Unlock Your Creativity with Heuristic Techniques
25 November 2008
Read by 1826 persons
1. Cognitive Distortions and New Forms of Competitiveness
The world has changed, but are our minds prepared? Not so sure! Everyone has learned to prioritize order, while we must confront disorder every day. We have been trained to respect the rules, while innovation comes from the ability of actors to think outside the box. Norbert Alter reminds us that innovation strangely resembles a form of transgression. Everyone agrees that there is a certain distortion between our cognitive structure and the characteristics of the universe we are currently traversing.
The cognitive qualities that are necessary today, according to Edgar Morin, rest on our ability to evolve in complexity and to tolerate uncertainty. One might even wonder if these contradictions are not at the origin of the significant increase in the consumption of anti-anxiety and antidepressant drugs, not to mention harder drugs (Modiodal, high-dose caffeine, or even cocaine). This anxiety may be explained by the fact that we must innovate using cognitive functions that are not adapted. Watzlawick would speak of a "double bind" in this regard. How can we be creative, agile, and flexible when all our education, training, and culture have rewarded the opposite qualities? This fascination with order is still deeply ingrained when we see the glorification we make of the most extreme "quality" procedures (e.g., Six Sigma).
We are in a paradox, and the results we seek to develop are not meeting our efforts. This is evidenced by the competitiveness clusters, which, for a number of them, are unsatisfactory and which, overall, are slow to produce the innovations we so desperately need to differentiate ourselves and enter the saving "price-competitive" advantage, which can be considered one of the possible solutions to what must be called a serious crisis. C. Blanc, in his report on "the competitiveness ecosystem," reminded us that it was urgent to act. We agree when we note that growth in 2009 will be 1% and that approximately 17.86% of people will be unemployed or in a situation of undeniable professional precariousness.
2. Self-Diagnosis of Your Cognitive Preferences
Knowing how your own cognitive system works can be a beneficial exercise to optimize certain potentials. In the tests we offer you free of charge and which come from our new test center, you will be able to diagnose your own brain preferences and those of your collaborators. What matters is not to possess all the functions yourself, but that your team, your company, functions as a collective brain.
The typology developed by Dr. Hermann is very effective. Everyone's preferences are easily identifiable through their "cognitive" behaviors. Simply observe how you reason yourself or how your collaborators reason. Reliable tests can confirm behavioral analysis.
Ned Hermann distinguishes 4 main types of cognitive orientation that can then be combined. Like any typology, it has its limits. It does not claim to define the entirety of an individual's functioning, but it allows highlighting key points:
- Left-brain behavior
- Right-brain behavior
- Cortical behavior
- Limbic behavior
The first two categories refer to a vertical right/left division of the brain, while the following two are linked to a horizontal division of the brain.
Researchers attribute to the left brain the capacity for fine analysis of reality. The image of a microscope is often used to define this capacity. Thanks to this instrument, it is possible to analyze matter in detail, separating its elements. If we take the example of the cell, it is broken down into many elements, each with its own characteristics. The left brain would be the brain function supporting rationality. A so-called "left-brain" person is able to go very far in the analysis of details. This is a very useful function for analyzing figures, correcting spelling mistakes, and filling out procedures. It allows mastering reality. However, with a microscope, there is a risk of losing sight of the whole and of getting locked into the immediate symptom. This is the criticism that some make of "allopathic" medicine, which develops reasoning based on a logic of exclusion.
The right brain, according to these researchers, would be dedicated to creative thinking; this does not rely on a sequential logic of information processed one after the other, but on an associative approach. This consists of letting ideas, images, and emotions emerge around a theme of reflection. This form of thinking prioritizes intuition and, above all, representation. By association, a vision, a "gestalt," is gradually built, giving birth to a form. It does not rely on logical but analogical reasoning. It can be understood by studying, in particular, the functioning of dreams. Dreams proceed by metaphor, metonymy, displacement, etc. The right brain manages the activity of imagination. It does not focus on details but on the whole. We will remember the image of the macroscope proposed by Joël de Rosnay in his book of the same name. Instead of focusing on details, we seek to cultivate a panoramic vision and make syntheses. This mode of operation is particularly useful in creative activities. In general, it is a cognitive activity that has been particularly censored. Yet it is this that we need today to innovate. We put it into practice, for example, when we sometimes doodle when we are thinking about an idea that is not yet clarified.
The upper part of the brain is called the cortical part. It is attributed abstract design capacities, while the lower part, called "limbic," refers to the pragmatic, concrete aspect. The limbic brain implements what the cortical brain conceives or imagines.
