Unlock Your Creativity & Innovation Potential with Tessa Forshaw & Rich Braden
Tessa Forshaw & Rich Braden
Tessa Forshaw is a founding scholar of the Next Level Lab at Harvard University, specializing in using cognitive science to explore how people best work, learn, and innovate. She draws upon her academic research as a cognitive scientist and extensive background as a former designer at IDEO CoLAb and Accenture to turn the cognitive processes involved in design, creativity, and innovation into practical insights that can be applied in the flow of work.
Rich Braden is the founder of People Rocket LLC, a strategic innovation firm based in San Francisco. With over 15 years of academic experience, Rich is a recognized thought leader in design thinking, leadership, and innovation. He is a design educator teaching at renowned institutions including Harvard University, Stanford University, Aalto University, and London Business School, helping shape future leaders.
All of us are creative, by virtue of being human. So how can we tap into our creativity and innovation with intention, and drive better solutions, ideas and outcomes?
In this thought-provoking conversation we sit down with authors of the brilliant new Innovation-ish: How Anyone can Create Breakthrough Solutions to Real Problems in the Real World Tessa Forshaw and Rich Braden. Together, we explore the multifaceted nature of innovation, which is not solely the domain of lone geniuses but rather a collaborative effort that requires curiosity, empathy, and humility.
Full of ‘aha’ moments, this conversation unpacks the importance of redefining what it means to be an innovator, the myths surrounding innovation hesitation, and the critical role of leadership in fostering a safe environment for creativity. The discussion also delves into practical strategies for integrating innovation into daily life, the significance of mindset, and the power of metacognition in enhancing creative problem-solving abilities.
You’ll learn so much in this conversation, including:
How curiosity, empathy, and humility are essential human qualities for innovation.
Why the myth of the lone genius in innovation is misleading.
The reasons collaboration is crucial for generating innovative ideas.
The ways mindsets influence how we perceive and approach problems.
How cognitive caution can hinder creativity but is a natural human process.
Why creating a safe space encourages idea sharing and innovation.
How leaders play a vital role in fostering an innovative environment.
The top reasons innovation should be integrated into daily practices, not treated as a special event.
The science behind how metacognition enhances our ability to innovate by allowing us to reflect on our thinking.
Learn more about Tessa and Rich and their incredible work – and order your copy of Innovation-ish – right here.
BONUS! Access your exclusive, free copy of the Move Map right here.
Watch the episode right now:
Chapters & Transcript
00:00 Defining Innovation: A New Perspective
03:01 The Human Element of Innovation
05:59 Innovation Hesitation: Understanding Barriers
08:51 The Distinction Between Innovation and Entrepreneurship
11:57 Mindsets for Innovation: A Cognitive Approach
14:40 Overcoming Self-Censorship in Creative Processes
17:53 Creating a Safe Environment for Innovation
20:42 The Role of Leadership in Fostering Innovation
23:47 Everyday Innovation: Integrating Creativity into Daily Life
26:53 Integrating Change Gradually
28:19 Understanding Moves in Problem Solving
31:22 The Power of Mindset in Innovation
35:07 Harnessing Metacognition for Creativity
48:41 Practical Steps to Foster Innovation
52:48 Introduction to Human Leadership
53:51 Cognitive Science and Innovation
54:56 The Role of Creativity in Leadership
Sally Clarke (she/her) (00:02.375)
Welcome to the podcast, Rich and Tessa. It is so amazing to have you with us. We have so many questions for you about your incredible new book, but we'd love to start with hearing from both of you. What does it mean to you to be an innovator?
Rich Braden (00:18.216)
I love this question because we ask this question all the time in classes and with clients after years of teaching we've heard kind of all of it, but what we often hear are some I guess a little bit disheartening things that it's like a lone genius mad scientist like we did a survey and asked an open question of what is an innovator or who is an innovator and
90 % of them came back with one of five names. Unfortunately, all males and it was like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and then of course Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein were the list and I think Bill Gates and people who are working alone and are super smart and know stuff is sort of like the vibe of that and we've heard that it's people that come up with like game changing paradigm shifts and artificial intelligence and
creative burning man, artist, Bohemians, somebody who knows all the steps of all the process and how to get there, the secret of it. And it's no wonder that people hear all that. But for me, none of that is what an innovator is. think for us, I think it means simply, like, if you have passion to solve a problem and you have the grit to keep going and keep
learning after you fail and you have a lot of humility like I don't know what the right answer is up front that I can just like go and do but I'm curious about it and I have empathy for who's experiencing it and I think ultimately confidence to sort of sit with all of that I have no idea where I'm going and stay in there if you can do that you are definitely an innovator and I think anyone is capable of doing it.
Tessa (02:13.794)
Yeah, I just don't, sorry.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (02:14.003)
Amazing. No any other job, but I have so many questions about the back of that. But yes, Tessa, please let us know what would you add? What would you contribute there?
Tessa (02:22.82)
Yeah, sure. would say some of my favorite response actually came from the 10 % of the US Gen Pop survey we did who responded to that. And they were answers like my mom, the local restauranteur down the street who's just started this really cool new thing. Really everyday examples. And to me, think innovators are actually a lot of the opposites of what we think of in the myth. They are as Rich said, they're humble.
They have a lot of humility, a lot of I don't know. They have a lot of patience. We always think that they have urgency. They have a lot of failures, myself included, a lot of failures. And we think often that they are just, you know, right out the bat overnight successes. And so I think all of those things are important. But to me, the thing that I think makes a really good innovator is just someone who's curious.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (03:04.915)
Right.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (03:21.503)
We had some very human qualities that you shared with us there. had curiosity, empathy, humility, and also Rich, you mentioned this capacity to also sit with the discomfort of not knowing for a while. And I think all of these for me really have that through line of being very human qualities that we certainly can't sort of immediately turn to AI for it to replicate. But also that collaborative component, I think is something that is obviously stands almost in contrast with what
Apparently 90 % of us think about when we think about innovation.
