Why Top Leaders Now Prioritize Creativity Over Efficiency

What if the secret to your company's next breakthrough wasn't found in your data, your strategy deck, or your AI tools, but in something far more human, Something called Wonder Rigger. Today's guest has been called the Creativity Whisperer to the C Suite. She helps leaders unlock the one advantage no algorithm can ever human imagination. She's lived in five countries, blended dance with design and anthropology, and now she's one of the top 50 keynote speakers in the world. Dr. Natalie Nixon. Welcome to Chats with Jason.

Thank you, Jason. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Absolute pleasure. I can't wait to dive into the questions. So let's, let's not delay, let's kick it off. Natalie, you've built your career around two words, wonder and rigour. When leaders first come to you, what are they really struggling with when it comes to creativity?

First, they don't really identify the struggle and the pain point as being around creativity. Typically, the questions and queries are around innovation, building cultures of sustainable innovation. Sometimes the questions are around what I call the murky middle and navigating through a significant crossroads. It could be because of an internal organizational redesign. It could be because of external disruption. And what they really are asking for are to be equipped with practical tools to hit, pause, zoom out, and do some strategic envisioning work. And it's interesting because I call it strategic envisioning. A lot of times we don't necessarily link the two words of strategy, envision, strategy and creativity. But it, to me, they are inextricably linked if we're doing it in the most optimized way. But it's really about finding ways to consistently innovate, navigate change, and build sustainable collaboration for real business results.

Yeah, I love that. Do you think there's a bias around the word creativity, like you mentioned, that they come to you looking for help with innovation and things like that. Do you think that leaders see creativity as something soft or a form of chaos?

It's been my experience that for a lot of us, when we hear the word creativity, we can equate it with art. And that's understandable because artists are excellent at wrestling with the ambiguity of, of the creative process. If you've ever been to a work in progress, visit to an artist studio, or you meet the choreographer after an open rehearsal and you ask the artist, so what's next? Or what are you thinking about doing with this? And they'll say really confidently with a smile on their face, I don't know. I don't really know. And so artists are admirably okay with the not knowing, they're okay with the ambiguity. Creativity has been siloed only among artists and sometimes it's considered a bit woo woo. It's considered as an addendum to air quotes, the important stuff. But in actuality, creativity is the engine for innovation. If we want to be able to consistently and sustainably innovate, then we have to build a capacity for creativity as individuals, as teams and as organizations. Because the way I like to define innovation is that it's an invention converted into scalable value. And that value can be a financial value, social value, cultural value, but it remains this one off invention until we, we integrate the, the conversion factor of creativity. And I like to define creativity as our ability to toggle between wonder and, and rigor to solve problems. And often when people hear my wonder rigor theory of defining creativity in that way, the light bulb goes off and it gives them permission, especially if they have not been self identifying as being creative, it gives them the permission to understand that the work that they do as engineers, as financial services teams, in healthcare, et cetera, as being very creative and essential.

Yeah, yeah, that, that makes so much sense to me. I've definitely been in some boardrooms where the word creativity was seen as maybe that team building exercise that we were going to do and as opposed to the innovation and the hard stuff that we were really there for. So tell me, when did wonder rigor first click for you? When did you realize that creativity needed both sides of that equation?

