creativity – Talent Revolution

Car parts for resumes.

I read Alex Perry’s piece in The Wall Street Journal (WSJ link) documenting the “The American Solar Challenge“. Engineering students design, manufacture, and race solar powered cars. General Motors started the competition back in the 90’s; it served as a way to identify talent that would play a role in the solar/electric car markets.

These types of events have been around since the late 80s, like The American Solar Challenge, served as a vehicle build a pipeline of talent. Perry writes:

“Such racing events for years have played a key role in training engineers and even laying the groundwork for new technology in the auto industry. A solar car race across Australia in 1987 helped GM develop one of the earliest mass-produced electric vehicles, the EV1. The Darpa Grand Challenge, a race sponsored by the Defense Department in 2004 and 2005, helped accelerate the development of autonomous driving technology.” — click for full WSJ article

My Take

Find creative ways to build a pipeline of talent. These “hackathon”/race style events are not new to the culture. It’s clear that some firms and government agencies utilize this event as a marketplace to identify and retain talent.

I do not use a hackathon event for hiring now. Instead, I give people a data set and ask them to prepare business reviews. It’s not nearly as cool… however… when I’ve designed and executed these events in the past, it’s been through tech/innovation accelerators or schools.

One Useful Action

Identify a talent/startup/tech incubator in your community. Invite them to help you design a challenge that may attract and open the door for talent. It’s my experience that leaders of these groups are creative, and incentivized to help their communities.

What have you to lose?

Being a bad hang; never a good thing.

I’ve been on teams where senior leaders ask me: “David, how do we get people to engage more” or “How, we do we get people to complain more?” Leaders want to create open environments for new ideas to make things better. Sadly, these very same leaders engage in behavior that makes them bad hangs.

Professional musicians sometimes categorize other musicians as “good hangs” or “bad hangs.” People who are considered “bad hangs” rarely get called, “good hangs” always get called. To “hang” well is to engage in behavior that makes someone want to spend time with you.

Showing up on time and sober.
Being kind.
Active listener.
Plays well with others.
Shares.
Show up prepared.

That’s it.

And in the corporate world, why should a hang be any different?

Managers that show up on time, demonstrate kindness, listen well, engage well with others, share their time and space, and show up ready are people that anybody would want to collaborate with — they’re a good hang.

In most cases where a senior leader asks for more open conversation, the challenge has been that the leader doesn’t listen well, doesn’t share the space, and talks over people — they appear impatient. And when teams begin to think that they are causing someone to become impatient, they quickly learn to shut up. Generativeness dies on the vine. Good talent starts looking for other managers.

One Useful Action

Focus on listening. Here’s how to practice the behavior:

(In your off time) learn to play an instrument. I’m not joking. Learning an instrument requires slow and painful repetition and critical listening skills. In addition, you’ll get a fun hobby out of it too!
When a direct report comes to you with an idea, ask a few questions before outputting a decision. Questions could be: What are the ramifications of this idea? What are the implications? What roadblocks do you expect and how might I help clear them? How might I help?
Don’t give the answer. Leave the question/idea with your team member and encourage them to work on it.

Parting Thought

If the returns from the talent you lead matter, the upfront cost of learning to be a good hang — in this case, listening — is worth every effort.

Problem Solving, Creativity, and the Receptionist

People often comment that they wish they could be as creative as me. 100% of the time they are surprised when I say: “you can.”

I see creativity like an input/process/output framework.

A problem presents itself. The problem demands a solution. The problem walks into an office and greets the receptionist and says, “Excuse me, I demand a solution.” Reception replies, “a solution, you say?”

The Problem, aggravated by having to repeat itself, “Yes, of course, a solution. I don’t want to ask again. I want a solution that addresses me, the problem.”

The Reception, “You’re the problem?”

The Problem, “Yes, I’m the Problem.”

And now for something completely different.

What is generativeness?

Simply: An expression of drive and curiosity that helps others.

Generativeness is a function social skills, depth and breadth of knowledge and interests, connectiveness, and social awareness. Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross discuss it at length in their book, Talent.

Social skills and depth and breadth of knowledge are self-explanatory factors. Connectiveness is the ability to connect ideas — even ideas that are seemingly unrelated. And social/group awareness is the ability to see how those ideas benefit the culture/group.

Steve Jobs is a generative person. When he spoke about the iPhone he spoke about the idea almost as if it was real now. Stuart Koffman calls this The Adjacent Possible.

