How to foster creativity in the workplace

[00:00:11] Welcome back to The Management Lab. I'm Sean Hansen from Saunders College of Business at Rochester Institute of Technology. And I'm Uri Gal from the University of Sydney Business School. Hello, Sean. Hey, Uri. Hey, we have an innovation. What? We have an innovation here. Yeah, the use of video. I'm not sure it's an innovation. We'll have to wait and see.

[00:00:36] Like, all I can think is number one now when I reference how fat I am, it'll be obvious to everyone. They'll no longer have to imagine it. You know how sometimes when you hear somebody and you don't see their face, you're kind of starting to imagine what they look like. Do you think when they see your face, somebody's going to, is anybody going to be surprised by that? That is a great question. I have no idea. I have no idea. Yeah. Yeah. There's times that you hear like a singer and you think, well, I have an image of this person.

[00:01:04] Then you see them and you're like, what? There's no way that's the same person. Um, yeah, that I wonder. How about yourself? Do you think people will pick out your face with your voice? I don't know. Well, it's hard for me to think about, to self reflect in that, in that way. I don't, I don't think that I've never heard anybody say to me, oh, your face looks different than, than what I imagine. Yeah. And what I imagine. But then again, that never really happened that I was in a relationship with anybody where they didn't see my face for a long period of time.

[00:01:33] No, you weren't catfished or you weren't catfishing somebody, I guess you would be catfished. I don't know what that is. What is that? Catfishing is this phenomenon where people get rooked into these fake online relationships. Right. And sometimes it's like, not even, it's like, you know, someone posing as a young woman and it winds up being a, uh, you know, decrepit old man or something like that. It can be people who are very different than what they represent. Never happened to me. Never happened to me. Yeah.

[00:02:02] Hey, why do you make, um, um, the, I guess the biggest story of the week or one of the biggest stories of the week is the, um, CEO of United health. That's the name of the company, right? Who, who got, who was murdered in, in New York. What, what do you make? Yeah. Yeah. So incidentally, my little joke was going to be, it's been a number of weeks since we have managed to speak with one another. And the joke was fortunately, nothing has really happened in that time.

[00:02:27] Like in the, in the, in the month and a half, since we've been able to record an episode, good Lord. Like it's just one thing after another. As we record, we are just about 36 hours after the fall of the Assad regime in Syria. Um, which is a regime that lasted for 54 years. If you count father and son. So it's kind of crazy times. Yeah. That, that, uh, murder of the healthcare, uh, exec.

[00:02:55] Um, I think the thing, number one, a murder on public street, you know, in New York city, uh, right out in the open is, is super disturbing. Right. Like incredibly disturbing. Almost more disturbing to me is the reaction of some of the people on social media. And I know, did you see that? And things like that. Yeah. Justifying what happened. Not, not just justifying, but celebrating. Right.

[00:03:21] I understand that people can have disagreements about the, the nature of the U S healthcare system, but. You know, people glorifying in the murder of a, a guy who, you know, was sensibly was just doing his job. Right.

[00:03:36] You can disagree with the way that industry operates, but that's macabre to me, you know, a, a family, you know, a man with a family and, uh, and, and people celebrating in his, uh, murder on the street is really a bad, uh, commentary on our contemporary moment. You know, they just arrested the guy, uh, suspect. I didn't see that. I mean, they had, they had him on film pretty quickly. Right.

[00:04:03] This was, this was not, uh, uh, a secret, uh, well-kept. Carried out. Well, I mean, I guess the assassination seems like it was carried out with some efficiency, but I mean, they had his images within seconds. And so I was kind of surprised that we hadn't heard that he was arrested within, you know, five or six hours or something like that. Yeah. Well, they got him at some, um, it's a young guy, a 20, 28 year old guy. Who's like a, an anti-capitalist of some, some persuasion.

[00:04:32] I'm entirely sure. But yeah, the fact that the, apparently allegedly the, the shell casings were engraved with the words, uh, was it, what was it? Deny depose. There was a third one. I forgot what it is. No, it's not to pose. It's, it's the, it's the phrase that gets used in healthcare that a lot, that a lot of healthcare companies apparently default to denying claims unless evidence, you know, unless they prod for additional evidence.

[00:04:57] And interestingly, that company, um, there was a big story a couple of years ago that their AI system that they used to, um, to, um, sort through claims had a 90% error rate. Right. So 90% of the claims that they denied were erroneously denied. Wow. Which, which caused a huge outpour a couple of years ago. And I don't know if there's a kind of like a, you know, a clear cause and effect relationship here, but. Yeah.

[00:05:27] It certainly underscores some of the things we've talked about in the past in terms of over-reliance upon algorithmic decision-making and the dangers of over-reliance upon algorithmic decision-making. And again, it underscores the, my point that, yeah, there, there's plenty to critique in the, in the industry and the conduct of the healthcare system or health financing within the United States. But that doesn't justify cold-blooded murder.

[00:05:53] There was something else I wanted to run by you before we get into the topic that we actually wanted to talk about today, which is creativity. But we, before we get into that, I just wanted to get, I wanted to get your take on something that happened here in Australia. So the, I don't know if you've heard about this, but the parliament here passed a bill a week and a half ago or so to ban under 16 year olds from social media. That's going to come into effect next year. Interesting. What's your, what's your initial reaction to this? Yeah. So you're getting me total first blush.

[00:06:23] Although I want to say that when this was initially being proposed, you had some writings online in this regard that I recall seeing. Yes. Yeah. So I think I'd have to ponder it. My initial, I have to be honest, my initial reaction is, is kind of favorable because I, I've sort of put my cards on the table before that I think social media has in many ways been a net ill for society.

[00:06:50] And I'm not a Luddite, you know, I'm not a person who generally is opposed to technology, but I think the, the evidence of the real damage that it has done to the psyche of an entire generation is pretty clear. Jonathan Haidt, who's somebody that we've referenced in the past in some of our conversations, I think has made a pretty good argument that, you know, a lot of the, the mental issues.

[00:07:12] We've seen a dramatic rise in the mental issues and mental health concerns of young adults, certainly in American society. I think in most Western societies, actually, I don't know that most Western societies, but certainly in the U S society. There's data from multiple countries in the West. Interesting. Very similar trends. Yeah. That, that it's been, and, and as I recall, height ties it very specifically back to the introduction of the like button on Facebook. And it was, I don't think he's the only one to have done that, but yes. Yeah.

