 Hi, my name is Niyate Chakrapani, also known as Ziet Mahamaya. I'm a former product manager at Microsoft now working at Consumer Direct. I'm the product manager for Hogo, a new app launching on October 20th, 2022 for consumer privacy and financial technology. You can learn more about us at hogo.com. The world is full of uncertainty, which leads to stress and real negative health effects. Everything you do is grounded in assumptions. Your brain evolved to take meaningless data and apply or create meaning. Product management is one of the most creative, rewarding, and self-developing roles in technology and uses creativity to deal with this uncertainty and provide positive outcomes for users. So what is creativity? It begins with not knowing. With a question. It relates to a number of ancient concepts. Huwe, simplistically translated to effortless action, the art of getting out of one's own way. Sahaja, spontaneous and natural enlightenment more literally translated to to be born together. And a number of others. We know now that creativity looks a certain way in the brain. And no, not just your right brain. Creativity involves a co-activation of three networks. The executive attention network, which is recruited during concentration that puts substantial demands on working memory. The default network also referred to as the imagination network, which is majorly involved in constructing dynamic mental simulations based on personal past experiences and used in remembering and collecting, thinking about the future, and generally when imagining alternative perspectives and scenarios to the present. It's also involved in engaged in social cognition, like when we're imagining what someone else is thinking. And the salience network, which selects which stimuli are worthy of our attention and has a robust prediction of individual creative ability from brain functional connectivity. An interesting feature of these three networks is that they're not typically activated at the same time, but research suggests that creative people are better able to co-activate brain networks that usually work separately, especially in the flow or trance state. So the creative brain really is wired differently, and creative people are better able to engage brain systems that don't typically work together. So while some people might have genetic and environmental factors which predispose them to creativity, it is something that anyone can learn and wire themselves for. Creativity is central to product management, whether it be identifying and questioning assumptions, empathizing and communicating, or brainstorming and problem solving with divergent thinking demonstrated by a presence of solutions and knowledge of differences. The job is almost impossible without creative thinking and system integration. The product manager sits at the intersection of the user, the technical team, and the business. We have to think like our users, but we aren't the target user. We have to understand the technology, but we're not the technical team or the ones building it. We have to understand the business, but we're not the business. No one person is. What we are doing is connecting the dots between disciplines and becoming a force multiplier. We have to be able to make associations, which is really what product creativity is. Once we have more connections between different pathways, it becomes easier and easier, basically exponentially, to be creative and innovative, words that are so overloaded, but can actually be broken down into simple concepts. As I said earlier, we often make assumptions in order to survive a very uncertain world, but those assumptions can be a detriment as well. While they are helpful to simplify things, we don't have all the information that we need, and we never will. So we need to be able to step back and figure out what assumptions we've made in the first place, something that's hard for nearly everyone. We also need to be able to communicate with others in a way that not just we can understand, but them. In fact, information by itself that hasn't been communicated, while not useless, is not useful in a group setting. We need to be able to understand the context of someone else's communication style and the knowledge that they already have. Now, we can't actually do that, but we can make assumptions that we then identify and investigate. Brainstorming and problem solving are maybe more obvious publications of creativity, but they're not easy. Even if you have an aptitude for problem solving or ideating, you need to be able to put constraints in order to use your time effectively, as well as think through a number of different types of solutions and understand the differences of them to optimize for the best solution. Anyone that's led a brainstorm knows that constraints make the process more efficient. It's like a writing prompt. Your brain has so much going on, as does the world, and your brain can't process at all. Giving your brain something to latch onto, to start and to know where boundaries are, helps the creative process. We have to be able to empathize with and know as best we can our user and come up with innovative solutions in order to meet their needs, possibly solutions and probably solutions that they haven't even thought of themselves. And this cannot be done in a vacuum. This can't be done alone. A product manager is a team player, so part of the creative work is actually in teamwork. In order to identify strengths, differences of opinion, and associations between opinions in order to come up with a solution. Moreover, a product manager needs to be aware of all aspects of the business, and especially in more lean teams, may even take on a role of marketing, sales, and more. And if you come from a creative background or want to develop more of a creative background, this can be directly applicable in ways that you might not