Detelina Vassileva: How to Ignite Creative Enthusiasm

This talk focuses on the concept of creativity and its significance within organizations. The speaker discusses the psychological aspects of creativity, emphasizing that it is not merely a talent but a way of thinking and operating. She explores the difference between open and closed modes of thought, highlighting the importance of creating environments that foster creativity while allowing for the execution of ideas. Creativity thrives in cultures that embrace experimentation, humor, and psychological safety. The speaker also makes a case for how diversity of thought enhances creative outcomes and warns against conforming to established norms that stifle innovation. Ultimately, she encourages individuals and organizations to explore diverse experiences and ideas to enhance their creative potential.

[Music] hi everyone uh thank you for joining today's section um happy to introduce dead Lina um she's calling in today from Sofia in Bulgaria and she's going to talk to us now it's not specifically a security topic it's actually around um cultural uh fits within an organization about thinking creatively and acting creatively whether that how that differs from an individual activity but then how we work within

groups as well so with that dead introduce yourself and um we're happy to hear more about that okay thank you um if you can just uh uh yeah there we go I can see my screen um hi everyone so my topic is going to be about creativity what makes it tick um and why it is important and of course I'm starting with an AI generated image because

you know the jury is still out on whether what AI creates is genuinely creative or not because it's still just you know mixing existing ideas into something that looks new but how original is it really and uh it's important for us with AI taking our more mundane tasks to um start using our brains in different ways so a little bit about me uh my name is uh

the vasila I'm Bulgarian um I have a bachelor in Psychology and I started working in it back in 2006 but I've continued to be very interested in Psychology and have read done of stuff about it which is why I'm coming to this conference with a topic like that which is making the link between um psychology and how it can help us in an IT environment I'm a

co-founder and Chief Operating Officer at Helix yora uh dat AI company and a fractional Chief Operating Officer at alter cabon that is developing a an AI powered digital nose a very exciting technology that can smell things like mold bacterial infections uh gas leaks and so on so the agenda for today is first of course definitions what is and what isn't creativity um what is the climate where

creativity grows uh we're going to talk about the two modes of uh operation of our brains uh open mode and close mode and then a few principles uh about creativity because creativity doesn't like rules so we're going to talk talk about principles instead and then we're going to discuss how Innovation is different and how is it more than just creativity so what is creativity if you want

you can uh put in your own comments in the chat if not the definition is to come up with something original and uh here is where um a lot of people assume that creativity is a talent when in fact it is not a talent it is a way of operating so being creative is not about being talented in the Arts and Crafts um space it's about being

able to use your brain to come up with new and original ideas and uh why is this important because we live in a world where um this is coming out this year there's been 10 Fast and Furious movies um the movie and the music Industries keep banking on whatever worked the previous year invest money in remaking the same old crap another big movie from last year Barbie

uh which is while potentially an original story it's still banking on an existing fan favorite character and another big movie last year was The Little Mermaid which is again very familiar character uh tiny tweaks here and there around the story to make it seem more original and uh when I went to a dance class last year uh one of the um younger people there uh said oh

let me play you guys some music and what did he play California Love a track from the '90s I am going to be 38 years old this year and I've been listening to this for a generation now and it feels as if we've sort of silently agreed with each other to not make anyone uncomfortable by making or saying or playing something that they haven't experienced before just

if if you listen to the radio it's the same old songs if you watch movies it's remakes and sequels and all of that and we do that with technology as well so it's important to for if you want to get somewhere new to learn how to do things differently so what is what does it mean to be creative it feels like being calm playful Brave and curious