[00:07:43] Yeah. So I guess my initial, my initial inclination is maybe this is something that's very warranted and worth consideration. Now I will say when my 18 year old, if she ever listens to our podcast and hears me say that we'll freak out. Uh, she likes her social needs. Well, by 18, she's fine. She's golden. Yeah. Right.

[00:08:05] I mean, to me, one of the most telling things about this conversation was that the arguments that were made against it, which I thought were quite feeble for the most part. That, that, so the main argument that I actually thought had some substance to it is that you have all these marginalized groups that find each other online through whatever their platform of choice. And otherwise they would be, you know, they would be isolated and alienated. So that, that I understand. So I think that's something that needs to be considered and we need to figure out a way to allow these people to connect to one another.

[00:08:35] But the arguments from, you know, big tech companies around freedom of expression and freedom of speech for teenagers. I mean, give me a break. No one's saying they, these guys cannot talk. They can talk and discuss and, and use whatever, you know, messaging app that they want.

[00:08:56] No one, no one's for beating them from expressing their, you know, I'm sure fully fleshed out, sophisticated, interesting views that they have about matters of the day. It just, I don't know. It strikes me as a bit, um, a bit of a stretch to make this. I'm a little sense. I would say I'm a little sensitive or, or responsive. Uh, like I can hear that argument. Like it, I get the point.

[00:09:19] This is why I would almost have to reflect on this a little more, uh, before giving an official reaction, uh, because you know, you, you, you're not saying they can't speak, but you are blocking them from a prominent mode of communication. A prominent contemporary mode of communication. And so I can, I can see some of that argument for sure. Oh, I mean, we do, we do block, uh, pre-adolescence from all kinds of things. We also don't let 12 year olds drive. Right.

[00:09:48] I dunno, maybe in Australia you do, but. No, I think you have to be a bit old. We don't let, uh, uh, people under the age of 16, uh, engage in all kinds of behavior. They can't drink, they can't smoke, they can't gamble, they can't vote. Right. I mean, speaking about free speech. They can drink beer in Germany. Yeah. I think it's pretty lax here as well, but be that as we may. Yeah. So I'm, I mean, you're right.

[00:10:16] I think, I think, uh, my, my perspective is that the, it's a net positive. Um, but I, I, I do think that the approach here has been somewhat narrow, um, because if you take out this massive outlet that people have right now, you have to come up with something else. Like with offline programs or. You know, school programs to allow people to. Hang out and communicate with one another through other means that they maybe they haven't been used to before. Yeah.

[00:10:44] There needs to be some kind of support system that I haven't seen the government talk about here at all, which is, um, I think that's a deficit in the way they're thinking about it. Sure. The community building piece is of course, a lot of the original sort of idealized or utopian vision of the internet, right? That the internet in and of itself would become this place where people can find community can find others who are like-minded.

[00:11:08] Uh, and maybe if they grow up in a sort of, uh, uh, cloistered context, they, they don't have those opportunities to interact with other people who are like-minded in ways that are different than their, uh, surroundings. So I think that was always sort of the, uh, uh, a lot of the articulated vision of the online world in general. Yeah.

[00:11:30] I do think we're seeing some of the downsides of enabling people to communicate with people who are like-minded in that they only communicate with people who are like-minded, right? Like we have this move away from, uh, a, a broad informational diet, right? Where people basically gravitate to spaces where they're just going to hear others reinforcing their preconceived notions.

[00:11:54] And I think we've talked about this in various ways, but I think it's led to a very sort of tribal and, and, uh, and divided society. I mean, I've found that I had to be, to make explicit effort to look for informational sources that don't immediately correlate with my preconceived notions of about politics or economics or whatever. So you actually have to be explicit about this. Yeah. Or don't conceive, necessarily align with any preconceived notions, right?

[00:12:23] Like where can you go to get sort of a neutral representation of the news? I think I've talked about this with you where I'll often go to the BBC website and it's crazy to me that living in the United States in 2024, I would have to look to the BBC's website for, for news. But most of the news- Why is that crazy to you? I don't know. I mean, there's plenty of news sources in the United States.

[00:12:46] Why would I have to look at a news source outside the United States, uh, to find, uh, what seems like a fairly even handed representation of what happened today or yesterday or last week. Right. Yeah. It's funny describing the BBC as, uh, as even handed. I think many people would disagree, but anyway, that's a topic for a different conversation. Right. I think you're right. I think that's true. I still, I, I find it more even handed than most of the major news outlets in the United States.

[00:13:15] My concern is that most of the major news outlets in the United States have, have sort of abandoned journalistic ethics in many ways and just have seated to their, their loudest, the seated ground to the loudest members of their audience and tell them what they want to hear. Yeah. Yeah. Well, how do we, how do we move from this to, um, to creativity, which is what let's be creative. Let's be creative.

[00:13:41] I think that's a demonstration of our lack of creativity right here. Yeah. Yeah. Whose choice was it to talk about creativity? Who's the good segue? This was yours. I think it was mine. Yeah. Let me ask you this just right off the bat. Do you consider yourself a creative person? Um, yeah, yeah. I think I, I would consider myself a creative person. Yeah. Do you want to reconsider your answer?

[00:14:07] No, I, I think, I mean, I think I, in my own self conception. Yeah. I think I'm fairly creative. I mean, I'm not an artist, but I used to write when I was younger. I used to write. What? Things. Yeah. What? I'm not talking about writing like journal articles and things like that. I used to, I used to enjoy. How long have we known each other? I used to, we've known each other, what 20, 20, 20 years. Yeah. Yeah. About, about yeah, probably 22.

[00:14:37] No, about 20, about 20. Yeah. Yeah. It would have been. I've never heard. I've never heard that before. Yeah. So what did you use to write? Oh, just, you know, like I didn't publish anything, but I would write short stories. I used to like art. I used to write poetry. Wow. I used to write poetry to, to Susie, sorry, to my wife when we were like dating. Is she right? She liked it. Yeah.

[00:15:04] I also used to read other people's poetry to her. That's the Irish part of you. I would venture, I guess the romantic Irish. Yeah. I don't know that romantic is a word that people often associate with the Irish, but the, the Mediterranean folks tend to get, uh, tend to get that a lot more often, but. Oh, okay. Well, that's, that's a different kind of romance. I guess. Lots of good writers. Certainly. So, okay.