Rich Braden (03:55.318)
Yeah, I think that's true. It is a very human thing. we talk about how innovation is about the people. It's not about a processor, a technique, or a secret or a technology. It's about the humans that are trying to solve problems. And I think we use innovation, design, design thinking, creative problem solving, all roughly interchangeably. It's about there is a challenge in front of us.
How do we go about coming up with a solution that doesn't just sort of fix it, put a bandaid on it, have to be redone next year again, but come up with really understanding it and doing something that changes the whole approach to it in a way that works so much better?
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (04:41.427)
Mmm.
Tessa (04:42.147)
Humans have been solving problems creatively since the beginning of time. Like I think we often forget that. Like that's, if you've ever been interested in archaeology or been to a museum and seen some of the types of tools that humans used thousands of years ago, like people came up with them. They innovated, they created those. This is not a new thing to us as humans. And so, you know, we are really well primed to do it.
Rich Braden (05:10.542)
Mm.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (05:12.36)
It's a fantastic point Tessa and just to your research, interestingly, it sounds as though when you ask that question, a lot of people identified other people or people that perhaps inspired them as innovators, but maybe didn't see themselves as an innovator. What is there a blockage there? Why do we struggle to perhaps see ourselves as an innovator and what are we standing to lose if we're not able to see that in ourselves?
Tessa (05:36.226)
Yeah, Rich and I have really identified three prime reasons that we see and together they form this notion of innovation hesitation. So the first one is what we talked about, this sort of mythology of the person who by themselves who has a huge organization and an idea that they come up with overnight. you know, often they reside in Silicon Valley and fancy buildings with lots of cold brew. Like there's a real mythology.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (06:05.334)
I'm glad you mentioned cold brew Tessa because that feels like it's a must.
Tessa (06:08.737)
essential, right? Yeah. The second kind of element is what we call the creativity gap. And that's really essentially this imposter syndrome of I'm not creative. And I think that that is a really sad belief that a lot of us have about ourselves. Firstly, because when we've asked a bit more about it, we often hear people say things like, well,
Rich Braden (06:10.624)
It's a requirement.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (06:22.078)
Yeah.
Tessa (06:36.235)
I'm not creative, I'm analytical or I'm right-brained. So I'm a cognitive scientist and I'm here to tell you quite definitively that there is no such thing as hemispheric dominance, like right brain versus left brain. It doesn't exist. There's thousands of, know, fMRIs and EEGs and all of that. And nothing suggests that in your neurotypical people, there is any kind of right brain or left brain dominance.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (06:38.389)
Mm-mm.
Tessa (07:02.691)
And certainly nothing to suggest that one half of the population is creative and one half of the population is analytical. Because if you think about some of the most creative tasks that you know out there, they involve a lot of analytical skills. being an opera singer involves a lot of analysis and reading music, understanding tone and pace, practicing, deliberate practice. a lot of...
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (07:16.619)
Yeah.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (07:21.832)
Hmm
Tessa (07:29.783)
listening to harmony changing if you hear an error so that you can cover it. Like all of those things are very analytical. On the flip side, my mom is an airline pilot and if I ask her about it, she says flying an airplane is very creative. So I'm just gonna take her word for that. I think both sets of things require a lot of the skills of the other.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (07:43.531)
Mm.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (07:50.591)
I
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (07:50.601)
It's a really fascinating point Tessa. And I think something that I find really interesting is that I think those of us who have to do a lot of problem solving as part of our role tend to think of that as being a more analytical type role without seeing problem solving in of itself as a creative endeavor or, you know, really relying on that creative side of our brain. And just one other point or a question I'd like to ask of you is again, when you sort of describing the people that
Rich Braden (08:08.59)
Mm.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (08:19.376)
you found to be innovative or the people that, know, the Elans and the Zuckerbergs of the world. Do you think that we're mistaking entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial tendencies for innovation or are these sort of a little synonymous? Is there a through line between the two there?
Rich Braden (08:37.39)
I think they are distinctly different. I think they are often put together because entrepreneurship based on innovation, I think is a successful combination, but I think they're different skill sets. And in fact, if you think of some of the famous, I don't know, Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, they were not the technical wizards behind.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (08:40.202)
Mm-hmm.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (08:49.267)
Mm.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (08:49.334)
Mmm. Mm-hmm.
Rich Braden (09:01.322)
what was made, their partner that we hear less about, because Woz was the brains of it, right? He designed the computer for Apple. And so it's not necessarily that they came up with the technology or even the idea by themselves. They had a team. And if you really dig into those, there's a lot of lore about Silicon Valley, but all of those examples, there is a team of dedicated people and pulling those people together is a skill in and of itself.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (09:02.496)
Yeah.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (09:06.731)
Yes.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (09:18.07)
in the name of
Rich Braden (09:30.456)
Collecting the right group is a critical piece of how you can create innovation because it is an intrinsically collaborative You need more than one perspective to actually Get creative ideas and to bring all the perspectives you need to generate something that is truly innovative So the lone genius is just not part of that story Are those people impressive and successful of?
Have they done incredible things? Absolutely. We're not here to disregard them and it's misattributed to being one person.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (10:10.815)
It's interesting, isn't it? think there's such a pervasive narrative in our culture around this kind of like lone wolf, sort of type person who does everything by themselves, but we are inherently so interdependent. And I think really realizing this is really powerful. And I think also my personal journey was from a very sort of logical analytical career as a lawyer. And I really, I remember very distinctly thinking like my friends who were graphic designers and creatives, I thought, well,
Rich Braden (10:17.206)
Mm-hmm.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (10:37.139)
I'm not creative because I'm just like a document monkey. They're like doing these amazing things and like thinking up new things. And it was a real shift for me, almost a mindset shift to understand that I am actually a creative being by virtue of being human. So I think if we can sort of see that and start to see that in ourselves and you you share in the book these beautiful six different mindsets that really serve innovation. Can you perhaps give us an example of
Tessa (10:51.021)
Mm-hmm.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (11:04.851)
what they look like, so to walk us through these mindsets and how they serve innovation.
