 the Creative Life, a collaborative production of Think Tech Hawaii and the American Creativity Association. I am your host, Darlene Boyd. And our guest for today is Lynn Kraus. Lynn joins us from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Lynn aims to help us to better understand how to navigate through change in our personal and professional lives. She is the Chief Innovation Officer for Brain Based Training and Development Services Incorporated. Lynn, how about we start out by having you give us a quick sketch of why you have chosen Brain Based Training as the integral part of your creativity training services. And then we'll move on and get started with disruptive paradigms of change. All right. I actually, when I worked for the Navy for many years, 25 years, I was introduced to the whole brain model by Ned Herman and started using his work with the Navy. When I left the Navy and for my own company, I just realized how important it was to use whole brain thinking as a foundation for everything I teach, not just change, but whether it's developing high performance teams or conflict management or strategic thinking or creative thinking, that it is really the foundation. And I spent a lot of years with Ned Herman. I was very fortunate before he passed away and he was a mentor with me and worked a lot with me on many of the different applications I developed for using the model in the workplace. Maybe Lynn, we should mention that you came to know each other when you were Executive Director of the American Creativity Association. Yes, Ned was president actually before I was Executive Director and he mentioned the American Creativity Association to me and I became a member and after many years kind of Executive Director for a while. And he was the one who made my connection with American Creativity Association. Maybe we should call it that first slide and look at a quote of his. Yeah, this was back when Ned was president in 1994. Now think about that. 1994 he was talking about change and he said ultimately we humans must accept change not only as inevitable but also as a much needed ingredient in the survival of the species. Without change we risk becoming endangered. History teaches us that the final verdict is change or face extinction. And I think he was ahead of his time on that quote because for us in the field of creativity we were trying to say you do have to think differently. You do have to change the way you think and do processes. But as you know back then we were still going against the tide even in the business community. And so as things went on and change really accelerated. I mean back when he was talking about it we still had what I would call some incremental change where you had some overlap. Something would happen technologically or socially or politically. But now we have ongoing turbulence. There is no more incremental. It's just perpetual overlapping constant change. And back then I think probably in the same years we had George Lan at one of our conferences where he wrote this book Grower Died. And he was talking about and he was talking about how corporations really had to embrace creative thinking in order to survive. But the whole survival mode has changed now because of just the constant overlapping change. And of course with the pandemic now which has driven change down to everybody at the same time across all disciplines. And that now we're really in a mode that I would call change or die. If you can't change you're not going to survive. It's not even about growing. It's about being able to look at what we have and how do we change it and shift it. And so having done organizational change with organizations for a while where you're trying to get people to understand how to drive change, the human element of change, getting them to adapt, teaching them how to drive change through the organization, which is most of the time not successful. The pandemic brought it to the individual. I mean now we all had to change and it required us to really think differently and use the creative process as part of that change. One of the things Ned said, which I thought was quite interesting, he was saying that when you're dealing with change and a lot of people didn't talk about change this way, you're dealing with two processes. One is the change process and the other is the creative process that provides a solution to change. Because you remember that old Einstein quote, if you keep doing the same thing you've always done, you'll get the same result. And that's what was happening. People were trying to implement change, but they were still focused in a very logical linear way of looking at things. So whether it was individuals trying to deal with things that were going on in their lives or even organizations, they were focused on a pretty much logical problem-solving mode to find the solution to the change. And I have a cute little joke that we use because I work with a lot of government organizations. We used to say that are you going to find scapegoats or reorg? That's our little government joke that oh we're going to find scapegoats or reorganization because that's what government used to do. Their solution to every issue was oh we'll do a reorg, we'll restructure everything. And so when you look at creative problem-solving, you're looking at a more risk-taking approach, but you're looking at doing it differently. And so in terms of when we're trying to drive change to find solution, especially with the issues we're dealing with now, whether you're an individual or a company, low resources, limited resources, whether it's money or manpower, and that you have to break out of the way you've done it before. And so with the pandemic, you can just look at some of the solutions that came up, businesses, that now had to rethink how they actually did something. And it kind of reminds me, we both know Edward DeBona from American Creativity also. Well he had a provocation, was one of his big techniques, where