in the ability for any one to be creative on demand when wanted and/or needed whether for pleasure or work.

Being Creative on Demand is a choice. It is the result of knowing ourselves and others. We can continually increase our creative thinking skills through practice and application. As leaders or managers, teachers or counselors, parents, friends we each can make a difference in the creative thinking of our selves and others.