Tessa (11:09.175)
Yeah, sure. So mindsets are, I think are really underrated or often not discussed enough part of cognitive science. And really essentially they are a cognitive framework that influence how we see the world and they influence our attention and perception processes. So a lot of people think that if you watch something happen on the street and you walk away from it, you have like a video recording in your brain of it, your objective and what you saw is what happened.
But what we actually know is that if you have people have different mindsets and they all watch the same thing, they all notice different things. They pay attention to different things. They look for different things and their recollection of that thing, it can be quite different. So mindsets are really powerful. You've probably heard of, I'm sure given this is a, know, humans and leaders focus podcast growth mindset. And that certainly is one of the most famous, but it is, is, as I said, sort of not the only one. So
We were doing some research around the different innovation processes that were out there. And as we started to actually read deep in the details of, I think it was about 80 or so of them, we found that what they were actually really trying to do was to get people to put these mindsets on, like glasses nearly, and to see the world through that mindset and have it guide their attention, perception and decision making.
And so we decided to sort of code them to identify the different frequencies of the ones that were mentioned in these AD or SO frameworks and then shape them each as a mindset. So we came up with six mindsets, but I really want to stress that they're just the ones that were the most frequent in the documents and they're not at all the right mindsets. Like I think you can have an innovation, a mindset to do innovation work or creative problem solving
just about anything. So my personal favorite is the insights mindset. And that is the mindset of looking for things that are sticky or interesting or contradictory or tension filled. And so it's about going out, doing an observation or looking at data that you have at your desk or looking at a legal brief, sadly. And really with that mindset of I'm going to pull out some sticky and interesting insights from this.
Tessa (13:33.187)
and use that as a way to sort of understand what is worth looking at, what is worth paying attention to, what doesn't make sense, what do I have questions about, what seems to be said over and over and over, you know, what is said in a funny way that I should really double click onto that. So that's my personal favorite mindset.
Rich Braden (13:53.038)
Hmm.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (13:54.611)
I love it. Rich, do you have a one that stands out for you as sort of being a favorite?
Rich Braden (14:00.0)
It's hard. It's like choosing what your favorite child is, think, in a way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, like Tessa, I appreciate the concept of them being interchangeable, I think, most of all. However, I think for me, the one that I think is the most fun and I enjoy playing in the most is the ideas mindset and generating and being divergent and coming up with wild
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (14:02.102)
I had a feeling you were going to say that.
Rich Braden (14:29.592)
crazy outlandish ideas or trying to come up with the worst ideas and going the other way. Because if you want to come up with a solution, you don't need to come up with one. You need to come up with a lot of them. It's much like me with photography. I need to take about 600 pictures to find a couple that I really like. I never put up a
Tessa (14:50.221)
you
Rich Braden (14:53.678)
my camera and then just hit it once. I'm like, let's go here. We're going to take a whole series because like small changes and inflections, but the same is true of ideas. Each one has little nuance and sometimes you need to start with one and then it inspires someone else and they evolve and it moves on. And that idea takes a chain of growth before it gets to something where everybody goes, Oh, that's really, that's really interesting now.
And so I think you got to get past a lot of the obvious first in that mindset to be able to really get there, but that's hard to do. It's difficult because there's so much self judgment on, Ooh, can I say that? What, what if I say that? And people laugh and the letting go of all of that.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (15:39.165)
It's such an important point, Rich, because I think so often we self-censor, particularly those of us who like to get it right. And certainly in an environment where there's a lot of urgency and we maybe don't feel like we have a lot of time, like we don't have time to get it wrong 500 times, even though when we spoke to Jeremy, Jeremy Utley, who you shared with us that it can take, you know, up to 2000 ideas to get to kind of the really spectacular ones. Can you tell us a little bit about how we can get through that sort of that discomfort of
Rich Braden (15:45.066)
Mm-hmm.
Rich Braden (15:51.362)
Mm-hmm.
Rich Braden (15:59.659)
Yes.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (16:07.036)
self-censorship and sort of get past that to get to that really juicy creative idea mindset.
Tessa (16:13.005)
So that's the third piece that we went in the innovation hesitation and we call that cognitive caution. And so the first thing I just wanna say Sally is I feel like people often think it's bad that they have that self judgment or self censorship or that caution. And actually firstly, let's just name that's a really human process. And it's a huge part of how come you have survived to be an adult.
Rich Braden (16:13.304)
Yeah.
Tessa (16:41.539)
to listen to this podcast. It is helpful to you. Like you're as a kid, know, your ability to just make decisions based on, I need to be a member of the group. This group saves me. I'm going to mimic something that I'm seeing happen in the group. As an adult, it can be very, very helpful as well when we're thinking about, you know, the limits of our society and laws and what's okay for us to do and what's all right to say like,
These are great cognitive processes that have a lot of value. They're just like sometimes a little overzealous in innovation. And the way that I sort of like to describe it is if you are in Yosemite National Park, and I probably should use an Australian example here. So if you are in a national park in Australia and you think there is a redback spider in your tent, yeah, like you should probably check that there is a redback spider in your tent.
and make sure that there isn't because the consequence of that could be serious. But in innovation, there isn't often a redback spider in your tent when you're sitting in a room with your colleagues and you're trying to come up with a bunch of ideas. So we don't need that kind of engine. And so the best way we find to address it is through classic cognitive behavioral therapy approaches. So to name it, notice it, name it, and tell it to go away.
