The Pivot Playbook Podcast Ellis Jones x Shackleton Labs

I really like Rhod Ellis-Jones. We had a great coffee where we agreed to make a podcast about creativity from our individual perspectives. Please enjoy the first 15 minute cut of that below-

If you enjoyed this, find the full version here! You can find a transcript below too-

Host: Rhod Ellis-Jones (behavioural strategist, creator of The Pivot Playbook)
Guest: Mike Davis, Founder & CEO, Shackleton Labs

Rhod Ellis-Jones: Hi, welcome to this friendly creative podcast. I'm joined today by Mike Davis from Shackleton Labs. I'm Rhod Ellis-Jones, a behavioural strategist working across Australia on different projects and applying the theory and practice of creativity, and that's what we'll be covering off today. Mike, would you like to say a little bit about what you've been up to?

Mike Davis: Yeah, thanks for having me, Rhod. It's great to be with you. I am Mike Davis, of Shackleton Labs. And at Shackleton Labs, we're working with organisations on understanding innovation and understanding also the best way to bring that to life within their organisations — purpose-driven organisations — through coaching, masterclasses, but also bringing that real executive problem-solving function to the fore.

Rhod: Great. So yeah, today we're talking about creativity, and this came out of us catching up one day and me talking about The Pivot Playbook, which I put together and launched — was that almost two years ago now? And you've launched your own business in that period of time. There's a lot of intersection with what we're doing. So I suppose to talk about it, let's go to first principles. What is creativity? How would you define creativity?

Mike: Of course, you put me on the spot for that one, Rhod.

Rhod: I'm happy to lead.

Mike: You're the one who's got the playbook, mate.

Rhod: No, look, I think that's a great question.

Mike: Creativity could be thought of in many ways, but from a Shackleton Labs perspective, we probably think of it as one of the key pillars or drivers of innovation. So it is a human attribute or capability — the capacity to generate novel, useful ideas. And I think for me, it's very much around connecting ideas that may not have been connected before, in a meaningful way, to create change.

Rhod: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. It's usually thought about in two ways: one is the novel ideas — generate something that people haven't experienced before — but then that has to be useful in a context to solve a problem, to generate new disciplines and new fields. So yeah, creativity also — what we have to remember, there is this genius complex around creativity, that some people are just born creative, some of them are geniuses and others aren't. But that's not the case, of course. We know that human beings are inherently creative, and we can talk a bit more about that today.

Mike: So that's like that misconception that you've either got it or you don't?

Rhod: Yeah, that's right. And we've all been there in the office and it's gone, "Oh, like this, I don't know. I'm not the creative guy — we'll have to go and ask him or her to help do this," or them to get it done. So yeah — is your definition sort of similar, or do you have a different way that you think about creativity?

Mike: I think it's fundamentally the same. I just think creativity happens on different levels, and again, we can unpack that a bit more in this session. So yeah, I think coming back to The Pivot Playbook — that playbook brings together identity, creativity, and behaviour as intersecting domains, with the primary premise that we can't solve the big problems that humans face today unless we apply a creative process and we address human behaviour. Because essentially we now control the health of this planet, and we control the health of communities — other communities, our own. So behaviour is so important within systems, obviously, but ultimately people change systems, so I'll still always come back to behaviour. And then identity is the other factor, simply because how communities come together, how they perceive themselves relative to one another, and how they solve problems as a community is very much related to identity. We are this kind of people, we have these values. And it comes up again and again — the work we do at Ellis Jones on behaviour change — it'll be one of the primary factors that people are acting in a certain way will be related to identity. So creativity, identity, behaviour coming together in order to achieve shared value — create shared value, which is essentially social and environmental impact that we need if we're to survive on this rock that's looking shaky at the moment.

Rhod: I love that you're doing this, Rhod, because for me this sort of speaks to the concept that you can't solve today's problems with the same things that created those problems in society. So The Pivot Playbook becomes a really important circuit breaker in a way — a new way to solve the problems of today and tomorrow, maybe.

