Event Replay: The Creative Connection: Fostering Belonging in Teams and Organizations

In thriving organizations, creativity and belonging are often seen as distant cousins—connected yet rarely interacting. But what happens when these two essential forces are united? On October 16, we hosted an inspiring conversation with Jamie Woolf, Dr. Christopher Bell, and Steven Morris to explore this powerful synergy.

This dynamic discussion delved into how creativity doesn’t just fuel innovation—it also creates workplaces where individuals feel valued, connected, and empowered to bring their full selves to work. The insights shared during the event offered a blueprint for transforming workplace culture through the lens of creative connection.

Watch the Replay to Discover:

• Engaging Stories and Insights: Learn how leading organizations balance innovation with genuine human connection.
• Practical Strategies: Implement actionable tools to foster belonging and creativity in your team or organization.
• A Fresh Perspective: Gain a deeper understanding of how creativity can become a catalyst for belonging and workplace transformation.
• Click below to watch the replay and unlock the potential of creative connection in your organization.

About the speakers

Jamie Woolf
Founder of Creativity Partners, Former Director of Culture at Pixar
Jamie Woolf is an innovation cultivator and speaker with 30+ years of experience in organizational psychology. As the first Director of Culture at Pixar Animation Studios, Jamie was a force for “constructive disruption,” helping teams embrace creativity as a catalyst for personal and organizational transformation. Having worked with top organizations like Google, DreamWorks, and Gilead, Jamie brings contagious passion and a wealth of experience in empowering leaders to lead with creativity. Outside of her work, Jamie enjoys tennis, hiking, and life in the Bay Area with her partner and two grown children.

Dr. Christopher Bell
Chief Associate at Creativity Partners, Executive in Residence at the University of Colorado
Dr. Christopher Bell is a nationally recognized speaker and scholar who uses the power of storytelling to build healthier workplace cultures. With over 20 years of experience, Chris has redefined the approach to “diversity training,” working with organizations such as AT&T, Pixar, and the United States Air Force Academy. He’s a TEDx speaker with over 1.3 million views and is passionate about using storytelling and play to spark creative innovation in organizations. When not speaking, Chris enjoys playing tabletop games, experimenting as an amateur chef, and strumming the ukulele in Los Angeles with his family.

Steven Morris
CEO of Matter Consulting, Brand & Culture Building Expert, and Best-Selling Author of “The Beautiful Business”
Steven Morris helps leaders build high-performing, purpose-driven organizations where creativity and belonging thrive. As the founder of Matter Consulting, Steven’s work integrates brand, culture, and strategy, showing leaders how to cultivate innovative, connected environments. His best-selling book The Beautiful Business offers a compelling vision for how businesses can flourish when creativity and purpose align.

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Creative Connection — Conversation with Jamie Woolf, Chris Bell, and Steven Morris transcript

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co 

The topic of today’s conversation is what we call the creative connection. It’s really the link between the connection between creativity and belonging. My name is Steven Morris. I’m the CEO of Matter Consulting. I’m a brand and culture-building expert who helps organizations integrate their brand, their culture, and their business strategy into what I call a unified or United, creative, connected, and unknowable organization.

But today I’m playing the host on your friendly neighborhood cajoler, so I’ll be asking questions of both Jamie and Chris and diving into today’s conversation.

So with us, we have two seasoned professionals, spirited hearts and brilliant minds, Jamie Wolf and Dr Christopher Bell, who both lead the team of creativity partners.

Jamie wolf has over 30 years of experience in helping leaders embrace creativity as a transformative tool. Jamie was previously the very first Director of Culture at Pixar, and who, as I understand it, also played a role in disruption there. So that’s a weird set of bedfellows. Maybe we’ll hear a bit about that.

Chris Bell has redefined diversity training. He is a master storyteller, nationally recognized and award winning speaker and scholar. And if you haven’t done so, I strongly encourage you to check out his TED Talk, his TEDx talk entitled, bring on the female superheroes. It has 1.3 million views. Check it out, not during this conversation, but check it out sometime afterwards.

So today’s conversation is really all about creativity and how it can do more than just spark ideas, but it can build stronger, more curious, more connected teams. So here’s the core thesis that I think we’ll explore, what happens when creativity and belonging become the super Twin powers to reshape workforce culture? Let’s find out. Let’s start with some very basic questions.

So Jamie, Chris, how do you each define creativity and belonging? Jamie, let’s start with you.

Jamie Woolf 

Well, I’ll, I’ll steal from Ed Catmull, who was the former president of Pixar, and I love his definition, which is, creativity is problem solving. So when people say I’m not creative, you know, you think an artist, a visual artist, you know, a performer, but we’re all creative, and we’re all solving problems every day, every moment we’re solving problems. So I would say that’s, that’s my definition of creativity and

belonging.

Chris and I talk a lot about what is belonging, because I think there’s so much work out there that’s not hitting at the true core of what belonging is. And I see belonging as CO creating. So when you’re on a team and you’re told what to do, and you’re, as we call it, at Pixar the wrist, you’re not really belonging. When you’re belonging, you are co creating whatever the project is, you’re co creating the culture. You’re valued for your contribution. So I’ll stop there.

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co 

Very good. Thank you, Jamie, all right. Chris, over to you definitions on creativity and belonging.