Like, hi there, I can see that I'm self-censoring, self-censor friend, it's good to see you. You can go now, I don't need you. Thank you for keeping me safe before, but I'm okay right now. Just let it go away.
Rich Braden (18:21.304)
think creating the right environment and letting people get used to it, it takes a little time to settle in. I had a side career teaching and performing improv for a dozen years in San Francisco. And teaching beginning improvisers, people show up, often they've been, it's been suggested to them that they should take an improv class to help loosen them up or things. And so they're a little bit terrified, don't necessarily want to be there. And my...
role was to create a safe place for them to start to experiment and let some of that out and then get rewarded by everybody. There's nothing better than you say something crazy that you're like, I shouldn't have said that and the entire place erupts in applause and laughter and, it's encouraging when you're like, and you get a little dopamine, you're like, can hang as soon by the end, they're like, hang on, where do you see what I can do now? And it's just getting comfortable with letting that out.
Tessa (19:05.155)
you
Rich Braden (19:18.456)
but it's not a muscle we use all the time. as Tess said, it's not appropriate all the time. You don't just walk down the street and say every thought that comes out of your head at any moment, you will be ostracized. There are penalties for the social dynamic. But if you create a place, take that mindset and put it on, say everybody, we're putting this on. There's no risk because these are not decisions. These are just some ideas. And we're gonna, I think things that can really help are two I sort of mentioned before.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (19:42.837)
Hmm.
Rich Braden (19:47.414)
If you go for let's think what would make the problem worse. Let's brainstorm ideas we could do that would make this terrible. All of a sudden, it's really silly. So whatever you say shouldn't work and that lowers the bar and then you can put out ideas. But really the what made it worse is a reflection of what you need to change to make it better. So then you can just jump to the other side and going for
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (20:07.776)
Mm.
Rich Braden (20:11.246)
crazy ideas like what if we lived in the world of Harry Potter or we were in science fiction and you could you know teleport and all those things. If you do that that also stretches the idea to what really the teleportation is about traveling over distance quickly and bridging that gap. So now we better understand the problem and that can inspire
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (20:30.709)
Hmm.
Rich Braden (20:34.114)
Well, actually, maybe doing a virtual reality would be something we can do today. So it's about stretching and breaking down some of these barriers that we have. And once you get there, I think that's what Jeremy was talking about as well. Once you break a few of those, now you can just go all over the place. And coming up with 2,000 ideas sounds like a lot, but it isn't once you're in the right space.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (20:57.49)
They're both two really critical perspectives that build on each other. Tessa, I love that you really touched on the interpersonal risk element that we really experience at an individual level. And I think you've mentioned or alluded to the fact that we have an individual responsibility to sort of build our own tolerance to that risk, to check in on some of those narratives that might be holding us back from sharing our ideas.
But Rich, what I love about what you said is that your experience as an improv troop coordinator, if it were, is the leadership perspective, right? It's how do we create the right dynamic in a team environment so that people feel safe to be silly, to challenge the status quo, all the sort of elements of the psychological safety that need to be there so that great ideas can come to the table. And I think
So often as leaders, we want people to be innovative. We want people to bring us their brilliant ideas or their solutions to problems that we can't seem to move past. But we're not always cognizant of how we might be the bottleneck in that scenario in our environment, or we might not be creating the right environment for that to come to the fore. So I love how you both sort of layered on that challenge, both individually and then as a leader.
Tessa (22:15.255)
Sometimes I think, sorry, bitch.
Rich Braden (22:15.598)
Sure. I'll say one quick thing. I think we can extend the concept of leader to be anyone leading a brainstorming session. You don't have to be in charge or the director or the VP to have this be true. Your group of your peers, if you're going to start this, you can help to set the environment, give everybody in the right space and lead that group to that as well.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (22:26.613)
Yeah.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (22:39.744)
Mm.
Rich Braden (22:43.06)
And as the leader, sometimes it might be right for you to step out and remove yourself if you haven't built the level of trust that you need and know when you can and when you're going to interfere with the process because they're performing for you. And what you care about is you get the right idea at the end of the day, however they come up with it.
Tessa (23:03.043)
I think though it's important to also note that like just because innovation isn't happening doesn't mean that it's always the leaders fault. And what I mean by that is like the things that we mentioned like cognitive caution, like the creativity gap, like innovation hesitation, they're, you know, what I would call like socio-cultural constructs. And so they can exist in a team even if the leader hasn't put them in place.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (23:11.53)
Yeah.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (23:32.586)
Yeah.
Tessa (23:32.612)
So your team can be experiencing all of those things, not because of anything that you did, but it is your job to notice it and to name it and to start talking about it and to start normalizing it and helping your team pull back front or peel the onion away. But their existence is not fundamentally your fault. And I think a lot of, I've seen at least a lot of leaders get really frustrated
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (23:40.128)
Mmm.
Tessa (24:01.985)
because they feel like the team isn't innovating, but I'm doing all of these good things. And they are doing often so many good things, but you can't just put your head in the sand and pretend that the cultural context doesn't exist. That makes sense.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (24:14.794)
Yeah, it's, it's such an important point, Tessa. And what I love about it is it sounds to me that to be innovative, we have to be quite intentional in how we create an environment versus doing nothing and expecting that these cultural and very much human reactions to discomfort and interpersonal risk will simply go away. We have to actually perhaps model that as a behavior as Rich has mentioned, like, or
Tessa (24:37.58)
Yeah.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (24:42.324)
Maybe step out of the room and let a point a project team to perhaps rumble on this behind closed doors in a safer container and then maybe bring some of those things to us. Does that kind of feel like a sort of thought process around what you're saying there, Tessa?
