Six Skills For 2026: 2. Creativity

AI can write. AI can design. AI can code. So what's left for you?

Creativity. But not the kind you're thinking of.

Most of us have quietly decided we're not creative. Not really. That's for the artists, the designers, the people who were born with it. The rest of us are the ones who colour inside the lines — and frankly, we're fine with that.

Except we're not fine. Because right now, at the exact moment creative thinking has become the single most valuable skill on the planet, 8 in 10 people believe it's critical to economic growth — and only 1 in 4 think they're actually living up to their own creative potential. That gap is enormous. And it's costing people.

In this episode, Phil and Pen make the case that everything you've been told about creativity is wrong. It has nothing to do with being artistic. It has nothing to do with a flash of genius or a lightbulb moment. It's about thinking differently — and that is something every single person listening to this can do. Today.

They walk you through:

• Reframe what creativity actually means — and why it has nothing to do with being artistic
• Understand the wait, stagnate or create choice — and why now is the moment to choose
• Use the Herman Brain Dominance model to discover where your creative thinking already lives 
• Turn anxiety into creativity — because misdirected creative energy is exactly what anxiety is
• Work in partnership with AI rather than fearing it, using six practical exercises to flex your creative muscle starting today

Because the world doesn't need you to wait for instructions anymore. You have three choices — wait, stagnate, or create. And there has never been a more important moment to choose creation. 

Listen to this episode and try this — take your job title, imagine an assistant handles everything routine, and rewrite your role with the word creative in mind. Just see where it takes you.