By combining the 4 variables, we thus have 4 types of preferred brain preferences:
The left cortical, which analyzes a problem abstractly. This is probably the one we favor in the analysis of numbers. It is the brain of the engineer in the methods office, the mathematician, or the accountant who manipulates abstract quantitative data.
The right cortical, which combines information, sometimes from very diverse sources, and which can give rise to innovations.
The left limbic organizes information and can create procedures that allow for ordered action.
The right limbic will create social bonds and use affective communication; this function favors exchanges and relationships.
To caricature and simplify, Hermann offers us 4 types of cognitive functioning:
The analyst (Left Cortical)
The creative inventor (Right Cortical)
The organizer (Left Limbic)
The communicator (Right Limbic)
3. How to Develop Creativity Functions in Everyday Life
We need to develop our creativity. We do not believe that this can be done by simple incantation or through methodological "ready-to-think" methods. It is through daily and customary training that it is possible to develop this function.
Tony Buzan, in "Draw Me Intelligence," has striven to make known this way of reasoning that he called "heuristic thinking." The "academics," holders of the order of knowledge, tend to smile at this work and consider it simplistic recipes. According to Norbert Alter, when an idea begins to make people smile, it is because it breaks away from conventions: This is the beginning of innovation. In reality, Tony Buzan must be recognized for having popularized a conception of thought that has existed since time immemorial: intuitive thinking. He has the merit of having opened the way to an approach much more developed in Northern European countries (such as Finland), since it is taught from kindergarten.
4. Some Innovative Tools to Develop Creativity in Everyday Life
To put heuristic thinking into practice, there are several simple tools:
- Mind mapping, which involves using an A4 sheet of paper in a horizontal position. A bubble is placed in the center of the sheet, characterizing the subject under study, and then key ideas are made to emerge by writing each one in a bubble around the central bubble. Then, associations of ideas are developed by drawing tree structures with one keyword per branch.
- The MindManager software has taken up heuristic techniques and offers a very powerful and very easy-to-use software (see our e-learning program)
- Oxford stationery is about to release a notebook that allows you to shape the ideas of collaborators during creative meetings: PaperShow (soon available in our shop).
Posted on November 20, 2008
4tempsdumanagement.com
The world has changed, but are our minds prepared? Not so sure! Everyone has learned to prioritize order, while we must confront disorder every day. We have been trained to respect the rules, while innovation comes from the ability of actors to think outside the box. Norbert Alter reminds us that innovation strangely resembles a form of transgression. Everyone agrees that there is a certain distortion between our cognitive structure and the characteristics of the universe we are currently traversing.
The cognitive qualities that are necessary today, according to Edgar Morin, rest on our ability to evolve in complexity and to tolerate uncertainty. One might even wonder if these contradictions are not at the origin of the significant increase in the consumption of anti-anxiety and antidepressant drugs, not to mention harder drugs (Modiodal, high-dose caffeine, or even cocaine). This anxiety may be explained by the fact that we must innovate using cognitive functions that are not adapted. Watzlawick would speak of a "double bind" in this regard. How can we be creative, agile, and flexible when all our education, training, and culture have rewarded the opposite qualities? This fascination with order is still deeply ingrained when we see the glorification we make of the most extreme "quality" procedures (e.g., Six Sigma).
We are in a paradox, and the results we seek to develop are not meeting our efforts. This is evidenced by the competitiveness clusters, which, for a number of them, are unsatisfactory and which, overall, are slow to produce the innovations we so desperately need to differentiate ourselves and enter the saving "price-competitive" advantage, which can be considered one of the possible solutions to what must be called a serious crisis. C. Blanc, in his report on "the competitiveness ecosystem," reminded us that it was urgent to act. We agree when we note that growth in 2009 will be 1% and that approximately 17.86% of people will be unemployed or in a situation of undeniable professional precariousness.
2. Self-Diagnosis of Your Cognitive Preferences
Knowing how your own cognitive system works can be a beneficial exercise to optimize certain potentials. In the tests we offer you free of charge and which come from our new test center, you will be able to diagnose your own brain preferences and those of your collaborators. What matters is not to possess all the functions yourself, but that your team, your company, functions as a collective brain.
The typology developed by Dr. Hermann is very effective. Everyone's preferences are easily identifiable through their "cognitive" behaviors. Simply observe how you reason yourself or how your collaborators reason. Reliable tests can confirm behavioral analysis.