Tessa (24:56.705)
Yeah, totally. I think I'm just saying don't, it's not always about you as the leader that it's not happening.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (25:01.482)
Yeah. Yeah.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (25:02.281)
And definitely we've, we work with the, our consultancy with a quite a few sort of quite diverse teams. And I think what you're sharing really echoes some of times our experience as well, that it is people's own experiences, backgrounds, approaches to things that it's really important to be sort of patient with these things. And I feel like it's also something that if we're in.
currently in an environment where there isn't a great deal of psychological safety for this kind of innovation that it can feel kind of like, my goodness, where are we? This is going to be like a mountain we have to climb. However, once we start to see that in and even do some, here's some like prep work we can do before the meeting and you're just really starting to create that environment that it almost becomes not so much like now we're going to be innovative, but actually this is just a state of being. This is just how we are together. This is how we interact. Is that also what's reflected in the research in your work?
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (25:32.278)
Hmm.
Rich Braden (25:52.396)
I think so. Yeah, it's time to innovate. I think is you're already down the wrong track a little bit, that it should be everyday innovation and embracing these ideas of being flexible and humble. And I mean, it sounds like an ideal work environment all the time. And you can't always be innovating on everything, of course, but it shouldn't be made special.
Tessa (25:58.564)
Yeah.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (26:14.006)
Hmm.
Rich Braden (26:16.714)
Or you go to a place to do it, or there is a day when you do it. It should be just integrated, but it doesn't mean you have to go full on full throttle innovation every day all the time. What if you just incorporate a little bit in every day or into one project? We talk about the concept of this is word here, innovation ish ness and it's
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (26:28.949)
Mm-hmm.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (26:34.996)
Mm.
Rich Braden (26:41.358)
You don't have to start at the beginning of some mystical process and go through to the end on a new project at the beginning every time. You got a project, it's already in flight. You're at a particular place. You pick a mindset and you do a little innovation one day in a meeting. Your project project is better off by incorporating some of those tools in that moment. And if you can do another one and another one, it just gets better and better. It's a little like you go into the gym once a week.
You should do that. You shouldn't not do that, but it's not going to do a lot. It'll do a little, but if you get up, you start like, I went, I feel good. Get that hit of dopamine. You do another one and it motivates you to do a little more. You start doing it more frequently. It becomes easier. You become, it's easier to integrate into every day, but you don't have to start at a hundred.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (27:16.565)
Yeah.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (27:35.615)
It's a fantastic point, Rich. And I think as someone who's led teams before as well, it's also inviting people in without it having to feel like everything's changing everywhere all at once. And we know from, you know, change management that when we try to move too many parts all at once, it's really challenging for people. And when you've got people who are quite resistant to change as it is, the level of discomfort can turn a lot of people away. So I love this idea of slowly integrating it.
more or less into the fabric of how we do things here. Perhaps it's how we make decisions or perhaps it's part of a meeting that we do regularly. And then we slowly kind of build the tolerance to that as well. I think that feels like a really useful point to start. And now we would love to speak around the next sort of layer of your book, if you will. We've just discussed some of the mindsets here. The next thing you discuss in the book is what you call moves.
Can you help us understand here what are some of the essential characteristics of a move and perhaps can you help us explore what one of these might look like?
Rich Braden (28:39.8)
Sure. So a move is simply a small action you take to start to solve a problem. That's all it is. If you, let's say you want to go and have an intentional conversation with a stakeholder to start understanding your project, you could call it a curiosity conversation or a chat with a customer or a qualitative research interview or a journalism interview to better understand. And it kind of doesn't matter which of those you call it.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (28:45.45)
Mmm.
Rich Braden (29:07.938)
they all are gonna get at the same thing. Now, how you define it, the conversation, how it's gonna be scheduled, the start and end, might look a little different. Curiosity Chat might start over a text, a qualitative research interview might start by writing down an interview protocol. But then, it's actionable, it's the second quality, definable is the first, actionable is the second. You can prep and have that conversation right away. There's no barrier, there's no at,
customer the customer meeting six months from now I'm going to do this. That's not a move you're planning to do a move sometime maybe but you could just get started now. You could start your prep. You could send the text. The third quality is that it's shareable. So your notes or your transcripts you can hand those off to somebody else and that's useful for them. They can read through it and extract information start to better understand and the last thing is it's repeatable.
So you can do the same thing with another customer or another stakeholder or another project, any one of those. So this idea of I'm going to have an intentional conversation can be packaged up in a move with those qualities. And that's really fluid and malleable. Like you can take it a lot of ways. So if you have a background that has journalism in it, you know how to do this. You didn't have to go to a design certificate class. So
Where do moves come from? Like first, you've got to look at your own background. How have you solved problems before? Anything you've used before, fair game. That's an innovation-ish move. You can acquire them from like books and websites. Go out and read things and say, I'm going to take that and shift it a little. I'm going to use those. You can ask your teammates how they've done it. Like moves are everywhere. You can go do a design course or a certification or something and you'll get some good design-y tools.
But most people think that's the only place and you get a set and that's your whole toolkit. And now you got to go carve whatever statue you're making out of only that set of tools. And you're skipping all of the ones you already have. Everyone is so creative and resourceful from their experience and their education already. What a move is the big difference between what I think we're saying and what a lot of design frameworks are is
Rich Braden (31:31.158)
You can use any move you want if it moves you forward and is helpful to you and you've already got more than you already realized. So a move is a small action that moves you forward.