[00:15:34] So you're a creative person. I, I would, I would not say the same thing about me. I'm hopelessly uncreative. I think I did not, I don't know why. So I was, you know, I play the guitar. You can see a bit of my, a bit of the, a bit of the amp behind me in the background and the tip of my wah pedal. So I played the guitar, but for the life of me, I cannot compose music. And I've tried many times. And I would even listen with my kids to, um, you know, they have all these little, um,

[00:16:03] teenage singers that they like. I think I've sent you a link, um, a few months ago to, to one of them and they write their own music. There's these teenagers, which is not very good. And I, and I kept thinking, if they can do it, like I should definitely be able to write something. And I've, I just can't. And I don't know if I'm being lazy or just utterly uncreative. Maybe it's a bit of both because I don't spend too much time and too much effort trying to do that. But then again, if you're creative, it shouldn't be that difficult to do. Right.

[00:16:32] Um, so, so I don't know. I think it is, I think it is difficult. I think there's a reason that we, that the term writer writer's block exists. Right. And those are people who write professionally, right? Like people who are doing this, even, you know, skilled artists, um, can have moments of sort of, uh, creative challenge. Uh, I do think that creativity and we'll get into this in some of the research, I think, but

[00:17:00] creativity is the kind of thing that has to be exercised and nurtured. It's like any other skill, right? If you don't, if you don't engage in it and exercise it, then it doesn't progress. And indeed it degrades, right? There's, I'm trying to think of who it was. It was a famous violinist. Um, might've been it's Yitak Perlman. Is that a violinist? Uh, he can check it while I'm talking.

[00:17:25] Um, and I think he was quoted as saying, you know, if I don't practice for a day, nobody can tell if I don't practice for a week myself and a number of the people in the audience would be able to tell if I don't practice for a month, everyone in the room would be able to tell. Right. And that was a guy who was a virtuoso. Right. And so this idea is, you know, with creativity, it has to be nurtured and it has to be exercised. Um, and if you don't do it, then it's not going to develop. Yeah. Okay.

[00:17:53] So, but we're talking about creativity in the workplace, right? In the workplace, creativity. Yeah. Uh, well, both workplace creativity at the organizational level, because there's differences between organizations in terms of how much creativity they're able to bring to bear to create new products and services. Like if you know, there's been this, I don't know if it's still ongoing in the U S because I'm talking about maybe 10 years ago that they had these ads. Uh, I think there were Apple ads and they were comparing themselves to Microsoft.

[00:18:19] So Apple was the, was the cool kid and, and Michael, and maybe I'm, I'm butchering what PC. PC is what the other guy was. It was Apple and PC where Apple was like, all right, now you, you, you put me on the spot. Uh, Justin long, I think was the actor, Justin long. So he was like a young kid. Right. And then I forget the guy. He was formerly on the daily show, but he was PC. So he was sort of like the stuffy. The still boring older guy. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:18:48] So yes, you have, you know, you can, as an organization, you could be more or less creative, more or less innovative, but also there's obvious individual differences between people in terms of how creative they, they are. So we'll, I guess. Yeah, go on. I think we should draw a quick distinction there because one of the things I was really interested in, in looking at some of this research is that there's a very clear, uh, demarcation between creativity and innovation, right? I think we, particularly when we're talking about organizational dynamics, we often sort of

[00:19:17] associate creativity and innovation together in the research literature. They, they define them very distinctly. Um, and so it might be worthwhile just to underscore that. Can I give you one from one of these papers? So they describe, this is actually Lee et al in the European Journal of Work and organizational psychology, but they're citing somebody else. So I'll cite the original one, which is Hughes et al 2018, where they say workplace

[00:19:44] creativity concerns the cognitive and behavioral processes applied when attempting to generate novel ideas. So the, the creation of novel ideas is the creativity piece. Whereas workplace innovation concerns the processes applied when attempting to implement new ideas. So creativity is the idea generation. It doesn't get called innovation until you can basically convert commercialize. Maybe commercialize isn't the right term.

[00:20:11] I don't want someone, uh, coming at me like the, uh, like a healthcare exec or something. Uh, but until, until someone can, uh, can, uh, translate that those novel ideas into products and services and bring it to the marketplace, then it's not innovation. Yeah. Right. So creativity is like the cognitive mental activity that happens, determining ideas and innovation is the, like the application of these ideas in real life and products and services.

[00:20:42] So, uh, before we started, you had a good idea as to how to structure the structure of the conversation, because we can go about this from different angles. So do you want to guide the way real quick, just to signpost what we're going to do? Yeah. So it seems to me that there's several different facets. I should say, by the way, this is literature that I was totally unfamiliar with. I mean, I'm sure I've encountered it at some point or another, but I had not seen any of this research before. So in sort of reading through a number of studies that we did, the things that jumped out at me is that there's,

[00:21:11] there's a number of different, very distinct facets to it. One is the personality piece that focuses on sort of individual creativity. What are the personality characteristics that tend to result in a creativity or signal creativity? There's a separate question around, or two maybe around the work environments. One is leadership models or approaches to leadership that tend to foster creativity within a environment.

[00:21:37] So then there's this other facet on the organizational side, which is the environment, right? Sort of characteristics of the environment that promote or inhibit creativity outside of the role of the leader. And then there's a, or there's maybe fourth and fifth, which is the distinction between individual and group creativity and the degree to which creativity can be demonstrated, not just by individuals within an organization, but also by groups.

[00:22:05] And then the last piece, which is one that is sort of consistent with some of the other things we've talked about is the, the impact of artificial intelligence on creativity. And, and obviously that's newer research, but it's pretty interesting what they're finding there. Yeah. Yeah. Generative AI specifically, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So how, how do you want to, where are we starting? What do we want to talk about first? So, I mean, we just talk about the individual piece first. Okay.

[00:22:32] I guess this was the least surprising to me because it seems like a lot of this seems to pull in ideas of the big five personality index. Um, not surprisingly, the characteristics that seem to be most closely related to, um, creativity were openness to experience. Oh yeah. Yeah. So the big five doesn't have creativity as such as one of the dimensions, right?

[00:22:57] But it does have openness, openness to openness to what, how, how is it defined in the big five? Um, a lot of times it's just labeled as openness, but I think it's most often characterized as openness to experience. Right. So this is sort of the personality characteristic of how, how open are you to trying new things, to doing things that you've not done before. So not surprisingly, that openness to experience seems to be pretty highly correlated with individual creativity. Yeah.

[00:23:23] I believe the other one extra, uh, actually I, I need to go check the source. I have a few more. So there's a paper, uh, from Oldham and Cummings in actually 1996, but it's very highly cited. It was published in AMJ Academy of management journal. They talk about three different things.