Ned Hermann distinguishes 4 main types of cognitive orientation that can then be combined. Like any typology, it has its limits. It does not claim to define the entirety of an individual's functioning, but it allows highlighting key points:
- Left-brain behavior
- Right-brain behavior
- Cortical behavior
- Limbic behavior
The first two categories refer to a vertical right/left division of the brain, while the following two are linked to a horizontal division of the brain.
Researchers attribute to the left brain the capacity for fine analysis of reality. The image of a microscope is often used to define this capacity. Thanks to this instrument, it is possible to analyze matter in detail, separating its elements. If we take the example of the cell, it is broken down into many elements, each with its own characteristics. The left brain would be the brain function supporting rationality. A so-called "left-brain" person is able to go very far in the analysis of details. This is a very useful function for analyzing figures, correcting spelling mistakes, and filling out procedures. It allows mastering reality. However, with a microscope, there is a risk of losing sight of the whole and of getting locked into the immediate symptom. This is the criticism that some make of "allopathic" medicine, which develops reasoning based on a logic of exclusion.
The right brain, according to these researchers, would be dedicated to creative thinking; this does not rely on a sequential logic of information processed one after the other, but on an associative approach. This consists of letting ideas, images, and emotions emerge around a theme of reflection. This form of thinking prioritizes intuition and, above all, representation. By association, a vision, a "gestalt," is gradually built, giving birth to a form. It does not rely on logical but analogical reasoning. It can be understood by studying, in particular, the functioning of dreams. Dreams proceed by metaphor, metonymy, displacement, etc. The right brain manages the activity of imagination. It does not focus on details but on the whole. We will remember the image of the macroscope proposed by Joël de Rosnay in his book of the same name. Instead of focusing on details, we seek to cultivate a panoramic vision and make syntheses. This mode of operation is particularly useful in creative activities. In general, it is a cognitive activity that has been particularly censored. Yet it is this that we need today to innovate. We put it into practice, for example, when we sometimes doodle when we are thinking about an idea that is not yet clarified.
The upper part of the brain is called the cortical part. It is attributed abstract design capacities, while the lower part, called "limbic," refers to the pragmatic, concrete aspect. The limbic brain implements what the cortical brain conceives or imagines.
By combining the 4 variables, we thus have 4 types of preferred brain preferences:
The left cortical, which analyzes a problem abstractly. This is probably the one we favor in the analysis of numbers. It is the brain of the engineer in the methods office, the mathematician, or the accountant who manipulates abstract quantitative data.
The right cortical, which combines information, sometimes from very diverse sources, and which can give rise to innovations.
The left limbic organizes information and can create procedures that allow for ordered action.
The right limbic will create social bonds and use affective communication; this function favors exchanges and relationships.
To caricature and simplify, Hermann offers us 4 types of cognitive functioning:
The analyst (Left Cortical)
The creative inventor (Right Cortical)
The organizer (Left Limbic)
The communicator (Right Limbic)
3. How to Develop Creativity Functions in Everyday Life
We need to develop our creativity. We do not believe that this can be done by simple incantation or through methodological "ready-to-think" methods. It is through daily and customary training that it is possible to develop this function.
Tony Buzan, in "Draw Me Intelligence," has striven to make known this way of reasoning that he called "heuristic thinking." The "academics," holders of the order of knowledge, tend to smile at this work and consider it simplistic recipes. According to Norbert Alter, when an idea begins to make people smile, it is because it breaks away from conventions: This is the beginning of innovation. In reality, Tony Buzan must be recognized for having popularized a conception of thought that has existed since time immemorial: intuitive thinking. He has the merit of having opened the way to an approach much more developed in Northern European countries (such as Finland), since it is taught from kindergarten.
4. Some Innovative Tools to Develop Creativity in Everyday Life
To put heuristic thinking into practice, there are several simple tools:
- Mind mapping, which involves using an A4 sheet of paper in a horizontal position. A bubble is placed in the center of the sheet, characterizing the subject under study, and then key ideas are made to emerge by writing each one in a bubble around the central bubble. Then, associations of ideas are developed by drawing tree structures with one keyword per branch.
- The MindManager software has taken up heuristic techniques and offers a very powerful and very easy-to-use software (see our e-learning program)
- Oxford stationery is about to release a notebook that allows you to shape the ideas of collaborators during creative meetings: PaperShow (soon available in our shop).
Posted on November 20, 2008
4tempsdumanagement.com