Tessa (31:42.22)
and you do a move with a mindset. So it's like I said before, the example of like, if I go out the front of my house and there's three of us and we're all observing what's happening on the street, like that observation for five minutes could be a move. And if all of us had a different mindset on what we notice, what we pay attention to, what choices we make as a result of what we just did, all of that would be different. So the central tenet is, you you pick the mindset that you need and then
you already have this whole suite of things that you are capable of doing because you are a grown adult and my five-year-old has things she can do. So I promise you have things you can do and you bring them forward and you do them with that mindset. And that makes you a little bit more innovation-ish.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (32:28.989)
I love it. And I'm hearing here some like really bringing in that curiosity. I think that willingness to learn. And what I love about the term move as well as there's this very front footedness to it. It's like, I'm going to go out and find it. I'm not going to wait for this to come to me, but I'm going to do it with intentionality as well. I'm not just going to sort of walk out with absolutely no parameters and just expect things to sort of strike me. Yeah. So there's kind of almost this slightly scientific, almost like science and art at the same time, if you will, of kind of going out and
Rich Braden (32:41.933)
Yes.
Tessa (32:49.697)
Yeah.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (32:58.431)
and seeking the information that's gonna take you forward in solving that problem.
Rich Braden (33:03.682)
You mean creative and analytic combined and blended? Yes. Yes.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (33:07.551)
Wild.
Tessa (33:07.639)
My favorite thing about Move is the trick of the dopamine hit. just like when you get a notification on your phone, you get a dopamine hit. And that's one of the things that makes that quite addictive. And when you complete a small, defined task that has a clear objective and you fulfill it, you also get a dopamine hit. And then they become kind of addictive. So it's like using the persuasive technology insights.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (33:07.882)
Wow.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (33:13.088)
Yeah.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (33:27.989)
Mmm.
Tessa (33:34.615)
for your own innovation good is a way to think about.
Rich Braden (33:38.584)
Yeah. And I think you can adapt them for the context as well because I've taught this to kids as young as kindergarten. And so the moves that we did were different. They were scaled to what their ability was. So they had a conversation and asked a teacher questions about their morning routine. And then to synthesize that in insights combined with brainstorming, they drew a picture of their
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (33:48.246)
Mm.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (33:52.209)
Hmm.
Rich Braden (34:07.15)
teachers morning improved a little bit. So they combined several things together, but their move was drawing a picture. Well with all of them were very comfortable drawing a picture. They did it almost every day in school, and they came up with incredibly creative ideas. My favorite is one of them came up with a 13 hour clock so that their teacher had an extra hour in the morning to get ready. Because she talked about how stressful it was, right? Isn't it? Isn't it fantastic? Yeah.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (34:29.974)
That's a great idea.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (34:32.831)
It's incredible thinking.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (34:34.196)
If only we had just thought to add an hour to the day.
Rich Braden (34:37.454)
Well, so this is we talked about the ideas mindset. What I love about a wild idea is if we collectively got together as a globe and said, guess what? It's 13. All meetings just got a little bit shorter and the number of minutes adjust and or the number of seconds in a minute. Like we could make that if we can get through Y2K, we could make the 13 hour clock adjustment. And then we just have more.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (34:52.342)
Mm.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (35:02.838)
Ha
Sally Clarke (she/her) (35:03.283)
Ha
Rich Braden (35:04.545)
time slots and everything moves a little differently, but it's kind of arbitrary that it was 12 already. I mean, 10 would have made a lot more sense to begin with. So it take a wild idea and bring it back to what's possible today. If it really solved problems for people across the world, then we could collectively get together and do that. In this case, maybe not that idea, but.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (35:07.232)
Love it.
Yeah.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (35:13.385)
This is.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (35:29.129)
I mean, maybe though, and I think this kind of leads us very naturally, I sense, into our next question, which is really around this next component of the book, which is metacognition. We really loved this section. There's a lot to it. We'd love to hear from both of you sort of what you mean by the term in this particular context and how can we harness metacognition to contribute to our innovation-ishness.
Tessa (35:54.732)
Yeah, I mean, I'm glad that you loved it. Metacognition is also my favorite topic in the world. So just for folks who aren't familiar with it, meta meaning above or self-referential and cognition meaning how we think, feel and act. Cognition meaning how we think, feel and act. So metacognition then is the act or the quiet act of noticing your own mind, your own thoughts.
your own thinking routines and patterns, choices, decisions, and subsequently actions. And it's a pretty powerful, powerful thing that a lot of people don't know how to do. In studies that have been done in the UK with high school classrooms that have had metacognitive interventions in them, there was then a meta-analysis down of all of those studies that did that.
And they found that metacognition being in the curriculum accounted for 70 % of the difference in the performance of the students' scores, which is like wild. And then in a creative problem solving sphere, to me, it makes perfect sense that it's also helpful here because creative problem solving is inherently an act of learning the processes that we've been talking about, divergent thinking, convergent thinking, the creation of new
you know, new or strengthening of neural pathways between neurons. All of those sorts of things are, you know, the same things that happen in learning. And so what we've seen in the studies of metacognition in creative problem solving specifically out of the University of Kentucky was that students who experienced creative problem solving with metacognition in their instruction
came up with twice as many ideas. The ideas were rated as three times more creative or original. And when all of the final projects were sent to external independent experts to evaluate their real world applicability and innovativeness, they were scored as much higher.
Tessa (38:14.539)
And so that's, think, a really powerful signal. in my own research, I've seen this too. I study a lot of innovation consultants, design consultants, and how these teams work and operate. And we really noticed in this work at Next Level Lab that the folks who were really outperforming and doing really great work often had these sort of micro moments of being metacognitive.
in the middle of their work. And why that's interesting is because metacognition traditionally up until the last sort of few years has been conceived of as only a thing that happens at the end. So if you think about your own teams, I'm sure you've seen like retros or splashdowns or stage gates, all of these like defined periods of reflection that happen after something, after action reports, like after something. What these innovation consultants are doing is
right in the messy middle of doing the problem solving, they will sort of stop and start thinking about their thinking because you can't be cognitive and metacognitive at the same time. So you have to stop and they'll start thinking about it and they'll think about their strategy and they'll adjust. So one really great example of this, which is not sexy at all, but I think a really impactful one was this woman was doing a series of interviews around
a particular health and energy project. a green energy project in the healthcare setting. And folks were using a lot of acronyms, as is probably not surprising given that context. And she noticed for her first few user interviews, she got really distracted by all of their acronyms. And so she held herself for five minutes before the next interview.