Chris Bell 

Cool. Um, I think, okay, so creativity, for me kind of boils down to the ability to imagine what isn’t. Think that’s the that, that’s the sort of bottom line of that, right, the ability to imagine what doesn’t exist yet; belonging, I think, is moving from yours and mine to ours, like it’s, it is, this is My business and you work here, or this is my team, and you’re a part of it to this is our space, and we are doing this together. Yeah. So that co-creation piece, I think, is really, really important.

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co 

Love it. Love it. I and so now let’s bring these two ideas together, if we, if we can, what is the connection and between creativity and belonging? How would you each see that? And Chris, let’s go ahead and start with you on

Chris Bell 

actually, can you start with Jamie? I  hate to put you out of spot, but go for it.

Jamie Woolf 

No fair. Chris, okay, creativity and belong the connection. I don’t think that I’ve seen the true flourishing of creativity when people don’t feel a sense of belonging, because they don’t feel safe, they don’t feel heard, they don’t feel valued. And I’ve seen this so many times in work in Creative organizations and in work where people say they’re non creatives, you don’t your brain actually doesn’t work in the fullest way when you feel like you don’t belong in any way. You feel like you’re lesser. So one of the things at Pixar we always asked, and this is, again, my inspiration is often Ed catmulls leadership is, how does the least powerful room in how does the least powerful person in the room feel? It’s such a potent question, because if the least powerful person in the room doesn’t feel free to offer up ideas that has a ripple effect, you’re also not going to get that person’s ideas. Because it takes everybody, it takes a diversity of rich ideas free flowing to have creativity.

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co 

Yeah, so I’m hearing kind of two things around that one, and I want, I want you both, to speak on this potentially, is, you know, there may be a chicken and egg theory around belonging and creativity. So, for instance, as you just described, there Jamie, that, you know, we can’t really have a creative room of people who are collaborating on something if there isn’t a sense of belonging that happens there first. So what are your feelings there? Is it sequential? Is it necessary to have belonging before creativity can even happen? Yes,

Chris Bell 

now, now, now, yeah, now, now, now, I’m ready. Yes, okay, that’s the I think that’s really the key, right? Is that if I don’t belong here, how can I possibly be. Creative if I can’t bring my whole self to work or to this space or to this team, I can’t possibly imagine effectively, like I can’t I can’t problem solve effectively. I can’t contribute effectively, because my whole self isn’t here, and I need my whole self to be creative,

Jamie Woolf 

right? And I’ll just add in a little controversy into the conversation. I think that I’ve often seen some really incredible creativity come from Renegades who step out of the hierarchy, step out of the system that in which they don’t belong, and then they go off. This happened. This is what Xbox came from. A bunch of renegades and they and at Pixar, we had a group. We had innovation lunches with people who felt like they weren’t getting heard. They weren’t able to leverage their creativity. So oftentimes there’s kind of a rogue movement that happens, but you need to not go it alone. You need to find your people, and you need to kind of sometimes take it into a place where there is safety and that fortifies the group to be able to then come back and and have some leverage. So

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co 

how does the team then go about recognizing those Renegades or the rogue people who want to be, you know, contributors, but are off, going off on their own, and they don’t feel like there’s this immediate sense of belonging, but they’re definitely want to contribute, like, you know, how? Like, either, how do, how did it happen at Pixar? Or how do you see it happen in other organizations where you bring some of those, let’s call them outliers, into the fold and make sure that their creative voice, or their innovative voice, is actually included, maybe not directly in the room, but around the room or in a circumstance that allows them to voice whatever they’re wanting to voice.

Jamie Woolf 

I feel like it’s kind of like a weed coming through concrete, like creativity is going to happen with the people who really have a purpose. And so it’s happened with the renegades, because they believe in something, and they believe and they’re iterating and they’re persisting, and you can’t keep that down. And so when I’ve seen that happen, there’s such a tremendous sense of purpose and energy, and they have enough time and the spaciousness that it takes to get out of the deadlines, get out of the pressure cooker that is so often the workplace, the efficiency mindset, and to find that spaciousness. And sometimes that’s been at night, when people are, like, working after their day job, and they’re, you know, at night, continuing to tinker, and then they have something elegant to offer, back, whether it to the executives, to the powers that be, and it’s just so remarkable that it has a life.

Chris Bell 

I’ll extend that a little bit further even, you know, I because I completely agree with this sort of Jurassic Park philosophy of life finds a way, right? Like that’s, you know, creativity finds a way, but so does belonging. And if I don’t feel like I belong and can’t bring my full creative self to this space, I will bring my full creative space to the place where I do belong. And so how do these how do these Renegades come together and and figure out expert, they find their people, they find their people, and they coalesce. And we can either harness that as an organization and bring it back into the fold, or those people will coalesce. They will bring their creativity, and they will take that creativity elsewhere. And so it really is sort of, how can we tap into those spaces so that people do feel like they belong, so that we are getting their best effort, rather than them feeling like they have to take their best effort underground or after work or somewhere else.