To be honest, I initially was focused on the wonder dimension and, and I think that's where a lot of us begin and start when we think about creativity. It's clear how creative acts, whether they're the mashup of two ideas that we typically would have never put together. The juxtaposition of opposing ideas or realms to create the new. It's a quite wondrous act. And wonder is about curiosity and audacity and awe and pausing and really broad thinking. But, but if we only stop at wonder, then we really won't get traction to develop the momentum that all creative acts require. And I, in my nerdy way, when I was trying to figure out a way to act on my hunch that in order to build sustainable cultures of innovation, we had to start with creativity. And I thought I've got to figure out a simple accessible way to explain what, what creativity is beyond the realm of art. I built out a miniature ethnography to explore at the time intuition, because that's also another Dimension of wonder and rigor. That's important. And so I was looking at the ways that dancer, choreographers, chefs, first responders. I forget the fourth area. And it wasn't comedians, but it was another group of people, of professionals, about the ways that they act in the moment and build on what the offering is. And it was in observing a rehearsal of a major contemporary modern ballet dance company here in Philadelphia called Ballet X. It was an open rehearsal that the wonder was really clear. But you're looking at the strenuous work that these dancers are doing. Their bodies manifest the hard work and effort that they put into the repetition over and over, repeating what seems to the outsider just a small bit of the entire piece. I thought, there's something else here that is helping them to be so creative. And I love etymology, and went to a thesaurus. And then little by little, got closer and closer to this word rigor. And rigor is about focus. It's about expertise development and skill mastery and technique. Rigor is not particularly sexy. It's often done in very solitary ways. And all of us who have mastery in some area understand that before, as the American dancer Twyla Tharp said, before you can think out of the box, you have to start with a box. And so it was through my research of these miniature ethnographies, of observing intuition at work that I landed on this counterpart to wonder, which is rigor. Now, what's funny to me is that in my. The days when I was working on a PhD, the theoretical construct that I use is something called chaortic systems thinking. And a Kord C H A C H A O R D is a word that Dee Haack made up. And De was the first president of Visa, the credit card company. And when he was tasked with leading this very experimental organization in the early 60s that was based on the electronic exchange of currency, he wanted to design a company that in its organizational design, mirrored the ways we see nature operating. Where in nature, De Hawk observed, there's chaos, which is randomness. We're not talking about anarchy, we're talking about randomness. But there's also order, which is not control, but it's structure. And he did a mashup of the two words, landed on chaod. Turns out that chaos can be directly traced back to chaos theory, to complex systems thinking. So I'm giving you that preface because, ironically, I didn't even have chaotic systems thinking in my head. It was just ingrained in the way I thought about things by that point. But obviously, the way I'm Thinking about creativity is wonder and rigor. You can see the relation to back to chaotic systems or wonder is the chaos dimension and rigor is the order dimension. And we absolutely need both in all creative acts. Whether we're talking about developing a new marketing strategy, a new financial model, a new way to collaborate, to approach product development, a new way to anticipate what's next in our sector. We do need develop the skills for both wonder and for rigor.

Yeah, yeah. So much deep research to come up with this concept of wonder rigor. So if there was anyone listening to this show thinking that it was something that you had just imagined over, over a weekend, that they've definitely been blown away. I want us to make it a little bit simpler just for a moment. If you were explaining wonder rigger to a nine year old using just what's in their backpack, how would you describe it?

I'd ask them to take out a pencil and I would ask them to just scribble or doodle the shape of a flower, for example, or a tree. And I would explain to them that the rigor is, is having that tool, that instrument called a pencil that can help us make real this idea in our head, this visual. The wonder is the way you think about what a flower looks like or the way you think about what a tree or a truck or a bug looks like. But we need both. If you only had the pencil and you didn't have the imagination, the curiosity to dream up different sort of shape, that's only one part of it. And similarly, if you didn't have the tool, the pencil or the marker or whatever it is to execute on that, it would remain, I wouldn't say the word ephemeral to a nine year old, but it may, or it may be your head or in the clouds, but we need both.

Yeah, yeah. What a great way to distill it down for everyone listening today. I think the only thing that I was hoping for you to say was that they needed to get out their crayons because then I could have used the line that every boardroom needed a crayon in it. But I agree with that.

I think, I think that would be a great addition. Absolutely. If we could just riff on that a bit. Doodling is a really important skill set because doodling is different from sketching. It's different from drawing. All of us can doodle. If you can draw a straight line, a circle, a triangle, a stick figure, an arrow, a Venn diagram of those intersecting circles, you can doodle. And your ability to doodle an idea that you're thinking through says a lot more about your capacity for complex abstract thinking than it says at all, anything about your ability to draw. And doodles are a way to simplify, distill an idea. It's one of the most basic prototypes ever because you can doodle a concept on, as Dan Ro made very famous, the back of a napkin. And that becomes a launch pad to have conversations and, and questions and the build on the idea. So to have in a boardroom a blank piece of paper and a crayon where you are asked to draw to, to illustrate what you're thinking about, what you're trying to communicate in very basic ways says a lot about your understanding of the principle or your questions about the principle. And it really democratizes the conversation and opens it up to conversation. So I'm a big advocate of doodling. I think it's awesome.

