Creative Leadership: Skills that Drive Change

1. Creative Leadership: Skills that Drive Change Gerard J. Puccio & Mary C. Murdock International Center for Studies in Creativity State University of New York

2. Purpose of Keynote To explore the important link between creativity and leadership To position Creative Problem Solving as a core leadership competence To introduce Creative Problem Solving: The Thinking Skills Model

3. Who is this third author, Marie Mance?

4. Chateau Marie

5. A Cat Named Mance

6. Baby Marie

8. How are creativity and leadership connected?

9. Four Fundamental Components of Leadership leadership is a process leadership involves influence leadership occurs within a group context leadership involves goal attainment

10. Mumford & Colleagues� Leadership Capacity Model

11. Qualities of Complex Social Problems Ill-defined: No single solution path � no right or wrong answer � thus allowing the problem to be defined in a number of ways. Novel: Past experience and knowledge is not sufficient to resolve the present situation, adaptive responses are needed for new or changing situations. Ambiguous: Gaps in information and/or a plethora of information of which only some is relevant.

12. CPS a Core Leadership Competency �The available evidence indicates that creative problem solving may indeed represent an important influence on leader performance� (Mumford et al., 2000, p. 18).

13. Creative Problem Solving: The Thinking Skills Model

14. Thinking Skills Associated with CPS

15. Visionary Thinking Articulating a vivid image of what you desire to create

16. Strategic Thinking Identifying the critical issues that must be addressed and pathways needed to move toward the desired future

17. Ideational Thinking Producing original mental images and thoughts that respond to important challenges

18. Evaluative Thinking Assessing the reasonableness and quality of ideas in order to develop workable solutions

19. Dotcom Failures: The Need for Good Evaluative Thinking Customer Service Meltdown Inadequate Order Fulfillment Use of Primitive Search and Transaction Tools Failure to Globalize Building Community Not Clientele Sullivan (2001)

20. Contextual Thinking Understanding the interrelated conditions and circumstances that will support or hinder success

21. Tactical Thinking Understanding the interrelated conditions and circumstances that will support or hinder success

22. Diagnostic Thinking(The Meta-skill) Making a careful examination of a situation, describing the nature of a problem and making decisions about appropriate process steps to be taken

23. Leadership Task: Using Diagnostic Thinking Gerry is leading the rollout of a new information system in a medium size organization. This new system is going to radically change how a substantial number of employees carryout their work. Gerry is aware that there are varying levels of acceptance and readiness in regard to the new system. Before rushing to implement this new system Gerry wants to make sure that some thought is given to how to best introduce the proposed change.

24. The CPS Thinking Skills Visionary Thinking Strategic Thinking Ideational Thinking Evaluative Thinking Contextual Thinking Tactical Thinking

26. Creativity: A Core Leadership Competence �It seems to me that business leaders have much more in common with artists, scientists, and other creative thinkers than they do with managers� Abraham Zaleznik (2003)

27. Creativity: A Path to Developing Effective Leaders �For business schools to exploit this commonality of dispositions and interests, the curriculum should worry less about the logics of strategy and imposing the constraints of computer exercises and more about thought experiments in the play of creativity and imagination� Abraham Zaleznik (2003)

28. Thank You & Best of Luck!! Puccio, G. J., Murdock, M. C., & Mance, M. (2007) Creative Leadership: Skills that Drive Change. San Diego, CA: Sage. www.buffalostate.edu/centers/creativity