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co 

I’m gonna bring a topic that’s kind of related to what we’re talking about here. And this is something that I’ve seen in teams that happen somewhat frequently. And I call it creative capacity. So when we think about teams getting together to do creative things, the first thing that needs to happen within organizations is that the conditions have to be set so that creativity can actually happen there. So I think about it very much like a garden metaphor, right? If we’re going to plant seeds of potential futures, to borrow Chris from your part of your definition of creativity, like it hasn’t happened yet, we’re here to imagine that, and we’re going to birth it into being. The garden metaphor comes into play, and the soil of the garden is essentially the conditions that leaders need to create in order for that garden to even have the potential for any flourishing, you know, any kind of health. But then there’s like the individual, right? So as we’re, you know. A lot of people go through their quote, unquote, work a day lives. And, you know, of course, stress happens, and maybe they’re just, you know, hitting a point of burnout, and their their personal creative capacity isn’t yet sort of nurtured or flourished. And maybe that’s their responsibility. Maybe that’s the team’s responsibility. How do you see that happening within organizations, and how do we help individuals to develop their own or cultivate their own creative capacity? And further, how do we work with leaders to help create the conditions so that creative capacity, not just from an individual standpoint, but from a collective standpoint, can flourish.

Jamie Woolf 

What comes to mind is we’re working with an organization right now where we’re working with a number of individual contributors who don’t feel like they have the authority, they don’t have the voice and but they are itching to exercise creativity, but they’re kind of overwhelmed and don’t have the time. So there’s a book that maybe some of you have read called your brain on art, and it’s kind of rocked my world because it validated everything I’ve intuitively known about the creative process. And we engaged in a little experiment with these people, individual contributors, which is just engage in something creative for five minutes a day. And we sent them prompts. And it was like, draw to music. You know, pick a pick, pick a piece of music and just doodle, draw whatever it is. You know, go into your recycling and create a sculpture. But, you know, only take five minutes put on your timer. Everybody has five minutes. But the profundity of that exercise was that it changed the way people see through the entire day, like if they did a watercolor, you know, or crayons, or, you know, we had very minimal supplies that we asked them to get, but it really did make them feel better, because engaging in creativity is good for your mental health, and so I think in organizations, we need to introduce creative methodologies to allow people, and it doesn’t have to take A lot of time, but to stir up that creative confidence that sometimes lacking, and especially when we have a school system that you know, by the time kids are in the fourth grade, they’re not raising their hand, that they’re good at art, and in the third grade, second grade, they are like we we thwart creativity from a very early age. And so Chris and I go into so many organizations where we put out art supplies, and they’re like, What the I just want you to know, I’m bad at art, not good at creating, yeah. And we recently had one of our most fun events with a finance department. These are, like, finance and procurement people, and they’re like, everybody’s saying, like, you know, I just want you to know I can’t do the art. If it’s, if you’re asking for an art, you know, experience, I’m going to opt out. I can’t do it. Like, so much fear. And the room was electric, like we had this finance team. This was like 85 people engaged in art, because it wasn’t about the result. Is about the process. And, you know, we created enough safety, and it was just like the laughter. And it’s right under the surface that that childhood wonder and that thirst, that appetite, but that that requires, you know, it either coming from oneself, you know, like the individual contributors I talked about, who are just going out and walking around their block and taking a picture of something they never noticed, like the prompts just, you know, created a whole shift in mindset.

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co 

Yeah, and you’re talking about what I would call creative hygiene, right? So, you know, the creativity is a practice, after all. And certainly we can, if we wanted to get into a more esoteric conversation, we could talk about genius and the Muses and all that kind of thing, which we’ll leave that out for right now. But if we even when we think about, you know, creativity as a practice, then then there’s a hygiene element that we can do just to develop that and cultivate sort of the everydayness, and maybe then that takes some of that, as you described, that fear of, oh, I’m not a creative or I haven’t, you know, I haven’t done quote, unquote artwork since I was in kindergarten, or whatever. I’m curious about something you just talked about, there’s there, seems like this. And I want to demystify a bit of the magic that we just talked about in here. So people enter the room with this sense of overwhelm fear, you know, this quiet whispering, I’m not an artist. Don’t expect too much from me, all that kind of thing. But then some transition, something magical happens, where, as you described Jamie, it turns into this moment where. People are all of a sudden alive, and have, you know, there’s laughter and joy is filling the room. What happens in between that? How do we make that happen?

Chris Bell 

It’s It’s instinctive. And what I mean by that is, you know, one of the, one of the things that we try to do is help organizations understand that creativity is everywhere, and creativity is everywhere because it is literally programmed into the way your brain is wired. It’s programmed in and over the course of our lives, we learn how to fall into this box of being a, what I always call, in my own work, a very serious person, and I always put a trade, little trademark sign after that, right, very serious person. That’s sort of the our end goal of being an adult is being a very serious person. The the problem with that is that we are higher order primates. And as higher order primates, it is literally programmed into who we are to learn through the activity of play, and so when we offer people spaces where they can play, the shift from very serious person to open to the creative process is a little bit of everyday magic. It’s a little bit of eye opening. So you get a bunch of finance people in a room, you put out some play supplies, and you don’t give them rules. You say, I want you to draw a like, here’s, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to look at the person across from you, and I want you to draw who they are, and I don’t want you to lift your pencil. And they say, How am I supposed to do that? And we say, I don’t care. All of a sudden, the whole world is open to you. As long as you don’t lift up your pencil, everything else is open to you. The amount of everyday magic you can see in people’s heads. You know, I met with a group of business finance majors last week. You know, these are our students who are in college, who are ready to go into the world of accounting and finance, and I told them we’re going to play a game, but I’m not going to be here for the game. You’re going to play it on your own. Before tomorrow, you’re going to go into the store. You have a $10 bill, and you need to spend exactly $10 can’t go over by a cent. You have to spend exactly $10 go figure it out at Target, and to watch these little finance majors who really want to be out in the world understand that there’s a game afoot. And now I get to play. And in the playing, all of these things are happening in my brain. I’m getting all these brain chemicals, and I’m getting all of this really positive stuff out of it. I think helping people understand you can do that everywhere. And it doesn’t matter what kind of organization you are, it doesn’t matter what your business is. People instinctively want to play. And there is joy in that. There’s joy in the creative process, in the art of it, I think, is really important.