you would take a problem and reverse it to find the creative solution. Like an example for our audience would be restaurants that don't serve food, and you would have people brainstorm around it. And of course, I'm living with it. We've lived with restaurants that didn't serve, they delivered, but they didn't serve food. And that's how they got internet cafe and things like that. So what happened for businesses? I didn't think about individuals at home who now had to have school, work, home life, maybe take care of people all in one place. They had to think about, how do I look at this environment that was used for one thing and now make it work for a whole lot of different uses. And that's one of the things he did with that technique. And so amazing if you look at how businesses switched over to all kinds of delivery, crazy things, way to do it. One of my favorite examples about the whole change thing through the pandemic is when I was in New York, to see how these restaurants could take the smallest square footage of outdoor space and create the most amazing little outdoor spaces because in the beginning we were all eating outside. And you know, even in Philadelphia here, I think it might have been 35 degrees and we're sitting outside with heaters, with you know, hoods and muffins. Yeah, while we're eating, because originally nobody wanted to go back in the restaurants and they weren't open. Lynn, your mention of New York is reminding me. Sadly, we remember when New York had a crime problem and then things turned around and then we felt very safe. Those of us, we lived in Philadelphia, we knew we could live in New York very safely. But now every day we're hearing the crime reports and it seems as you of course highlight the pandemic as many of our guests do at this point. How do we regain control during major change? Every day as you point out, we feel like we're spinning and don't know what's going to wake up to the next day. So how do we get that control back? Yeah, and as you said, major change has to do with loss of control. Because you know, change is on a continuum as well. You know, you can have like a minor change that just requires some personal adjustment. You can have a major change that's significant disruption to what you expect in your expectations. And people could accommodate the change, maybe not really easily, but they could accommodate it. Then we have traumatic shock and change, which is kind of what we're going through now. So in order to, you have to create what we call predictability, you have to help people know what's coming when you're driving change, when you're trying to manage through change. So the greater the loss of control, the more major the change is. And so people have to believe they have some sense of control. You know, it's the old story of that, you know, people will stay in a dysfunctional relationship because they know what's happening versus actually changing and trying something different, even though there's risk. So this is where, especially with New York, because it seems like, especially with crime, everybody wants to focus on what happened, how it was better. What was the solution 20 years ago? What was, you know, what could be the solution? And really, it's a systematic thing that they have to really relook at. Now, do I have the answer to that? No, but it would require creative thinking that would let people look past those logical structures of, oh, we could arrest people, we could do this, we can maybe provide shelters, we could do this, we could do that. So, you know, we always have that great saying in creativity, there's always more than one right answer. True. And there's always multiple answers, but that what happens is people get really rooted when they're trying to come up with some solution into some kind of logical kind of way to look at it. And it seems like you're about to suggest some adaptation resources. I mean, don't we have to, oh yeah, and what, yeah, in terms of adapting. And I just, one of the things too, and I just want to say this about change, that people think that crisis drives change, that if we're in crisis, we're going to have change, not necessarily, and I'll just throw this out, that 90% of binary, coronary, binary patient, of bypass patients, when they command and the doctor tells them they need to have a change in lifestyle, according to John Hopkins study, 90% don't change their lifestyle. So, but think about it, that's a major life crisis. And then sometimes, and this goes back to the fear will drive change, but not necessarily either. You need a compelling vision. So when I say compelling vision, that's part of like, what do we see as the big picture solution? And that when you say compelling vision that the fear is, is the compelling part? No, I think people need a vision of not the fear out of the fear. Yeah, in other words, what does the like, I'll use your New York example before we go to capacity, but what does, what does, what does the city look like when we crime is not an issue? What's that big picture? What's the vision of that? And then we can then look it back to see what we have to do to, to make the change. But it's like, there has to be something bigger out there. The other thing that's so important is that people have mindsets. And this is what really affects most of everything going on in that you have this mindset and it doesn't matter what the facts are. Facts do not affect your mindset. And so we reject those facts that don't fit our mindset. And that has to do with change and with many things. And so that a lot of our mindsets are also have to do with the way we process and see data. And so that we all see the same data, but maybe process it differently. And so then, then we start to see all that data that way. And so in order to get past that, to move into some things that look at how do we, you know, do some adoption to change? Those are some major things that have to occur up front. Now, what happens with