Leadership and Creativity
Intro: Welcome to Listen For Insight. I’m your host David Ternik. We have for you
David Hodge, President of Miami University, and his insights on innovation and
creativity in education. I send you now to our interviewers…Korey Smith and
Amanda Burke.
Korey: What inspired you to make this the year of creativity and innovation at
Miami? What was sort of the background that got that started?
President Hodge: The year started when I received an electronic--an ebook--from
a former faculty member here on creativity and I read this book over the summer
and I was going wow you know what, I haven’t thought about some of these things
before and it was really pretty cool and so I sent it around to some others because
he had suggested that this might be a good summer reading book for the next
summer.
So I thought ok so let me shop it around. So I thought this could be potentially very
quite nice and so I did and I got back this incredibly strong feedback from people
who said wow this this is pretty cool this could work. And then they said this may
not be the right book for it but the idea of having this kind of a book could be really
cool. And the more we talked the more I realized given this response why restrict it
only to the summer reading program where we have the incoming freshman, as
important as that is lets, let’s see if we can’t expand the influence. And from there
that was the pathway into thinking about it as a yearlong enterprise on the part of the
university.
What’s different though, I think, or what I thought was really distinctive as I started to
talk about making this the year of creativity and innovation--one of the first things
that I heard from people is ok that’s great so it’s fun to highlight it. It’s important to
make sure that people recognize the importance of creativity and innovation but we
really want to make sure that we have a lasting legacy from the year…that we want
to be a different university as a result of these activities long-term permanent
changes not just a year of celebration. And so I thought that was really important
and the more we thought about it the more we focused on two major overriding
goals.
Number one is we know that we need to produce graduates that are more creative.
That people everywhere are looking for creative individuals and every one of us, no
matter what job we’re gonna have, no matter what occupation we end up in, the
more creative we are the more successful we are going to be in those positions. So
goal number one: figure out or begin the process of figuring out how through our
pedagogy or curriculum and so forth, we can produce graduates who are more
creative and therefore more impactful.
And then secondly, how can we be a more creative university. How can we
continue to evolve in ways that are true to our vision and our mission, true to our
values and yet be more flexible and end up being better able to do the things that we
want to do. So those are the two big goals that emerged from this.
It all started with one email…with an ebook about creativity. Shared it with others,
said great idea maybe--not the right book-- but great idea. And by the way this is
good for the whole university and therefore the year of it-- and the year of creativity
and innovation. And as a result, we hope to have some really long-term significant
impacts at a path that Miami was already on but we’ve hopefully accelerated and
emphasized that.
Korey: So you mentioned this idea of increasing people’s creativity. So do you think
that creativity can be taught or is it that some people are just born with that ability or
in other words what is sort of this nature vs nurture idea of creativity?
President Hodge: Well, the two questions you asked, I would say yes to both of
them. Yes, it can be taught. And, yes, some people seem to have it more naturally
than others, but all of us all of us can find a way to enhance what we do. I don’t
consider myself a particularly creative person but I’ve been astonished at how I’ve
started to check myself. I get into a solution to something and then I’ll go well what
am I assuming here that’s blocked me from thinking about this in a novel way and
leading to a better solution? So absolutely, positively no question about it. We can
find ways to be more creative.
Korey: In your annual address you cited this idea and you mentioned earlier of
creativity being so desired by future employers and you also mentioned the idea that
creativity and innovation are actually on the decline. So what do you think is, sort of,
blocking either the university or just the country or the world as a whole from
becoming more creative if that is such a desired quality? Why aren’t those, why isn’t
there more initiatives like there is the Year of Creativity and Innovation at Miami?
President Hodge: I think the criticism is largely focused on what we’re doing in K-
12 and how the trends there are not good trends. They are not trends that are
nurturing creativity but they are trends that are trying to set standards and standards
that are actually…they may seem good on the surface… but because we’ve been so
rigidly trying to adhere to those standards, they are actually forcing us away from
investing in more creativity and innovation.
This is what Sir Ken Robinson, who will be our commencement speaker, is so well
known for, and as you may know he’s the most listened to person in TedTalk history
and a large part of his core message which is our K-12 system is broken. It’s not
doing what it needs to do in terms of enhancing and encouraging creativity in our
children.
Amanda: Another thing you talked about in your annual address is having these
habits of mind to encourage yourself to be creative. So have you worked on
developing some of these habits of mind for yourself? Like what are these habits on
mind that you’ve adopted into your personal routine?