It's about um connecting with your inner child and doing things not the way you're supposed to do them not with a particular purpose but just playing around seeing what will come out of it it's it's about um experimenting using two paint brushes instead of one um it's about uh pushing the limits of what is generally considered the right way of doing things for example I'm not going

to paint on just the paper I'm going to paint on myself my skin and my clothes as well maybe I'll paint with my fingers maybe I will uh use the wrong color for the sun it's about uh being open and playful and experimenting and work is often the exact opposite because it's very purposeful you have a list of task that that that you need to do you

have to be productive you have goals that you need meet and it can feel frustrating and stressful and tense uh which is the exact opposite spectrum of emotions than those that you need for cre so what is the climate for creativity let's start with inspiration um inspiration can come uh other than just by setting the stage by being more playful and open uh it can also start

with borrowing an idea that you already like and cleaning your head from old ideas to make room for new ones so one thing that sometimes works is um to try and imagine what someone else would do in this situation one of the problems with being creative is that our imagination is limited by the current reality so um we will not generate as many ideas for our current

reality like what would our team do if this or that happened then we would generate if it was a different team Al together because for our team we would be like well this wouldn't work because uh we don't have a person who can do that or that wouldn't work because we don't have the money for this so you have to completely let go of all of the

constraints and all of the ideas of how things need to be done at the moment to be able to get inspired um to do something new and of course borrowing an idea you like we've heard that before good artists borrow great artist still you start with something that you already like and you start working on it and if you work at it long enough it's not going

to resemble what you started with soon enough um so it's going to be much more of your own idea now the space and time for creativity to flourish requires no distractions so you have to put your phone away um there's a a research that says that uh in order for your phone to not distract you it doesn't just need to Switched Off whether that's just like airplane

mode or do not disturb mode or uh like physically shut down it has to be in a different room from you because if it's in the same room it's continuing to distract you and now if you make a parallel with how we generally work normally you have a bunch of things generating notifications all day every day and it's very difficult to focus and relax and just think

about something so that you can generate an idea so no phones which helps you to have also no worries and you have to let go of the fear of making a mistake the fear of making a mistake is one of the killers of creativity and this is why it's important to build company cultures where mistakes are fine and it's it's okay for people to make them and

then you just play so if you first try this and maybe set like an hour to sit down with yourself no phone no computer maybe just just paper and a pen to sit down and think about things what you're going to notice is that similar to attempting to meditate a lot of new stuff is going to a lot of stuff is going to pass through your head

things like oh I forgot to call this this person I need to send an email to that person um I I I I really need to pick up the delivery later today um so it's going to be nothing like you clearing your head and just immediately you're getting creative um what helps is writing down all of these tasks that your brain comes up with so that you

can let go of them and then continuing and now for some people um this super quiet place is a a great environment for creativity for others it's a specific type of music um or they take a walk um or for me at at one point it was playing a chick flick while sitting on the sofa which tricks my brain into thinking that we're not actually working and

that helps me create a a new presentation so anything that requires me to like not read and analyze a document if I'm if I'm not in the research phase then playing a movie actually helps me be more creative so think about it find what works best for you experiment there's not one recipe for for everyone but you have to have time and space where you let go

of all the productive stuff and just think creatively now when you do that you're going to notice that ideas are very fuzzy at first which is because they are generated from the non-verbal part of your brain so you know how you you're thinking of solutions and the solution sort of forms in your head and you can't quite find the words to describe it at first um this

is exactly because uh it takes time to connect uh the verbal part of your brain with wherever the idea originated from um so you got to give them a chance to grow before you start criticizing them because in the beginning they're not going to look like much so take your time and calmly and carefully just let the idea shape then uh engage your analytical brain to see

what it can do and then you can use your creativity again to develop it uh after you've criticize that this may not work or that may not work you can get generate more ideas on how to combat that um you can afterwards request feedback and most importantly iterate um and cut anything that is not relevant um there's this quote that I really love it's um apologies for

the long email if I had more time I would have sent you a shorter one so to be um you have to spend time um and work on more and more versions until you're happy with the result and try and be concise and simplicity is actually something that is very valued by the brain because the brain doesn't like complicated things so if you can use your creativity

to make things simpler then generally win um and how does it work in a group if you have to be creative I'm going to leave you with this question unanswered for now because um one of the things we're going to talk about today is that a lot of the creative thinking happens in um on the back of your head in an unconscious way so you sort of

pose a question and let it linger and then after a while Boom the answer comes to you readly so uh the brain has two ways of operating um you may have heard of U uh slow and fast thinking uh there was a a book by Daniel canaman um uh thinking fast and slow and there's a another book before him that was similar hair brain toris mind which

