Published works

The ‘new normal’ includes larger, more complex incidents. This suggests that
leaders will need to think outside the box and use of higher cognitive skills such
as creativity that includes divergent thinking, to respond and recover from these
incidents. Processes in creativity include thinking skills that are conducive to
taking new perspectives on problems, pivoting among different ideas, thinking
broadly, and making unusual associations.

This document identifies the empirical results from a series of workshops
conducted with end-users to identify if a method for developing creative skills
and specifically divergent thinking, led to teams being more creative in the
development of options analyses.

Results indicate that teams scored significantly higher on a creativity scale after
being taught the methods to enhance their creativity.

The improvement can be traced to improvements in the criteria of fluency (the
number of options) and elaboration (embellishment of the information
provided). Teams did not demonstrate evidence of the other two criteria for
creativity (flexibility in the use of the intelligence provided and originality).
Consideration of how to build flexibility and originality into the existing method
will drive the next iteration, which will be translated into research utilisation
products over the remaining time of the project.