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co 

Well, what role do you think permission to play plays in the play,

Jamie Woolf 

yeah, I think I mean, that’s where leadership comes in, right? Is to create the kind of environment where you lower the fear around image management. You lower the fear around I have to sound smart. And I think that, unfortunately, I’ve seen so much rely on leaders. You know, it’s the tone that’s set in a meeting. And if a leader, if it’s a leaderless group, the tone is set by, you know, people who are playing leaders, who are, you know, playing the role of influencing the group, having the loudest voice, and one of the and then another in answer to your question. I think another lowering the bar to make creativity easier is, is soliciting the wild idea, the stupid idea. And I’ve been in story rooms at Pixar, where the question that starts off the story process is, what if, and like, the crazier, the better. And the other rule was, like, we’re not talking about box office. We’re not talking about profit like that is out of the conversation. It’s all about the craziest idea. So then someone says, Well, what if a rat cooked fancy cuisine in Paris? Whoa, like, that’s crazy, rather than like. That’ll never happen. Like that won’t work.

Chris Bell 

One of my, one of my favorite sessions I was in with a client recently where we played worst idea first. And so they’re the only rule is you have to intentionally try to come up with the worst idea possible for this thing that we’re doing. I love that. It’s an icebreaker. So then once all the bad ideas are out, we look for the seeds of what’s good within those bad ideas and see if we can move them forward. But it kind of gets again, it’s the permission to play, and it takes my idea is going to be terrible off the table, because that’s the idea I want. I want the worst idea first. Like, let’s try that.

Jamie Woolf 

We also, we were in a room with a bunch of entrepreneurs, and we had them engaging in a challenge that they were facing, and they had to say yes. And, you know, we’ve all heard the yes and improv. It was so hard for people to do. It’s so easy to get caught up in, yeah, but when it’s really an issue that you’ve you’ve iterated on and you’ve hit your dead ends, it’s like you hear someone have an idea and you just want to say, No, we’ve tried that. It’s just it rolls off the tongue. And so creating permission to plus every idea. We call it plusing, and we at Pixar, is this idea of yes and.

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co 

very good. All right, let’s shift gears here. So, Jamie, a question for you. You know, I’m sure you hear people say, you know, because they know your background to Pixar. Well, we’re not Pixar. We’re in an industry that is, you know, quote, unquote, not creative. We’re in banking, we’re in finance, we’re in accounting, whatever, …we are, very serious people — we’re serious about business. So how’s your message about creativity relevant to those organizations and industries that wouldn’t necessarily consider themselves as creative, or they would actually would self assign that we’re not creative?

Jamie Woolf 

Yeah, it’s such a, such an important question because first of all, we get that all the time, like, you know, you know, we’re not Pixar, you know, we’re not, you know, animation, we’re not entertainment, we’re a bunch of computer programmers, so very uncreative. So, I mean, a few ways to answer that. One is, we meet people where they are, because we do have a whole host of skills. You know, my background is organizational psychology, organization development. So we do strategic planning, we do problem solving, you know, we we want to address people’s pain. So you we meet people where they are. And it’s not just like we’re saying we’re going to introduce creativity, you know. So sometimes we, depending on the client, we won’t lead with, you know, we’re going to be drawing, but like in, what with one group at a very large tech company with computer programmers, and they were all PhD computer programmers, and we were told, like, this is a tough group. They’re going to be, you know, coming in with their arms folded and very introverted. And we did a lot of hardcore strategic planning, but by the end of the day, they were painting canvases about their and their like minds. You know, the one of the comments that came from one of the computer scientists was, thank you. I’m going to go home right now and draw with my granddaughter, and it just still gives me chills. So we find a way, we find a way to sneak it in, and sometimes we don’t lead with that, and then we do a lot of like lowering the bar on so you say you’re not creative, but you’re solving these vexing problems. I think you’re creative, right?

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co 

And is it? Is it the word creative that they have an allergic reaction to?

Jamie Woolf 

So there’s a great book called Creative Change by Jennifer Mueller, and she’s one of our advisors on creativity partners. And the reason she’s an advisor is she has done such important work about the bias against creativity. And among many things, the bias comes about because of our obsession with profit and efficiency. And so creativity is messy and it’s more circuitous, and so we have to know about those biases to be able to get through those biases.

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co 

This leads to a question, I’m curious, Chris, how can cultivating the artist’s mindset of curiosity, openness and willingness to take risks actually be complimentary to all the analytical and the results oriented stuff that Jamie was just talking about.