[00:23:45] They talk about having broad interests as a, uh, a strong indicator of, of individual level creativity, attraction to complexity, which I thought was quite interesting. Not entirely sure how you measure this, but I guess there's a way to do it and high risk or ambiguity tolerance. So high tolerance for risk taking and for tolerance. Or for ambiguity. You said high tolerance for tolerance, high tolerance for ambiguity.

[00:24:15] Yeah. Risk and ambiguity. Yeah. Yeah. Which all makes sense. Right. Yep. And now when you list those, I definitely think I lean toward creative creativity. I do. Like, I think I'm pretty okay with ambiguity. I sort of accept ambiguity and, uh, in life and recognize that there's not always a right answer to every question. And anyway, it's, it's an interesting little typology. Yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm self reflecting for a minute.

[00:24:44] I mean, I think there's a difference. I mean, just because two things are correlated, they're not the same. Right. And that does not necessarily a strong cause relationship either. I think there's a different, I mean, I always say to people and to myself, maybe especially to myself, that one of the hallmarks of being an adult is the ability to cope with ambiguous situations and accept different positions on, on a given topic. Right. You, not everything is clear cut and not everything goes your way.

[00:25:08] So you have to, um, you have to accept or, uh, you have tolerance again, I'm mixing up words. You have to accept ambiguity and that there is not always a clear answer to, you know, why are we on this earth and why we are alive and many other things. Yeah. But that doesn't make me. I'm certain that that's a quote. Hold on. There's somebody who said something like hallmark. I'm going to, we, we can cut out me searching this, but. No, that's that sofa.

[00:25:37] That's the best part of the conversation. You're really, you're really highlighting your, and I said it before, but I'll say it again because it was so spot on. I think the Soviet color palette. Brown with gray mixed with a bit of, um, you know, military green. Yeah. Before we got on, Uri said that, well, I am wearing sort of a. Why are you just breaking the fourth wall? Yeah. Oh, sorry.

[00:26:06] Uh, but Uri accused me of looking like a scene out of the Americans or Chernobyl. I'll see if I can get a more creative background for future. Um, so it was a reference. It was F Scott Fitzgerald. I guess the exact quote is the test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. There you go.

[00:26:35] You know who F Scott Fitzgerald was. What if I said no, how would that make you feel? Um, well, you know, sometimes you like to disparage Americans. So I don't know if you read. Why don't you explain to everybody who it was? I know you're just dying for an opportunity to put your. No, no. I guarantee the vast majority. The vast majority of American listeners had to read the great Gatsby at some time in their lives. Just a 20th century American author.

[00:27:05] Do you actually have to read it for school? Oh yeah. It's one of those. Oh yeah. It's one of those that's sort of de rigueur. All right. We, we, we digressing. So these were, I guess, some of the primary individual, um, antecedents for creativity, right? So broad interest, attraction to complexity, high tolerance for risk and ambiguity. Uh, and what was the one that you mentioned before? Um, openness to experience was the first one. Yeah. One of the big five. Yeah.

[00:27:33] Now I think all of those are things that can be nurtured by the way. So one of the big questions is if creativity were just a personality characteristic and a lot of the big five are sort of stable over time. So that people tend to have just, you know, lock in on certain, uh, levels across time. But I, uh, to my mind, those are all things that can be nurtured in, uh, a business professional, young adult, anything like that. Yeah.

[00:28:02] I mean, I'm, I'm sure you could, you know, I have two young kids and you had young kids as well. You can definitely train your kids or educate your kids or talk to them about the importance of, of looking at things from different perspectives and, you know, tackle issues in a more refined, um, multifaceted way. I don't use that language with my kids, but you know what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:28:26] But that's, I mean, but that's, I mean, so I think that's very true with kids who are very sort of intellectually malleable, but you know, from a management perspective, I think even with, you know, adult working professionals, you can nurture their sort of comfort with ambiguity and, and their introduction to different perspectives. In fact, there's a whole industry of, of consulting firms that do exactly that claim to do exactly that, right. To increase people's creativity in the workplace. Yeah.

[00:28:56] All right. So that was the first, um, dimension. What was the, what's, what's the next one I want to tackle? Well, the second question is sort of group. Well, let's, this wasn't the second one that I posted a second ago, but let's go ahead and do it now. Uh, individual versus group creativity. Okay. Right. So I think we often think of creativity just as an individual thing, right? Okay. Individual characteristic. Um, but I think there's pretty good evidence that, that groups can also, uh, be more or less creative.

[00:29:24] And sometimes it's the presence, uh, or absence of creative individuals within them that can have a, um, multiplicative effect on their coworkers. And, um, okay. So what, what are some of the things that we know about how to put together groups to enhance their creativity? Uh, so let's see. Yeah. No, go ahead. So, um, looking at a study from God, I hope I'm pronouncing the names right.

[00:29:49] It's zoo and hover, uh, research on work, work, workplace creativity. Uh, it was published in 2014 in the annual review of organizational psychology and organizational behavior. And they point out a couple of different things that have to do with the attributes of groups and their relationship with creativity.

[00:30:08] So groups with, uh, high cohesiveness or shared goals tend to be more creative, which I actually thought was a bit surprising because typically when you have this strong homogeneity in objectives, but I would have thought that actually reduces creativity, but they found that it increases creativity. Yeah. I was a little surprised by that as well. Right. We talked about, by the way, but anyway, it doesn't matter. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:30:38] Participative, uh, participative decision-making. So to include more people in the process of making decisions about certain things, which I guess does make sense intuitively to me anyway, having a supportive climate, right.

[00:30:52] Where you don't shoot down people for asking weird questions or, you know, to say things that you're not supposed to say to create a safe space for people to express themselves and ideas that might be perceived at least initially as, um, you know, out of the field or out there. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, groups that have members with a long tenure, um, tend to be more creative, which. Yeah. That was, that was another one that I found surprising.

[00:31:20] So, yeah, I guess there's a couple of different ways of thinking about this. One is, you know, the longer people are there, you know, the more they know each other, the, the less there is to discover about how different people think and the less innovative configurations of ideas that are there to explore. Right. But I guess the other angle is that the longer people work together, the higher the level of trust is interpersonal trust is, which I think might be an important aspect of, of creativity because you do need to feel secure.

[00:31:49] And safe in saying things that might be perceived as, like we said before, as weird or unconventional, uh, without fearing repercussions from peers and managers. Or judgment. Yeah. Or judgment. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I'm guessing that that's the mechanism ultimately. Right. Probably.