The reason a manager would talent high in generativeness is because they need to design and build a thing. It could be a product, a service, or a success plan. I’ve hired people to design and (now) lead a Digital Customer Success program. Generative people on my team now built CS Operations teams and functions. Generative people identify, refine, design, and execute implementable ideas that benefit a firm and its customers.

If a manager, like yourself, desired generative talent and want to interview for it here’s how.

Ask a candidate what they’re really into outside of work. (Let them know it’s an optional question).
Ask what they would change about the thing they’re into.
Challenge their reasons for change. Ask “Why” and “What Else”.

What the person is into doesn’t matter. And, you should be aware that you’re not biasing for that. Instead, what you care about is:

Frequency a candidate brings up potential real-world applications or impacts of their ideas.
Frequency a candidates tries to engage me in the ideation process.
Quality of how the candidate handles the limit of their knowledge.

If you feel more comfortable asking a work-related question, then have a generous discussion around a business problem you’re trying to solve and ask the candidate how they might address the problem. Challenge and ask “Why”, “What do you base your ideas on”, and “What else”.

A generative discussion does not feel like an interview question+answer session. A generative discussion feels engaging, fun, and judgment-free… it’s an exploration.

And if that’s not enough consider that generative talent is often overlooked talent. Firms may pass over this talent because they might be just a bit “out there” or they don’t represent the “mean” candidate. That’s good for you! Because that means the market has made a mistake and it’s your opportunity to seize a great investment opportunity.

Imagine a world where you find great talent that others pass over. You create an environment where they can make real impact. They grow your business, they grow their career — and you were the one known for spotting and cultivate that talent.

Cultural Stagnation = f(AI, and Creative Output)? And why team managers should care.

I’m thinking about the connection between AI and human creativity. The question is: what’s the connection creativity stagnation and AI’s transformative potential? And what can managers do about it?

I observe two things.

Scott Buchanan of Economists Writing Every Day writes that investors had high hopes for AI-related investments. The thinking is that AI would revolutionize the world. Recently, analysts wonder if they’ll see an ROI.
Ted Gioia of The Honest Broker writes that the entertainment industry is stagnating creatively. Music preferences are regressing to the past, the New York Times 100 best books of the 21st century contained writers who were mainly known in the 20th century.

Here’s what I think I know.

AI is built on human knowledge.
Human knowledge is an output of humans — largely from some creative/scientific (they can be the same) production function.

Is it possible that we’re realizing that AI is not as revolutionary as we thought because we’re not as revolutionary as we hoped?

This is not the blog for people to learn how to adopt AI into their workflows. Plenty of smarter people are writing about that.

This is the blog for people who obsess about talent and want a (often contrarian) perspective. And because you’re a person who cares about talent, here’s how I believe like us act.

We do all we can to find generative talent. We open our minds to people who are different or don’t have the “perfect” resume and look for people with skills we can use. We increase the breadth and depth of our human capital!
We adopt management styles that promote creativity. We engage in brain storming, ask for talent to give us inputs into decisions, we give inputs, we let people experiment, and we help coach decision-making versus coaching outcomes.
We stop talking and listen more. We let talent give their ideas and we engage with their ideas. We say, “I think you’re trying to accomplish z, and you got outcome y, and and if you take path x your process may get you closer to z.”

Happy generating.

Prioritizing generativeness over practical skill?

Generativeness – the ability to produce new ideas that benefit the whole team. Combined with the ability to executive, having high generative capital on your team sets you up for growth.

Generative talent is often overlooked talent. Often mistaken mislabeled as ” a creative”, generative talent demonstrates social awareness, broad knowledge, and the ability to connect disparate concepts using their extensive mental models. If you’re talking to someone who looks like a “generalist” it’s possible they are high in “generativeness.”

To spot generative people, I ask candidates what they’re passionate about, then probe deeper with “why” and “what else” questions. I’m looking for real-world applications, attempts to engage me in ideation, and how they handle knowledge gaps. Click here to read more about my interview process.

The use case for needing to hire generative talent is simple: it’s for firms seeking to grow. And growth will likely be a function of tech, infrastructure, labor, and education. A multiplier on this growth production function is ideation. I created this Perplexity page for you with more information.

You might encounter a roadblock — talent high in generativeness may be low to practical skills. You could optimize for finding talent high in both — but but that talent could be pricey due to being in short supply or already employed.

If you are skilled at enabling and launching talent, optimizing for generativeness over practical skill may generate long-term gains for you and your firm. Practical skills are easily taught through observation and generative talent will likely figure it out quickly — that’s why they’re special.