And she said, Hey, I'm getting really distracted by all of these acronyms. These notes that I've got aren't great. I need a different strategy. And so she decided that what she was going to do moving forward was write down the acronyms and underline them, but then like not pay attention to them because what she was doing was trying to decipher them while she was trying to listen at the same time. So it doesn't sound like that revolutionary, but that kind of moment all of a sudden meant that
Tessa (40:40.491)
She's adjusted her strategy and now she's more present. She has more attention at the end of each day. She's going back and reviewing acronyms, which is helping, know, trigger sort of bringing some of those memories together in her hippocampus and start to combine them and come up with innovative things. So she's done a really good job there of being metacognitive and adjusting her approach.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (40:59.545)
So,
Such a fantastic answer that Tessa and for me, I think when I first came to the term of metacognition, I found it to be quite honest, a little sort of esoteric and confusing this idea of thinking about how I'm thinking, I was sort of in this stuckness of not knowing how exactly to zoom out and do that. And I wonder in a very practical sense for a leader who's thinking, you know, you've sold me I need to integrate this into my problem solving, my thinking my day to day.
Where might we start as a practical tool we could use to get into that metacognition level of thinking?
Tessa (41:40.226)
Yeah. So in the book, we have a move map and we can make sure that your listeners can get a link to that if that's helpful as a way to help get them started through a series of questions. But often a thing that I find really helpful is just these following four questions. So the first question I often ask myself is, where have I done this before and how did that go? And so that makes me think about what I did last time, what
the strategy was how I think it went. And you see if I want to use some of that information in how I'm approaching the thing that I'm doing now. Another question I'll often ask is around my own cognitive biases. So depending on the setting, but especially if it's like, to use the example before of user interviews, I'll be like, am I accidentally elevating some voices over others? Am I anchoring on the first thing that I heard?
Am I identifying with one voice because that person looks like me, right? Versus looks completely different to me. Like all of those are natural cognitive biases and it's not about getting rid of them but it's about noticing them and being able to manage them once you've noticed them. The third question that I often find really helpful is what did I expect to happen and what has happened? So that can often tell me like have I...
have I pre-designed the outcome to this situation or is there anything novel in it? Have I led us here by accident? And then finally, I'll sometimes ask myself, where could I disprove what I think? So based on what I just did, do I have any contradictory information available to me that can help me sort of unanchor or untether myself from my like design fixation is often what it's called. But there are four questions that I often ask myself.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (43:34.921)
Super helpful Tessa. I'd love to hear Rich, do you have anything that you would add to sort of that process of tapping into metacognition?
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (43:35.25)
It's been, yeah.
Rich Braden (43:46.786)
I think it is, if there's a secret sauce anywhere in this, I think that's it. That it is stopping what you're doing to think about what I should be doing next and why is incredibly important. And that is one of the big differentiators. So we like all of the creativity and frameworks that are out there, the design thinking and the agile and all of them. They all have wonderful things. I think they are mostly a forcing function.
for mindsets that are laden with tools. But the problem with them is they lay out the sequence of those things for you. And that's where you run into trouble. What metacognition does for you is says, hey, you have agency and you get to choose. So now, even though you know all these frameworks and everything, you can decide it's not the right next step. What I actually need is to go here and to put on that mindset, do that move.
And there's a lot of freedom in that. So it shouldn't be that don't use them. We don't like them. It's use them all as an inspiration and a resource for being able to mix and match. But to think that somebody could write down the process you should go through to solve your particular problem in your context seems a little crazy when you sort of pull it out and look at it. It's like, how would you know what I need to do?
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (45:10.261)
Yeah.
Rich Braden (45:12.824)
when you don't know anything about it, and neither do I. And so I think there's, it's really a recording of what some really smart people did that worked a couple of times for them in a particular way. And that's useful experience. It's almost like a remote cognitive apprenticeship of learning from experience from others. But what you really need to do is do that thinking on your own. those questions, I use those all the time. I try to use those with my children as well. Tessa's really...
let me drink the Kool-Aid on this. But I find them so useful in helping to guide you and it's so powerful once you step into it.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (45:44.416)
Yeah.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (45:52.137)
It just makes so much sense, Rich. And when you say this out loud, you know, why would you let someone else determine how you solve your problems? Of course. And what I love about what you said is two things. Firstly, it helps us reclaim that agency. It helps put us back in the driver's seat. And the second thing is it kind of helps us pull on the lab coat and the scientist hat and actually conduct some of these tiny experiments. And I think both of those things help us learn, grow.
Rich Braden (46:13.762)
Yes.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (46:16.656)
and develop as a person, both this risk taking, but also our capacity to solve problems in a novel way. And I really love that.
Tessa (46:24.323)
I think it's so important as well because, mean, obviously I think it's so important, congratulating medical condition, but especially because the kind of stuff we're facing now with the future, like it's like off the map territory. Do you know what I mean? And so like a process map, it going to help us deal with some of these things that we are facing? And so we really need to teach people how to be metacognitive over their creative problem solving.
Rich Braden (46:24.75)
Absolutely.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (46:28.896)
Hahaha
Rich Braden (46:30.508)
Ha
Sally Clarke (she/her) (46:37.631)
Mmm.