have thought of. Writing, video editing, marketing skills, these are all valuable when it comes to writing specs, blogs, copy, and a bunch of other things. You often have to present your ideas in a creative way, even if you've already thought of a creative idea. Like we said, communicating is maybe more than half the battle. A great product manager is a force multiplier. Someone who uses the impact of others to create more impact and whose presence increases the impact that others are able to have. A great product manager also has a combination of divergent, convergent, inspective, and imaginative thinking, which you can imagine on a sort of graph. The Inspect Imagine Access refers to how a PM will approach the problem, product, or project from a more pragmatic or realistic point of view to a more creative and imaginative point of view. Meanwhile, the Divergent Convergent Access, which both are used, by the way, in brainstorming, refers to where to focus the attention, being the divergent and more open think, where a lot of ideas are explored to a convergent or deep think focusing on a single aspect or idea. We didn't touch on how inspecting and imagining are part of the brainstorming process specifically, but you can think about it in terms of creativity more generally. By crossing these axes, we can see a vast ocean of possibilities for a product manager to position themselves toward the product. In his lecture, Ken Sandy presents four clusters that he calls the four mindsets of a product manager. The first one is the Explorer mindset, which combines an imaginative point of view with a divergent way to see the world. The Explorer defines a vision, seeks opportunities and solutions by looking away from the product itself, and often borrows these solutions from other products similar or not from their own. It is ideal that an Explorer product manager pursues multiple solutions concurrently, validating and testing these different ideas to fail fast and cheap. The second mindset is the Analyst, who focuses on the aspects of the product and inspection, but sustains an open think standpoint or divergence. An Analyst product manager is concerned about metrics, how to set them and how to measure them. They're a data explorer and observer. A usual aspect of this kind of mindset is to interview customers. Being analytic is a good way to understand the customer and their unmet needs, and it's important to know that being analytic is not the antithesis or antonym of being creative. These things are not left brain, right brain, separated. Those are all simplifications. The third mindset is the Challenger. The Challenger, a combination of inspection and convergence, identifies and mitigates risks. It's a mindset for the PM who approaches ideas as hypothesis and requires continuous validation. The Challenger listens to problem finders and is always searching for ways to focus, prioritize, and cut. And last, but certainly not least, is the Evangelist mindset, focusing on motivating the team and building support with a combination of convergent and imaginative thinking. Also don't hear that imagination and convergence are not opposites either. The Evangelist communicates with all the stakeholders, understands different kinds of communication and sets context. More importantly, they lose ownership over the product to the team, giving them all a sense of unit and engagement. You're likely more skilled in and prone to one mindset of being a product manager, but it's important as a well-rounded great PM to be involved in them all, within one product or multiple, within one day, one week, one month, one career, I don't know. But you will have to use these different types of thinking as a well-rounded individual to make a great product. Creatives are also associated with higher levels of emotional intelligence, which makes it easier to empathize with customers, stakeholders, and team members by engaging, listening, and learning from them, which is the secret to building awesome products. Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify and manage your own emotions and the emotion of others. Emotional intelligence is generally said to include four core skills, emotional self-awareness, what I see plus my personal confidence, social awareness, or empathy, what I see plus my social competence. Self-management or motivation, what I do plus my personal competence, and relationship management or social skills, what I do plus my social competence. Creativity is also associated with resilience. Creatives feed off of adversity. They don't run from it. They embrace it. Adversity is where the creative process starts. Our problem is nothing more than an opportunity to create something better, to see things differently, and to discover new paths forward. Creatives thrive on collaborating within diverse teams to hear a variety of perspectives because they know that these can lead to bigger and better ideas. So how do you build your creativity? Creativity appears when we allow for unconscious, unfiltered, or random sensations to arise in the flow state. Integrate your knowledge. Create synaptic connections by finding associations between concepts. The more you have different sets of neurons firing to one another across pathways, the easier it is for those new pathways to fire next time, and the more pathways you now have to think through things. Also, schedule time for imagination, daydreaming, visualization, with constraints. In order to achieve flow, psychologist Mahay Chiksemay lays out the following three conditions. The goals are clear, the feedback is immediate, and a balance exists between opportunity and capacity. Other great techniques include journaling, taking visual notes in mind maps, painting, drawing, coloring, dancing and using your body, and exercising. Do things in moderation that give you joy and minimize harm to yourself and others, and