everybody today? Because change is so overlapping. We have one of the things that affects us is called adoption resources. What's our capacity to absorb all this change? I mean, every day it's something, whether it's the price of gas went up now, I can't get what I need at my supermarket. My kids are screaming in the next room while I'm trying to have a conference call for work. I can't go to work because we're not open, whatever it is a whole range of things. So what happens is we're like, if you think of us like a sponge, and what happens is this change, all this change is pouring in. Remember, it's all overlapping. Some of it could be from your personal life. Some of it could be from your business life. Some of it could be because you're in a volunteer organization or your caretaker or whatever it is. So you have, you basically all have one brain, even though we have all different roles in life. But as what's happening is change, it's pouring it, pouring it, pouring it in. So what's the only thing we can do if we keep pouring it? What would be the two things we could do to stop that? What's the two things we could do to help us with change resources? Bring it out. Bring out what we have in there or stop pouring it in. Now, what happens is, whether it's organizations or we're an individual, what most people don't do is try to look at are there things I can stop pouring in? In other words, here's all these things I have to do. Maybe I have to find ways to have other people do it, change what I'm doing. One of the things I say is detach from it. Sometimes we have emotional connections to tasks that we do, and we don't want to let them go. And so sometimes you have to detach. We have to reinvent. We have to delegate. But we have to find a way to look at what we're doing and saying, okay, what things are going. So when you talk about the sponge, and it's an excellent example that we all can follow, sponge is coming all different sizes. So we're not equal in the capacity as individuals as personalities to absorb change. So how? Okay, right. Yes. And what role does our, do our emotions play in dealing with change? Okay, so I'll take one at a time. With the sponge, we all basically have, if you think of your brain as your sponge, okay, we all have the same sponge. But we do have everybody has different capacity. It might be my capacity for change within my family structure, within my work structure, me as individually. And that people, there are some people who resilience is something that we talk about. And what's resilience here? I'm going to give an example. Here's my rubber band. Now, when change is stretching you, the faster you bounce back, the more resilient you are. Now, obviously, at some point, the rubber band will break. So when people are more resilient, they can bounce back faster. What happens with change is that when you have too much change, too much stuffs in that sponge, what happens is you become dysfunctional. And when I say dysfunctional, I mean you could be sick, you make poor decisions, you start having conflict with people, you know, you're jumping, you know, you start getting angry. Just you get tired, you get fatigued. And so that's what happens when people have too much going on. Resilient people can absorb larger amounts of that and still stay functional. But everybody has that breaking point. You can't stretch a rubber band forever. And is that why, not because of the rubber band, but why are people more resilient than others? Is it in their past history? Something that... Okay. And one of the things we know about resilient people is resilient people tend to be, have a more positive view towards the change. They have a clear vision of what they're trying to do. They also can be organized around ambiguity. So all the stuffs going on, I have, I can't be dealing with the absolute linear structure. So I need a way to be able to organize with not having a lot of data. I need to be able to make decisions, intelligent risk-taking, creative thinking, which is the same thing, making decisions and trying things without a whole lot of data. And I'm good, and they're good resilient people are good at responding to uncertainty in different things. And they feel they can be focused about getting the task done in terms of where they want to go. So now one of the things is in what I teach in brain dominance in thinking preference, the Herman model, that people, in terms of how they take in and organize data, some people have a natural strength in the area that allows them to deal more easily with ambiguity, coming up with different kinds of things and being higher risk takers where some people are afraid of risk-taking. And so it's maybe it becomes much more difficult for them to deal with change. What role does creative thinking play in developing and enhancing ones? Well, here, this is the great thing. Creative thinking and everything that goes into it is a cognitive function, which means we can teach it. And so it's a matter of people learning to value differences. When people have a bit of an idea, they're not going that stupid shut up, we don't want to hear it. So in creative thinking, we try to value the difference and we treat each idea as a gift. Here's a gift, my idea. And before we jump all over it, we examine it and look at it. We have tons and tons of tools that help us do that. But one of the things I found is because it is a cognitive function, whether you're teaching, trying to synthesize things, integrating things, looking at a big picture, conceptualizing, you can train people in that. And that's what's a great thing about creative thinking. Some of us have it naturally and it becomes easier. And it's harder for some people to move into creative thinking because you got to get them to drop the logical processes. And also creativity is all about risk taking. And in today's world, we call it intelligent risk taking because people have to make decisions without a lot of data. You don't have a lot of