Yeah. I think for me, when you say to someone, oh, can you get up and draw what you're talking about? Everyone, or maybe not everyone, a lot of people just freeze. I don't know how to draw right. But in our notebooks, many of the same people will be sitting there doing their own doodles, which is a drawing of their ideas. I think if we can just embrace it a little bit more, it will help us be more, more effective as communicators, if nothing else. Because people connect with the visuals as more than the words at times.

Yes.

Skip a beat a little bit. You've talked about burnout and you've said that in your work, you've talked about burnout and that it isn't a weakness, it's sabotage. In your keynote, burnout to Breakthrough, you challenge the hustle culture that has become more and more prevalent of late. What's the mindset shift that leaders must make right now if they want their teams to thrive again?

The biggest shift in mindset would be to shift away from thinking about rest as a reward to thinking about rest as part of work. And that's something I explore really closely in my latest book, Move Think Rest, where I'm offering a human centered operating system to flourish because of burnout, ubiquitous technology and new rules for work. The statistics are pretty staggering on burnout stateside. In the United states, upwards of 71% of knowledge workers reported burnout around the time of the pandemic 2020, 2021. And that that number of 71% has not really decreased over the past four years. And there's a cost to burnout, the business cost of burnout is estimated to be about $300 billion with a B to US businesses alone. And that's because when people do struggle with burnout, there's absenteeism, there's higher turnover, there's, there's knowledge transfer, there's higher insurance costs. All of these are costs to a business. The understanding that organizations are organisms made up of humans, where we actually now are at a really cool time to leverage the technology to amplify what makes us uniquely human because we have the technology that can get us answers more quickly. The so what of that is now we have spaciousness, now we have time for greater critical thinking, for reflection, for collaboration, for eyeball to eyeball conversation. The key here is that we now have new tools for working, but we haven't shifted the systems of how we work, which requires us to pause and zoom out and rethink things like the meeting, the cadence of meetings, how long meetings last, incentivization plans, KPIs, and not just minimum viable products, but what I call minimum viable experiences. So that to me is a great place to start, is to rethink how we have considered the placement of rest, micro breaks, intermittent rest, rest scaled from how we think about REST within a day of work to over the span of a year. And how leaders model and message that they value and don't view as punitive when people rest.

So in your new book, you take us through the MOVE Think REST framework. And when I was looking at it, almost felt radical in a corporate sense, considering where many corporations act today, the way that they acted 40 years ago, 50 years ago, 60 years ago, they've just changed some labels, bought in some new pieces of equipment, maybe complicated their business in the process. They really haven't zoomed out and thought about reimagining it and even some of the new age, for want of a much better term. Companies that that were heralded at some points around having different ways of rewarding and recognizing their team members. Remember the movement where everyone was talking about how amazing it is that there's companies now that give their employees breakfast, lunch and dinner if they're there in the office, and they thought that was going to solve everything? The MoveThink REST framework really does make us think differently about that. Which of those three elements of the framework do you think leaders are resisting the most? And what actually happens when they stop resisting and embrace it?