Transcript

Creativity Paradox And The Choice

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Creativity. Thinking differently. I'm just gonna put that as an alternative. It's not are you creative, it's how are you creative, and that's the exciting opportunity here. The number one skill demanded by employers in the next decade is creative thinking. Now, the uncomfortable irony, at the precise moment that creative thinking has become the most economically valuable skill, most adults don't believe they have it. So a global Adobe study found that only 25% of people describe themselves as creative. While 80%, 80%, that is not a small number, that's an A grade if you're doing your GCSEs this year. 80% say creativity is critical to economic growth. So we've created a world that depends on human creativity, and more and more depends on human creativity, and that this while simultaneously convincing ourselves that we're not creative, we're in a very exciting time. We're in a time of big change. The ground is sort of shifting. So, you know, we always talk about we have a choice in these moments to just wait and hold our breath and see what happens. Stagnate and just stop where we are and give up or create. And this, those three words that we use in terms of innovation, change, creativity, we've always got that choice. Just to take a step back and just think about how your brain, your thinking, your beliefs have been sort of trained and conditioned up until now, and you have a set of beliefs around that, and that does not mean that that is how your brain will operate and what you will believe in the future. I don't think there's been a time in my life where this is more relevant. Hello, my name's Philip Walla. My name is Penelope Waller, and we are two of the directors at 4D Human Being. And welcome to the 4D Human Being podcast. What's it all about, Penn? It's all about your personal and professional relationships, it's about your communication skills, how you lead, how you work and build teams, how you are looking after yourself and your well-being, and how you are much more at choice. What do we mean by that? Well, sometimes we can get a little caught in patterns in life, and we can all be a little bit on our automatic pilot. So 40 human being is all about helping us get back to choice and being a four-dimensional human being, and your fourth dimension, of course, is intention. So whether it's about your impact, your leadership style, your team dynamics, whether it's about your well-being, whether it's about your communication or your presentation skills, anything that involves human beings interacting with other human beings, 4D Human Being are here to help. We're gonna take a deep dive and look at some tools, insights, theories that are gonna help you go from a 3D human doing to a 4D human being so that you can happen to the world rather than the world simply happening to you. Can you hear me? I am recording everywhere. Your recording functionality is omnipresent. Thunderbirds, we are going now, Phil. I do have to say we are gonna be talking about the second of our skills topics today, which is six skills for 2026. And I have to say, before we dive in, we are going to be talking about creativity today. We will remind our listeners of what we've done. I'm just saying to people who've heard that word, don't swim. No, exactly, don't get judgments for that word. But I will just say, Phil, your outfit today is very much in the creative zone. Well, you've got a full stripes and spots. I've got a double pattern, and I think there's more room in the world. For a double pattern. I've gone no, I've gone the opposite, Phil. I've gone no pattern. Yeah, you've gone you've gone very uh what do we call it? Like capsule wardrobe, like they like fundamentally classics. I do like those capsule wardrobe videos on Instagram. Yeah. And they don't they don't tend to feature what you're wearing, but you look great! Well, here's the thing about double patterning, which is different from double deniming, I really want to make that differentiation. Is it's one of the this is a lovely super segue me upright nice Laura. It's such a good example of unspoken, unwritten, often unconscious, maybe choiceful, but unconscious creative constraints. And there'll be all these in your wardrobe that you never put together because you've got an unconscious rule around what's allowed to go with what. And I say, blow that out of the water. What if I put a stripe with a spot? Look, what could happen? And there it is, we're gonna go. What can happen? And it's a good segue into the what if around creativity. Okay, I do want to pick up on one thing from our previous episode. So to run through the six skills for 2026 are accountability, creativity, curiosity, adaptability, visionary, and relatability. And these are all skills, qualities that we all need to dial up to really meet the new world and the technological advances, and particularly AI. I want to say one thing about our previous podcast, the first one, Accountability, which I which you knew and I sort of looked at again around the size of teams. So if you haven't listened to the accountability podcast, go back and listen to it. There's lots in there around that kind of self-determination, autonomy, and also holding each other to account that we'll need more and more because we'll be working much more in these kind of hubs and in these much more fluid, remote, I want to say teams, but this is my this is my piece here. Yeah, because we went through, didn't we, quite a few reasons why accountability doesn't always show up and happen and also how to get more of it. But we didn't mention this one, which is absolutely brilliant. Which is absolutely key, which is about the number of people. And it sort of makes me want to immediately jump to crowd think. And if we think about crowds or protests, you lose if that suddenly surges into violence or aggression, that becomes quite difficult to say, Oh, that was Bob. I mean it's always Bob. But because accountability gets lost, and actually the research is it's actually about five or six people. When teams get beyond six, which is actually quite small. So actually we want these small, agile hub teams that's gonna be much more productive. We stop being as productive. There's another really good piece of research around this, which is around the bystander effect, isn't it? Which is if somebody like they've done research, which is I mean, pretty dramatic, but it but it's a useful piece of research where they have somebody kind of feign an illness, claps on the floor in a public space. The more people there are, the less likely it is that somebody will go and help. Because of course, we just think somebody else will get up and go and do something. Whereas if there's only a few uh one, two, three, four, like you say, up to six people, it's much more likely either somebody will jump in or they will collaborate and talk about it and somebody will go in. But massive crowds. You think all they'll there'll be a doctor, unless Penelope, it's you and me. Well with our first day training. With on a flight where it was a long haul where someone's having some sort of seizure, and the steward asks, is there anyone on board with any medical training? And I look at you and I say, Well, I have just done Mustang John's ambulance first day. So And I said, Pop your hand down, Phil. Pop your hand down, there might be a doctor on board. Um but it is a really good point in terms of you know, if we think if we think about accountability, as we spoke about last time, we very often think about as a leader, how can you get more accountability in your teams, and also as an individual, how can you how can you take on more accountability and responsibility? But of course, this is a very relatively simple structural piece. If you have more than six people in your team, uh Jeff Bezos always says meetings should only have um people that uh you could share one pizza with. Um if you have more than six people that's not many people in my world period. No, yeah, no, that's that's one. That's one. If you have more than six people if you have more than one more than six people in a team in a meeting, it's just much more likely that accountability will start to reduce on an individual and a