time. You can't go and gather everything. So that's one of the really important things about using creative thinking with change. And so when you're looking at, let's say you're in your house and you have all this stuff going on, the kids are in one room doing school because right now they can't go back and you're trying to do your business thing and maybe you have an elder parent staying with you asked to do their thing. You start to have to say, okay, what can I do? How can I change this? Forget about how I did it before. What can I do to make it better? As a trainer, one of the things I've been doing is all the training I've been doing now is on Zoom because the government, the buildings are still not open. And so when you're teaching creativity and strategic thinking and teaming and all, you're talking about highly interactive courses that use drawing and kind of doing group projects and all. And we just had to find a creative way in a Zoom environment to be able to teach the same thing because we know what the learning objective is. We know what we want the person to get out of it, but then how do we do it creatively? And you know, it really required rethinking things, but one of the things when you do look at things from a creative perspective, you start to see opportunity. So instead of focused on, oh, we can't be in class and face each other and I'm not going to be able to see how they're reacting right to me every time, you start to go, what's the opportunity? And this Zoom as a medium has created a lot of opportunity because one of the things we notice with adults is they interact in a much more, you're more engaged, believe it or not, because in sometimes in a class, you have people who kind of don't participate in the group stuff, it forces them to see one another, look at things. So you begin to see opportunity and that's true in everything. And even though people are upset with having right now to do things at home and do things differently, think about what's the opportunity? What can I do to make this a kind of positive thing versus seeing it only as negative? And that helps move people through change a little faster. Now, nothing's going to stop feeling overwhelmed. It just isn't. But truthfully, you basically have two choices. And the two choices are, you can embrace this and see opportunity and create your own destiny, or you can let destiny kind of find its way to you and hope you like what it is. I mean, that's kind of your choice. I think it's good you call our attention to the choice. We're winding down in the time that we have. And I think you've given us a good picture. I do have a question, a quick question, and that is, when we've been talking about change and when we talk about getting together with groups in a creative process, we're always seemingly referred to groups. How do we, do you think we can be creative by being by ourselves, oneself? I think I am. I, and I don't know, you know, I create my landscape. I do like displays. I visualize it. I work it out in my brain. I think everybody can be creative individually. And I think one of the things the pandemic's done is people have had to spend more time with themselves. So again, you can either see that as an opportunity or see it as a negative. But as an opportunity, you get to try things, explore things, you know, maybe read things you never did. Just I'm just taking a lot of stuff online, you know, classes where, you know, it's, it's, it's video, but I'm like learning things I never learned before. And I just, you mentioned something I'd like to share with the viewers. They may recognize you from national news programs, because you, when you said you had displays, you, for Hanukkah, you come on and the groups have been there and they have featured you that it's such a neat decoration or I don't know what to call it. Yeah, yeah, we put up the light show. And I, of course, I have, I build waterfalls and ponds. Ask me how I know I don't. I just try it. It's kind of like trial and error. And then I'll read something, you know, and I do, you know, because you can be creative individually. And some people I think want to do it in an individual way versus being in a group. And the other thing I've noticed, and this is a whole new thing. If you've noticed adult coloring books, have you seen that, Darlene? That's a whole new, a whole new venture they're selling pencils. Art has like just bloomed for the individual, you know, whether it's, you know, I bought the thing that was featured on Shark Tank with its paint for you paint for it's a whole set that it's for adults. And they paint this beautiful things and it teaches them brush strokes. So I think that the, even though we're going through tough times, and we have to know that we're never going to get time and money back in terms of an individual, we can really be creative and take everything that happens as an opportunity. Even if you have to help your kids with being the teacher at home, think about it as, oh, I have a short time to be their mentor and teacher. You know, just reframe everything. Isn't that what we say in that creative? Reframe the problem into a positive, right? I think reminding us that to look at things or try to find the opportunities and to go with it is probably a good path for us to look towards, for anyone to look towards. So with that, we are, we've had time and you have my head spinning thinking of the adaptations and glad that you clarified some myths about change for us today. And look forward to tomorrow was a day of opportunity and we face the next challenge. And I thank you, Lynn, for joining us. Oh, happy to, Jordan. You have been watching The Creative Life featuring our guest for today, Lynn Crouse. We hope we have offered you ideas for regaining control during major changes and also offered you some strategies for identifying ways to gain adaptation resources and dealing with change. Join us in two weeks for the next edition of The Creative Life. Until then, aloha.