CREATIVE/ Design THINKING &
PROBLEM SOLVING
It is a mixture feeling. I was so happy and relieved that we completed our video presentation but it was also hard to believe that we’ve come to this point and now saying goodbye to each other. As we spent time reflecting together, many things have become more crystal clear in my mind.
I remember set out for GIST with full of excitement, a little bit of nervous and unconfident of what lay ahead and what I am going to do or accomplish. But it was a quest for new learning, a quest for mind adventure kept me keep going and never giving up. Looking back today, with more reflection, I am happy that I’ve changed. From just looking for learning new knowledge, understanding about the application of process and toolkits, I discover it’s not just all about that. It’s about the change the mindset and applying the mindset. And five of us, each started with individual direction, focus and interest now see a common theme emerged as we shared our learning, our discovery. To me, it is all related and linked to that mindset, the mindset that takes for people to work together to solve complex challenges. It’s the mindset of empathy, the mindset of collaboration, the mindset of experiment and learning from failure. It’s not an end..it’s the beginning. It’s something that we learnt to say to each other in APLP. It’s the mindset of continuous learning and discovery. And I look forward to learning more and having more opportunity to share and work with others through this approach with the right mindset. I’d like to thank EWC, APLP team, all individuals and organizations who have provided much support through my journey.
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It’s time for reflection. I’m still trying to synthesize my learning from the past few months…Still working in progress.
But the last three meetings in Singapore and the meeting with UNICEF Innovation Lab in HCMC were quite interesting. I shared with them my learning and questions from the workshops and somehow it led to the discussion of creating environment and leadership for innovation and creative problem solving (i.e design thinking). One trainer shared with me that it is not that leaders don’t know that they have to empathy with people, with their team; but they find to have insufficient time to prioritize given the pressure of business performance. Similarly an associate professor from Innovation center of NUS shared the finding from his Ph.D that most of the creative ideas fall short in the implementation phase as there seems to be a gap between the knowledge creation space – the routine operations and the idea creation space – where innovation happens. So the challenge is to create and nurture the environment for creativity and innovation. It can comprise of many factors like leadership, the organizational culture and the physical space. We find the physical space is just as important as other factors as it can influence people behaviors when they are in that space. Maybe that’s why big corporation like Google create working space that makes people feel free and creative when they are in. Working process, policies are also factors that make up the physical structure that will support or not support the innovation space in organization. I guess, it takes holistic approach from physical to mindset, attitude and skills to help people become more creative and create creative culture in organization. But as we always said, start small and experiment. We can always start somewhere..small but meaningful. And it requires collaboration as UNICEF identify as key for innovation to happen. Another week in Kuching, I’m grateful to be given opportunity to conduct another 2 workshops with a group of ‘think tank’ teachers and a group of teachers from other MRSM in Borneo. If I felt the students enjoy the sessions as it is something new to for them to learn, I guess the teachers went through it as a reflection. We realize our thinking habits and pattern through simple activities.
We realized as adults we tend to judge more often even realizing that we’re passing judgement. Is it because of critical thinking habit as a participant point out? But I guess it comes at the right time. We realized that as adult, we want to jump quickly for solution. In fact, we often have pre–determined solution in our head when we see a problem/ a challenge. And it somehow makes us frame a narrower question? Maybe to lead to the answer that we think of. Another thing that I found interesting from the last workshop is sometimes the thing that we say and things that we do are so different. It was many stories about passion in teaching and engaging with students that we heard. But suggested solutions were mainly about rewards. I wonder maybe because the process did not remove the biasness? And as an adult, sharing about creativity and design thinking to various groups, I felt the creativity skills that we discussed – questioning, observing, association, networking, experiment are really something that we never heard before. Design thinking is also not a brand new idea but it’s just a reinvention that people put it together and called ‘design thinking’. But these concepts and framework reminds us all of having and maintaining the right mindset.
What I found interesting are how kids find themselves to be creative and become more creative under challenge. It’s also to learn from each others. A group share with me how the came up with better way to complete the challenge is by looking at other group and find a better way to do it :). It’s creative! And ‘Imagination’ is a buzz word as they talk about creativity. It’s how they look at a car and see a dragon or a sexy girl. It’s how they draw out of the circle to make caterpillar, glasses, etc. It’s how they can be so spontaneous in role–playing games.
Under design challenge, I find interesting that most people often talk negative experience in their conversation. And therefore, the discovery phase is to empathize how people have such experience and then later find ways to improve their experience. I’ve been thinking about both design thinking and appreciative inquiry approach. I see it as much similar to each other when I read it but now I seem to realize a difference. Maybe it’s not because of the approach that creates the difference but because of tendency and nature of people (talking/ complaining about negativity). So I think it’s all about asking the right questions to determine the approach. That’s all for now! Will post when I find access to wifi. I’m excited about learning more through upcoming experiment. Happy Easter Weekend :) Innovation encounter – it was my experience last week coming back to KL. It was the name of the module that Edwin is teaching at Taylor’s University and I am grateful that he was willing to share with me his knowledge and experience. It was maybe the first time that I have a proper orientation about design thinking. I'm glad that I came back to KL for that.
Design thinking was reframed into the process of Understand – Observe – Ideate – Prototype. As I associate it with my previous experiment and readings, it really helps me organize and strengthen my understanding and his sharing from the perspective of technical expert and consultant provided many practical insights of design thinking. It builds more knowledge and confidence for my next trip to Kuching. Preparing for the workshop, I also explored techniques to enhance thinking and creativity in design thinking. Edwin shared with me some Lateral thinking technique from De Bono. It came from different form, but I found interesting to link with 5 creativity skills of innovators (HBR). I was introduced to the book ‘The Luck Factor’ by Richard Wiseman. From his experiment, he found that lucky people are the ones who can spot obvious opportunities that others miss. I find myself not so good at this skill and need much more practice. Reaching the last stage of GIST, I wonder sometimes of what I have achieved. But the process of going through the learning has helped me to understand about myself, strengths and weaknesses. Hope that the experience and learning will be good with more synthesis effort – a way to practice creativity & design thinking. |
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