I recently had the privilege of speaking to a group 400-plus senior executives from a very large organization. During my allotted 90 minutes, I conducted an activity used to demonstrate the power of divergent thinking. At the conclusion of the exercise, I asked for solutions to a specific problem. Twenty hands went up, if that. And, of those, most were only halfway raised.
Contrast that with a presentation I had given later that afternoon to a group of 200 high school students. When we conducted the same exercise, all 200 hands went up. In fact, half of the students had both hands up, so technically 300 hands were up. And, in an effort to gain my attention, a quarter of the students were jumping up and down on their chairs. The solutions provided by the high school students were off the charts. They were so creative that some ideas were beyond comprehension.
The difference between the adults’ and teenagers’ sessions were night and day.
My own observations, while not overly surprising, have been validated by research.
There was a study done a number of years ago by George Land. He found that 98 percent of 5-year-old kids tested as highly creative. By the time they were 25 years old, only 2 percent tested at that same level.
If children possess such a dynamic level of creativity, why aren’t companies hiring a collection of 5-year-olds to enhance innovation efforts?
The answer lies within the distinction between innovation and creativity.
What I admired most about speaking to the children was their passion, not necessarily their responses. They had a level of enthusiasm that was unparalleled. They all wanted to play. They all wanted to contribute. And no one was concerned about looking bad in front of his or her peers. In fact, it seemed as though the more they participated, the more it made them look good in the eyes of others.
Adults, on the other hand, are calculating and careful when responding. They are more concerned with saying something “stupid” and being labeled as a failure. As a result, they sit quietly — often with the best ideas buried in their minds — and resist participating fully. This robs teams of their full potential.
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