So, along the way well talk about the pitfalls of mixing diversity and creativity and how you, as the hero of our tale, can negotiate them. But, well also take a look at possibilities of success. Perhaps, since I am narrating this tale for you, I should let you know how I encountered the possibilities that make up this story. My discovery (It was a discovery for me: I do not claim that it was a discovery for the world.), as is often the case, occurred in a fortuitous mixing of things normally separated: diversity training and creativity training.

Most of my time is spent in Japan helping people discover the possibilities of effective multicultural communication. When we added creativity training to our services last year, we started noticing interesting things. One of the most interesting things that I noticed was that the root cause of many intercultural communication problems appears to be what is called in some creativity circles, out of the box thinking.

Charlie Prather, author of Blueprints for Innovation, (1) describes our thinking box as comprising a double wall of our logic and our expectations. As most people reading this article already know, our normal, everyday thinking and problem solving goes on without our ever stepping outside this double-walled box or even becoming aware of its walls.

Once I had fully grasped the metaphor of a thinking box, I found that it explained some extremely frustrating communication events I had experienced within my own company. Now you should be aware that everyone in my company is a professional communicator and we charge our clients a lot of money to help them with their communication problems. So, when we have communication problems ourselves, we examine them very closely and that examination helps us provide better service to our customers.

Charlie Watanabe and I founded AmAsia Inc. in 1990. Though he was born, raised, and educated in Japan, most Americans who encounter Charlie think he is American because of his native level English. He had just completed his masters degree in English linguistics at Georgetown when we started the company. I, on the other hand, have a fairly advanced proficiency in Japanese. My masters degree is in communication, which overlaps considerably with linguistics. So, we can converse easily in either of two languages and we share a significant academic base from which to talk about language and communication.

Despite all this, there are times when the flow of our communication breaks down completely and tremendous effort is required to reach across that break. Determining that the cause of the break is cultural differences between the two of us is usually quite simple and that gives us a good general explanation. But, the question that always nags at me after such episodes is how, exactly, do cultural differences cause a specific communication breakdown. The answer seems to be connected to our thinking boxes.

It is because the walls of our thinking box bear striking similarities to those of our friends and neighbors that we are able to understand one another and to make reasonable predictions about what those around us might do or say. Similarities arise because the walls of our thinking boxes are built as we become enculturated, that is, as we learn and adopt the thinking patterns and expectations that fit within our culture.

While we are inside those walls we know what to expect, we are comfortable, we are competent, and life has a familiar feel to it. But, when we go into a foreign culture, the people around us have thinking boxes that differ from ours. We are unable to accurately predict what they will do, how they will respond. Everything around us, from clothing to architecture to TV programs to conversational topic choices arise and fit into thinking patterns that are not our own. The stresses that arise from this are often referred to as culture shock.

Perhaps, as the ancient maps used to tell us, beyond the walls of our own thinking boxes there be dragons. Well, you cant have a really good story without dragons and here they are so lets deal with them. Frontal charges are not usually recommended tactics in such situations, so lets see if we can make an oblique attack and come out on top.

Dr. Edward de Bono(2), in his book Serious Creativity(3), provides us with a pathway metaphor for how the brain processes perceptions and information(4). The argument is made that unless something provokes us into processing perceptions differently, we are virtually locked into taking the next logical and obvious step(5). When we are trying to be creative, we welcome those ideas that push us out of our standard thinking patters. Out-of-the box thinking is just what we want. However, when we are just trying to get a simple point across, it can be excruciatingly frustrating when our interlocutors next logical step does not match our own.

What often happens is something like this. Dissimilar people are going merrily along the path of a conversation, each following the next logical step in the flow. Suddenly, the next logical step for one is completely incomprehensible, or offensive, or childish, or threatening, or something else that is altogether unexpected by the other.

At some point, the thinking patterns have diverged. It may have been at the step immediately prior to the breakdown. Or, it may have happened several steps earlier but each side continued to construe the other as still being on the same track even though they actually are on different paths altogether.

This is not an uncommon situation. And, for this to happen, the people in conversation do not have to be from different cultures or even be all that dissimilar. For example, in Washington, DC, I was working with a group of government workers when I became aware that a major problem had arisen because a worker and a supervisor had vastly different conceptions of respect. Though they were of the same race, one was male, the other female. They also had grown up in different parts of the country and had different educations.

The boxes for these two people did not have sufficient overlap for them to make much sense of each other on this issue. Each felt the other was illogical and was flouting normal expectations when anything related to this subject came up. Naturally, respect can be related to nearly everything and so the entire department was constantly roiling in the dissention caused by this.

This can be a dangerous dragon to fight. An approach that could be quite successful would be to use a lance fashioned by de Bono and teach everyone involved about patterned thinking and the potential trap of mindlessly taking the next logical step. Following through with a sword stroke of lateral thinking, you (as the hero of this story) could help these diverse thinkers to begin to value the out-of-the-box responses that they sometimes get because those responses can be the provocations that engender creativity.

Thus we have dealt with one dragon (there are more dragons that I will be discussing at the roundtable at Convergence 99). Lets now talk about some of the potentials that can arise from consciously including diversity as a resource for creativity. Perhaps the most significant potential, creative provocation, can be found at the end of the last paragraph.

A superbly written literary example of using diversity to fuel creativity is provided by Caleb Carr in his novel The Alienist(6). This thriller is set at turn of the century (19th to 20th) New York. A European immigrant psychologist (They were known as alienists at the time, and thus the title of the book.) puts together an diverse team to solve a string of spectacularly gruesome murders. He brings together a newspaperman, a female police secretary, two young Jewish detectives, and a juvenile delinquent. The team must be extremely creative to solve the case and it is quite often provocations like the ones we addressed earlier that bring the creative breakthroughs.

Another potential benefit from including diversity as a spark to creativity comes in the realm of logic. Different logics (or thinking processes) can be quite beneficial in helping move from a provocative thought back into the flow of patterned thinking so that the thought can become useful. The interplay of different thinking processes can often find ways to make ideas useful that might be missed because they could not be found using only one type of logic.

Finding creative ideas that can be made useful is your primary role as the hero of this story. You must find the ways to gain the potential benefits while avoiding the pitfalls. This can be a difficult task because most of the benefits are merely the obverse side of the pitfalls.

I invite you to join in the roundtable discussion on Diversity & Creativity to see how you can become the hero of your own story.

Endnotes 1. Charlie Prather is the creator of the Bottom Line Innovation program and the author of Blueprints for Innovation. He can be reached at CW Prather Associates, Inc., 1704 Fox Grape Lane, Suite 312, Annapolis, MD 21401.

2. Lynda Curtin introduced Dr. De Bonos work to me in a session she presented at Convergence 98. She provides Six Thinking Hats and other de Bono products. She can be reached at The Opportunity Thinker, 248 W. Loraine St., Suite 103, Glendale, CA 91202-1868.

3. de Bono, E. (1992). Serious creativity: Using the power of lateral thinking to create new ideas. New York: HarperBusiness.

4. For a neurological description of the process see (LeDoux, J. (1996). The emotional brain: The mysterious underpinnings of emotional life. New York: Simon & Schuster.). See also (Holland, J. (1995). Hidden order: How adaptation builds complexity. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.) for a related discussion of complex adaptive systems, the centerpiece of the new science of complexity.

5. Dr. Ellen Langer makes similar points in her books on mindfulness, (Langer, E. J. (1989). Mindfulness. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.and Langer, E. J. (1997). The power of mindful learning. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.).

6. Carr, C. (1994). The Alienist. London: Warner Books.