Be Irresponsible

One of the privileges of teaching at Stanford is that we get to engage a global audience. And one of the gifts of global audiences is the nuances illuminated by subtle language differences. We were recently teaching a group of executives from Asia, and experienced one such lovely illumination-in-conversation.

We were at the point in the program where we prompt folks to reflect on the differences between the two primary modes of thinking in creative work: convergent thinking (making decisions, eliminating options, refining, etc), and divergent thinking (generating options, imagining interpretations, seeking unexpected inputs, etc).

One high-ranking woman in the group offered, “When we are diverging, it’s ok to throw out anything. When we are converging, we have to think responsibly.” I loved that! A native English speaker likely wouldn’t have put it that way (implying that a core aspect of creative thinking is “irresponsible”) because it might be insulting to the teacher. But I thought, “That’s exactly right! It does feel irresponsible to diverge!”

And it helped crystallize a key insight: we all want to be responsible stewards, whether of company resources, of our reputations, etc. Therefore, it stands to reason that we should always be responsible. Therefore, because divergence is irresponsible, we should never diverge.

See the problem?

When the history books are written, one of the defining contributions the d.school will be credited with making is that we brought clarity to teams regarding, What kind of thinking is appropriate, when? We call such clarity being “Mindful of Process.” And it can seem like mere semantics until you realize that, depending on what kind of thinking is required, we need to show up in very different ways, despite being the same people, because the rules of what constitutes spectacular contributions are almost opposite.

Of course, we ultimately want to steward organizational resources responsibly. Of course. But sometimes, the problems we’re facing aren’t entirely clear, and neither are their solutions. In such cases, appropriate stewardship requires divergent thinking, and that feels irresponsible. But responsible stewards are adept at cultivating such pockets of deliberate irresponsibility, knowing what’s at stake.

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