President Hodge: Well there…there are certain small tactics that you can use
about how to ask a question differently and I reference a number of those in the
annual address. And these are just tactics which say ask this question or ask that
question or ask the question differently or ask this question in another way yet and
every time you do that it it it takes you down a different path. So if you want to solve
a problem you might turn out to say, what could I do to make this worse. And you
start out and you go ok and you start to do it and you say okay wait a second and
then you start to open up your mind and say here are some new solutions that I
hadn’t thought of.
So it’s those kinds of techniques I think that we need to practice on a more regular
basis in order to just naturally do it, you take a problem and say how do I take…
imagine it to be a cube… how do I take that problem and just turn it around and look
at it from this side, that side and the next side? These tactics, these techniques
these questionings or approaches are simple ways in which you can learn to do that
systematically.
Korey: So you ended the address by encouraging people to learn more about
creativity and innovation. So, as you’ve led this initiative of creativity and innovation
at Miami for this year and you’ve sort of maybe learned more about what those
mean, what is something that you have learned or something that you’ve grown
personally, just from being involved in the year of creativity and innovation?
President Hodge: I think that I’ve been awfully impressed by how many people are
interested in this field and in this area. We come back to why is it important? Well
it’s important because we live in a fast changing global world. What this means is
that when ideas are emerge that their potential impact is huge because we’re now
global but that those who get the idea out first have a huge advantage because they
are the ones who reach the global environment first and reap the benefits of doing
that. So in one macro sense, that’s what this is all about. And that’s a significant
motivator in in and of itself.
But what I’ve also found is that talking to a lot of people that this desire that I
described earlier my own desire my intrinsic motivation my desire to always be
better and seek something that’s going to be better is actually in most people. And
what we are trying to do as a university, certainly, as well as with our students is to
stimulate that activity, there is a hunger there, people actually say hey I want to
figure this out, I want to figure out how do my job better.
For the university as a whole, our emphasis on lean management has been one of
the really productive areas. I don’t like that term very much because lean suggests
just trimming away to get slimmer and all of that, when in fact what it is is a
continuous improvement process where you take a problem or you take something
that you view as being substandard and say how can we think differently about this
process , how can we re-design it, how can we get rid of unnecessary steps and
yield an outcome that is probably less expensive which is one the of the goals we
have, but more importantly, most importantly, that its better and and and that kind of
experience is is a tremendous feedback,
So it builds momentum and people just have that reinforcing and reinforcing and get
hungrier and hungrier for it, it’s addictive in the right way for people to believe in
doing this. It also creates a degree of efficacy, a meaning for ourselves its its I like
what I’m doing I like who I am I like the organization I am a part of because I believe
I’m having an impact and I’m making a difference.
So for me one of the biggest things of this year is to just see the level of enthusiasm
that people have and that they embrace this. And I think it really starts from this
desire above all else to to make a difference and to achieve good things and to
create outcomes that are better than the ones we have.
Korey: I know that you were involved with getting with a group of students after the
summer reading book, um can you just talk a little bit about that and maybe how you
saw some of that desire in you know the very incoming students to further their
creativity and innovation?
President Hodge: Well we, we had this little exercise that we were doing where we
had them making a video and doing all of these other sorts of things and and in that
the part of it was we started out with kind of getting to the power of yes and it’s a
simple technique where you um ask someone uh you you make a proposal like in
this case it was ah the original conversation was about some new uh hero uh you
know marshmallow man or whatever it was and the other person’s reaction was to
be be critical at first in a negative way and say well it’s not going to work because of
this or it’s not going to work because of that. And, and yet when we turned that
around in the next stage and started to say now your answer is yes and, um, I was
not fully prepared for the dramatic impact it had on the way the students had a
conversation. Not only did they get more engaged, the volume in the room went up,
the energy went up, and it was it was just startling to see it. So that was an example.
We had experienced it ourselves, those of us who had the sessions in the previous
day’s workshop where we had all gone through the same thing and uh had the same
personal experience and we said okay, okay, so we were in a special case. It’s not
going to happen with the students. Wrong. It happened big time with the students uh
and it was really very encouraging to see.
Korey: Have you been able to promote that yes and type of thing in people that you
interact with that are not students or are pretty far removed from the idea of
creativity and innovation? More focused on maybe business or running a university?
