The Creative Thinking Handbook: Your Step-By-Step Guide to Problem Solving in Business

If thoughts like these occur to you, that's the problem in a nutshell, according to lead author Chris Griffiths. He'd say you're limiting yourself with negative thinking. If you assume that only certain, special people are "creative," or that creativity rarely makes a real difference, you need to start thinking differently.

In other words, you need to think differently about thinking! Creative problem solving is a skill that can be learned like any other skill, by anyone. And it can improve every aspect of work, whatever job you do.

"The Creative Thinking Handbook" is aimed at anyone who wants to feel more confident about their ability to solve problems, come up with new ideas, and bring a fresh and innovative approach to their role. It's also about creative leadership, showing us how big names in business have benefited from this approach, building organizations that have creativity at their heart.

Chris Griffiths is well-qualified to write this book, with his background in both creative thinking and business innovation. He's the founder and CEO of a company called OpenGenius, and he's worked with Fortune 500 and FTSE100 companies worldwide, promoting what he calls applied creativity. He's a well-respected speaker in the business community, where, he says, people still don't talk enough about creativity.

Co-author Melina Costi is a professional business writer.

So, keep listening to find out how to "calculate" your creativity, what psychological habits might be holding you back, and how we can put our creativity into action at work.

"The Creative Thinking Handbook" is designed as a practical tool, and it looks and feels easy to use. It's a fairly thin paperback, at just over 200 pages long, and it offers a nice mix of author insights, nuggets of research, and short case studies. There are also colorful examples from a good range of role models, both men and women – from historical figures such as Leonardo da Vinci and Charles Darwin, to modern-day innovators like Body Shop founder Anita Roddick and Apple's Steve Jobs.

But at every stage, this is a book about you. There are exercises to get you thinking about your own creativity, and opportunities to put the author's key principles to the test. The very straightforward structure helps you stay focused on the process behind this particular brand of creativity.

Part One helps you analyze your existing creative skills, and exposes any risk areas in your thinking. Part Two lays out four stages of the creative thinking process, which should lead to you having strong ideas, and knowing how to put them into practice. In Part Three, you look at how far you've come, and commit to keep improving from there.

It's a clear, staged approach, so it's sensible to work through each chapter in turn. Having said that, the authors say it's possible to dip in and out, if you need help with specific issues. Although the chapter titles are a little vague at times – like "Commit to Thinking Differently" – there's enough information in the table of contents for most people to find what they're looking for. There are online resources, too, which you'll hear more about later.

The book starts with the observation that the skill of creativity is often overlooked. It tends to be regarded as a mysterious gift that some people have, and others don't. As a result, we focus on other abilities – despite the fact that creativity may well be the most important one of all!

This is not just important for companies that do obviously creative work, like ad agencies or game developers. The authors believe that creativity is at the heart of successful business, period. It improves people's happiness at work and makes them perform better. On a larger scale, it helps whole organizations cope with challenges and change. And it has a direct impact on their profitability and long-term success.

So it's important that we know what creativity actually is – and what it isn't. It's not doing things differently just for the sake of it. And it's about much more than bringing extra color, a creative vibe – or even more beanbags – into the workplace.

Creativity may be surprising and playful at times. But it should also be serious and process-driven. No company can afford to ignore it, or to limit it to particular people or one-off events.

Among the many persuasive statistics in the book, the authors point to an Adobe survey which found that 78 percent of workers want to be more creative. And they quote from the World Economic Forum's influential "Future of Jobs" report, which identified the top three crucial workplace skills as complex problem solving, critical thinking, and creativity.

So why do so many people lack confidence in their creativity? Young children revel in it – so creativity should come naturally. But we "unlearn" creativity early on. Education leads us to become rule-bound and afraid of making mistakes. By the time we enter the world of work, too many of us are thinking in terms of boundaries, limitations and rules.

It's time to start breaking the rules. In one of the authors' most memorable statements, they say, "Creativity isn't just thinking outside the box – it's getting rid of the box altogether."

But that doesn't mean taking an uncontrolled, haphazard approach. You may not box in your thinking, but you do give it boundaries. That's how you manage the creative process with a team, focus your thinking, and apply your ideas with impact.

So let's look at the step-by-step approach to creative thinking that's outlined in this book. Part One is called "Thinking About Your Thinking," and that's a neat definition of metacognition. This is the foundation of the authors' approach. They admit we'd be lost without many automatic thought processes, and of course we have to make some assumptions about how to tackle common problems. But, when there's a new problem to solve, we need to break away from instinctive responses, and look at things with fresh eyes.

To help us to think about our thinking, they've come up with a tool called the Decision Radar, designed to assess creative problem-solving ability in five key areas: Understanding, Ideation, Reasoning, Analysis, and Direction. The authors urge readers to head to the companion website to use this tool online. You'll find it rebranded as "Calculate Creativity," and it takes about 20 minutes to complete.