collection. It's the old cliche, isn't it, of sort of just hide, hide at the hide in the meeting and shuffle paper and boob we go. Yeah. Okay, let's talk. Topic two, creativity. Thinking differently. I'm just gonna put that as an alternative. So creativity in the face of a changing world. Because we're gonna come to, we're gonna go through what what do we mean by creativity? Why is it important? It's always been important. Look at look at you know who we are. We are, it's the primal drive of the human being, I would argue. Pro-creativity is the fundamental creativity, and everything else is a supplement. We know that energy, that universal big bang energy is the drive to create. Like it's so primal. What's interesting is it's even more important now for us to understand what it is and what aspects of it we need, because I love this sort of this distillation, this nugget. For the last at least 200 years, we have been valued and rewarded and understand ourselves for what we know and what we do, and that my dear friend, is changing, and that for some people is pretty scary because if I've learned stuff at school, we'll get to the education system, and if I know how to implement tasks or organise information or you know, structure a timeline in a project. I get a grade or a certificate or a project. I get a certificate, but you get a certificate, I get paid, I go home, I feel satisfied. And we are facing tech now that can do that so much better. And I'm gonna double down, I'm gonna double down on that, Phil, which I know we'll talk to, which is not only has that been the structure of how our society kind of operates, works, what we're valued for, how we identify. I would offer that the word creativity itself has kind of lent itself to something that is very specific or very different or very and I remember this from the days um back in corporate when I used to work. I worked for a long time in the in the Walt Disney Company. And the Walt Disney Company, by its very nature, is I mean, if not the most famous creative company on the planet. I I don't know what is, you know, it was all about creativity and magic. And I was working originally, I did move into more general management as I as I moved up through my career. But I was like, sucking the creativity out of it. I was in finance bill, and not you know, and it and I just remember at the time how important that value and that word was in the organization, and how at the time I don't really know if I identified with it. I thought, well, that's other that other people do that. And of course, looking back now, of course, I I completely think of creativity in a in a different way. Um, but you can understand why we sort of other it with other people. We definitely need to rethink that, and we're gonna outline what we mean by it, what it what creativity is, what it is, and and also really give you a way to think about it in terms of a model and practical things. And reassure you that we are all creative, as Philippa just said, it is our very nature that we are creative. Exactly. So if you're thinking, oh, that's not me, we believe that everyone is creative. It's not are you creative, it's how are you creative, and that's the exciting opportunity here. We are at an unprecedented supposedly, that word is so overusing. Even if you're not a kind of doom mongerer and sort of you know, super negative and panicking, I think it's fair based on a lot of the inputs, podcast, information articles that we're hearing from people within the industry, people in government, people in business. Whether or not you think the sort of world is coming to an end with AI, I think it's fair to say we're in a very exciting time. We're in a bit, we're in a time of big change. Maybe you don't feel excited about it. In in in the same way, on a part, if not bigger than some of the sort of industrial technological revolutions that we've seen. So the ground is sort of shifting. So you know, we always talk about we have a choice in these moments to just wait and hold our breath and see what happens, stagnate and just stop where we are and give up or create. Wait, stagnate, or create. And this, those three words that we use in terms of innovation, change, creativity, we've always got that choice. I don't think there's been a time in my life where this is more relevant. That those three words, as on an individual basis, as well as you know, organizationally, regionally, nationally, culturally, globally, on a personal level, we can constrict and stagnate and just think that's nothing, I'm just it's over. We can wait and just hope that it doesn't happen, or somebody else does something that means we're still relevant, or we can create, and that for me is getting ourselves at the center. Well, I also really like how I mean, obviously, Phil, you you you know, you have a passion for live creativity and many, many things. And I love how enthusiastic you are about this because there is a lot of fear around this and and very valid, and we can also argue from a real kind of systemic level that what this is doing, what this massive shift and change is doing is it's kind of forcing us, if you like, to quick to develop more quickly as human beings to move out of the way that we have been operating into the past into a much more creative way of operating. And human beings are always developing, um, and that's based on many, many factors. And one of those factors is how the environment around us changes, and that has ever been. And we could argue that the way that the system, the environment has been working over the last, you know, 100 years, 150 years or so, has kind of encouraged us, if you like, to be relatively compliant, relatively task-focused, um, looking for a validation in the system, waiting for information to come from the system because that's work. We've had a, I know it may not feel like it, we've had a relatively stable system out there that has allowed us to operate like that, which Robert Keegan would call the reactive um stage of development. Pick up the folder, take it. Do what the system needs. Exactly, and the system will remain relatively stable and allow you to operate like that. And you get rewarded for operating like that. React to the system, comply to the system. The system will reward you. And it's worked for us, right? And you could argue at, you know, kind of a big sort of woo-ic existential level that the system is now being it's like sort of vibrating and shaking. It is, the ground is shaking, the ground is shaking, the walls are the walls are crumbling. Yeah, and you can you can you can look at that and think, well, that's happening because these tech companies have developed this technology, and yes, that's true. You could also look at it at a more sort of universal level of and the system will continue to shift and change to make sure that we develop where we need to go. And the next stage of Robert Keegan's development is the creative stage, which is much more about internalizing our authorship and our identity and our beliefs and our words. Yeah. So it's it's not about what does this what does this system need from me, what must I do, what mustn't I do? It's yeah, who am I inside? What do I believe? What do I want? What can what can I create in this system? Those words. And about kind of 20% of the population, 25% of the population have already sort of shifted into that creative stage of development. The vast majority of people are operating in the reactive stage, which is the stage of development, which has worked well up until now. So, in a way, I like to think of this as yes, there are some very scary things about it, and if we hold that sort of meta view, you could argue this vibration, this shake up is to push the human race into the next stage of it. And I like thinking of it like that. I would look, if it hadn't been AI, it would have been something else. You know, this idea that, you know, it's so funny, isn't it? We have it at a at a more micro level, you know, we we we find an apartment to live in or we buy a house, and then we think, right, I'll decorate it, it's done. Right, we're done now. Stop! It's as if everything could just stay the same. And and for that to happen, you'd sort of need no weather, you'd need to not have anybody around, don't relationships, no