In 2018, IAG set a strategy that focused on innovation and growth. Chief Innovation Officer Julie Batch emphasized that creativity would be a key mindset required to achieve this.
While the Design Community system addressed key design capabilities, it became clear that an intelligent application of creativity was essential to grow it: curiosity and confidence to explore new business areas and customers; and context, conflict, and connectedness to constructively collaborate across teams.
The brief was to create a program that suited IAG’s company culture, which could be used on its own, or in conjunction with IAG’s growing use of design to drive more innovation across the company.
How might we enable creativity within IAG?
We kicked off the Creative Intelligence project with the usual kick off session we the working group can align on ways of working, roles and responsibilities, and assign tasks. The first phase was to immerse ourselves in the world of innovation and creativity. The team and I spend several weeks consuming white papers, books and video content on these topics.
By the end of this stage, we had a solid grasp on how great companies drive innovative outcomes and how some people were more creative than others. We learned that creativity is not what someone is inheritably born with, it's a skill that can be built upon and external environmental factors can either encourage or discourage creativity.
The next phase of our work was to understand where were at in terms of creativity and innovation at IAG. In usual service design fashion, we created an interview guide on what we wanted to learn more about as well as a list of key staff we wanted to interview. After each interview, we created learnings from our raw interview notes.
Moving into Synthesis, we booked in a room for the week so we could take all our learnings from our interviews and create insights. This was an intensive process, however was extremely valuable.
We had great insights which we could start ideating on and getting into solution mode. A key insight was that if you give a motivated individual / team of motivated individuals a clear problem to solve, with the right setup for them to be empowered and have the permission to explore, make, and break things, they will highly likely achieve an innovative output.
By investigating: How might we enable effective creativity within IAG? The project team yielded insights and solutions that were tested and iterated to create the Creative Intelligence program. It contained:
Frameworks: Demonstrating the creativity process
Principles: Factors required to support participants
Activities: To introduce and enhance components of participants’ creativity
Engagement Models: To embed the creative mindset
Measurement System: To assess creative capability pre-and post-implementation
The Creative Intelligence program accelerates IAG employees’ ability to apply design techniques or complement their expertise with an adaptable open mindset to grow, be more resilient, and do things differently.
We developed a few low-fi prototypes and tested it with a random sample of IAG staff which helped us refine the solution. We then moved into hi-fi prototype testing and continued the test, learn, iterate loop until we were ready to pilot our solution.
The Creative Intelligence program delivered value for several business units across IAG.CFO Leadership introduced curiosity and exploration into people managing. They enabled their 300+ staff with an environment supporting creativity as they redesign how financial services are provided.The New Zealand Enterprise Delivery Team incorporated creativity into IAG’s delivery approach, affecting all NZ IAG brands. Effectively questioning programs and exploring alternatives has enabled them to achieve more human centred outcomes.The Design Team enhanced their ability to collaborate confidently with diverse stakeholders and subject matter experts.
This uncovered project ambiguities and created better solutions within flagship programs that cater to over 85% of IAG’s customers.
Participants are guided not to become creative experts, but to be able to apply elements of creativity within their disciplines.The tools, mindsets, and skillsets can be applied within projects, meetings, or personal and professional growth within teams. Alongside the program is a measurement system, developed in conjunction with IAG learning and development experts, tailored to track the impact on participants and the business it is delivered to. This system also feeds into the Design Community so that we can track participants’ competencies and refine the Program’s offerings.
The output of our Creative Intelligence program had a profound impact across various teams and disciplines across IAG. This led our team to become recognised by Good Design Australia for the second year in a row, taking another win for design strategy in 2020 for our work with the Creative Intelligence program.
"A commendable initiative focused on upskilling executives in the basics of creative thinking. It's a strong internal design transformation program that is a great example of design strategy and leadership to build in creativity and practices that turn new insights into potential impact."
- Good Design Australia 2020