This exercise reveals your strengths and weaknesses in the five key areas, and it helps you understand your overall approach. There's also written feedback that explains the analysis in more detail, and you get specific advice about where – and how – you might be able to improve.

The website offers other supportive resources, many of which you'll have to pay for after a short trial. But the Calculate Creativity test is a free, standalone tool, and it's vital for applying the rest of the book to your own situation and needs.

After pressing the importance of the Decision Radar, the authors explain some "common thinking errors" that may be stifling our creativity. Engaging examples and intriguing questions reveal just how easy it is to misread situations and miss out on creative opportunities.

For example, confirmation bias can make you blind to anything that doesn't match what you already think. Selective attention and recall can keep you wedded to your favorite ideas. And it's all too easy to be held back – or fooled – by assumptions, especially when you're weighing up the risks of doing something new.

By the time Part Two begins, most readers will be eager to get into the nuts and bolts of creativity. Four of the five areas assessed in the Decision Radar test are now defined as active stages in the creativity process, and each stage is explored in turn. The fifth area, Reasoning, still figures, but it runs throughout the other four stages – because we need to be aware of how we're using our brains every step of the way.

Sometimes, divergent thinking is best, exploring new territory and opening up a range of possibilities. At other times, convergent thinking lets you pull ideas into focus and apply them to the task at hand.

But you always need to guard against negative thinking habits. Black and white thinking, for example, is when you're unwilling to explore uncertainties. And mind reading is assuming you know in advance how others will react to your ideas.

Remember, in this version of creativity, problem solving isn't based on gut feelings. It's a serious, logical process that you work through step by step.

As you heard earlier, the first of those steps is Understanding. It's vital to clearly define the problem you're trying to solve. There are some useful templates here for asking the right questions, and for seeing situations from different points of view. For example, how would your problem look to a reality TV star, or an eight-year-old child?

When you've got a clear idea about what you're trying to achieve, you can move to step two: Ideation. This is where techniques like brainstorming can produce a rich collection of ideas. But they'll only work if you get everyone in the room to participate, and you value all their contributions – however weird and wonderful they may be.

Griffiths has a proven track record here. He shares some excellent advice about how to keep ideas sessions organized and productive. For example, allow people time to think alone. Combine and build on ideas. And make space for incubation, as the best ideas often emerge over time – and when people are doing other things.

By the time you get to the third step, Analysis, you should have plenty of ideas to consider, in your search for an innovation or the solution to a problem. Once again, there are processes to follow – and templates to guide you – as you sort, evaluate, score, rank, and finally settle on the best ideas to take forward.

Step four is Direction. Here, there's an emphasis on the need for creativity to have an impact. We learn about the importance of resilience and persistence, and get motivational examples from the careers of people like the inventor James Dyson and the tech entrepreneur Elon Musk. They prove that it's no good producing a great idea and hoping it will magically deliver results. You need a clear implementation process, and a set of targets that will drive your plan forward.

Part Three helps with that. It loops back to the self-test from earlier, so that you can judge how far you've already come. And it urges you to keep going – to learn more about the creative process by putting it into action every day.

As in the rest of the book, there's no shortage of practical advice here. Work out the best times of day for different types of thinking. Harness the power of daydreaming – because that's when your creativity is particularly strong. And help others to be creative. Let them know that it's OK to fail. Talk about "glitches" rather than "mistakes." Make work a fun place to be, and encourage curiosity and playfulness.

There's a big emphasis on collaboration. The authors provide some good examples of companies that prioritize shared creativity, and set up working environments that support it. Groupon's Enchanted Forest meeting zone will be the envy of many!

So what's our last word on "The Creative Thinking Handbook"?

It's a clear, practical guide that informs as well as instructs, through the expertise of Griffiths, in particular, and a lot of great real-world examples.

A few of the case studies seem a little simplistic – especially as we're told throughout the book that creativity is a complex business. And, of course, not every reader will have the power to implement some of the more ambitious ideas. But it's still interesting to hear about initiatives like those at Toyota and Disney that have boosted creativity on a grand scale.

The book includes plenty of warnings about what blocks creativity, and it has almost as many don'ts as dos in its chapter-ending checklists. That said, it finishes on an up note – and that's important, the authors say, because a cheerful outlook is vital for creativity to thrive.

To become more positive, you must embrace newness. Read inspirational stories whenever you can. And, however challenging things seem to be, always expect to succeed. That attitude can help you lead long-lasting creative growth.

The authors are clearly passionate about personal creativity. But they also want entire organizations to benefit from this book. If we follow their process, our companies won't become boxes we have to think our way out of. Instead, they'll be places where creativity can be unlocked, and even the trickiest business problems solved.

"The Creative Thinking Handbook: Your Step-By-Step Guide to Problem Solving in Business," by Chris Griffiths with Melina Costi, is published by Kogan Page.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.