Chris Bell 

Yeah, I mean, I the again, sort of circling all the way back to the beginning of the conversation creativity, the artist’s mindset, is quite literally the ability to imagine a thing that isn’t there, and every organization needs to be able to do that. It’s how we move things forward, it’s how we innovate. It’s how we create a new product or a new service or a new way to help our clients or. Ever. And so I think whether it’s an allergy to the word creativity or a feeling that we can only implement creativity in sort of a frivolous way, those breaking that mindset and moving us into a space where we say, thinking like an artist means looking at a white space, a blank piece of paper, a blank whiteboard, and being able to imagine what could be there. I think that’s a vital skill for anybody, for any industry. You know, if we’re finance people, we need to be able to imagine systems that are more if efficiency is our goal, fine. What does it mean to be efficient? Let’s, let’s open our brains up about that, like, what if profit is our goal, fine, we have this blank whiteboard. How do we make you let’s put profit on one side and let’s put us on the other and fill the board. How do we get there? That to me, all of that are versions of creativity. And does I always, you know when, when I talk to clients, I talk a lot about about Moon shotting. I don’t know if you know what moonshotting is, but like, we want to get to Mars. If we go from Earth to Mars, it takes a very long time. If we use the gravity of the moon, we go this way, and then we slingshot around the back of the moon. It shoots us off, and we get to Mars a whole lot faster by going away from Mars to go towards it. And for me, that’s what creativity is. It’s the it’s the moonshot, it’s the slingshot, right? So if I can get you to play and open your brain up to creativity. If I can get you to draw or paint or play a game or whatever, and I open your creative mind up, I can refocus you on the problem. And now we’re slingshotting our way to new creative solutions, to open world, to the blank whiteboard, right? So you might go, how does you know you’re I’m going to spend five minutes at the beginning of this meeting playing, you know, heads up, seven up, like I’m a kindergartner. And my answer is, yes, you are, because it’s going to open your brain up to a different way of thinking, to a different set of possibilities that we can then harness to do the thing we’re trying to do.

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co 

Yeah, I would add two things to the artist mindset, and that I think are really important in the world of business. One is the act of noticing. We have to notice what’s in front of us, what’s around us, and what we tend not to notice, in order to come up with new ideas, new solutions, and even go into that creative mindset. And in the second thing, which we kind of have touched on, and I think all business leaders need to do this, and frankly, most people, individuals within organizations need to do this, is to get really comfortable taking risks. And sometimes, you know that could be big risk taking, like the moonshot stuff that we’re talking about here, or it’s small risk taking where it actually includes speaking up in the middle of a meeting where you don’t disagree, you don’t agree, or you do agree, or you have a different mindset or view from the core topic that’s being talked about. And again, that goes back to the hygiene issue, which is creating conditions where people feel safe enough to be able to speak up and take risks, but also say what they’re noticing, and notice that in such a way that it’s brought into the room as a potential material, element, part of the Artist Palette, if you will, to create the new things that we’re creating.

Jamie Woolf 

I’ll add, I’ll add a few more to that, to what you and Chris have have said. I think the other thing that the art mindset brings is heart, and I think that’s if that’s missing from the work that we’re doing, it is probably more profit oriented, product oriented, and doesn’t have soul, and doesn’t motivate people. And so even in an organization that’s not about storytelling, you know, getting to your question of, yeah, that’s fine. At Pixar, of course, asked to have heart. But I was recently with some executives, some of whom I’m doing one on one, coaching with, and they would say that their superpower is problem solving and decision making. And through the course of coaching and working with this group, there’s so much noticing, like you said, Steven, of what they miss because of their superpower. Yeah, if you’re if your problem. Solver and decision maker. You’re coming very much from the cognitive and you’re missing what’s your team struggling with, what’s lighting a fire under them, who’s not speaking. There’s so much that’s missed

Chris Bell 

well, and there’s so much investment in wanting to be the one who notices, and therefore being somehow personally slighted when somebody else notices a thing you don’t notice, rather than seeing that as an opportunity to have a different conversation, or to maybe open up your lens for how you’re seeing the world, instead of being mad that someone else noticed a thing you didn’t know this,

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co 

yeah, you’re talking, you’re talking about a very fascinating psychological dynamic that happens in a lot of brainstorming meetings, which is, I want my idea to be the best idea, and I want to, you know, be the like, I know the super, how superhero that comes in and saves the day. And you know that mindset, while prevalent, isn’t the healthiest mindset for group collaboration. And I’m curious, like the there’s there’s the other side to that coin, which is, I see organizations suffer from this thing called group think, right? So we’re in this Creative Conversation, or we’re in an innovative session and things like that, and then people go into this element where they go to common denominator thinking, or the way they’ve done things in the past. I wonder how you’ve both seen that, if you’ve seen that happen in the past, and if you have, how do we remedy that within organizations?

