How to Deliberately Be Creative: An Overview of Creative Problem Solving

Some people are just born creative, right? Actually, that’s not true. The truth is creativity is a skill that can be developed with practice. It is not an inborn trait that some people have and others don’t. We all have incredible potential to be more creative if we follow an intentional, deliberate creative process. What most people don’t realize is that highly creative people don’t sit around waiting for inspiration to strike, they get to work making creativity happen. They naturally follow a process called the Creative Problem Solving process. The Creative Problem Solving (CPS) process was first discovered in the 50’s  and since has been researched extensively and taught to hundreds of thousands of people with amazing success. The process has four simple stages: Clarify, Ideate, Develop, and Implement. I’ll explain each of these in more detail here.

When you want to be creative you must first Clarify your challenge and narrow in on the specific problem you are trying to solve. Perhaps it’s creating a culture of feedback within your organization, designing a new leadership training that will appeal to millennials, or increasing retention among new hires. All of these problems lend themselves to innovative solutions. The Clarify stage involves fully understanding the current state of the problem, including gathering data and soliciting input from stakeholders. Then, narrowing in on a specific challenge statement to guide the rest of the Creative Problem Solving process.

Once you have the specific challenge, you move into generating lots of ideas. I don’t mean 3-5 ideas, but rather dozens or hundreds of ideas. If you truly want to be creative you have to get past the typical and the typical always emerge first. In the Ideate Stage, there are numerous techniques that can be used to generate wild, creative ideas. I like to move beyond the traditional brainstorm to other techniques such as using Climer Cards, SCAMPER, and brain writing (see free download below). Once many new ideas are generated the best ones are selected.

The best ideas from the Ideate stage are further refined and developed into more complete concepts. It is rare, if not impossible, for an idea to come out completely formed. It takes time to adjust it, mold it, add to it, and tweak it. That’s what happens in the Develop stage. The Develop stage also includes

Once it’s more developed, it’s ready for implementation.

Creating action plans, finding supporters and addressing resistors, developing prototypes or pilots are all part of the implementation process. This is where things can get exciting. It’s also where things can get really tough. Sometimes ideas don’t quite work the first time. You need to changes and adjustments and try again. It’s not about getting it perfect the first time. It’s about doing it and refining it over and over. Keep going until it’s amazing, not perfect, but amazing.