[00:32:06] So if we, if we find that greater tenure and like you, I was surprised by that, uh, finding, but I imagine the mechanism is that sort of development of trust and people feeling comfortable trying new things, expressing new ideas, floating, floating novel ideas to the group. Yeah. Yeah. Another thing that they came up with, uh, is, um, groups with members high in need for closure are less creative.

[00:32:38] So I guess it's more of an individual thing, but then, than a group thing, but when you have multiple individuals in a group that have high need for closure, that decreases creativity. And that immediately made me think of, um, of Sheldon from big bang theory, because he famously had a very high need for closure. Um, I think we should start bringing in clips. Now, if we're going to do video, we should start bringing in clips. From other shows. Yeah. From just, yeah.

[00:33:06] Uh, no, I don't know what you're talking about in particular, uh, specifically though. Well, there's a whole episode where Amy is just torturing him by, you know, playing the start of the American anthem, but doesn't let him finish and a bunch of things like that, because he has this very strong need for closure and she's just trying to mess with them. Anyway. Yeah. Dispositional need for closure. I thought was interesting. Now that one wasn't surprising to me though, right? The groups that need closure to any given, uh, I don't know, you know, project or task.

[00:33:35] Um, that seemed to be sort of the opposite of comfort with ambiguity, right? Um, people who need an answer, a very distinct answer. That's sort of the need for closure. Well, if you, if you have a strong need for an answer to any question and can't sit with the idea that maybe an answer will be forthcoming at some later date, um, that suggests that you're not so comfortable with ambiguity. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:34:02] It makes me think of, and I'm not sure how relevant it is, but I don't know if you remember when we, when we were PhD students, one of our professors, a couple of them actually were involved in writing a book about design. It was, um, Dick Boland and, and I think Fred Colopy was, and they had this idea. So they were looking at, um, Frank Gehry, who's a, I guess, I don't know if he's still around actually. Um, but he's a famous artifact. The firm certainly is. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:34:29] And they're famous for creating these wacky looking buildings that could sort of look like, I don't know, crumpled paper or, or spaceships depending on your perspective, I guess. They don't have, um, they don't have very many straight angles in these buildings. They look very, very wonky. Um, yeah. So they were talking about the, the Disney music hall in LA, if people have seen that. And certainly the, the Peter B Lewis building where we were studying at the time. Yeah. In Cleveland. Not sure how many people know about that building though.

[00:34:59] You never know. Um, there's the Guggenheim museum in, in Spain. Yeah. Yeah. There's a bunch of them. Um, they're kind of, once you see these buildings, you know, it's a Gary design. Yeah. Um, there's a, I don't know if it, no, actually it is a building. I think there are big sculptures in, in one of, um, Chicago's parks. I forget which one it is. Anyway, there's a bunch of them all over the place. And so they, they wrote a Frank Gary is still alive. He is 95 years old. Yeah. Wow.

[00:35:29] Good friend. So they, they had this idea of, of liquid crystal or something along these lines that they came up with to kind of, um, represent their, their, the way they're thinking about design. So they're thinking about solid structures of course, but they're thinking about them in a very, in, in very flexible ways, uh, very late into the, into the design and process, uh, and, and, and construction processes. Right.

[00:35:55] So they, they, they keep things fluid, uh, for very long before they actually put them into actual physical structures. Yeah. So very, very low need for the. Yeah. I liked it. Yeah. Managing is design. I think was the title of that one. Yeah. I think you're right. Yeah. Yeah. So, but there are other things, um, that have to do with, I guess, what, what, what, what did you call them before? Environmental. They have to do with the organization.

[00:36:24] Um, yeah, I think you already hit on one of these, which is that supportive environment and environment that's yeah. Sort of context, right. Just sort of the, the, the culture or the context of the workspace. Um, and that idea of a supportive environment where people feel like, uh, they're, you know, they're going to be supported by their colleagues, by the organization and things like that tends to foster more creative mindsets. Yeah.

[00:36:48] There was another interesting study from, um, Montali Montani rather, um, and others in 2020 that looked at the relationship between innovation and, uh, workload. Mm-hmm and, uh, they found interestingly an inverted U shaped relationship between workload and innovative behavior. So if workload is really low, you don't tend to be very innovative. If it's moderate, you tend to be quite innovative.

[00:37:16] And if it's too high, if it's very high workload, then innovation drops again. Yeah. And interestingly, it was mediated by, um, work engagement, right? So, uh, workload leads to work engagement, which in turn leads to innovation. So if you have very low workload, you don't need to be very engaged and the innovation is low and at moderate levels, um, engagement is, is very high and then it drops again and innovation drops as well. Yeah.

[00:37:46] Did you find this surprising at all? Uh, I didn't find it surprising. I do think it's a good insight though. Right? So, uh, I mean, to me it's fairly, there's an intuitive appeal to it. Right? So, you know, if, if you, if you have a very low workload, you're just, you're like looking for things to do, right? These stereotypical stories about people like, you know, surfing the internet or, you know, Looking for their next job. Yeah. Filling time.

[00:38:14] Uh, if they don't have much work, you can imagine why that would lead to sort of a low level of creativity. They're just, their, their minds aren't engaged in their work. Um, at the same time, you could see the opposite side of that inverted U if they're just inundated, you know, if they're just the workload so high and they're, you know, feeling overwhelmed, it makes a lot of sense why that would not be, uh, conducive to creativity. You're right. I guess the challenge is the, is finding the sweet spot in the middle.

[00:38:43] But we, there was another, um, finding from Zao's and Zao and Hoover's paper that at least challenges this finding or maybe even entirely contradicts it. I'm not entirely sure. Um, so they, they, uh, looked at chronic time pressure, which I think would be highly correlated with workload. I would, I would think maybe it isn't entirely, but I would think there would be a high correlation there. And they found that chronic time pressure has actually a direct positive effect on creativity. So granted, they're talking about great content.

[00:39:13] Uh, so they're talking about creativity rather than innovation. Maybe that's why there's a different relationship there, but yeah, they talk about the chronic time pressure as, as being directly and positively related to the creativity. And they're also talking about individuals rather than, than the, the entire workplace. So maybe this. I can, I can posit an explanation there.

[00:39:37] So in something like agile software development, you know, uh, where you work in short cycles, you know, two weeks, four weeks, something like that. Um, a big argument for that approach to software development. And it's now been adopted in all kinds of domains of project management is, uh, that it creates a more manageable workload that you don't have these periods of, uh, intense demand and other periods of, you know, lulls.