Jamie Woolf 

Yeah, I was just talking to a friend of mine who’s writing a book, and the thing, the thing that she’s coming up against is that all of the publishers are like, what’s that comparable to? It’s like, well, nothing like. There’s so much derivative junk out there we’re also sick of. And again, the bias against creativity, the bias about being different. And so, you know, group think I come I think again, you know, I feel like I’m repeating this so much. Maybe it’s a theme of our conversation. Is the fear factor, the leadership factor of like coaxing out the the different ideas and and coaxing coaxing out, like Chris was talking about, like the worst idea in order to find the best idea. And I think whether you’re the leader or not the leader, like it seems like we’re circling around the same kind of thinking, what’s missing here, like asking those kinds of beautiful questions, what’s missing? What? What’s a different way of seeing this, if someone was from the field of architecture was in the room. What would they say that’s not been said? Yeah,

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co 

I love your What if, front end of questions? I mean, you could fill in on the back end of what if a myriad of things you know, what if you know one question I bring into some innovation groups where we’re thinking about new products and things like that. What if our our clients are from another planet? How would we how would we solve problems for them? Or how would we tell stories to them that is so potent that they would totally get it about to say something? No, I

Chris Bell 

was just gonna I for me. I think there’s the added piece of this is that we often think of risk management instrumentally. And I think so much of it is that the risk management at play is often emotional, not instrumental. And what I mean by that is, you know, we have worked with some of the largest organizations on the planet, right, and they have all the money that anyone could ever think about. The fear isn’t that this thing that we want to do isn’t going to make us more profit. The fear is that we’re going to be wrong, and because we’re going to be wrong, it’s going to make us feel bad that we were wrong, and therefore we don’t want to take the risk, not because it’s going to lose us money, but because it’s going to lose us faith in ourselves that we can be right all the time about everything. And I think that the if we can help people get into a space where it’s okay to be wrong, where it’s okay to to try a thing and hope for the best and make a good plan, and maybe it works out for us, and maybe it doesn’t. Everyone wants to be the next whatever. Yeah, and it’s very hard to get people into a space where Wouldn’t it be awesome to be the first? Yes, whatever. Wouldn’t it be awesome to stop chasing the dragon and to actually be the dragon, like, wouldn’t that be great?

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co 

Yeah,

Chris Bell 

no. And for me, that’s the what if we don’t talk about enough, you know? What if, instead of being the next big thing, we were the first big thing, you know? I just

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co 

pointed to a paradox that I see happening in successful organizations. So the success that got them to the point typically, was an innovative leap that they made within the organization, but the more success an organization has, the less likely they are to go into the risk taking category because they want to protect what they currently have. And so in, you know, all of what we’re talking about here is getting people back into the mindset where it’s okay to take risks. And that what you know, as Marshall Goldsmith says, what, what got us here, won’t get us there, kind of thing. And it also goes back to something that that, Chris, you were touching on earlier, which I think, I think is really important. So Peter Drucker, back in the 1960s said there’s really only two core functions to every organization. The first function is innovation. The second function is marketing. Well, so innovation is everything we’re talking about here from a creative mindset standpoint, but they could also add the marketing side, is nothing more than storytelling. And so that’s a creative act in and of itself. So it’s taking what we’ve innovated on and telling stories about how that what we’ve innovated on is valuable to a set of somebody’s out there, which is also a creative act. So really, in the end of the day, you know, Peter Drucker’s argument is saying, everything is creativity, and you better get at it if you want to thrive at those two things, innovation and marketing. I have

Jamie Woolf 

a question for you along those lines, Steven, can I flip this the script? Bring it up. Yeah, since your brand and marketing, I’m curious what your answer would be to this question, are customers a source of innovation?

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co 

Absolutely, yeah, if, and if we you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s one of those, what if questions that I would encourage both innovation and marketing teams to ask is, what if we listen to our customers and the best ideas about what they need most comes from them, and that becomes our next level innovation. Not that we’re taking dictation from them, but we’re speaking to them to get to the heart of their emotional needs in such a way that we deploy what we might call dynamic empathy, to listen into what those needs are and turn those needs into solutions that we provide for them.

Jamie Woolf 

So a different angle on that. This is so interesting. I love this. So at Pixar and many companies you know, Braun, design companies, Apple, Steve Jobs. And this is kind of a provocative answer, but he said, customers are not a source of innovation, because they only see what is they see current needs, and they can’t see that, you know, in a time of horses, that we need cars for example, right? And so at Pixar, we did not have focus groups. People ask all the time like, do you have focus groups to find out what audiences need? And Steve Jobs and other, you know, executives would say absolutely not, because they don’t know. They’re not going to say, We want a movie about a rat cooking fancy cuisine in Paris. Yeah, right. And so the source of innovation is not customers, but the validation of your product, resonating or not, comes from customers. Yeah.

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co 

I think it could happen both ways, you know. And what I was talking about, hopefully I said it eloquently or clearly enough, was that you’re not soliciting ideas from them, but you’re tapping into what their emotional needs are based upon their life or lifestyle, or what, what, what, what their current habits are. And you’re ideally, you’re delving in with with a deep set of empathy for something is unmet, emotionally unmet within them, and you’re really mining for that information, then you’re taking that information and turning that into something that’s innovative for them. Involves that particular

Jamie Woolf 

it’s such a core part of design thinking and all that. But it’s an interesting, you know, debate,

