15 Could Be: Preparation in Creative Collaboration

Let’s begin our deeper exploration of creativity in a team setting, and well, why not start at the start?

This first stage, the Could Be component of the creative collaboration process, is a crucial time for the success of the team. As the name indicates, anything could happen in this stage, and it’s important that teams and collaborators embrace that huge expanse. The possibilities are wide open: the possibility of a cohesive team, the possibility of a great innovation, and yes, the possibility of failure–but more on that later.

Don’t Herd the Cats Too Much: The Could Be Stage

The “Could Be” phase can also be understood in the context of other frameworks. It may be correlated with the “Understand” or “Monday” of a Design Sprint, the “Empathize” or “Define” in Design Thinking, or the “Problem Definition” stage in general. It also share a lot of similarities with the individual Preparation stage.

In the individual’s Preparation stage, as we know, a person’s influences, experiences, learning, and research are all being actively engaged to establish the foundation needed to engage with the problem in a creative way. You’ll notice that each collaboration framework mentioned here also approaches this first stage in a similar way, finding a common definition of the problem or establishing a connection with stakeholders to understand their perspective.

But with a team, the Preparation includes multiple wells of influences, experiences, learning, and research, as each team member brings their full life to the problem. To engage with these vast possibilities, the Could Be stage is one of wide-ranging exploration. Great creative collaborations approach this stage by asking open-ended questions that take time to investigate. What problem are we really trying to solve? Who are we solving it for? What are the existing obstacles and opportunities?

Understanding Team Development Within Creative Collaboration

Psychologist Bruce Tuckman established a framework that teams inherently follow as they develop, which has become widely known as Tuckman’s Theory. As he outlines it, a team comes together in phases: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, and Adjourning. The Could Be stage overlaps with the Forming stage of a team, and understanding this can help in creative collaboration because the nuance, adaptability, and compromise look very different when a team is working in an innovative space.

In many work situations, Forming is done by the organization, though other times a team can select its own members. The Forming stage is where a team gets to know one another, not just by name but also by ways of thinking, strengths, and unique contributions. An ideal team consists of members who each bring something unique to the group, and Could Be is a stage where leaning into those differences and bringing them out as fully as possible is the best strategy for creativity, as it increases the range of the team’s divergent thinking.

The Widest Divergence: Opening Up Possibilities

Could Be is the stage that most fully embraces divergent thinking. In our previous chapter we learned that divergent thinking is the process of generating a wide range of possibilities without immediate judgment. In creative collaboration, this range is greatly extended beyond what an individual creative could generate. And in collaborative creativity, it’s important to lean in to this range. During the Could Be stage, the goal is to have the divergent thinking move as widely as possible. Ideally, team members should feel empowered to contribute all kinds of thoughts, observations, and initial ideas, no matter how unconventional.

Why is Could Be the stage with the widest divergence? Because at this point, the team is still determining their direction–they are Forming as a team, figuring out what the structure and direction will be. The problem is still being defined, and the potential solution space expands out before them in a vast openness. And with a lot of potential problems and potential solutions, there are also a lot of potential paths to follow. Rather than shutting things down by looking for right and wrong answers, Could Be is about gathering as much raw material as possible in order to be open to many different possibilities.

If a team is successful at the Could Be stage in divergent thinking, team members support one another’s ideas by being open to them, especially to ideas outside of their own direct experience or their own habits of thinking. This is often a lot of fun, too, when a team is in sync with their creative collaboration–improvising, generating, pie-in-the-sky riffing. This might involve a brainstorming session where everyone throws out stakeholder needs or even rough solutions. But there are lots of other, often better alternatives to brainstorming. The team could employ a giant stack of sticky notes, lively debates, role-playing, synectics exercises, whiteboarding and hive-mind-mapping, just to name a few approaches.

This is the beauty of early-stage divergence, when a collaborative group feels free exploring the full spectrum of the problem space. It can be hard for some team members to embrace this without moving too soon towards convergence by saying no to some ideas, but it’s crucial to find a way to avoid that while in divergent thinking mode. Try saying, “Yes, and…” to every idea in this part of Could Be.

From Broad to Focused: The Pivot to Convergence

While the initial interactions in Could Be are heavily focused on divergence, the seeds of convergent thinking are also being planted. As the team researches, empathizes, defines, and shares perspectives, a few key themes and patterns will inevitably begin to emerge. Often, collaborators will feel a little jolt of excitement–a miniature Illumination, if you will–when they recognize these patterns and similarities.

However, the primary goal for Could Be isn’t to select solutions yet. The process of understanding and defining the problem naturally starts to filter out some of the information and bring certain aspects into sharper focus. The team will sense a general direction they’d like to move in, but there are still lots of details to figure out. That’s okay. That’s what the next parts of the creative collaboration process are for.

Greater Divergence and Exciting Convergence

It’s key that creative collaborations interact with purpose in the divergent-heavy portion of the Could Be stage, because it significantly impacts the success of the entire team creative process. By investing in divergent thinking and trusting that the right path will become clear no matter how wide or wild the first ideas are, the team earns a greater understanding of the problem from multiple viewpoints. This ensures that teams don’t jump straight to premature solutions and waste valuable resources on the wrong path, solving the wrong problem. A strong Could Be stage establishes better team collaboration and more effective creative exploration in subsequent stages.