relationships, you'd have to sort of freeze it in time, you know, don't light a fire, certainly don't have pets. I mean, you can't do anything because it's gonna deteriorate. That is the nature of I mean, someone said the other day, you know, even at the with the big questions around, it was a international um Parkinson's Day the other day, and this this gentleman was on a radio show, and he said, you know, they were playing um there was a whole group, a community that plays ping pong, and he it was really, you know, it really helped him. And and he said, and at some point you have to sort of go, well, you know, Parkinson's or not Parkinson's. Life is is at some point degenerative. And you know, and that that actually we have to it keeps rolling, yeah, and you have to find a way, in his case, to find a path through a really difficult situation. We're now faced with this, like that this is what happens, you know. You you buy your house, you decorate it, it it starts to get ruined, you you choose a different colour, like you move through, you move house. This is what it is, and that sort of notion of static living, our we wouldn't breathe if life was static. Yeah, that pulsing breath. What we're really talking about here in terms of this topic is responding creatively to the world, people, yeah, rather than waiting to be told to do the we're not saying creativity, everyone has to now start painting by numbers in their spare time. Although please do that if you enjoy that. We are talking about as human beings how can we respond creatively to the world around us, and that is the exciting thing. That is the exciting thing. So let's let's do a few stats and then a lovely paradox. So, love a paradox. So apparently 300 million jobs will be affected by um AI automation. These are numbers from 2023, so these will be different now already. This was uh a Goldman Sachs um survey. Um, 85 million roles will be displaced by 2025. That's interesting, that's already happened. So this is these are a little bit old. 65% of children starting schools today will work in job types that don't even exist yet. Love that. Um, the number the number one skill, this was in 2023. I mean, we've been talking about this for ages. It's so interesting, isn't it, when we talk about something and then we're right in it. And and we know we've had that with various things through our through our um work at 4D. We keep talking about it and now we're in it. The number one skill demanded by employers in the next decade is creative thinking. Now, a couple of things on this. One, the paradox. The paradox is that never has there been a moment in history time, as far as we know, you know, the uncomfortable irony, at the precise moment that creative thinking has become the most economically valuable skill. I want to repeat those words, not just all the most valuable, the most economically valuable skill. Most adults don't believe they have it. So a global Adobe study found that only 25% of people describe themselves as creative, while 80%, 80%, that is not a small number, that's an A grade if you're doing your GCSEs this year. 80% say creativity is critical to economic growth. So we've created a world that depends on human creativity, and more and more depends on human creativity, and that this while simultaneously convincing ourselves that we're not creative. So I mean I just think that is absolutely kind of most extraordinary. So this podcast really is to crack that open and say, yes, you are. Whatever your school taught you, whatever your you know relatives taught you, whatever you've taught yourself, whatever your job is, whoever has ever said to you, and if you've said it to yourself that you're not creative, this is to crack that open. It's impossible that you're not creative, because at some point you've lost a key to your house or your car and you've creatively thought how to solve that problem. Like it's impossible we are not creative. Creative by our very nature. And to follow on from what you've said, again, this is a topic for me that is really, really important and really, really valuable, possibly partly because my early career was in finance, and you know, one would not have associated that word with um. Yeah, you can really be very creative in finance. Yeah, quite a lot of it. Not that you did, Penn, but you know, creative cooking of the buckles. But but this is really important because you can really talk to this. You know that space of feeling like you've been in an industry where the creative people are over there, yeah, and you're and you're not passing. And I and I think there's two things that I would say about it. One is in terms of the the skill set in terms of our thinking, um, we can definitely, definitely develop that, and we'll talk about how we how we can do that. And the other piece is the identity piece, so how we talk about ourselves and what we think about ourselves. Um, because how how we do that will then change how we think, how we communicate the ideas we come up with. So it's both the identity narrative and beliefs that we hold around that word and ourselves, and it is also Literally a muscle training in terms of how we think and how we respond to the world. So if we are all creative and we can all up our creative game. Yeah. So if you find yourself, you know, at a party or with anybody, and you find yourself saying, Yeah, you know, I'm I don't really think of myself as creative, I'm not really creative. That's a really good flag for you to question that and ask yourself, it's not that I'm not creative, it's that I don't know if I've really thought about how I'm creative. Yes, exactly. That's the different question, which is creative in itself. So creativity is we can often think about it as being artistic, acting, drawing, painting, writing novels, performing. We've got that very cliched way of thinking about it. I mean, it sort of really makes me laugh. You know, you think about a th, you know, and I've been in theatre and TV. If you think about those productions, I'd love to know how a film gets filmed without the accountants and the engineers, and you know, you just go, it's the lighting guy. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's the technicians, like it's just it's absurd. It's the it's the piece that holds it all up. People also think about creativity as having a sudden flash of genius. I mean, I cannot tell you, I'm in a writing uh club that I meet, we meet every week, and even people who are you know super interested enough to spend a night of their week going on a writing to our writing course, still everybody struggles with wanting that flash of genius to pull them onto a chair and just pour the genius out in one go onto a page, and it's just not how it works. It doesn't work for any writer. Any writer will tell you it's discipline, it's a muscle, you've got to sit down, you've got to write rubbish. Like it's the same. And we think that, you know, we think that these writers just sit down and just write the book and then send it off and go and put the kettle on. I mean, it's just nonsense. There's no flash of genius. I mean, there might be, but that comes from years of discipline. Or being a special type of person, you know, if you wear multiple patterns, for example. Well, Phil, I think it does a lot, to be honest. Yeah, if you're more bohemium, you know, you sort of live in a certain way, or you're more right-brained that you're more creative. It's just not true. Here's what we mean by creativity, and this is what the world needs, this is what the economy needs, and more importantly, this is what AI cannot supply. Like, that's the most important thing. You are not in competition. Your creativity is not in competition with AI. You know, Tom always say, doesn't he like cut your own groove? If you feel you're in competition, get on a different lane, man. Go and run your own course. It's so much more exciting. So, this is what creativity is. It's noticing what's missing. It's the human capacity to ask, ooh, what if? It's when you find yourself asking the question, why hasn't somebody done that? That's your that's your doorway in. It's connecting the unconnected, it's making meaning out of experience. Oh, I wonder what this would mean to a child. I wonder what this would mean