remember that love and joy are exponential when collected. Practice positive psychology and gratitude, including nightly gratitude journaling. This will all improve your mood and activate the anterior cingulate cortex which is associated with insight. Address addictions and avoid other hijackings of neural pathways. Use psychoactive substances like caffeine as a tool if you want help. Eat healthy foods and practice raja yoga including pranayama and meditation. Perform samyama, the combined simultaneous practice of dharana, concentration, dhyana, meditation, and samadhi, union. Yogi B.K. Iyengar says, fixing the consciousness on one point or region is concentration, dharana. A steady continuous flow of attention directed towards the same point or region is meditation, dhyana. When the object of meditation engulfs the meditator, appearing as the subject, self-awareness is lost. This is samadhi. These three together constitute integration or samyama. For mastery of samyama comes the light and awareness of awareness and insight. Samyama may be applied in various spheres to drive its usefulness. And seek diverse community perspectives. Use the wisdom of Nguni Bangtu philosophies of Ubuntu. I am because we are. Being self through others and humanity most literally. Be present in the moment and breathe. Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese monk and associate of the Dalai Lama recommends you say in your head while inhaling, as I breathe in, I know I am alive and while exhaling, as I breathe out, I smile. Or simply in, out, to bring awareness to your breathing and presence. And rest and sleep. These are some of the greatest things that you can do to improve your creativity. Gratitude trades the brain to focus on the positive, altering its normally negatively biased information filtering tendencies. This impacts mood, but it also increases novelty since we're used to the negative, the positive is often refreshingly different. Gratitude feeds the salience network with more raw material and the good mood that results gives the default mode network a better shot at using the material to make something startlingly new. Mindfulness teaches the brain to be calm, focused and non-reactive, amplifying executive attention. It also put the little space between thought and feeling and gives the ACC more time to consider alternative, far-flowing possibilities. Exercise lowers stress levels, fleshing cortisol from our system while increasing feel-good neurochemicals, including serotonin, norepinephrine, endorphins, and dopamine. This lowers anxiety, augments our good mood, and amps up the ACC's ability to detect remote possibilities. Plus, the timeout that exercise provides works as an incubation period. A good night's rest also provides additional benefits. In fact, one might say the most important ones of all. It increases our energy levels, providing resources to meet challenges. It improves memory consolidation and mood. The resulting feeling of safety also lifts our mood and increases our willingness to take risks and amplify creativity. Moreover, sleep is the most critical incubation period of them all. When we sleep, the brain has time to find all sorts of hitting connections between ideas. Gratitude, mindfulness, and exercise and sleep are non-negotiables for sustained peak performance. The non-negotiable part is key. When life gets complicated, these four practices are often what we remove from our schedule. But when life gets complicated, lean into these practices instead to get the creativity needed to untangle the complicated. If you already consider yourself creative and want to enter into product management, ramp up on system design and technical concepts that you are interested in and that people are hiring for. Look into industry professional transition programs, especially in companies that will pay you for this, and roles looking for non-traditional backgrounds, possibly in startups. And most importantly, build projects. What problems can you solve today? What goals can you achieve? What does the market need that you are uniquely positioned to provide? You will have a harder time convincing people that you can do what you say you can do than you will actually doing it. If you're already a product manager, how do you know your team needs a boost of creativity? Signs include converging answers and perpetual alignment. Encourage creativity on your team by expanding the individual techniques to a group setting and hire for creativity with the following principles. Remember that there are many types of intelligence and abilities and not all of them are rewarded by society with obvious merits. Consider people with non-traditional career backgrounds, fewer qualifications on paper, and diverse marginalizations. Ask candidates to make visual, verbal, kinetic, and other associations. Scout candidates on non-traditional platforms like social media, lower tier colleges, and related less skilled work. All of these terms are not things I agree on, but are used today. Test teamwork and collaboration by working on a problem together as insight is rarely developed alone. Value passion. Make a creative job posting may be a riddle. Value diversity, including disability and different ability. Give candidates questions beforehand where they can showcase their ideas, but do not overwhelm them with too much work during their job search or ask them to solve business problems for you without pay. Ask the same questions of all candidates and provide the same set of information for fairness. Always accommodate online interviews and proactively ask for candidates, accommodations, pronouns, and preferred names. Remove your ego and value differences. This might be the most important thing of them all. I'll conclude with a quote by Picasso. Everything you can imagine is real. Thank you for joining today. Now go out there and be creative.