The Innovative Team

The Innovative Team is an engaging business fable that reveals the impact our underlying work style preferences have on our teams and their results. The authors present a breakthrough thinking process for developing successful teams. They introduce a uniquely effective set of tools built on FourSight, a measure of problem-solving preferences field-tested by top consultants, which can help anyone from professionals to novices solve problems and achieve performance breakthroughs. FourSight enables teams to understand their patterns of thinking and manage themselves more deliberately toward accomplishing a goal.

• Written as a business fable that recounts the story of a team's journey from dysfunctional to high functioning
• Outlines a new and effective set of tools for enhanced team performance
• Details the four stages of a dynamic breakthrough thinking process

The Innovative Team offers a great resource for management and leadership development professionals, team leaders, and anyone interested in kick-starting innovation in their workplaces and lives.

About the Authors xi

Foreword xv

Introduction 1

Part 1 The Story

Chapter 1 We Have a Problem 13

Chapter 2 JustWhat Kind of Duck AreWe Dealing with Here? 27

Chapter 3 The Sum of the Parts 33

Chapter 4 The Need and theWay Out 41

Chapter 5 Thinking About Thinking 59

Chapter 6 Mapping a Minefield 67

Chapter 7 The Power of a Good Question 77

Chapter 8 FromWild toWorkable 89

Chapter 9 Combining the Unlikely 99

Chapter 10 Be CarefulWhat YouWish For 109

Chapter 11 Preserving the Novelty 121

Chapter 12 Priming the Pump 127

Chapter 13 The Pieces Come Together 139

Chapter 14 What’s the POINt? 153

Chapter 15 Assisting Acceptance 163

Chapter 16 Sealing the Deal 181

Epilogue Where Are They Now? 187

Part 2 Exploring the Four Creative Thinking Styles

Chapter 17 Applying the Framework 193

Chapter 18 Clarifying the Situation 195

Chapter 19 Generating Ideas 205

Chapter 20 Developing Solutions 215

Chapter 21 Implementing Plans 225

Chapter 22 The Combination of Preferences Within People 231

Chapter 23 Creating Conditions for Success 237

Chris Grivas is an organizational and leadership development consultant focused on increasing the creative capacity of individuals, teams, and organizations. His clients have included Ernst & Young, Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, and New York University, among others.

Gerard J. Puccio is department chair and professor at the International Center for Studies in Creativity at Buffalo State College and partner in FourSight, a training company and publisher of FourSight: Your Thinking Profile. He is an accomplished writer, speaker, and consultant to Fisher-Price, British Broadcasting Corporation, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Kraft, and others.

Told through the lens of an engaging business fable, The Innovative Team offers team leaders and team members a proven framework for promoting innovation and creativity within their organization. Based on more than twenty years of solid research and international field testing, The Innovative Team tells the tale of a fictional dysfunctional team that needs to come up with a good idea or get canned by their client. The fascinating narrative introduces a uniquely effective set of tools built on the authors’ proven FourSight framework—Clarify the Situation; Generate Ideas; Develop Solutions; Implement Plans.

Using the FourSight approach, team leaders and members can learn how to focus their creative thinking in order to respond to situations that have no easy answers or immediately apparent solutions. It enables teams to understand their unique patterns of thinking and gives them the ability to manage themselves more deliberately toward accomplishing a goal. Implementing this field-tested framework demystifies the process of creativity and innovation so that any team can achieve performance breakthroughs.

The Innovative Team offers a great resource for management and leadership development professionals, team leaders, and anyone interested in kick-starting innovation in their workplaces and in their lives.