to my colleague. It's taking the risk to try something new. It's all of those things, and that could be in any field, any industry. It might be the way that you present numbers. It's a different way of thinking, and that's creativity, and that AI only knows what we tell it. Yes, that's right. Well, it's the real difference, isn't it, between the left and right brain thinking, which I mean, Ian McGillchrist's work in terms of that left and right brain thinking is is is sort of beautifully demonstrated with AI because the left brain knows what it knows, and it can analyse, problem solve, regurgitate based on what it knows. And of course, that is AI because we're feeding, feeding, feeding it all of this knowledge, and it's working in a sort of closed capsule of that knowledge. The right-hand side of our brain is all about meaning making, improvising, it's really about kind of making stuff up, big picture thinking, things that have never been done before, whatever, all of that kind of stuff. And none of that, you know, we've got we've got centuries ahead of us as human beings where that will continually we hope, we hope, where that will continually be running and generating. Yeah. And that's not in AI yet. And there will always be more and more that we can generate. Yeah, well, let's use that. I mean, this is such a cliched one, but you know, it's the Henry T. Ford, isn't it? It's like without the way that he was thinking, if you'd asked sort of you know, somebody else, or if you'd in our case, if you'd asked AI what they want in terms of. How can we get for a faster transport? They'd have said faster horses. Yeah, they'd put another put another horse on. Yeah, put another horse on. Make the carriage lighter. Yeah, give him you know more carrots, you know, exact exactly, make the carriage lighter. Like they it can only work with what it's got. Whereas we us humans, the complexity of how our brain works and the subtlety of our experience, you know, that lovely Keith Johnston phrase who worked a lot with uh improvisation, he really built up the lot of the improv tools in the 60s in theatre here. One of his phrases, your obvious is your talent. And I just love that because it's that you've you know, you're walking along, you have a thought. Oh, I wonder if what if we did that? And you may well dismiss that as oh, it's nothing. It's just a thought just making stuff up in the woods, just making stuff up, or someone else will have thought that. And what he really teaches us with that phrase, your obvious is your talent, is no, no, that is the unique coming together of every single experience that you've got. All of your genetics, your DNA, your neural pathways, all of those clusters, those neurons firing off. I nobody, even us as identical twins, nobody has the same experience. If if if I say the word chair, you and I are going to think of different chairs. It's we are so unique in that way. That's what's so exciting about creativity. And of course, we double down or triple down for when we're working in partnership or in teams, because but then we have a very different, a unique combination of thoughts and experiences, which creates a whole different set of ideas. And that is infinite in terms of what we can co-create together. Um and I think one of the one of the things we we need to stay or get excited about in this period of massive change and huge uncertainty is the fact that we have a real opportunity to stimulate, re-stimulate, rediscover what our brains are designed to do. And for some of us, where that feels not me, or it feels scary, or I guess I would, I guess I would offer just to take a step back and just think about how your brain, your thinking, your beliefs have been sort of trained and conditioned up until now, and you have a set of beliefs around that, and that does not mean that that is how your brain will operate and what you will believe in the future. I wanted I want to give an example of this. My lovely shout out to my fabulous Italian teacher, Paola, and she's really helped me get through the frustration, sort of probably two or three years in when I'd sort of got a handle on the language, and then would get really frustrated when I couldn't speak, some couldn't, you know, formulate a sentence or couldn't find the word that I needed. And she stopped me one day and she said, I really noticed that you you kind of go into like this tension, like this lock that you get frustrated. And she said, Why would you know something that you don't know yet? And it and it was such a you know, I mean, in a way it's really obvious, isn't it? That we get annoyed with ourselves rather than joyous and enjoying the discovery of learning something new. So as you talk about that reconnecting with creativity, rather than coming to this with a with a feeling of, oh, I'm not creative, or you know, I haven't had to think like that or do anything like that for years, like learning a language, we can get frustrated with ourselves, or we can go, ah, okay, what's the first small step, like learning the first few words in Italian? What's the one thing that I could do? And to start feeling, you know, thinking much more like those small steps of cure. We'll come to curiosity in the next episode, because that is like the dieting or the gym, isn't it? That big picture, uh, I should already be lifting 50 pounds and you know, look like something out of, I don't know, GQ magazine. Like already we've lost. Yeah. Already it's over. And for we'll we'll talk about some some tools and techniques for really pushing pushing into creativity. And I guess I would say for we'll also re-emphasize why this is so important in this era. But I guess I just want to emphasize again for anybody who's sitting there thinking that's not me, I don't need to do that, I don't want to do that, I I do this, I'm good at this. I'm gonna yes and you on this, which is yes, absolutely, you can do all those things that you've learned to do, and you you know you do have those that that identity around what you're brilliant at. Yes. And yeah, it's not losing any of that. It's not losing any of that, it's building on top of it. And the the the other thing I would say about it is the beliefs that we have about ourselves and the kind of patterns we've got into and the jobs we've we've got into, we have to accept to a large extent that that has happened and unfolded as a result of what we've learnt as kids, both at home and in our education system, what we've been told we need to be and do in order to get a good job and be safe and secure and all those kind of things. So we we have been conditioned to a large extent to operate in a certain way. Now, that's not to say that those ways of being and those the doing of those tasks is not part of our identity. As I said, you hold on to that, like you've got that. I would offer that we have a huge opportunity to build on top of that with more skills, more creativity. Not that we are, not that it's impossible for us to do, but that just hasn't necessarily been encouraged. I mean, if I think about my middle daughter, such an interesting conversation on Saturday, because she is, I would definitely call her a very creative person. Uh, she used to get told off when she was in primary school because she very quickly lost concentration with the teacher and she used to stare out of the window. And we often got told at parents' evenings, you know, she doesn't concentrate, she's like, she's off with the fairies, she's off in the clouds, and she's she's just dreaming things up and making up stories in the house. Sound lovely, doesn't it? But you know, over time she got taught that she needed to stay focused on the maths equation on the border, whatever it was. And I and I get it, you know, that's that's how the education system works. But of course, now she's 17, we were doing a piece of creative writing the other day, and she said, Am I allowed to say that? We were talking about what you could add, you could build onto this piece of text. And she said, Would it would that be okay? And it was just so interesting because I know it's not that she can't do it, it's just that in all of the pieces of written work and test she's had to do, she's built a belief that there are things that you can't do, and there's certain rules that you