Finding Answers or Creating Solutions

I had the privilege today of spending time with a local professor of one of Colorado’s leading universities.  It’s always a privilege spending time with him and I’ve had the opportunity to guest lecture with his students.  What makes it exciting to work with him is his intense and deep-seated pursuit of education excellence.  He endeavors to find ways to not only enhance the learning experience, but to deepen it in a way that prepares his students for successful careers.  His care and concern for those entrusted to him is what education is all about.

We discussed the recurring concern he has with student’s abilities to apply critical thinking.  I reflected on these concerns in a piece I wrote over the summer (http://connect2action.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-death-of-curiosity-and-critical.html).  As we talked about his latest efforts and experiments with new technologies and techniques to improve creativity in learning, it occurred to me that there is a huge difference between finding answers and creating solutions.

With the vast resources available today, it’s far easier to find the answer to a particular question simply by looking it up.  Beginning in grade school, students discover that a quick Internet search will often yield the specific answer to nearly any question.  If that is all that is required, to what extent has learning taken place?  If searching for and retrieving an answer is sufficient to meet the academic requirement, has the student learned anything of perpetual value?  One of the things we discussed was the application of learning from one context to another.  In other words, if certain principles hold true in one context, how might they apply in another?  If you don’t have to solve the problem through analysis and deduction, you probably won’t have the skills to adapt one set of principles for a different situation.  Further, you probably won’t be able to recognize when certain principles apply and when they don’t.

 

Creating solutions requires skills far beyond finding answers.  In my experience in industry, it’s evident that many are missing this important link in the education they are receiving.  Solutions not only require foundational knowledge, but the ability to connect the dots in new and creative ways.  It requires a high degree of curiosity and a certain explorer mentality.  It’s not enough to know the answer to a problem.  Instead, value is found in knowing how the answer was derived including the many paths of failure along the way.  It also requires an ability to know when a situation is different enough that a standard answer doesn’t apply.  Adding to the complexity is the human dynamic which often distorts or changes the environment in unpredictable ways.

This is the work my professor colleague is focused on and I applaud and respect him for it.  We should encourage ourselves and others to ask ‘how’ and ‘why’ instead of simply asking ‘what’ the answer is.  Curiosity is a creative attribute and we need to cultivate and value it in our organizations.  If we hope to develop solutions to today’s problems, we need to quit relying on a simple search for answers and instead journey into that creative place within each of us.

Duane Grove is founder of Connect2Action, a strategy execution specialist at the intersection of employee engagement and executive leadership, igniting innovation as a lever to accelerate your growth.  Follow Duane on Twitter @connect2action and connect with him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+.  Learn more by visiting www.connect2action.com.