Chris Bell 

I think, I think I come down on the complete opposite side right, which is, I think customers are the only source of of innovation. I think everything anyone designs in terms of like a product or a service or a or a film or whatever, necessarily is tapping into. Something, somebody, somewhere, needs, like, otherwise we’re creating false needs and then fulfilling those false needs, which is not the same thing at all. You know, I tend to be a kind of guy. My wife would tell you this in a heartbeat, if there’s like, a gadget for the kitchen, I’m gonna buy it, because I love, like a new doober that does a thing. Do I need a little machine that makes a breakfast sandwich, like you put all the things in and then it cooks it all together and makes a breakfast do I need that? No, but if someone’s makes the thing and then says, here’s what you need, it creates a false need in me, where I go, Yeah, I think that is a thing I need, and then I buy the thing. Yeah, that’s very different than understanding people have a deep yearning for x. How do we fill that need? How do we how do we take care of that, right? And so I think customers know the difference a lot of times, yeah, between you’re only giving me a thing because you want me to buy it. And this is a this actually fulfills something that I really wanted deeply in the world. And that goes for storytelling, that goes for products, that goes for services, that goes for really anything well,

Jamie Woolf 

and related to what both of you are saying, I think back to the question of belonging. You know, we need to know whether we’re writing a story for a film or developing a product. We need to know about the stories of those underrepresented voices. Like we designed so much for white men, we decide design so much for men. You know, the classic air air bags. And so I think this is an interesting time in the conversation of, again, that merging of creativity and and belonging, yeah,

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co 

you know. And it’s interesting. I’ll bring another voice and swinging the pendulum back into the the artistry camp, the book by Rick Rubin called the at the creative act. You know, one of the mindsets that he has is that the audience comes last. And here he’s talking primarily about, you know, true artists, or artists that you know are, you know, musicians and or painters, things, things of that nature. But I think it works kind of in the business world. So if we, if we take the mindset that, you know, innovation is this pure thing that we’re really thinking about, that’s that comes from the heart and soul of who we are as an organization, or who I am as an artist, then I’m going to birth the thing that truly comes from my heart and soul, and if there’s an audience for it, I will help, hopefully find that audience, and I’ll put it out there, because I think this is my best work, and it serves or tells a story in this particular way that hasn’t been done before, or maybe Even that hasn’t been done before. Doesn’t even matter it, but it truly comes from me, and in in that circle, you know, he would say that it has to come from the poor essence. And if it doesn’t, it doesn’t feel authentic to the audience of whoever that’s aimed for.

Chris Bell 

Yeah, there was a it’s interesting. If the thing that, oh, the thing that really interests me is this idea of, like, the collaborative process between the audience and the artist, right? Because on the one side, there’s this, there’s this idea that the artist creates the thing and then puts it out to the world, and people like it for what it is, or they don’t like it for what it is. And that’s the nature of things. There’s this other space where it says, No, you go out and you find out what the audience wants, and then you create the thing around that, and then you give it to them, right? I’m always super interested in this middle space, right? And I’m thinking of a really specific media example, but we can think about this in a lot of different sort of spaces. But there was this television series that also put out a video game at the same time, and then people played the video game, and then people realized things that were happening in the video game were affecting what was happening on the show, so that audiences, the audience, was literally participating in the creation of events that were happening on the show, if they had this event on the video game, and whatever happened in that what the outcome of it was people talked about on the series. Remember the Battle of blah, blah, blah and that, and this character got wounded in the battle, and now we that’s happening on the show, and it was this very interactive back and forth kind of a space that I just find so fascinating. It reminded me a lot of the TV series Lost, where. Lost, had a bunch of mysteries, but then there were all these message boards online, of all these people throwing out their theories. And then when the next season would come out, some of those theories migrated their way onto the show. And you would be like, someone’s reading, like, I don’t know who’s reading, but someone’s reading what’s happening online, and moving the story in particular directions. And I wonder, you know, if, if other, if industries can cultivate that back and forth, where, here’s the thing, how are you feeling about this? And now we tweak it, and now we move it forward, and now we that’s another way of iterating, of of engaging this creative process, where we are listening to the customer, we are listening to the to the audience, and that’s shaping our creative thought. And

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co 

what you’re pointing to, it may be a question of, when do we listen to the audience, and when do we? When do we? When do we, you know, be in the vacuum of our own ideation like, you know, Jamie, I’m curious over a Pixar. You know, there’s a tradition in the movie industry where you have a pre screening with, you know, sort of a test audience. And, you know, I don’t know if you guys did that at Pixar or not, and whether or not you know how much of that sort of feedback from a live audience you you the team over there modified what was on screen.

Jamie Woolf 

Yes, very important. So no focus groups to figure out what we’re making. But when we are in the process where the films close to done, there are audience previews, and they’re taken very seriously. And in fact, there’s all sorts of analytics about what the rating is and how well it’s going to do in the box office. And sometimes the audience previews have has inspired the filmmakers to go back and let go of, you know, kind of blow things up. And really, I mean, the film is being iterated. I don’t think people realize it’s being shaped and and blown up and reshaped all the way until the end. And it’s typically like a four year process. So, you know, there are some of the films that you love where the, you know, the PROLOG was not in the film until the 11th hour, like it’s, it’s very important at that point. Very

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co 

good. All right, I want to be respectful time. There’s a question from Tim, how to invite leaders to support these kinds of practices, to help them make the link between creativity and belonging, relates to and supports, deadlines, goals, bottom line, etc. How do we how do we balance those elements.