have to follow, and certain answers you have to find. And so I don't know if anybody else out there feels like that, but I guess I'd wanted to mention that because I think lots of us have sort of channelled our creativity in different areas or sort of limited it a little bit in order to work well within the system that we're in, and yeah, I think probably most of us have got massively untapped creativity. Definitely, definitely. And we're talking about play here as well and how much that diminishes as we get older and learn to live as an adult. Yeah, I mean, it's so it's so interesting, isn't it? I mean, you're making me think of of Rolo May as well. If anybody um knows Rolo May, the sort of philosopher, uh psychologist, that there's a fear in freedom because you know, suddenly if you take the constraints away, we go, ah, but I don't know what to what do I do with that? Like that now there's no parameters. And so part of what we're gonna talk about today is well, how can we start small and give ourselves some parameters, if you like, because it can feel a bit overwhelmed. Like, what am I supposed to do here? Am I supposed to transform, you know, you know, my business or whatever it might be? So I think that's one thing. And the other thing that comes up for me around that as well, that sort of is almost like the second piece to that. Around we think about identity and having learned, practiced and learned to do these things, and that's how we then get value and who we are, and then suddenly we're told we don't have to do that anymore. Ah, well, can I and who am I? But then the other bit around that, of course, is that can bring up huge anxiety. And anxiety and creativity have a very, very interesting relationship. I don't think it's any coincidence that some of the most creative people through history, when they're thwarted or when things go wrong, struggle, you know, very you know, have huge levels of anxiety or even even mental health. Because we think about creativity like an energy. And when we feel like we've got nowhere to put that, goes in. Um, I think it goes, yeah, it goes in. And I think a good example is, you know, we talk a lot about, we use the CIA model, control, influence, accept. When we feel like we can't control something, so what's happening in our culture, what's happening in the world globally, AI's coming, you know, there's job losses or there's job shifting. And if we feel we can't control that and we want to control, well, that energy is going to go into anxiety because we're now we're just caught in a sort of box or a loop that we can't escape because we cannot fix the thing. We can't stop evolution, we can't stop taking that, we can't fix that problem. So now we're caught in anxiety, or we can't, we know, we can't make our boss make a certain decision. Like when it's out of our control, we can go into anxiety. If we start to think about anxiety as unconsciously mischannelled creativity, and yes, it's difficult when we're activated, but if we can just nip the top of that adrenaline spike, just get a little bit regulated and think, well, there's all this energy which is currently going into problem, problem, problem, problem, oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no. And it's actually going into what if, what if, what if, but it's going into what if, what if, what if terrible, terrible things happen. Yeah. You can rechannel that to what if I redo that corner of my garden? What if I jump onto my AI chatbot, chat GBT or Claude or whatever it is, and ask it a question. What if I what if go somewhere else? Now you're at the centre, yeah, and now you've turned your anxiety into it. And it's a really nice question to think about in terms of leadership and teams at the moment. That question, what if? Because I mean, I speak to lots of clients where there's obviously there's lots of concern, there's lots of anxiety, there's lots of difficulty with world events and you know, ever ever changing situations. And the question, what if, is much more likely. It might not be that you'll find the perfect solution, but it's much more likely to start channeling that energy down a healthier, healthier creative route and interaction than if we sit with the anxiety and the problem. So it's not it's not necessarily going to solve everything, but just one step into that creative process. There's a direct correlation with anxiety reducing when we start to shift into doing something or putting putting our creativity towards something. Even if you tidy a drawer, you know, it's a it's a creative act. It's and I think that that's got real relevance at this point. That if we feel we're starting to get caught in some sort of global anxiety, we really do at that point have a choice to be sucked into that and swept along on that wave, or to stop and think, all right, there's all this thinking energy going somewhere. Where would I really need to go? And I I I build on that, Phil, with thinking about meaning making. So sometimes I think we can think, particularly if we've been in more of those left brain roles or more of those sort of, you know, I I deliver and I tick things off, which you know, I I love. Um, I think we can sometimes think, sort of, what's the point? No, what's the point of spending that time doing a bit of gardening or, you know, painting or having a conversation about doing things differently? It doesn't, it doesn't feel like the thing that's going to be useful. And that meaning making piece in terms of our brain, I mean, this is gonna be, this is gonna be absolutely fundamental to the next phase of human development is meaning making, because you could argue that our current meaning making is about kind of delivering, do the task, do the task, see the results, delivering, but possibly a bit around sort of status. Um, but it's the meaning making is quite trapped in that sort of in the transactional jobs that we do. So not only are things gonna shift in terms of how we operate as human beings and the workplaces that we operate in, we are gonna have to fundamentally shift what we put meaning on and how we make meaning out of our lives and what we do. Because because that that is gonna shift, and if if we don't shift the meaning making as well, we'll likely kind of be frozen because we'll think, well, what's the point of doing that? So we need to shift the meaning as to why it's important. I couldn't agree more. Um, there's an absolute direct example to demonstrate this, and there's sort of I've got a number of thoughts because we're really talking to Herman's brain dominance model, which is left more left brain. We know those terms aren't perfect, but fact-finding and organising, and then the more that right brain improvising and meaning making, and we're going to talk to these. And of course, what AI can do really well, it's fact-finding to an extent with the facts that it's been given, and it can organize really brilliant at organizing. What it's less good at is coming up with things that don't exist yet, improvising and meaning making. Now, what's really interesting is I agree with you, if we if we link this back to the sort of where the push is coming from and the evolution, if we simply let tech take over, and I think we're experiencing it now, we've got a lot of facts and information just coming to us in a loop. And to some extent, I guess there's sort of meaning in that, but we're sort of stuck, you know. If we imagine doom scrolling, and the thing that is crying out to happen is for us to break out of that and connect and say what else, and to make meaning as a as human beings together again. Like we can feel it, you know, we can feel, you know, why is there so much anxiety and neuro, you know, and ADHD? And like, you know, why? Because we more and more we're in this sort of isolation, thinking that sort of information and tech can satisfy everything that we need, and of course, it can't. So there's something not only happening, but wanting here, isn't there? Yeah, and fundamentally, the two things that we need to think about as we as we move into this new era are upskilling, which is what we're also talking about here, and a shift in our meaning making. Those are the two pieces we've really got to tackle. Yeah. So just to kind of go over the the Herman brain quause, we've