I think the resistance is really situational. There are examples and pockets within companies that are embracing the MOVE Think REST model. So for example, a company like Atlassian, which is a 100% remote global company. They've been very proactive about thinking critically and creatively about when and how they meet, how they use meetings and. And it's because they have this distributed work model, so they have an opportunity to that. You also have a company like Zapier which has experimented with rest in the sense of they. They experiment with something called Get Stuff Done week. And interestingly, productivity did not slump during that week. And people reported out an appreciation for the ability to do deeper thinking and deeper work and, and time to actually, as the name of the week said, get stuff done. There are pockets and examples of that. And when I talk about movement, I'm not just talking about exercise, but I'm talking about what we could call movement hygiene. Making sure that we're designing the space of work and the cadence of work in ways where people are able to not just be sedentary all day. If there's an opportunity to have a standing decks, if you desk, if you can design in breaks to walk instead of having a zoom or teams meeting, maybe it can be on the phone or in person. And the reason that's important is that as humans, we are not designed to be sedentary. We are designed to move. When we move, our ideas move. The spinal cord is an extension of the brain. And when we are able to move, more blood flow is going up to the brain, which means better oxygen flow, which means our ideas are more dynamic. The thought dimension of the motor framework is really about back casting and forecasting. So while critical, sharp cognitive thought is rewarded in the workplace, it's essential. Our best critical clear thinking comes when we can back cast, reflect, use memory, use metacognition, but as well as forecasting, using the imagination, curiosity, dreaming. And we need both in order to do our best clear cognitive thinking. And the rest part can be everything from, as I said, micro breaks to sabbatical. So we have examples of company that comes at them that in addition to Atlassian and Zapier, we have a leader like Yvon Chouinard, who decades ago, he's the founder of Patagonia, he wrote an incredible memoir called Let My People Go Surfing. So he back then had this really radical leadership style of macro management versus micromanagement, acknowledging that if I have a person on my team who loves to surf and she knows that the surf will be up between 2 and 4 in the afternoon, I'll let her do that because I trust that she will get the work done. And over and over again we find that counterintuitively when we build in these models of trust, when leaders reflect back to their teams that they want them to do this, that they themselves are going to do this, that they aren't impressed by your, your productivity theater, then inch by inch people begin to venture out and do that. So those are just a few examples of companies and I would say the rest part is probably the most challenging area. Having a moratorium on meetings for one morning a month might be a way to experiment with that, or maybe it could be one morning a week. It depends on the culture of the organization. But the key is to start launching small experiments with seeing how your particular organizational culture resonates with these different ways of working.

Yeah, we're a little bit over halfway through the show and we've talked about creativity, we've talked about moving and thinking differently and allowing people to rest in ways that make sense to them while not actually impacting in negative ways the business. And if I was a naysayer listening to this, I'd be like, all this is great woo woo stuff, but it doesn't have a return on investment. What would you say to that person?

I would say that the move think Rest human centered operating system is equips you, your team with one additional way to build creativity as a capacity. And the reason building creativity as a capacity matters is that it helps to achieve meaningful business results. And here's what I mean by that. There is a direct, bold, solid line between creativity and using creativity as a strategic competency and business results. It's not a fuzzy dotted line. So for example, when you commit to building creativity as a capacity in your team and the way you think about hiring practices and your incentivization and KPIs, you necessarily collaborate more. Now, most of us, if we're honest, we don't really like collaboration in the short term. We feel like it slows us down. We have to explain ourselves. However, in the long term, collaboration boosts productivity because the more diverse the inputs of skill set of experiences, then the more innovative the output. If we keep having the same people around the table with the same skills, same background, who ask the same sorts of questions, we're going to get the same output. So when we collaborate, ultimately productivity boosts. When productivity increases, efficiencies go up and, and when efficiencies go up, costs go down. That is a direct line between collaboration, which is an element of creativity, of building creativity as a habit and competency and lowering costs as a business result. A second example is that when we commit to building creativity as a Capacity, we necessarily do much more inventive thinking. We, we no longer cling to our default mode of we've always done it this way around here. Or our default mode of it's worked fine for past five years. What's the need to change? Our market share is just fine. Let's just keep humming along. When you look in the rearview mirror and you don't see anyone behind you, that's exactly when you need a bit more urgency because scrappier, smaller entities could eat your lunch. Inventive thinking is an incredible byproduct of creativity and having a creative capacity because of that ability to juxtapose ideas that previously you would have never thought to mash up. When we do more inventive thinking, we identify new sorts of products and services and experiences which lead to new revenue streams. That's a business result between inventive thinking and new revenue streams. And then lastly, I would say when you commit to building a capacity of creativity, then you shift away from falling in love with your beautiful baby, which is the products and services you've been selling for the past decades, to falling in love with the problems that your clients have, right? Challenging your own assumptions. And as you get better and better at that, then you build brand loyalty and build market share and brand value. And that is also a business result. So lower costs, new revenue streams and greater brand value, these are all just three examples business results that we can connect back to. Building a capacity for creativity. So it's not woo woo.

