Claudio Perrone’s Monologues

There is this common notion of “intelligence” as a largely inherited talent that can be assessed in one hour interview.
Do you know your Intelligence Quotient (IQ)? I don’t.
In fact, I’m terrified by IQ tests.

You see, those tests may well find out that I’m an idiot, or at least, that I’m not that sharp.
No thanks, in this case I’d rather be a smart coward and influence my destiny in complete ignorance. After all, I can still be “imperfect” and yet make a difference in this world.

Edward de Bono, one of the leading business creativity experts, likes to describe intelligence as the horsepower of a car, our potential. The skill of thinking is then the skill of the driver. A poor driver on a powerful car can still be outperformed by a skilled driver on a humble car.
We may not all have the same IQ, but we can certainly learn to become skilled thinkers.
If I could only remember where I left my car keys

The irony is that highly intelligent people may fall in what Edward calls the intelligence trap: for example, they may be unwilling to take risks for fear of not being right all the time. Or they may be so good at supporting and “sell” their own point of view that they may never find a need for seeking potentially better alternatives. Ouch!
As the French philosopher Alain (Émile Chartier) once said:

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it’s the only one you have.

I recently found some evidence that IQ and creativity are different in the most unlikely of all places: the Big Brother House (BB8 UK).
Uh? Big Brother? Well, I confess. I usually don’t watch these programs, but this year I’m hooked. The best part is shown on Sunday evening, when a group of psychologists display the result of their weekly experiments on the contestants.

A few weeks ago, Big Brother called each housemate in the diary room and presented them with a simple task. Within one minute, they had to identify things you can and can’t do with a paper clip.
Each of the housemates came up with a bunch of ideas; it was certainly interesting to observe how the constraints of the environment and their condition greatly influenced the answers they gave.

But when 20-years old Brian entered the room, something unexpected happened.

Poorly educated, gullible, goofy and - by his own admission - not one of the brightest people around, Brian quickly identified a rather impressive number of ideas and easily outperformed all his housemates.

As the experts indicated, within the given time constraints, he gave proof of excellent:

• Fluency: the number of meaningful ideas generated
• Flexibility: the number of different categories of relevant responses
• Originality: the statistical rarity of the responses
• Elaboration: the amount of detail in the responses

In conclusion:

• Don’t envy others for their intelligence, because you can be (at least) as creative and as they are.
• Explore the world with a fresh perspective and you’ll soon see things others can’t see.

Along the way, you’ll pick up some serious thinking tools to help boosting your potential.
Like a blacksmith, I’m hand forging those tools for you.
The first one is almost ready, and I’ll hand it to you in my next post!

Have you ever believed that you could never learn to be creative because inventive people are born with some special ability that ordinary people like you don’t posses?

A few years ago, I suggested to each member of my team to choose a nick name, an inspiring name that would break away from what has been chosen for them by their parents.
I didn’t have a particular reason; it was just for fun.

A co-worker (who later changed his mind and chose to be called Lone Ranger) initially opposed to the idea and argued that “you can’t wake up one day and decide to call yourself, say, Alexander the Great”.
Why not? – I replied.
I thanked him for the really great suggestion, as he had just found my new name!

Alexander was such a formidable icon.
He was an invincible fury who conquered most of the world known to the ancient Greeks.

But there is a different reason why I still use that name to this day.
It is a powerful reminder that you should never be afraid to question the rules and revisit your assumptions, particularly when others say “it can’t be done”.

What would you say if I told you that creativity is a skill and not a gift?
Like any other skills, it can be learned and developed.

Many will be surprised to know that my mum is an accomplished and multi-talented artist. She is a French-Italian poet, interpreter, writer, editor. In the past, she has been a painter, a radio DJ, a dancer, an aerobic instructor, and many other things I can’t even remember.

Even if we discount the tiny possibility that my attitude towards creativity may have been genetically determined, my character has been powerfully influenced since early childhood.
In my family, we have always valued originality and worked extremely hard to develop our talents.

Although it might sound widely pretentious to state it here, I know I can be (and I have been) extremely creative.
Unlike my mum, however, I’m not an artist.
I’m a software developer, after all; I’m more technically inclined and definitely a bit rusty on poetry

I hopefully inherited her capability of creating ideas that can bring success in any field and personal life.
The problem with such attitude, however, is that you can only accept it for what it is – it’s not easy to develop a gift, is it?

The truth is that creativity can be learned and developed indeed, and it has nothing to do with intelligence.
Perhaps you knew this already, but I was surprised to make this discovery very recently and by pure coincidence.

Luckily, my motorbike broke.
On my new bus commute to work, I started speed reading creativity books voraciously.
I learned theories and ideas form Edward de Bono, Michael Michalko, Roger von Oech and many others.

I shared some of these findings with my team in our latest muffin morning, and will share them with you here, in my next few posts.
I will present some behaviors, mental models and tools that I found useful to organize thoughts and generate tons of ideas.

My dream is to evolve as a better thinker, to be original, maybe even revolutionary.
And I would love to share and help others to evolve too: my family, friends, coworkers, and, yes, perhaps even you.
I know, it’s just a dream, so please don’t judge me.
We are all allowed dreaming after all, although most of us have long forgotten how to.