is about how the brain is quick but the mind is slow like a turtle TT to um so you may have also heard of it as analytical versus intuitive thinking so let's explore what mean open mode um is about uh this intuitive more emotional part of your brain uh where things are more visible visible more intangible uh less verbal um and um when when you're in that

like almost drowsy state of mind um the ideas come to you and uh they may feel like you looking at the sky and the clouds and trying to make out what they look like so this is why you have this picture here where you're just looking at things and trying to make out what what shape they are uh so open mode is um your brain operates at

these very slow brain waves they're called uh theta waves they're also um associated with um ADHD U because people who have HD ADHD have these uh episodes where their brain operates more frequently in in these frequencies um the theta waves are associated with a drowsy state of mind so this uh this physical state where you're in between waking and um and sleeping so you really have to

slow down to get into open mode the other thing that you have to do is to be open um there have been um a lot of um uh research papers on creativity and um one thing that uh correlates with creativity for example if you've heard of The Big Five personality test uh openness is one of the Big Five personality trait so how open you are to new

experiences to uh anomalies to diversity um uh so to be to be creative you have to like literally open your mind anything is fine anything can happen and um as I said very calm almost like sleepy um there are um tales about Edison who had his uh ritual for getting into open molde where he would hold um uh like a metal ball um and he was sitting

on a chair and uh he had like a a metal plate underneath the chair so that if he started falling asleep he would drop the ball um and it would generate a very noisy sound and he would wake up and boom that's like that's where his creative ideas would come because he would have gotten into this drowsy State and then woken up you don't have to go

this crazy but you have to be calm and open your mind now uh this is Dr Alexander Fleming who discovered penicillin while trying to grow bacteria why am I telling you the story because um he was not trying to discover penicillin uh he was trying to grow um bacteria on Petri dishes uh and he came back to the lab after a vacation and he found that one

of the plates um one of the dishes didn't have bacteria on it it had mold and if he was in closed mode he would have been like okay so you know six dishes had bacteria grow on them and the seven one didn't um so the percentage of success in this experiment is blah blah blah and then throw everything away but he was in open mode so he

was curious and he was like hm how interesting that this petritis did not actually grow bacteria and he started looking into it with the Curiosity of a child so being in open mode is about like if you're maybe trying to do something and trying to find the answer to one problem and in the process you discover something else it's about being open to pursue that path instead

of just sticking to whatever the original purpose was and do you know what gets you into open mode quicker than anything else I'm going to give you just 10 seconds to see if anyone's going to come anything so the thing that gets you in open mode quicker than anything else is humor the humor basically restarts your stress response system and uh it gives you that light um

open calm and curious state of mind that you need in order to generate good ideas which is why it's super important to uh Foster company cultures where humor is acceptable and unfortunately at the moment in the world because diversity which is such an important topic for creativity um has been implemented in very perverted ways people are too afraid to say anything out of fear that they'll be

cancelled because someone found it offensive and we should be doing the exact opposite we should be embracing humor and embracing diversity at the same time but not embracing one and you know at the cost of completely losing the other um I for one would never want to work at a company where humor is not one of the values of the organization because it means that we're just

sticking to what we know and we're not going to push the boundaries of anything now Clos mode is about focusing um your energy um and your brain on actually executing the ideas so I remember when I Was preparing the topic for creativity I was speaking to um a guy in a bar and I was telling him about him and he was like oh this is going to

be super useful for me because I've had like four different novel ideas that are great and I haven't written a single novel and I said well you know you don't have a creativity problem there you have a discipline problem like being creative is about coming up with the idea but then you have to actually sit down and execute so close mode is about like make the list

of tasks sit down go through um go through to complete everything that your brain came up with and which is why open mode and close mode are important both because you can't just be in closed mode because you're never going to generate any um new and innovative ideas and you can't always be in in open mode because you're never going to get anything done and what gets

you in in closed more mode quicker than anything else is fear and uh at the moment in work environments we're talking performance engagement mistakes deadlines meet expectations there's a lot of fear uh inducing language in in in corporate life um and it's important to make room for humor and for creativity in order to ensure that your business is going to come up Innovative and now creative thinking

is about alternating between open mode and closed mode uh in as many iterations as are needed uh in order to get from problem to solution so you start by using close mode to Define your problem as concretely as possible um the for example if uh you have to um come up with a new architecture for improved security um then what problem is this architecture trying to solve

