As a creative writer and a leader, I have been influenced by the concepts of Convert and Divergent Thinking. Convergent Thinking is about “coming together” by identifying a well-known solution, while Divergent Thinking is about creatively “exploring outwards” to create new possibilities.
The ideas of Convergent and Divergent Thinking were created by Psychologist Joy Paul Guilford in the 1950s. The two concepts have been influential for group work, creativity, and product design in many fields. In this post, I want to describe these two ideas and give some examples of how they can be used.
Convergent Thinking
Convergent Thinking means to “come together” around a single solution. Convergent Thinking promotes speed, efficiency, and predictability. When a situation arises, convergent thinking emphasizes that people quickly identify a known and well-established solution and not spend time exploring possibilities.
Convergent Thinking is very useful in business operations. When a customer makes a request or there is a problem, employees know how to respond. This knowledge allows organizations to grow and expand - even low-level employees can make decisions because the solution is “pre-approved.” This approach doesn’t require a lot of commitment or effort from managers; staff can identify the correct answer on their own, and the manager is free to explore more important opportunities.
Creative people (including writers, artists, engineers, and computer programmers) can use Convergent Thinking to save themselves time in the development process. For example…
Poets who are writing a sonnet know that this poem type has a specific structure, so they can basically fill in the blanks with the correct rhyme scheme rather than spend time to invent a brand new poetic form. Here is an example of the rhyme scheme in a sonnet about the Statue of Liberty.
Crime novelists know that this literary form has specific conventions - a crime, a detective, an investigation, a guilty character, several false leads. The novelist can write a “crime novel” by writing about these typical things.
In a business office, employees write reports, memos, business contracts, financial statements, invoices, etc. Each of these documents has a form, and the office employee can quickly get work done by following these established forms.
Convergent Thinking can also be useful for team leaders. In many cases, the leader needs employees to agree to a new policy or a new strategic goal or a marketing idea. In these instances, the leader presents an idea and encourages team members to “come together” to that solution.
This decision-making process is fast and efficient. It saves the team a lot of time because they don’t have to explore and debate different options. It can also create a sense of cohesion and harmony among team members because they all agree with the idea and can work together to support it.
Problems. But Convergent Thinking also has its problems. In group settings, convergent thinking threatens to silence minority and opposing opinions, and this can create “group think” and a lack of diversity. Eventually, this approach can make the team feel like they have to agree with the leader, and the lack of diversity and debate can stifle creativity. As a result, the organization will not respond to change, and employees may feel that loyalty is more important than innovation.
Similarly, writers, artists, and designers who use too much Convergent Thinking may also limit their creativity and intellectual growth. They will end up producing the same stories, music, artwork, and engineering products, and customers will think their work is repetitive, un-original, stale, and lacking in creativity.
Divergent Thinking
Divergent Thinking is the opposite of Convergent Thinking. Instead of coming together around one solution, the team or creative person explores other possibilities. This process is slow, takes a long time, and can be filled with debate and conflict. But it can also lead to new discoveries, new innovations, and growth.
Divergent Thinking is obviously useful for creative people, such as writers, artists, designers, engineers, and computer programmers. Instead of writing the same well-known story, creative writers come up with new characters and new stories. Instead of the same poems, poets create new poetic forms with new rhyme schemes. Musicians create new sounds, artists create new artistic styles, engineers create new products, and computer programmers create new software and programming languages.
Ultimately, this is the work creative people need to do. Writers, movie producers, musicians, fashion designers, and many others become rich and famous by creating new things. They can’t simply produce the same stories and fashions every year.
In organizations, teams use Divergent Thinking to explore other possibilities. They read articles and case studies, they speak with experts, they review customer feedback, and they use brainstorming strategies to come up with new ideas. During meetings, the leader asks employees for input and new ideas, not agreement. Employees become partners in the problem-solving process, and they explore and evaluate possible solutions together.
As a result, the organization becomes more creative, innovative, and responsive. This can help the organization create new products, find new customers, and expand to new markets. Employees can also become leaders by taking the responsibility for developing their own ideas.
Divergent Thinking is obviously valuable for creativity and innovation. It also shows respect to employees and customers because it includes them in the planning process.
Problems. But Divergent Thinking also has its own problems. Divergent thinking is slow, and it takes a long time. Team members can spend a long time searching for and evaluating alternative ideas, then they may become incapable of deciding because all options sound good or because they haven’t reached a level of certainty.
This causes many problems: the exploration takes too much time, employees take sides on which solution is the best, they don’t make a decision because they don’t know how to resolve the internal division, then they search for even more information to try to tip the scales. The leader who tries to resolve the issue must compromise or alienate one of the groups, or they will seem weak and indecisive if they don’t make a decision. Meanwhile, the organization is not responding to changes in the business world, it’s not innovating new products, and customers become tired of the same products and services.
I see this problem frequently in education. As educators, we love to analyze the situation, and we also love to explore and learn about new technologies and new processes for doing things. But this exploration takes times, it creates new expenses for new technology products, employees don’t focus on other needs, we became incapable of making a decision (yet we know we need innovations), and we become “out of touch” and demoralized for “not being with it.”
For creative people, Divergent Thinking takes writers, artists, and designers down intellectual “rabbit holes,” where they spend too much time exploring new ideas and not enough time creating well-known items that will make them a living. For example, writers can make good money through social media marketing, website development, case studies, white papers; instead, they spend all day thinking about new characters, new stories, and new programming languages. Yes, of course, these things can make them famous and rich, but they also take a long time to develop, so professional writers usually have a mix of short and long term writing projects.
Divergent Thinking can also make creative people out of touch with their audiences. When creative people spend a lot of time in development, they lose connection with their audiences, and they may no longer understand what audiences are looking for. Instead, they may produce something that is meaningful to them personally but has little interest for the audience. Or, their idea may be too late or too unusual for large-scale success.
Summary
The ideas of Convergent and Divergent Thinking have helped me as both a writer and a leader.
As a leader, I realize that some situations need focus on the immediate short-term goal of writing a document or completing a routine project. In these cases, I promote Convert Thinking with my team. On the other hand, I also encourage educators to create new learning experiences for students and to explore possibilities for grants and professional scholarship. In these instances, I use Divergent Thinking by “sending out them out” to explore and be creative.
Similarly, as a writer, I use Convergent Thinking when I try to make my novel into an historical adventure story. This novel form has well-established themes, character types, historical settings, and important moments in the plotline (such as the “call to adventure” and the “hero’s refusal”); my novel needs to meet these expectations. On the other hand, my blogs and newsletters (like this one) let me explore different and interesting ideas, so I use Divergent Thinking to explore and learn.
Which type of thinking do you mostly do? Do you try to find the one best solution, or do you like to explore different ideas and create new solutions? Let me know by responding to this email or commenting on the social media post.
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My name is Lirim Neziri, and I am an educator and a writer. I love to read and learn, and this newsletter (which I call Lirim’s Learning Club) lets me share interesting things I am learning. I write about History, Literature, Writing, Education, Technology, Leadership, and Personal Productivity. Please join my learning adventure.