The Value of A Problem Minded v Solution Minded Organisational Strategy

As the Creative Leadership Forum explores with senior executives the value of creativity within organisations, it becomes clear leaders generally have little or no knowledge around the importance of creativity and innovation strategically. Our research is suggesting that there is a disconnect between the way leaders construct business plans and how they think strategically, particularly in regard to creativity and innovation. Leader's training and education around strategy comes from two sources - a traditional business education such as an MBA or an entrepreneurial spirit driven by commercial practice rather than any formal education. The common myth is that ideation or brainstorming sessions will provide the insights to the organisation's planning and strategy needs - at least to commence.

Professor Arthur Van Gundy, one of the most underated writers and thinkers around creativity has written a paper The Care and Framing of Strategic Innovation Challenges in which he argues that it is not ideas that are important in strategic thinking. Indeed, he says ideas are easy to produce and agrees with the myth they are a dime a dozen. Van Gundy proposes that business leaders are solution minded, whereas he argues the real breakthroughs in strategic business planning occur through adopting a problem-minded approach to strategic thinking. In this thought provoking paper, he argues by framing an organisation as a series of problems that need to be solved, it is much easier to obtain creative and innovation breakthroughs both strategically and organisationally. His Q-Bank methodology is a broad process that allows organisations to take a hard look at themselves and what they do and don't do as well as what they should do. The outcome is a sense of the potential strategic direction they should pursue.