done a podcast on this ages ago, I think. So yeah, fact-finding is obviously that analytical data-driven. Um, AI is just going to get better and better at this, the more, the more it's fed, the more information that's going to come back. Although, of course, we do know that it likes to please humans because humans like to be pleased, so it doesn't give us correct facts. So it's good at it, but we I mean, I did this the other day. We were doing a piece of work. I wanted a story to represent some of the themes that were through that piece. I wanted to open with a story. I asked Claude, he gave me this perfect story that fitted everything I needed, all the keywords I'd put in. I was like, wow. And then, wow, I was like, that I've got a pen. They said, Oh my god, it's unbelievable. This is an amazing story. This true story of this man who climbed a moon. And then I and I thought I'm just gonna just before we I'm just gonna check it, just before we, you know, stand up and you know, go and deliver the piece of work. And of course, it was completely made up. Because what AI unfortunately has learned is humans like to be pleased and they don't really mind what how you do it, just give me what I want. So, yes, it's good at fact-finding, we need to be, but we need to check it. And this is the one of the pieces we're gonna come to, which is how we become creative in a tennis match, in a in a partnership with AI, because it does need us, it's not perfect. Organizing, it's super good at organizing, it's very good at structuring things, which I mean, I have to say, for me, is just the dream. And I think that is one of the things that will be fearful to people who have found value in that in that particular space. Yeah. Um so I I guess for any of you who would would say that your sort of dominant thinking style is in that organizing space, and I, you know, I hold my hand up to that as well. Trust me, we can train all parts of our brain to be firing on all cylinders. It's just that up until now, we've potentially prioritised one part of our brain because it served us, it's rewarded us. It does not mean you cannot fire up those other creative parts of your brain. I agree, and I would even say I'm gonna give even more of a bonus there is that yes, it's good at organizing. What is really good fun though is it can do all that basic organizing for you. It can structure things into the chapters or the levels or the timeline that you want, and then you can look at it and go, try this. Yeah, I can do this. See this, and that's your improvising in service of your organizing, improving on that. And that's so much fun because then you've it's like someone's done all the chopping of the vegetables when you cook your roast. You don't have to do it anymore. But boy, you've got a better marinade for your chicken because you've got all that time left. Like there's so much to be gained, isn't there? I mean, I don't cook, weird. I use that analogy. Those are the two sort of left brain fact-finding and organizing. And we would argue Claude is good at both of those, probably slightly better at the organising. And then your right brain is your improvising and meaning making. Something just fell off my ceiling there. Which is your what if, blue sky thinking, anything's possible? You know, what if we could hold phones in our hand with no cable? Ooh, you know, Steve Jobs. Um any any what if, you know, what if, what if we could get this done in half the time? What if we opened up a whole new channel of customers based on some innovation that gives them the kind of training that they need in two minutes? Like what you know, what's the what if there? And then the meaning making is all about the experience, the human connection, the what does this mean to people? Which, you know, so if you think about that, a really good example of this is maybe there are jobs that are going in retail, for example, because more and more of us are swiping on those ads and buying online. But what would it mean to people to have a really exciting, transformative, engaging, shared experience in a store that didn't even feel like a store that felt like some kind of you know, personalized fashion show for us? Like the experience, what we're gonna need as human beings is experience. So what if becomes your wonderful question around your product or your business? What would this mean to people if if they're buying stuff online or they're working remotely, they're not doing things in the same way, you know. Coders, you know, we know that most people who are coding, there's not going to be as many jobs by a long way. But what what's the what if for people like that in terms of what what if this was possible? What if there was a piece of code that could do this, or what if there was an experience that blah blah blah. So, you know, so it goes on. And then we move into how can you take your what if, even if it's you know, what if my draw, my cutlery draw could be organized in a different way? How do we then feed that photo of your cutlery draw into Claude and start playing and start interacting? So this is where it becomes the partnership, and this is what we've said for a long time about the cre creativity, human creativity with AI. Idea generating, meaning making, what if improvising at the beginning. Now you've got your partner. Let them do some of that basic work, drudge work, let them kind of throw a few more things up. Get take that yes and it, or yes, and it, what like that bit. Can you do this? Can you do this? I say this as somebody who initially was resistant, and now I love nothing more than getting my little servant Claude to tweak and play with and improve something that I've given him, so that I just have to have him, her, so I just have to have the ideas, and the speed at which then I can play with those ideas is is so much more increased. You know, the time it takes is so much more diminished. I promise, have a go, ask a question. It's taking, it's like you've got someone who can carry your shopping for you. Yeah, it's doing the tough bit of the it's doing the long bit of the work so that you can plan. Yes, I think that's how we we need to we need to think about ourselves. So whilst I will say again, of course there is fear involved in terms of what AI is going to do to to workplace and employment, we haven't we have an opportunity to to creatively redefine ourselves. Now, we cannot predict what is actually going to unfold there in the future. We we don't know, but as um as the lovely Joe Dispencer says, the best way to predict the future is is to create it. We have an opportunity to kind of to to recreate who we think we are. Now, one thing you could do, just for a bit of fun, is take your CV or take your job role and description, and imagine that you've got an assistant who does lots of that sort of organizing and process stuff, and think of the word creative and then rewrite your job role with that word in your mind and just see where it would take you. It's that kind of thinking that is going to be really helpful to us, not only in terms of the role that we have, the value that we offer, but also in terms of what might be possible in terms of future roles and future value that we bring. So absolutely pushing, pushing, pushing a little bit further, that creative thinking. Exactly. So another good example, if you've been someone who's needed to sort of read reports or briefs and then kind of you know share that information with somebody or correct it and share that information. An AI bot could do that for you. They could they can synthesize that brief or that report super quickly, which leaves you to now ask and answer the question what would be a really exciting way to communicate this? How can I put this into a slide deck or an experience in a totally different way that is going to wow people and really make this message sticky? And our experience through years and years of leadership training is the portion of time spent on how will this presentation actually feel and land with people is tiny. Most of the time has been spent on writing the script, creating the slides, getting those data points right. And guess what? Everybody hates presentations. We have such an opportunity here to go, right, Claude, ChatGPT, whoever we use, you do that bit.

