Preparing the Mental Workspace

For planning teams to thoroughly understand unfamiliar problems—to see important connections and influences and to articulate key nuances—it requires team members to think and explore the problem in ways that may not be familiar. Making sense of the problem is going to require many team members to adapt their typical ways of thinking, and to think critically, creatively, holistically, reflectively, visually, and from multiple perspectives. In the same way that an athlete warms up before starting an intense workout, it can be helpful to loosen up the minds of the team before the members engage in different ways of thinking about the problem set. In this section we provide tips and strategies that can help prime the team members, enhance their awareness of how they typically think and help bolster member’s cognitive flexibility.

Key Issues and Challenges

Based on our interviews preparing the mental workspace is challenging because the military culture encourages its members to use highly analytic processes to plan and solve problems. While linear, analytic, and highly structured modes of thinking are exactly what is needed for many problems, these methods are not so effective for making sense of highly complex or unfamiliar problem sets. That means that the cognitive tools that many planners bring to solving complex problems are often not best suited for the task.

A related challenge for team members is for them to understand how they typically think, what perspectives and biases they bring, and how they usually solve problems. For some team members, this kind of awareness of one’s own mental workspace (known as metacognition) may be second nature. But for many individuals, metacognitive awareness may be new and possibly uncomfortable. Many individuals can get stuck in their own worldviews and paradigms, and have difficulty breaking away from them and looking at problems from a different viewpoint. Metacognitive reflection, “thinking about one’s own thinking,” is a skill that requires practice and team members may need help getting started.

An additional challenge to preparing the team’s mental workspace is the presence of team members who are unwilling (or possibly unable) to open their minds to other perspectives, opinions, ways of thinking, work processes, ideas, and recommendations. To optimize the team’s interaction and collective problem solving, it is essential that team members offer respect for and consideration of others’ ideas and contributions, and be open to at least exploring different views and ways of thinking. The team leader has a central role in developing a collaborative, trusting environment and does so by both modeling these behaviors, and by reinforcing these behaviors in the team. (see Managing the Team)

Tips and Things to Consider

There are a variety of factors and strategies to consider when preparing the team’s mental workspace. Note that some of these strategies may seem counterintuitive, especially to an organization such as the Army that values efficient process and structure.

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Recognize the role of team composition in fostering cognitive flexibility (Expand)

Diverse teams that include differences in perspectives and knowledge can stimulate higher levels of team creativity and increase the likelihood that new connections and insights will occur (see Assembling the Team).

Consider providing warm-up activities (Expand)

Consider providing warm-up activities before starting the problem framing effort. These activities should challenge team members to think in different ways. These warm-ups might include activities such as exercises in visual thinking that are very different from what team members might be accustomed to doing (see Engaging Problems as a Team). Every team meeting can start with a different warm-up exercise. The exercises can be short and get increasingly challenging over time. Some examples include:
- Provide a set of visual images (photographs, graphical images) and have team members select 1-2 images that represent the team’s mission. Put all images up on the wall and have each team member describe his/her selection, and how it corresponds to the team’s goals.
- Ask the team to create a picture “that interprets x.” “X” can be a phenomenon, activity, or attitude of the leader’s choosing. The idea is for the team members to consider and capture the “essence” of something in a visual representation.
- Select an image (painting, sculpture, abstract art, or graphic); ask the team to spend 5 minutes examining the image. Ask the team to describe what they see depicted in the image and how the image relates to the problem the team is tasked with solving. Discuss as a group.
- Ask the team to take 10-15 minutes to create an initial sketch/graphic of their view of the problem; post these sketches around the room and allow the team to examine one another’s work. Then ask each team member to talk briefly about their sketch.
- Show a video such as When there is a Correct Answer – Exercise in Creative Thinking.

These activities can prime the team members, loosen up their “mental muscles,” and begin to move them into a different mindset. The activities can also provide important practice at getting to the “essence” of something (i.e., to the heart of what matters)– and to begin discussing as a team what is important and what is not in problem solving activity. Finally, the activities also provide an initial team-building experience and way for team members to begin to know how each member of the team thinks and communicates.