[00:40:05] Uh, but it creates this sort of manageable, um, consistent, uh, rhythm of work. But that also means that you, you have, I don't know if intense is the right word, but you have clear, consistent time pressures. You have to deliver things every in those environments. Sometimes your work has to be checked in every day. So it's like, I gotta be done by the end of the day with this particular task. Um, but certainly your, your cycles again, let's say a two week sprint cycle.

[00:40:32] That's the iteration, uh, you know, in, you know, scrum one particular agile methodology, uh, environment is called a sprint. If your sprint cycles are every two weeks, no, that's a pretty clear time pressure, right? You've got to, you're supposed to get these things done in those two weeks, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you become overloaded with work or at least the premise is that it's a much more manageable workload. Yeah. Maybe that's what it is. That makes sense as well. Um, and then I think the last, oh, not the last, uh, the.

[00:41:02] Second to last piece is, um, leadership. And because there's a lot of research that looks at the relationship between different forms and styles of leadership and their impact on innovation and creativity. Um, so one, and of course that's the most immediate that, that, that piece has the most immediate implications for managers. Although I mean, the other ones do as well, but we can talk about this later. So one thing that I, that I thought was really interesting and pertinent was managers expectations of their employees.

[00:41:32] So, uh, you familiar with the, uh, I'm going to put you on the spot now here at the Pygmalion effect. Uh, I don't think I am. Oh, Sean. I'm familiar with Pygmalion. Oh, Pygmalion. Okay. So I'm sorry. I mispronounced it. No, I wasn't calling. I wasn't calling you out. I don't think I'm familiar with the Pygmalion effect. If you, uh, see if you can jog my memory.

[00:42:00] So it's basically the idea that, that people behave based on the expectations of other people often, right? So if you expect somebody to perform badly, they're more likely to perform badly. But if you expect them to perform really well, then they're more likely to perform really well. So if, if managers expect people to behave in creative ways, they're more likely to be creative in the workplace. So that's what that study found. Um, that same study from Zao and, and Hoover over, which by the way, was a review of different,

[00:42:29] and of other studies, that's why they, they have so many different, um, findings in, in that paper. So pig, did you say Pygmalion or Pygmalion? Pygmalion. Pygmalion, which I don't know. It sounds like a pretty American pronunciation of that name to me. Call it the my fair lady effect. All right. Uh, what, what else have we, uh, did we see about, about the relationship between leadership style and creativity?

[00:42:57] Um, so one of the things that was pretty wild to me is how many different styles of leadership have been, um, documented in the research literature. Cause in one of these studies, and I believe this was the, uh, Lee et al. Um, yeah. European journal work in organizational psychology. One of the ones I think I referenced before.

[00:43:20] Um, they looked at, uh, just a huge, uh, set of different leadership styles involving like, um, ethical dimensions. So like authentic leaders or moral dimension. So authentic servant leadership, ethical leadership, humble leadership, uh, empowering versus entrepreneurial, supportive and benevolent, destructive and authoritarian.

[00:43:50] So they have all these different dimensions. And as a result, you get a lot of nuance in terms of the, uh, types of leadership that make a difference for, uh, for creative behavior. I think the big takeaway there, uh, big takeaways there are, um, oh, transformational. That's another one. Right. So that, uh, the, the leadership approaches that seem to be most beneficial for, um, creativity

[00:44:19] or the transformational, which is sort of, you know, focused on, uh, getting people on board with a vision, uh, not, not as focused on, you know, uh, micromanagement or task, um, authenticity in leadership. Uh, those elements seem to foster creativity and again, not terribly surprising, but sort of a, a domineering or authoritarian style of leadership is just a killer for creativity in groups. Yeah.

[00:44:49] There was another study that basically, basically confirms what you just said. So, uh, they found that's all human commons from 1996, which we referenced before that. Uh, where is it employees who were supervised in a supportive non-controlling fashion were more likely to be, to exhibit the creative behavior, right? So it's basically the same thing as you said, just from different study, right? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:45:17] People have freedom to experiment, don't judge them and don't overly control what they're doing. And they're more likely to exhibit creative behaviors, which again, it's not surprising. What is surprising is how many leaders don't do that. Mm-hmm. Right. Um, and you and I had a conversation the other day about another scenario, a real, real life scenario, which will not re, um, um, um, recapture here.

[00:45:42] But, you know, the senior leaders that you would expect to, um, well, both to know the literature and to have the right intuition about these things, um, who lead organizations that are clearly knowledge-based organizations that not be, they're not based on manual repetitive labor. They're actually, their success is heavily predicated on the creativity of their workforce. Yeah. And generation of novel ideas again. Yeah.

[00:46:10] And yet they, they, they do all the wrong things. Smart, highly educated people, experienced people who do consistently all the wrong things with that, that is, that's amazing to me that it happens. So why do you think that is? Why do you think that is when you sort of look at it and read it? I think there's, there's probably different reasons in different situations. And, um, um, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna abstract of, of the previous example to kind of speculate

[00:46:39] about why in different circumstances, people might exhibit these tendencies for control. I think many people who rise to the top of these organizations are probably highly driven individuals. And I think at least some highly driven individuals tend to, um, tend to want to have it their way and, and tend to be very competitive and very, um, individualistic in nature. So that's probably some of it.

[00:47:07] Um, I think in some cases people are, they buy into a certain, um, institutional order where managers have this power because they've always had it. Or, um, maybe they see other leaders in similar positions in similar organizations with this power and, and they, they want to have a similar, um, influence within their own organization.

[00:47:30] So, um, you know, these mimetic tendencies, if we want to take the institutional route to this answer. So I think there might be different, different reasons, but the prevalence of the, of these, of these views and these predispositions is, is hard to ignore. Mimetic meaning imitation, by the way. Yes. I'm just assuming not everyone uses the same theoretical nomenclature that you're. What's your intuition on this?

[00:48:00] Um, it's very, uh, very similar to your, your initial one, which is the people are very driven, but also, um, a lot of people who rise to those positions of leadership have been very successful in doing that. Right. Like by definition, they've, they've had great success. And I think that can often foster a, uh, a bit of a God complex or like a perception that they know the right answer to every problem. Right. And, um, and so if they, if they get that perception that like, I know the answer here,

[00:48:30] you just listen. Um, I think that leads to that, that sort of very directive approach to management. Look, I know the answer, just listen and do what I say. Yeah. Yeah. I guess it's a somewhat of a double-edged sword there because I think many senior leaders and probably rightfully have this enhanced sense, sense of, of self-confidence because they have been, like you said, by definition, they've been successful.