Jamie Woolf 

I think it’s exactly right. It’s a balance, and it’s not easy, but the efficiency mindset needs to be separated from the creativity mindset, and so many organizations get that wrong. And that’s not to say that the creativity mindset is about having no guardrail rails. There’s deadline pressure, and that actually enhances the creative process. But when you’re focused on simply, let’s get it done, and let’s make a profit that thwarts creativity, and you won’t have as good an outcome. So there’s got to be some line between the two, and the spaciousness needs to be allowed for of going off in this direction, iterating this direction, this direction, and it’s much more of a circuitous process.

Chris Bell 

Yeah, I tend to be the kind of person who thrives best in an environment where people understand that, like you can tell me what you want, or you can tell me how you want it done, but if you tell me both, it’s not going to be done, the best it possibly can be done, yeah? Like there has to be, there has to be room, right? So sure tell me what the goal is, tell me what the deadline is, and then let me figure. Let me do the thing. Let me figure it out. Let me, let me iterate, let me whatever it’ll get done by when you need it done. I’m not saying I don’t need any walls at all and just open world it, but I think in general, the fewer walls you can put around people, the better results you’re going to get, because people are able to open up their minds to the full idea that maybe I can think of another way to do this that gets the result that we want in a way that’s maybe not more efficient for the company, but certainly more efficient for me as the person Who’s doing the thing.

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co 

Yeah, you’re pointing to the research in the book by Dan Pink called Drive, which really the summation is that, is that what drives people is a combination of three things, autonomy, mastery and purpose. So you just described that very beautifully. There Chris pivoting to an. Another question from Mark, how do you have you needed to adjust strategies for fostering creativity when working cross culturally? And by cross culturally, I assume that can mean lots of different things across the cultural organization or different types of mindsets or personalities or even backgrounds of the individuals, yeah,

Jamie Woolf 

one of the organizations that we have been working with is, you know, global, and so some of the struggles have been not just time zones, but cultural interpretations of projects, and, you know, speaking different languages in all the ways that we think of language, and so absolutely, and it’s, I think it’s so vital that we take a beat to really understand who we’re working with, What, how they see things, and they’re not being this, this obsession with there being some right way

Chris Bell 

well, and I also think leaning into it as much as possible as well. You know, one of, one of the organizations I work with, you know, we work with the most, was doing some internal focus group work. You know, here’s our here’s our next thing, let’s get some people together. Let’s do this internally. And one of the things that I pushed them to do was to set that exact same process up with their sister component, which is in Europe. The play, the component here in the United States has people from all over the country. The component that’s in Europe has people from literally 27 different countries. So let’s tap into that. Let’s actually lean into that sort of cross cultural knowledge of being like, how do people from different places around the world see this problem that we’re dealing with. How can we actually use that to our benefit, that we have this ability to go cross cultural rather than seeing that as a barrier?

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co 

Fascinating? Absolutely. All right, guys, being respectful of time. Any any last thoughts, any parting words, Jamie, I’ll start with you.

Jamie Woolf 

Well, I want to thank you, Steven. I stumbled upon you in a number of ways. Your book, your talk with Creative Mornings, and reached out to you, and thankfully you said, Yes, I’d like to talk. And ever since talking with you, I’ve just, I feel like Chris and I just feel like we expand all of our imagination by talking with one another. So this has been really a joy.

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co 

Thank you, Jamie. I appreciate it. And right back at you agreed,

Chris Bell 

I think that, you know, both Jamie and I tend to be sound borders. We tend to be people who like to get in a space together and sound stuff out, bounce things off of each other. And so, you know, being able to do that sort of, maybe publicly, a little bit here with you, I feel like has been really valuable just in clarifying some things in my own head. So thank you for the for the time and space I really appreciate

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co 

that’s beautiful, yeah, and I’ve loved not just this conversation, but all the preliminary conversations that we’ve had leading up till now. And, you know, just giving folks sort of a sneak preview, we’re talking about how to collaborate with something, Jamie, Chris and I and to offer some type of retreat setting, either inside organizations, which we’re very happy to do, or in something that’s maybe not in an organization, maybe more like a university setting. So we’re thinking behind the scenes. We’re cajoling. We’re asking, What if, if we can as much as we can, as deeply as we can, and I’ve deeply appreciated that exploration with with both of you. And so stay tuned for more and Jamie and Chris. How can people find out about you in the world?

Chris Bell 

We have very easy to find at www dot creativity, dash partners.com, um, com. We also have a LinkedIn presence, and we’re kind of all over everywhere. Jamie, you were gonna

Jamie Woolf 

Yeah, you said what I was gonna say, and then to reach us individually, it’s Jamie at creativity partners.com and our Gmail. No, sorry. Jamie at creativity partners com.

Chris Bell 

Chris at creativity partners.com Yeah, we also, you know, we also offer a leadership development workshop called Grow Your Moxie, which a lot of really, you. Cool and innovative people are a part of and so you know, you can sort of check that out on our site as well. Fantastic.

Steven Morris / MatterCo.co 

Jamie, Chris, thank you so much for your time, everyone that’s been here. Thank you so much for your questions, for your presence. And I’m looking forward to more creativity in this world. And as we know, in the crazy world that we’re living in right now, we could sure use more both belonging and creativity. So thank you.

Chris Bell 

Thanks everybody. Thanks for coming. You.