Become attuned to how team members tend to think and approach problems (Expand)

Help the team members “think about thinking” so that they begin to reflect on and become more aware of the perspectives and worldviews they bring to the team. One approach is to use some of the many tools and inventories that assess aspects of cognitive style, preferences for learning and information processing, personality type, and interaction style. Some examples that many members of the military are familiar with include the Strategic Thinking Questionnaire (STQ) and Strength Finders, but there are many others that can provide interesting insights about individual and team profiles.

“You need them to confront how they think…. If they can at least acknowledge their own shortfalls, their own preferences, their own biases, they have a greater chance to recognize when moving down that same road.”

(U.S. Army MAJ)

Carefully consider how to use any information available from inventories and assessment tools. Team leaders might simply make the assessments available to team members for the members’ own self-knowledge and reflection. Or, the leader might ask members to share what they learned about their styles with the rest of the group. Another option is to present a “team profile” based on findings, without necessarily identifying individual’s scores or findings. The point is, the more individual team members (and the team as a whole) understand their own preferences and inclinations, the more likely members are to recognize the advantages and constraints of their typical approach to working with others and to solving problems.

Help team members become more aware of (and more confident in) their own abilities to innovate and be creative (Expand)

This can be particularly important for team members who are resistant to different ways of thinking and exploring problems because they believe they are “not creative.” Consider engaging in an “Every day creativity” exercise that helps individuals to explore how they are creative in their everyday lives – whether it be in the way they cook, the way they organize their garage, or the way they landscape their home. This will help each team member become more aware of how and where they are creative, and recognize that creativity manifests in a variety of different ways. And that creativity can be pulled into their problem solving task as well. (For an example, see the “everyday creativity” activity.)

Or, consider showing David Kelley’s video How to Build your Creative Confidence to help team members to understand their creative abilities.

Tools and Resources

This section provides a set of tools and resources that planning teams may find helpful for preparing the team to work together and for doing the work itself. The tools and resources are organized around the following topic areas: 1) exercises to prepare the team to work together, 2) exercises and videos for preparing the mental workspace, 3) assessment tools, and 4) suggested reading.

Exercises to Prepare the Team to Work Together

Background Exploration Exercise (Storytelling) [PDF]
Description: Allows team members to better understand what each individual brings to the team by sharing personal experiences and backgrounds with the team.

Broken Squares Exercise [PDF]
Description: Gives insight into how each individual team member tends to look at situations and solve problems.

Engaging Everyone – Liberating Structures [PDF]
Description: A handbook containing a range of exercises including ice breakers, physical space suggestions, creative thinking techniques, question asking techniques, and approaches for improving interpersonal and team communication.

Team Role Experience and Orientation (TREO) Instructor’s Guide [PDF] and Survey [PDF]
Description: A teamwork style survey developed by the Army Research Institute (ARI). Designed to help teams and team members examine their preferences and how they typically work in a team.

Exercises and Videos for Preparing the Mental Workspace

Visual Explorer Images
Description: Images available for purchase through The Center for Creative Leadership website useful for a variety of creative thinking exercises.

Everyday Creativity Exercise [PDF]
Description: Exercise to help team members recognize where and how their creativity is being expressed in everyday life, so they can then apply that way of thinking and being to their work.

When There is a Correct Answer - Exercise in Creative Thinking
Description: Believing that there is a correct answer can dampen creativity. Video shows an experiment with third grade students.

Tales of Creativity and Play
Description: TED talk by designer and IDEO CEO, Tim Brown. He describes the relationship between creative thinking and play.

David Kelley: How to Build Your Creative Confidence
Description: TED talk by David Kelley – President of IDEO. He argues that creativity is not for a chosen few; everyone has creative potential.

Assessment Tools

Strategic Thinking Questionnaire
Description: Measures a person’s ability to think strategically. Reveals an individual test takers use of three mental processing skills: reflection, reframing, and systems thinking.

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®)
Description: Questionnaire to measure psychological “types” – i.e., how one perceives the world and makes decisions.

MBTI® Complete
Description: Online tool that does not require a certified individual.

Clifton StrengthsFinder
Description: Assessment test to uncover one’s personal strengths.

The Cognitive-Style Inventory [PDF]
Description: Assessment to identify cognitive styles and help to anticipate benefits and drawbacks for each.

MAKING SENSE OF COMPLEX PROBLEMS