SPEAKER_01 50:27

I'll do the fun stuff.

Six Exercises To Train Creativity

Apollo 13 And The Closing Ask

SPEAKER_00 50:28

Yeah, I'll spend all my time now calling up 4D human being, learning to be the most amazing communicator, shaping an amazing story that AI couldn't have come up with, creating an experience, putting this in putting this information into a communication that gives people an experience and a meaning that changes their day. Now, that for me is the creative opportunity that we're having. Totally, totally. And and underpinning all of this is that the word creative is not only in terms of that sort of blue sky thinking or different thinking or you know that that mindset. What we're also saying with this is we will need to start thinking, not in terms of, well, I'll wait for the weekly creative meeting when that that's the space when we'll do that, or I'll wait for the boss to say we're gonna have a creative. That those those days are are gone, or they will be gone soon. What we also mean by creativity is is kind of that proactive response to the world rather than that reactive response to the world. So it's both how you respond, how you step in and make decisions creatively and think creatively, proactively, and it's also how you allow that creative thinking to expand so that you can enhance your role, change your role, add value in different ways. So it's it's really about what we are gonna be doing, but also how we're gonna be evolving into you know the next next level of development as human beings. So I mean I I when I think about it like this, I get really excited, and I have to say, I too can have moments of concern and fear around AI. What's it gonna what's it gonna do to the world? What are my kids gonna be doing in the future for their role? So I'm with you, anybody out there who feels that fear. And when I let my brain start thinking like this, it makes me feel completely different. Yeah, about that. That's right, it's a completely different experience, and we always have that choice create, wake, stagnate. Um, we're gonna give you six tips of how to tips of how to access your creativity in a really practical way. Before we do that, I want to give you some language that if you that each week, I'm gonna the challenge is to say not just to yourself but to colleagues and bosses at work at least one or two of these phrases. I've been thinking about I've had an idea. Could we try this? What if we have you thought about could we give this a go? Find yourself using language that's expansive, absolutely telling you that you're pushing into something new. So I think you before we even look at tools and ways of things to do, if you're already using language, I was thinking over the weekend, I've come up with an idea, I'm excited about could we try? I know this is a risk, and let's you're in the space, you're in the space of pushing, pushing beyond what's the the the the current boundaries and just hoping that what you do isn't going to be taken over. Well, it's really interesting you say that, Phil, because I was talking to a client this morning actually about exactly this, and not not really even pushing into a whole discussion around creativity, but simply trying to start switching language in a meeting into that real positive future focus that we talk about. What's possible, you know, what what's ahead, rather than feeling stuck here in the present with the problems, how can I push that positively forward? And as you say, even that is much more likely to encourage creative thinking from your team members. Absolutely. Play with your kids, get give your kids some of your work issues, you know, give them some of your work issues and go, what would you do? Like, you know, it's play, it's playtime, it really is. Okay, creativity is a muscle, you've got to work it. So, like any muscle, it responds to use and atrophies with disuse. We know that feeling after a holiday. So these exercises are designed to warm up your creativity, get your creativity flexing. They are not about producing great work. Remember that. You don't go to the gym once to go to the Olympics and lift and have many keys. And you don't you don't buy a painting by numbers uh pad to become Van Gogh. I've been I have been looking at those recently, Phil, because you know, I would definitely say I'm not an artist. And I thought, you know, in the spirit of what we're talking about here, I think I could do a paint by numbers film. Doesn't mean I've got to be Van Gogh. No, well, exactly. It's like anything, it's like writing. If you're writing to be James Joyce, you're in trouble. You know, just you know you do it it's a muscle. Just do it. It's just doing it for the sake of doing it. Really important, and see where it takes you. Get curious. Okay, number one, the random question warm-up. So pick something that you're genuinely interested in, like a hobby, a topic that you love, or might be a frustration or a problem. Open your AI tool of choice, and they're a free ones, so you don't know how to pay at this point, and ask it something unexpected about that thing. Not a work question necessarily, not even a useful question, just a curious question and notice what it gives you. Just get random, then ask a follow-up that may might even surprise you. And this is how you build the habit of play. Five minutes, you could ask really random questions and see what it gives you. It's just getting curious. Okay, that's number one. Number two is the obvious observation journal. That is not easy to say without you too. That is not a journal. I'm gonna be really honest here. Claude, thank you, Claude. Love Claude. Keep a running note on your phone, might be a bit of paper, whatever. Capture things that you notice that no one seems to be doing anything about. The thing that you're very good at this, Phil, you're very good at this. Surely, surely somebody. Yeah. Why isn't somebody? You're really good at you're really good at this. You you you go around in life like with a butterfly net, just capturing things, and you're constantly making voice notes and notes and noting things down. Yeah, just I love it, like exactly that. Like, so you know, even if it's like those road works or uh, you know, in your village or your town, or you know, why doesn't somebody put a drink stand next to those on a hot day? You know those those people in the UK who are going around designing little scenes in potholes on the road. Oh, I mean, that for me that is just brilliant. So in the UK, we've got a real pothole problem in our roads at the moment, but partly because of underinvestment and partly because of the weather. So there's potholes everywhere, people get really frustrated, damages cars, blah blah blah. And there's this thing that's erupted on social media where people go around and they like they like put little figurines in so they create like swimming pools with an orange make it little swimming pool or little gardens, or and then they sort of film them. And if you think about that from a meaning-making perspective, you could say, what is the point of that? Like that is not solving the the pothole problem, why are they doing it? But it's giving different meaning to something, it's giving absolute joy and creativity to something that's chewing is there, it's a different it's a creative response to something that's sitting in the system, and I love it. 100%. It's for years and years and years there's a chewing gum on the pavement painter in Moswell Hill in North London, and it gives a great deal of pleasure. It's very unique to that area, um, and the the pavement is scattered with not just bits of chewing gum, but chewing gum that's been painted into faces or objects. Love it. So you can add to that when you've observed you know issues, problems, you can even then go to your AI and ask it what would improve this, what would solve this? What do you think people might love? So you can again you can come up with your own ideas. You can also use AI as your partner there. Play with it, observe things that are problematic and and um you know not working properly. AI can't run out into your village and see these things again. That's us, isn't it? It's just an experience. I don't think AI would have come up with how do we solve the pothole problem? Well, why don't you create a little swimming pool scene and regarding it? The constraint game. So you have to solve things, um, for example, only using things that you can see on your desk. So if I had to solve the traffic jam issue in in a village, I can only use things that are on my desk. And again, sounds ridiculous. You go, why would I do that? Just notice, even now, as I've said that, and I'm going, well, that what am I even? My brain really wants now to come up with a solution to the traffic jam, traffic works with what and I've got some. I would definitely take my microphone out there, Phil. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, and look how fun. I mean, already that's 30 seconds we've done that, and already we're having fun around, you know, what how would I use a box of tissues and a plant and a clot? Like, great, love it. Okay. So give yourself the constraint game. Again, you could give, you could feed that into AI, you could get together with some colleagues. We can only solve this problem with what's in this, what's in this meeting room. Fun. Just to get them, it's just a muscle, remember, to just work. What if ask 10 what if questions out loud, on paper or into AI? What if, what if, what if? That is your real key. It's your best friend your what if questions? What if the opposite were true? What if the budget were 10 times this? What if it was 10 times less? What if the timeline was 10 months? What if it was 10 weeks? What if it was 10 days? What if it was 10 minutes? What if, what if, what if? I mean, ah, I mean already I already I want to do that. I want to put that into um AI or talk to people about that. What if the target audience was completely different? What if 4D was suddenly not working with the businesses but working with children? Like, what if, what if, what if? You're not committing to any of these, you're just playing. What if, what if, what if? Number five, the meaning check. Ask yourself once a week, what am I doing or making right now? Why does it matter? Who benefits? What changes if it exists versus it doesn't exist? Who loses, who gains? What's the best version of this? And what would it take me to get there? And that meaning check can be something that you have made up and just feel for yourself. There is no rule out there that something has to have a certain meaning. Absolutely. You could even ask, what does my job mean to people across the world? What what you know, what would I have to do to impact, you know, children or mothers with the work that I do? I mean, it's just endless, isn't it? Like the how can I impact other people? How can I benefit people more? How could I benefit people 10% more every day with what I do? I mean, I just love I mean I just love these questions so much. And then finally, number six is your tennis match session. Get involved, right? Get on AI, or you know, or get a friend to come on with you if you don't know how to use it. And give it your personal or professional challenge. Just spend two minutes writing out your very rough, you know, where you can learn to hone the prompts that you give your AI bot. Just give it something really honest. This is what's going on, this is why it's a nightmare, this is what's difficult, this is the problems that it's creating. What would you do about it? Read what it gives you, see what works, tell it what works, tell it what doesn't work, pop it back in, off you go. Tennis match with AI. See what happens, try another problem. The washing up, my kids never do the washing up. You know, whatever it is, and get into a tennis match with it, see what it gives you. Some of it will be rubbish, some of it might be useful. Hone, hone, hone. It's like polishing a diamond, isn't it? And all all of this, all of this is about pushing our thinking into that blank sheet of paper. Even if it's feels pointless, even if it's not gonna lead anywhere, it's exactly as you said, it's just training the brain so that we're thinking in a different way because that thinking style is what is gonna be valued. It doesn't mean that you've now got to be at home and find all the perfect solutions or paint the paint the perfect picture. What we want is we want to train our brains so that we can provide what isn't gonna be needed in the workplace from from from day to day, going forward in the future. So it's brain training, getting your creative, getting your creativity back up where it needs to be. I'm gonna finish with we re-watched because of Artemis, we re-watched Apollo 13 at the weekend, and it was so wonderful. I think I'd aged really well. Yeah. But the Apollo 13 engineers and crew solved what felt, oh, I'm tingling, solved what literally putting a round square peg into a round hole with the filters, solved what felt like an impossible problem in 87 hours. These were not people who were resistant to play, they were people who didn't stop playing to get the solution and find somewhere different and to do the impossible. And I just love that. But these NASA engineers and crew, all they had were a random set of objects and the ability to play. It was amazing, wasn't it? Let's go to the moon game. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the 40 Human Being Podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. Do take on board some of the insights, tools, and tips because every time that you try something new to get back to choice, you are making a vote for the you that you want to become. And I I love that phrase, Pen. I do too. And please do share this episode with somebody that you know would really benefit from the lessons and learnings we've been chatting about today. And of course, if you're interested in more from 4D Human Being, do get in touch. We run workshops, trainings online, in-person, conference events and keynotes. We've got the 4D on-demand platform for your whole organization. And we do have a free essentials membership where anybody can sign up for absolutely free to access some of our insights, tools, and tips. So do get in touch with us. If you'd like to hear more, we cannot wait to hear from you and to carry on the conversation.