Tessa (46:53.825)
because that's like how they do it when we're off map.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (46:59.379)
And I think, sorry to interrupt Rich, I think for me, there's a couple of things. One is that it also underscores for me how important it is that this is a collaborative process because then we can help each other sort of get those perspectives as we develop them in ourselves too. And it also just brings me back to practices like meditation, which seems so disconnected from the workplace and to what we're doing, but in fact, our training, the very capacity to gain, know, metacognition and step out of the thinking. it's really powerful and I think too,
It reminds me that when we're taking on those sort of checklists that other people have created, it takes us out of the moment. We're basically just sort of following through things. And that can give a lot of comfort because it feels like there's a structure and I just have to tick things off. And we love that, right? But I think being able to sort of shift between the things that we know, all of our experiences and use obviously what has worked in the past, but with that presence in the present moment to know.
Tessa (47:39.607)
Okay.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (47:53.627)
that things can be different and will be different. So how can we move with that and have that freedom that you alluded to, Rich, as well in that process as well, which will ultimately lead us, I think, to more beautiful, brilliant and truly innovative innovations. Now, I feel like, no, go ahead.
Rich Braden (48:08.386)
Yeah.
I think there's a lot to it that's almost like self-coaching. I've done coaching training, I've had lots of coaches. Coaching often talks about asking powerful questions. I think if you look at a good percentage of them, they are rooted in metacognition because they're asking that person to reflect and solve the problem on their own as opposed to giving them answers. Most people have experienced some degree of it somewhere, but I think it's not...
called out or emphasized enough. once you know about it, now you can choose to do it at any time. It's not terribly hard. I mean, it's hard work, but it's not hard to do. You can do it in five minutes between interviews. So it becomes a very powerful super tool. think that's why I said maybe if there is a secret sauce, that's it is because it helps guide everything that you do if you choose it.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (49:06.161)
It's amazing. feel like I thought we'd been talking for like five minutes. It's been much longer than that. And we could certainly talk for days with both of you about these incredible concepts and your brilliant book. We would love it you could leave our listeners and us with what you think would be, you for someone listening who perhaps doesn't consider themselves inherently creative, but is really excited by what they're hearing. What's a first step for them to start this journey towards innovation?
Tessa (49:09.879)
I'm sorry.
Rich Braden (49:32.942)
Do mean besides buying the book Innovationish and reading it? Right, right.
Tessa (49:34.817)
Hahaha
Sally Clarke (she/her) (49:35.199)
implied term, Rich, implied term. That's so good.
Tessa (49:41.133)
the australian woman in me really struggles with this just to like make that for everyone yeah i'm like
Rich Braden (49:44.622)
Right, right. I was trying to do enough ingest and overdone so much that that wasn't real.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (49:46.634)
With the hard cell? Yeah.
Sally Clarke (she/her) (49:46.856)
Hahaha
Tessa (49:54.357)
Yeah
Sally Clarke (she/her) (49:57.523)
But genuinely, is so good that it's like, it's one of those things where I feel like it is so good that it's not a sell. It's just, you can really come from a place of this is so valuable. It's not a sell. It's genuinely so enriching for people. So please don't, don't hesitate to lean into that space.
Rich Braden (50:13.016)
Yeah, well Tess already said that we'll make available the Move Map, which is a great thing. And then I would offer that this is in the book, but it's not hard and you can have it here now for free, is we have a thing called the Start Somewhere Questions. Because sometimes you just get stuck and you're not sure what you should do. And this is a quick trip through each question rooted in a mindset that lets you brainstorm actions you already have that you could take.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (50:16.576)
Yeah.
Rich Braden (50:40.342)
And then you can just do one of those to move forward, whatever problem you're trying to solve. So if you think about a problem or a challenge that you have in front of you now, maybe one that's a little sticky and you know you have to do or you want to, but you haven't gotten to it yet. These six questions, and I'll just rattle them off so people can come back and look at them, but how can I better understand the problem? Write down as many ways as you can think of going about understanding it. How can I activate other people?
get them to help me with solving it or all the different ways you could go out to do that. How can I learn how people experience this problem? Others outside of myself. How could I test or try something that's small? Just do a little test in it. How might I make sense of what I've learned already in the work that I have done about this? And the last one is how can I share what I've learned with other
people so I can get some feedback. If you just go through those, if you come up one answer to any one of those questions, it'll give you at least one thing that you can do and get you started today.
Tessa (51:49.39)
My favorite thing with these questions is they sort of started as this like thing in class, not us taking them super seriously, if I'm honest. And then when we were getting like class feedback, know, everything, everyone's like, these six questions, I took them to my team and everybody says the problems just look smaller and Rich and I are like, okay. And so we sort of let into them and refined them. And we've continued to get that sort of feedback from folks where they're like, wow, like,
I have been putting this off for my whole year and it's now December and I don't know how I'm going to get this done by the end of the year. And you just helped me figure that out in three and a half minutes. Like, how is that possible? And so that's been really positive to hear that sometimes just sitting there intentionally and answering some questions can help you out.
Rich Braden (52:36.878)
Mm.
I'm not alone. It seems smaller. I know one thing I can do. Those kind of answers are just, yeah, we love to hear that.
Tessa (52:42.379)
Yeah. Yeah.
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (52:42.698)
Yeah
Alexis Zahner (she/her) (52:48.222)
Love it. And it sounds like the best barometer for a framework or a set of questions that works is that it's working for people. So we love it. Now, Rich and Tessa, this has been such a privilege to sit down with you both today and discuss your new book. I think the words to wisdom ratio was off the charts, perhaps the highest we've had all season of the podcast. So thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure to have you both here. Thank you.
Rich Braden (52:54.723)
Mm-hmm.
Rich Braden (53:09.634)
Yeah.
Tessa (53:12.779)
I thank you so appreciate your time.
Rich Braden (53:15.534)
Such a pleasure. What a great conversation. Thank you.