um what uh what are the people that are going to be using it what are companies what are the use cases that it's going to cover so you sit down and you analyze these and you make this as specific a problem statement as possible and then you start generating as many ideas as you can and then you go back into close mode and um you put in

your selection criteria so um from this exercise with the problem statement you may have bits and pieces that you can use for the selection criteria here you evaluate the different ideas based on the selection criteria you come up with a solution and it may not be the best one so you may need to like you come up with a solution you test it out and then you

may need to come back problem idea selection solution cuz creativity is about experimentation and this is another thing that in company cultures we need to um learn to Foster uh because we sort of expect that a solution means something that is definitely going to work everything is a hypothesis until you test it out that's that's the thing we are experimenting unless you're doing something that you've always

done you don't know if it's a solution until you test it out so you may need to go back through the same process reach another solution and test it again yeah and you may also recognize this from uh design thinking uh which is an implementation process now creativity um operates based on principles not rules what is the difference uh well rules um happen in a context for

example you can't drive above 50 kilom an hour in towns it's very specific you have the speed you have the context where on which streets and so on and it always applies in the same context principles on the other hand are a lot like tools um for a specific problem you may need a wrench and for a different type of problem you may need a nail so

principles are uh like tools that you use and the tool that you decide to use in a particular uh situation will depend on the problem that you need to solve so it's not one siiz fits all principle number one we can only be creative about things we know well um now we discussed that creativity is not Talent So you you're it's not about being good at arts

and crafts but if I was asked to do a project on um data and AI in the healthcare industry I'm going to need to learn a lot about the health care industry first before I can do something that's original or effective for that matter um so before you even start think about how much you you know about the topic and this is also very important for when

you do creativity in groups uh I was one in a once in a meeting um with uh a team that was um organizing a conference and the organizer asked us uh how do we do the sponsorship packages none of us had any experience whatsoever about sponsorship packages and she turned to a 16-year-old intern and asked her what do you think what are your ideas and she just

Shrugged like I'm 16 what the hell do I know um so if you want to be creative in a group like you have to make sure that you're putting a problem in front of people that they have enough context and understanding on otherwise you're going to be like well you know uh did I engage everyone into the problem uh solving process yes did I ask everyone for

their opinion yes still work so do your research and also uh allow people time to do their research if you want them to participate in a creative solution solving problem solving process principle number one kill the lead character what does this mean when you start um let's go back to the uh to the architecture that you're creating uh for improved security uh let's say uh you start

working on that problem and you have a pretty decent draft and you're very happy with it and then two days later you find new information um that uh shows that there's actually a better way of doing this a lot of people make the mistake of sticking to their first idea because they've already designed the solution they've already created the diagram they've even written like what 10 pages

of documentation for it so there's too much effort involved to Pivot into some other idea and erase what you've done and do that new thing that you came up with and it also has this thing where it it may feel like um like a failure if you delete your own work uh but it shouldn't because um let's look at the example of slack um I don't know

if you know this but uh slack the company that created slack was originally creating a game and it wasn't working out and they still had some money so they sat together and we're like okay what can we do how can we pivot so that we can spend the remaining money and still make profit a profitable company and that's when they decided that they're going to be using

the communication to that they developed for the game as yeah this is the product that we're going to create and if they hadn't pivot pivoted then they wouldn't be a billion dollar company that they are now so always always check if if it's the right time to kill the lead character again this is a principle not a rule you don't have to always kill the lead character

but be ready to do that when new information presents itself and convinces you that it's a good idea because one of the most dangerous phrases in the languages we've always done it this way uh the brain likes familiar territory doesn't like new things and that's every brain mine yours everyone else's um so you you have this unconscious bias that you're not going to like the new thing

better than you like the old thing fight that kill character principle number two you're going to love this uh original people procrastinate why because because um it's very important to learn to live with the tension of not being ready for as long as possible because as we know some of our best ideas come after we've um slept over them come to us uh as we're taking a

shower not actually actively thinking about the problem or we're going out for a walk um so uh our brain works on the idea um without us knowing without us consciously working on the idea so it's very important to give your brain time like remember the how does creativity working groups question no answer we keep going give pause a question to yourself give yourself time keep going so