Mike: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, again, we have to break this pervasive idea that only some people are capable of that. So coming back to it being in our DNA — it is actually in our DNA to be creative. Many studies have been done on this, and there are genetic traits and genetic code that have related to creativity, and it's across all races, if you like — all peoples. It comes up again and again. So there is very strong evidence that we are all creative to that level.

Rhod: Do we need to do genetic engineering to become more creative?

Mike: Hopefully not, because that's well beyond me. I'll just be at the other end of figuring out what to do with the insights they get.

Rhod: Yeah. But let's talk a bit more about that. So neuroscience — the neuroscience of creativity in brains — they have this plasticity, which is part of the creative process happening at a neural level. So making connections that weren't there before, and pulling thoughts from different parts of things we've banked, and then bringing that together to solve a problem. And that's how most of us think creatively, whether it's trying to take the cap off a jar of jam, or whether it's faced with an operational issue at work and you don't have the resources that you think you need to do it — so how do you get through this? So yeah, that's absolutely in our genes, and it's not just Sydney Sweeney that has great genes — many other people have it as well.

But yeah, so the neuroscience is important, and it's important for us all to hold onto that notion when we're sitting at work and we're being asked to do a task that we think is beyond us. And there's often this — this is one of the most interesting things I found when I was writing that playbook — we think about dopamine, which is what encourages us to go the distance with creative thought. It's what encourages each step of the way to keep going, because creativity is generally about trying and failing, trying and failing. And we tend to think about dopamine as the thing that happens at the end — it's like "yeah, success." But actually, by that point, if you run a lot of creative processes, you realise that's just like, "oh, we got here." The whole time, your brain was giving you this push via the dopamine that it's playing through your system.

Mike: It's so interesting you mentioned that, because I was sort of thinking a little bit about how sometimes it's counterintuitive, but you need to slow down or change your context to speed up, to get to the results you need.

Rhod: I totally agree, and the other thing is that most people, if you go through a design process, they're all rushing to get to the end. And as a facilitator, your best trait in that perspective is to get people to enjoy the journey, because that's when — if they slow down and they allow the brain to do that thing it's got to do — that's when you get the outcomes. Not by starting with your classic double diamond here and rushing to try and get to a prototype. So yeah, it's good to know how the brain works, because we have to help it be its best.

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Rhod: And people say, "Well, how do you nurture your creativity in that sense?" Well, it is about slowing down, finding spaces. You and I were talking about when do we get our best ideas? For me, it's generally on a bike — a long bike ride.

Mike: The shower is another classic.

Rhod: The shower is a classic, yeah.

Mike: Yeah, I have a quick shower, so it doesn't give me enough time.

Rhod: Did you do the whiteboard? I think I had this — this is for luxury. Yes, people who luxuriate in showers — but it's a good idea, around getting Blu Tack and putting a whiteboard marker in your shower, because that's where you have a lot of good ideas.

Mike: That is a good one. And then you can just actually write down your ideas in the shower. Do they last in the shower?

Rhod: Well, I think the idea would be that you wipe it off. You take a screenshot or a photo, then you wipe it down. But you can see where I'm getting at there — it's like—

Mike: Totally. You've got to find something that works for you.

Rhod: Yeah. I think that's the point, isn't it? Some people, it's meditation. I don't engage in meditation as a structured process — I don't have an app to do that. But I do it different ways — slow walk.

Mike: Yes, slow walk.

Rhod: I preference activity on wheels or with my feet before anything else. If I can walk somewhere, I'll do it—

Mike: Smart.

Rhod: ...mainly because you get that little bit of time. And I don't have the headphones in — I like to sit there and hear everything, just settle there with my thoughts.

Mike: Oh, you do it properly.

Rhod: The minute I've got a podcast going or music going, I find that collides with... but other people are different. I know people who think really well with music in their ears all day. So there's those sorts of things. But at an organisation level, we obviously have to create space for that.

So that might bring us to why. So why would you invest in creativity — as a practice, particularly as a business? Why would you invest in that? I'll let you kick off — what are your thoughts on that?

