Week 2 Blog - Creative Abrasion and Divergent Pairs

I feel that both my past and especially my current employer would greatly benefit from the implementation of divergent pairs or creative abrasion.  What I see with my current employer is the same thought process that existed here in the 1980’s: this is the way we have always done it.  What this has lead to is the same problems still exist today and unfortunately they have become the norm.  They are accepted as fact, as part of the situation and there is nothing we can do about it. 

Basically, it has pulled us into what is known as the comfortable clone syndrome (http://www.businessweek.com/careers/content/sep2007/ca20070913_359965.htm, retrieved on 9/1/11).   I believe this is more prevalent in engineering organizations where introverted managers who are very technically smart don’t have the leadership and people skills to deal with conflict or disagreements.  This in turns drives them to hire ‘like minded’ people unintentionally inhibiting innovation within the organization.

The current discussion among a small group of us has recently been around the concept of diversity of thought.  This is very similar to the idea of creative abrasion and the intent is to bring new ideas into an old organization.  Like creative abrasion the inclusion of diversity of though will fill in the lack of skills within the organization making optimal use of the organization’s collective talent. 

The difficulty that we see is getting the organization to open up to the different ideas.  This requires that people change, take risks and in some cases put their egos aside.  I would really love to see how Mr. Hirshberg employed divergent pairs and opened up each individual to the ideas of the other.  What training did he provide the pair?  At what point did he interject in the process if it was not working?  What guidance did he give to the groups?  Did any of the pairs come to fisticuffs?