[00:48:57] And, um, I forget the name of this bias, but we, you probably know what it is. He, you just shout out the name when we tend to associate successes with our own abilities, but failures with environmental factors. Oh yeah. Um, the, could it be the fundamental attribution error? I think, I think that's what that is. Yes. I think you're right. So there's probably some of that at play there. Other people's failures, other people's failures. We associate with them. Yeah.

[00:49:25] But your own failures, we attribute to the environment. That's the environment. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Um, well, I think that's good. There's one thing I want to touch on here that gets to both this leadership and the context. And I think it's something we've talked about a little bit before. Um, is this tolerance for failure piece, right? That, um, that is a cultural dynamic within an organization.

[00:49:51] And it is definitely something that, that again, leaders can foster. But if you have an environment where there is a very low tolerance for failure, you have to get things right every time. Um, any new idea, if it's a failure, you're going to be shamed in some way or, uh, ridiculed for, for getting it wrong is going to be an, a creativity killer, right? You have this idea that you can try something new and if it doesn't work, that's okay.

[00:50:19] Uh, you know, don't, don't keep doubling down on a failed idea, but if you fail, move on to the next thing. Um, I think is, is really critical for fostering creativity in organizational life. Yeah. Places where failures are in fact, uh, a form of success, right? Because you cannot succeed without having failed before. It's very rare that that happens. And there's, um, you know, many people say in the, in the fighting business as well, that there's more to learn from failures and from losses than from, from wins and successes.

[00:50:49] In what business? The fighting business? The fighting business. Yeah. Yeah. I was reading about it. I was reading about it before we started. Um, no, I was going to say something else. What was I going to say? Oh, I, I, let me, while you're thinking about it, let me throw this out. One of the other leadership styles that showed up as sort of in, in, um, conducive to creativity was an entrepreneurial leadership style.

[00:51:17] I think that goes back to that tolerance for failure. Um, no great entrepreneur that I've ever known is not someone who, who didn't have a tolerance for failure. You know, there's a reason we have this phrase serial entrepreneurs. They're people who try something out. Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don't. Yeah. Doesn't move on to the next thing. If it does, that's great. But even there, they know when to get out right. And, and have an exit strategy.

[00:51:42] And so I think that entrepreneurial leadership, um, brings in a, a big part of that, uh, that tolerance for failure. Yeah. And also I think that paper mentioned that that, that relationship, at least as partly explained by, by the fact that the entrepreneurs tend to be creative people themselves. So they understand, um, what it takes to cultivate it and to encourage others to be creative as well. So that does some of that as well. All right. Let's, should we talk about. Come back to.

[00:52:11] I think we should come just, just as a note, I think this should be a future, uh, episode because there's a whole research on entrepreneurship and I have in my life often wondered, can you really foster good entrepreneurship or is it something that's just built in to a personality or a style, but, uh, that's for, that's for a separate episode. Yeah. Okay. So the last piece is the technology, right?

[00:52:39] The, and specifically the AI, um, element and the way it relates to creativity. So we looked at two studies. Let, let's be clear about the studies that we looked at to make sure we're doing them justice. So one was from, uh, Doshi and Hauser, 2024 gen AI enhances individual creativity, but reduces the collective diversity of novel content. That's the, that's the title of the paper.

[00:53:06] I think it's probably the most descriptive title I've ever seen of for a paper before. Yeah. Um, and as the name suggests, um, so they, they looked at the use of chat bots for, um, writing tasks to write content. And, and what they found was that the usage of, of AI, of generative AI increased creativity, um, at the individual level, but that the divergence across, um, texts between individuals, was actually lowered.

[00:53:34] So it produced less innovation or creativity, um, collectively. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is interesting and a little depressing to me. Um, say more. Uh, well, I, I think as we use more and more AI in our lives and in, I mean, I, I'm certainly seeing it more in higher education, right?

[00:54:00] Like plenty of people are, it becomes quite clear that students are using AI in various ways. Um, and the idea that it, that it can enhance their individual creativity, but it gets this sort of beige suit, right? Where it's all the same. Much like the background. Yes. Um, where it's, it's all sort of the same, I think, um, is a real concern. This is one of the things that has occurred to me a lot lately with regard to the use

[00:54:29] of generative AI is the idea that it's, it's sort of a wisdom of the crowds effect, right? Um, the wisdom of the crowds is this idea that collectives can often be much more accurate at predicting things than individuals. If you have one of those old contests where it's like, there's a gumball machine and you say how many gumballs or jelly beans or whatever are in the jar, each individual guess is, is

[00:54:57] very frequently far from the mean. But if you, you take the, uh, average, the mean for the group, that tends to be pretty darn close to the actual number of, um, jelly beans in the jar. Right. Yeah. And this is referred to as wisdom of the crowds. It goes back to, I think Francis Galton, a little social exercise on weighing the, uh, guessing the weight of a heifer or something like that.

[00:55:24] Um, and I feel like that's what sort of generative AI is. It's sort of the wisdom of the crowds. It can tell you the, the into the collective intuition that can be gleaned from online content. Right. But you, you're not going to get super innovative things from it. Right. I mean, maybe you can, if you know how to do prompt engineering, just right. But in general, you're not going to get like what an artist does a good artist, which is create something fundamentally new and innovative.

[00:55:55] Yeah. Yeah. So I, my experience has been the same as what you're describing that, you know, you can pretty easily prompt the bot to write pretty good text, be it academic or a story or an email or a message or whatever. It can, it can do it in a fairly proficient way, at least from a, like a, a lingual grammatical perspective.

[00:56:21] Um, but to be innovative or to, to like, I've never been wowed by a text that was generated by, by AI in terms of its artistic qualities or, you know, to look at things from a novel perspective, um, that, that, that hasn't really happened. Um, I mean, it's pretty good at, I mean, uh, so I, I would use AI when I think about an

[00:56:48] idea for a paper, for instance, and I would ask it, you know, how would you examine this, this idea from the perspective of this theory or that theory? So to the extent that the AI knows the theory and of course it knows the theory because it knows everything that's on the internet and beyond, um, it will do a pretty good job at, you know, spelling out how that theory would examine that, that idea. But, you know, I could have done that had I had the time to read the theory or if I, if

[00:57:14] I wasn't too lazy to do it myself, but there, there is a certain blandness to the texts that it generates. Now you will find people that are, you know, kind of, um, I don't know, self-described AI grew gurus or futurists or whatever. Um, and they would argue that you just need to know how to prompt the, the, the bot and to ask the right questions or the right follow up questions.