Mike: Well, I think in the current environment where we've got the AI wave constantly changing every week and changing our society, changing the way we think about jobs, I think there's now a premium on some of the human attributes that were maybe under-indexed before — like creativity, judgment, discernment, expression. The ability to set an incredible vision or come up with something really novel and exciting. All parts of creativity that are really valuable. And I think we're in a really fast-paced society, so what I notice is that a lot of my coaching clients and masterclass/workshop clients, they're all sort of struggling with that same challenge around how do you get people to step change, slow down, and really start to work on that creativity muscle to generate new ideas that they can then take to scale and really drive growth — and really drive impact, too, sort of in that purpose space. So that's really important.

Rhod: Yeah, that makes complete sense. Yeah, there's a lot in that, isn't there. The thing that really actually led to me really wanting to do that playbook a while ago, and include creativity in it, was the WEF — World Economic Forum — Future of Jobs Reports. Regardless of your feelings about the WEF, the Future of Jobs Report is amazing. Because it's a study done of 6,000 or so companies globally — I think it's around 6,000 leaders — asking what are the traits, among other things, what part of this is about what are the skills, traits you're looking for in employees. And the top three skills — definitely the top one's problem-solving.

Mike: Yeah.

Rhod: Second was creativity. And then it's things like being able to hold ambiguity, being able to be agile and adapt to different situations.

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Rhod: And they're all things that are not about rote learning a skillset — that's kind of a given that you're capable enough to do that, you come into a job with those skills locked away. What they're looking for is someone to be able to ask the right questions, be resilient through change. So problem-solving, creativity — the top two. I think the last one, again, they were in the top three. So you think about that, you think, "Okay, and what are we hearing about AI? What are the great fears about AI?" Well, it's that AI will dominate human beings at some point, and if it doesn't go the right way, it could cause us a lot of grief.

Mike: Well, we need to be polite to the AI.

Rhod: We do, yes. It's a good idea. It needs to be fêted and so on, because it's going to be our lord and master in the future. But no, I think the main point there is what you referenced — it's the fact that human beings are capable of unique thoughts.

Mike: Yeah.

Rhod: And we have values that are inherently human that we bring to a process or a problem that we want to solve.

Mike: I think that's right, and I also think it's a key differentiating source of competitive advantage — not just as a person, but organisations are looking for something a little bit different to stand out, to drive solution-making, problem-solving.

Rhod: Yeah.

Mike: I think when you think about what does a purpose-driven business or organisation exist to do — it's solve problems, right?

Rhod: Yeah. And you named that sort of problem-solving thing as being critical. What do you need to solve problems?

Mike: Well, problems are fundamentally now very different to what they were.

Rhod: Mm.

Mike: They're wicked, they're complex, they have all the VUCA-ness to them.

Rhod: Yeah.

Mike: So if that's the case, then you need to be even more creative than ever. And I think the AI part of it is that AI can be a partner for us to be more creative if leveraged the right way. If leveraged the wrong way, it leads us to just spit out the same garble as everyone else.

Rhod: Yeah, we're not going to push ideas forward, and I suppose that's an interesting point there around AI — it's just pulling down information that exists.

Mike: Yeah. And yet we know that what we have is not enough to solve the problems we've created for ourselves, but also that could improve life on earth for human beings and those we share it with.

Rhod: So you mentioned VUCA — yes, we should define that: volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. These things often come up in the strategic planning work I do. The boards, they're going, "Future-proof my company." Well, you can't do that through a strategic plan, but we can think about how we have cycles of problem-solving—

Mike: Yeah.

Rhod: ...and we get reports and we have a dashboard that's telling us the right things, so we're making better decisions — but we're investing properly in our teams to be creative. And that's not just about psychographic profiling or whatever when you're employing someone — it's saying, well, if we fundamentally believe, and the science says it's true, that everyone can be creative, and problem-solving is really important, and we've heard from top companies around the world that that is the actual skill and attribute we need from people most — it begs the question why we're not investing in it—

Mike: Yeah.

Rhod: ...and investing properly in it. And not just the training, but the space for creativity to happen — providing the psychosocial safety for people to have a go at something and fail—

Mike: Yeah.

Rhod: ...and not feel like then that's a black mark against their career.