how much time do you give yourself whenever you have to come up with some solution to a problem always check what's my deadline and then make sure that you do not decide on anything before the deadline you make the decision as late as possible so that you have used all the available time to ponder on the issue and given yourself time to come up with the best

idea that you can have because it's the first one may not be your your best idea principle number three don't try too hard we've all been there uh you're working on it um you've come up with a good idea you're trying to polish around the edges and at some Point you're like oh come on why is this not happening um and you're all of a sudden trying

too hard which means you're stressing about it um and uh you're putting a lot of uh frustration maybe um and too much purpose in into the whole exercise which is the exact opposite of what the creative climate entails so um you have to just stop what what you're doing get out of there either break tension with a joke or as we used to do back in the

days when people went to offices go out and play playing reminds the brain about um being less purposeful about being open and experimentative so it's a very good thing to have uh something to play with in a work environment and uh I think it's very important for a remote first companies and for hybrid companies to think about how they Implement playing into into work processes and practices

so that people can let go of the of the tension and get out to play a little bit so that they can come back with their fresh idea and also think about time tracking if you ask employees to register eight hours of work per day they're either going to lie um or they're going to stress about what to put in there because they actually left two hours

early went out for a walk came up with a solution to the problem uh as a result of those two hours but they weren't actually at their desk um or online so they weren't actually working how do you register the creative process in a time sheet now there's another 40 principles of creativity um that a team uh of Russian scientists came up with as they researched uh

I think 2,000 patents and they analyzed what uh are the most common denominators uh of these patents what are the things that people did that resulted in this Innovation and it's things like uh SE segment it take part of it out create a local quality as opposed to trying to apply the quality to everywhere um uh if it's uh round uh uh if it's Square think of

it as a sphere if it's a sphere think of it uh as a square um and uh try to transform um the the phase it's it's very interesting research you can look for Tris and the 40 principles see if maybe this can help you um even though it's uh mostly mostly for Hardware stuff uh but it could also be um useful for for software Engineers uh and

maybe try and apply some of them too so why is innovation more than creativity and what's the difference between Innovation and creativity um creativity is something that you can do individually whereas Innovation is something that requires a team so if we look at this robotic arm for example there was a firmare engineer involved a machine learning engineer uh there industrial design people uh manufacturers and so on

to to do Innovation you need more than one brains so you need more people of different roles and perspectives to work together innovate and now we're finally going to give an answer to how creativity Works in a group uh one thing that uh is a very common mistake um in uh company meetings is if you're well first they're mostly operational um there may not be even meetings

where you're trying to get people to be creative but if you are one of the mistakes is that uh everyone participates and there isn't a moderator to keep track of time and to help people move between open and closed mode so always have a a moderator then the next thing is to create psychological safety which means people should be allowed to give ideas um without the fear

of judgment or criticism and uh here is another very common practice that is counterproductive brainstorming when people uh generate ideas verbally um the first idea people say out loud is going to sway other people in the audience to give similar ideas uh also people when they uh voice an opinion uh when someone hears it that someone feels obliged to comment on it oh but this is never

going to work because and then you get fewer and fewer ideas as opposed to more and more ideas um so uh for example uh Japanese people um in Japanese companies uh that uh there's a a principle of asking Juniors to share their ideas first and Jeff Bezos also does that my personal preference have people write ideas down use something like slido or posted notes have them write

their ideas in paper and then work in a group to create to to discuss and present those ideas um but also if you have you know people talking ideas in a in a group um chances are it's not going to be very creative also because if one of the first people to speak is the highest paid person in the room people are just going to go with

whatever they say and they're not going to want to contradict that and sometimes the exact opposite to what they said is going to be the best solution if you see that people are trying too hard break tension um it's uh uh something that uh Hitchcock did back in the day and I've also heard uh um interviews with Elon Musk uh where um he mentions like uh on

the SpaceX team when uh they were hitting a roadblock and couldn't figure out how to do things he would just ask the weirdest questions like um what if uh 200 years from now we're living on Mars and this happens and people like what like focus focus on what we're doing like we have to be productive here but um people uh if they if they get into this