Yeah, yeah. I think the simplest way to say it is creativity isn't a nice to have, it's a non negotiable, it's a growth lever. So I don't know about you, but it seems like everyone is talking about this thing called AI right now. But you say the real advantage isn't artificial intelligence, it's authentic imagination. In the imagination era, what must leaders protect that AI can never replace?

It is their capacity to imagine. And imagination is a combination of curiosity, human consciousness, dreaming, the sentient intelligence that we have as humans. As much as we try to treat the brain, for example, as machine or brain as computer, we have to stop that. The brain is not disembodied, it is part of the human body. And we are wired in a way to make sense of our world and our environment that are additional sources of data. So the data that we get to make decisions, and some of it comes from Excel sheets and from all sorts of rigorous quantitative research and data that the machine learning can churn out for us. But there's also the data that we get, which is discerned, which comes from this collective historical knowledge of learned experience of people. It's those signals that. Those blur, those beeps that you get on your own personal radar screen that you have to pause and pay attention to. There's been a lot of interesting experiments and research connecting the dots, for example, between intuition and rational, strategic decision making. So one such experiment is about something called interoceptive awareness and interoceptive accuracy. So interoception is this internal. I call it an internal radar, sonar system of I feel cold, I feel tired, I feel safe, I feel in danger. It's all powered by the autonomic nervous system. And more specifically, it's powered by the inter. Interoceptiveness is powered by the vagus nerve. And the vagus nerve is the longest cranial. Cranial nerve in the body, extends from the brain down through the heart and lungs into the gut. And so we say things like, my gut is telling me it literally is. And it's a really complex neural system extending throughout the gut. And the experiment that's been done is to have people sit on a chair with their feet flat on the ground, and they're asked to tap out on their lap the rhythm of their heartbeat, not by feeling the pulse on their wrist, by just being still and tapping out the rhythm of their heartbeat. And the experiments yield really interesting results that people who have high interoceptive awareness and accuracy are 26% more likely to make clearer, rational, strategic decisions. So now there's more and more of the neuroscience is showing connections between interoceptive awareness and strategic decision making.

I think we could probably spend the next hour just unpacking that even further, but we don't have time. Today I'm going to end our time together, Natalie, with this question. When people experience your work, when they truly apply wonder rigor, how does it transform not just their business, but the world around them?

It actually is a lens that helps to bring uncertainty a bit more into focus. And what I mean by that, it helps people to not shirk away from uncertainty and ambiguity, but to embrace that liminal space as being on this crossroads and this precipice of what's next. Because before being exposed to the wonder rigor theory and these different ways to think about process and uncertainty, it becomes something that you try to control, that you try to, you know, smushing a square peg into a round hole. But equipped with the wonder rigger theory, people are left with an understanding of how to navigate that ambiguity. Fall in love with the process and understand that only when you get more comfortable with that ambiguity by tapping into wonder rooted in rigor, that you actually can make your way forward. And that actually gives space for deeper and greater collaboration with peers, with competitors. It just really shifts the way you've been seeing what's possible, what's essential, and what's transformative in your work.

What a great way to end the show. Natalie, thanks so much for your time today.

Thank you for having me, Jason.

So whether it's curiosity, intuition, or imagination, Natalie reminded us that creativity isn't a luxury, it's leadership's greatest currency. Because when we dare to wonder with rigor, we transform more than results. We transform ourselves. I'm Jason S. Bradshaw and this is Chats with Jason. Transform the experience. Transform the business and the world around you. Hey, just quickly I wanted to reach out and say thank you for taking the time to listen to this episode of Chats with Jason. I'd really appreciate a five star review on your favorite podcasting app. Or if you're watching along on YouTube, give me a thumbs up and show that you like this video. And be sure to subscribe so that you don't miss out on the awesome content and the great guests that we've got coming up for you.