[00:57:41] And that, that's kind of the, the, you know, to take it to the next step. I, I don't know. I haven't, I haven't experienced that myself. Well, and I've also seen some research recently suggesting that it is, that there is a sort of, um, movement to the mean in terms of creativity in terms in content, right? You can get, uh, uh, Dolly or mid journey or one of these image generators to generate images

[00:58:07] that are really cool, but you start to see that their own, that there's very little variation between them. The results wind up being, uh, very similar. And so I, I think there is a bit of a, uh, uh, blending together of ideas and it's going to be harder and harder to get truly creative or novel, I, uh, concepts out of this content. I do think, um, one of the things that worries me just

[00:58:33] as a, at a societal level is, you know, we're, there's all this talk about using AI for writing movie scripts or sitcom scripts or things like this. I think we, as a culture have a real challenge with a lack of creativity right now. Um, in the last year I heard something or last six months or something like that, the top 10, uh, movies at the box office have all been sequels for the first time ever.

[00:59:01] Top 10 movies have all been sequels or prequels or, you know, something derivative. Yeah. I mean, that's just anecdotal, but it's still, it's a bad indicator for the level of creativity in our society. So do you watch much Netflix or another streaming service? Yeah. I think there's a similar phenomenon there as well, where, you know, you used to get shows like breaking bad or the Sopranos or even the

[00:59:25] Americans that came out before I think Netflix became a big thing, uh, where it wasn't immediately obvious where it was going to go. Mm-hmm . It wasn't entirely formulaic in nature, the script, the plot lines, the characters, there was more room for exploration and creativity and surprises. But it strikes me that, and it's becoming increasingly hard and maybe, I don't know, it's an age thing or maybe I don't have enough patience. I don't know what it is exactly, but it's

[00:59:51] becoming, it's becoming increasingly more less enjoyable to watch Netflix shows because you, there's, it's pretty obvious what's going to happen. Right. And I don't think it's, I don't think it's a coincidence. No. I think these shows are created for, you know, according to a certain formula. Mm-hmm . And I'm not saying that's AI. I mean, that happened before AI came onto the scene, but I think that, you know, it's a product that they're trying to optimize. Yeah. So they're creating it in very specific ways,

[01:00:20] according to what they think people want to see. And I think with the advent of AI, that, that trend is just going to become more and more extreme because it's going to be easier to execute this. Right. So it's, it's going to become more extreme. So yeah, that doesn't bode very well for, for us as a culture. Yeah. I think the algorithmic selection definitely makes that worse.

[01:00:41] One, one interesting finding in this study was that the less creative people actually benefited more at the individual level from AI than the more, than the more competent writers. Right. So less competent writers became more creative than more competent writers. So AI helped more those that were less creative and less competent. Yeah.

[01:01:05] The second study we looked at. Um, so they looked at the use of AI bots in a sales, um, um, scenario, certain sales context. So they used AI chat bots to, um, create, um, um, sales like leads to create leads for, to, to contact, um, prospective clients and also to create scripts to guide the conversation with those clients. Right. So two kind of, um, um, um, sequential tasks.

[01:01:34] Yeah. This is. And then the, and the, uh, the, and our training unit was one of the most. Uh, and so they, they, they found that, that AI, the use of AI increased creativity because it helped people create more intriguing, complex, engaging scripts, um, that led to more, what was the word that they used there. Um, it intensified interactions with, with, uh, with, with,

[01:02:03] found the AI more useful rather than the lower-skilled individuals because the lower-skilled individuals actually got frustrated and showed negative affect when they were asked to use AI in that way. And my hypothesis is that in the first instance, the task was relatively simple, more straightforward to create a certain text, whereas leading a conversation with another person is a more involved task

[01:02:32] that requires higher levels of skill, perhaps. What did you make of that? Yeah, I think that's a good hypothesis. I think the same thing. It gets back to this idea of engagement, right? If the AI somehow undermines the sense of engagement, then it's going to destroy performance or reduce performance. And sometimes more skilled people just have more to draw on, and so the tools might sort of foster their scripts

[01:03:01] and their ways of engaging with customers because they already have that broader base of sense or that broader sense of engaging with customers. But it is interesting that the two studies seem to suggest inverted dynamics. Well, inverted in that sense, but they both indicate that there is creativity to be gained from using AI, right? At the individual level. Yes. But not at the collective level.

[01:03:29] Well, I mean, the two levels are not unrelated, arguably. Well, in the first study, the Doshi and Hauser, they say very explicitly it enhances creativity individually, but collectively the creativity seems to be reduced through the use of AI. Oh, right. But that's text-based creativity at the collective level, which stands to reason. But I think if you use it to inform a conversation,

[01:03:58] I think that dynamic might be different. So, you know, if I'm a manager, I can definitely see the allure from a couple – there's a couple of reasons of using AI to increase creativity. I mean, that's definitely a good reason to explore this and also the idea that, well, other people are doing it, so I need to be – to make sure that I don't fall behind, so I'd better look at that as well, and that makes sense to me as well. Yeah. All right. We need to wrap up, Sean. Any final thoughts?

[01:04:27] Final thoughts? I think the – I mean, I guess the question of creativity is an open one in any given workspace, like how creative do you want people to be? And if the answer is a lot, then you have to think about the culture that you're creating and the leadership style that you're affecting. And I think the answer is there is transformational versus transactional, avoidance of task-specific micromanagement,

[01:04:56] fostering a tolerance for failure, a tolerance for experimentation, enabling exchange between team members and enhancing trust amongst team members, I think are all things that would make good points of focus. And ensure that there aren't too low or too high levels of workload and use AI when appropriate, I guess, to additions as well.

[01:05:26] Yeah, find that sweet spot. I think the AI one is going to be an open question going forward. I don't know that we know the answer there. Despite this very good research, I don't know that we yet know the answer in terms of the long-term impacts of AI on human. Well, it's still very recent, so maybe that's something to come back to as well in a future episode. Yeah, for sure. All right, Sean, that was interesting. Great. Go on your merry way and we'll talk again soon. Excellent. Talk to you soon. Bye. Bye. Bye.

[01:05:57] Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Thank you.