trying too hard mode you have to get them out of it and open their mind and get them out of the the problem and the productivity phase and just into experimenting and Open Stage um another thing to be very mindful of uh when you try creating meetings where people need to be creative people will start obsessively talking about the problem as opposed to looking for a solution

so time box it um tell them look your brain likes problem territory because it's familiar territory but we're here to generate Solutions so always like just 10 minutes on the problem the rest of the time on generating ideas um for everyone to participate is is very important so this is why written down really helps and uh you have to invite people to challenge the facts which means

for example uh if we're doing things uh a particular way as a company at the moment uh make an exercise of challenging that what if from tomorrow we're not using a ticketing system to support our customers or what if uh um uh the main vendor that we're in partnership with went bankrupt tomorrow what would we do so invite people to challenge the status quo challenge the facts

be very aware of others people are different um uh extroverts uh talk uh a lot more freely than introverts introverts tend to need a lot a little bit more time to process information before they can generate ideas so again make sure you prepare group activities so that uh uh people have enough time to get familiar with the topic and they can just come and generate ideas not

just come and listen to the information that they've heard from the others um one interesting research uh suggests that uh introverted leaders have more creative teams than extroverted leaders because they talk less so they create the space for their teams to generate ideas something to think about um now to summarize tips for individuals do your research before you start generating ideas find your own ways to get

into open mode whether it's going to be to close yourself in a room go for a walk take excessive showers or or uh just play uh a chick flick just find your own way uh get yourself exposed to anomaly and diversity daily this means like read a different newspaper um um listen to different music uh watch a movie that you think you're not going to like listen

to what the political opposition has to say just just to train your brain to register anomaly and diversity and create the time and space to be playful play whatever way you can whether it's Sports uh whether it's a a game just play and then get into close mode and execute your ideas and then for companies create psychological safety for your employees because ideas need to be welcome

free from judgment uh Foster diversity of opinions ideas and approaches invite employees to challenge the way things are done um and prepare group activities relentlessly you have to be very prepared for them to work and stop expecting people to be busy all the time because creativity needs time and happen these are some of the resources for from my research on creativity thank you and remember to was

amazing thank you so much telina um at the moment we don't um don't have anything on the Q&A at this exact second um I will encourage attendees if you do have any questions about anything that was discussed here I I do feel free to ask um I'm sure T's more more than happy to answer um but yeah this was a great talk um and and can I

ask where is that uh where is um when we were getting together as helixor we decided to do a fun photo um and this is a uh trash um area so all of this is Created from trash that is very cool yeah it's a it's a creative and fun enough photo to use for a thank you slide of course yeah it's very yeah remember remember not to

take things or yourselves too seriously because yeah it helps to have to have fun yeah but but you're right about exposing yourself to different uh things sometimes outside of your comfort zone I think what happens sometimes is when you no matter what side you are whether it be political beliefs or beliefs in movies if you tend to only watch the same thing you tend to look at

everything else and go oh I dislike that and I'm not happy with it it's because you never expose yourself to it and the same can apply to work because I work in finance I don't like Finance but if I expose myself to financial activities maybe I'd have more time and respect for others who do work in finance as an example yeah yeah that's the thing you get

more closed-minded the more you close yourself to in your bubble of of comfort um I I did this exercise once with uh one of my companies where I gave everyone a piece of paper and said write something that you think uh this company needs to change but you don't don't think that anyone else would agree and the first time you do this people are totally playing it

safe um they're not coming with the most original ideas because uh it's a bit like it's very constrained by the current understanding of the current reality and the more and more you do this people come up with crazier and crazier ideas and it's the crazier ideas that move things in in a New Direction yeah that's very true and that can be applied to just about anything in

life it's true not just in corporate world um but no look this session is fantastic um I'm just checking there's still no question in the QA um if it suits you I guess we'll wrap up here um thank you so much again it was a really great session and again for everyone in attendance uh you can contact her directly on I assume the email address is the

preferred way of being contacted or or LinkedIn or whatever you know everyone's on the conference is smart enough to figure out exactly so look thank you so much I'm going to close it out now but um look forward to hearing more about this in the future thank you bye bye for night for