President Hodge: Yes, we’ve ah, in the in the president’s cabinet we’ve tried a
number of these things, ah, deliberately trying to do this, try this yes and sort of
thing. And but again, it’s one of those things where it’s a technique that you might
use to make yourself more aware, but then if we do it right, it’s that we’ve kind of
changed part of the tone of how we interact on regular business throughout the year.
And I think that’s where the biggest impact has come is that we’ve kind of
internalized that and said, there are different ways to approach, approach these,
let’s not put the hypercritical phase on it to begin with. Let’s let’s have our idea
dump. Let’s throw the ideas out there, let them go, build on them, say yes and yes
and as often as we can, see where it goes. And I think we’re seeing much more of
that happening right now amongst this group.
Korey: What advice would you give to us or just Miami students in general as we go
out into the real world about how maybe we can use creativity or use innovation that
we’re learning here in the future?
President Hodge: Well, the first thing I would say is it’s all about attitude. The
most important thing that you have is just the attitude that you want to make
something better that you feel that you have possibly the power to do so which is
committed to that, you are driven by it that’s number one. No question about it.
Number two is keep reviewing, come back and read a few things about creativity
and so forth on a regular basis to kind of renew and spark your interest in that. Take
a few techniques that you think are ones that you really feel comfortable with and
that you like to use. Such as instead of solving the problem, making it worse and
how that might work you know something like that. If that’s something that’s
comfortable for you and it’s worked, make it work.
The last thing I would say is in creativity we think that we focus on the individual
being more creative, but the truth of it is, it is groups who are going to be more
creative; and so the question is how can you learn to be a better group member.
How can you learn to lead groups and how to have group dynamics be one in which
people are challenging each other and going off of these different directions. Doing
all these sorts of things, and then bringing them back together again to find a
solution. Ultimately, that is where the biggest impact will be. Solving complex
problems collaboratively and creatively.
Host Voiceover: We asked President Hodge to give us any last advice on
innovation and creativity.
President Hodge: It just, it comes back to the, to the fundamental notion that we
can all enhance our creativity individually and as groups, ah as teams to be more
precise. Ahh I think it’s an exciting time to be in a world that we live in because there
are so many ideas swirling out there we can reach out, we can grab them, we have
access to the kinds of information some technologies the previous generation could
only have dreamed of, it’s just a fantastic experience, in in that regard. So, if we can
find ways to spur that creativity and innovation umm we will individually lead richer
lives and we’re going to have more impact on the organizations that we work with
and serve. That’s pretty good motivation I think.
Korey: Well thank you for taking the time out. Before we let you go, we just need to
do a little technical thing. At the end of all our podcasts, we have the interviewee just
say their name and then a quick word about who they are and say thank you for
listening for insight. So if you could just say your name and who you are and then
say thank you for listening for insight.
President Hodge: Yes, I’m George Clooney
[laughter]
…
President Hodge: I am David Hodge, President of Miami University, and thank you
for listening for insight.
In July 2006, Dr. David C. Hodge became Miami University’s 21st president after 30 years of experience in higher education. Before coming to Miami, Dr. Hodge served as a professor of geography, department chair, divisional dean, and most recently, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle. During his time at the University of Washington, he was named the University of Washington’s Distinguished Teacher, served a term as Program Director at the National Science Foundation, was a consultant to local and state agencies in community development and transportation planning, and was editor of a core journal in his discipline. A native of Minnesota, Dr. Hodge graduated magna cum laude with his bachelor’s degree in geography from Macalester College in 1970 and went on to get both a master’s degree and a doctorate in geography from Pennsylvania State University. As president, Dr. Hodge has brought a disciplined, ambitious, and strategic focus to Miami’s thinking and planning. Some of his many accomplishments include establishing five-year strategic goals, initiating broad-based curricular innovations by utilizing state-of-the-art learning environments and engaging teaching/learning pedagogies, implementing the University’s first dedicated Sustainability Program which includes the University’s first LEED certified building, and initiating a strategic analysis of support services to save over $13 million and improve the delivery of services to students through the intelligent use of technology. Dr. Hodge is committed to creating sustainable long-term strategic direction for the university that focuses on Miami's core mission and strengths in order to continue to provide an undergraduate experience that is among the very best in the nation. Out of that desire, he has led the initiative of Miami’s Year of Creativity and Innovation for the 2015-2016 academic year. He currently serves as chair of Ohio’s Inter-University Council of Presidents.
Uploaded 10-30-2018
Categories | Creativity and Innovation
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