Friday, April 30, 2010

The Gateway to Customized Employment: Think Laterally!

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand. Imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” Albert Einstein

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking with my colleague, Bob Niemiec, Director of the Minnesota Employment Training and Technical Assistance Center (MNTAT), about a learning phenomenon each of us has observed in the teaching of customized employment (CE) practices. I thought this topic deserved some discussion here because of its importance to the Employment First movement in Minnesota and the United States.

First, the good news is there’s a lot of excitement about the promise of CE. And second, there is a growing public investment in workforce training to transform practices and improve integrated employment outcomes in support of people with disabilities. In increasing numbers, direct service practitioners from the fields of education, rehabilitation, employment, business, and disability are enrolling in training seminars to learn new skills so they can support more people in going to work.

The bad news is this—many adult learners are struggling to grasp the concept of CE. The core problem is not their ability to learn new ideas but rather to unlearn old ideas. In particular, experienced, seasoned providers of disability and employment support have strongly ingrained patterns of thinking and behavior with respect to delivery of their services. And what we are seeing consistently is this internal struggle to integrate CE principles into old paradigms of education, transition, disability, and community rehabilitation services.

People are hesitant to give up on obsolete practices despite their ineffectivess. Speaking candidly here, it’s a lot easier training new, inexperienced learners about CE because they do not view these practices through a lens of past work experiences. At a recent training event, I even joked with attendees that I was searching for powers to “permanently erase their memory banks,” so we could make room for a new way of thinking. And then a new way of working.

One of our greatest challenges is that people want a quick fix. They are looking for the kind of clarity you will only find in a high definition television. People want a concrete model. They want a program or a recipe of ingredients that will lead simply to the development of integrated employment outcomes for all. And this is troubling to say, but many are looking for a logic model that offers no pain and fits in conveniently with their existing policies, economics, staffing roles, and program service structures. Well, you know, it just doesn’t work that way.

Here is a common misunderstanding—customized employment is not a program. It’s not a program, service, or model. Customized employment is an outcome. It’s an outcome driven by a job seeker’s interests and signature strengths, designed to meet an identified business need, and negotiated in ways to customize the ideal conditions of employment for both parties. CE offers social integration and competitive wages and benefits for job seekers who are unable to benefit from a traditional, comparative job placement approach. If you really need a recipe, this is it—we plan and secure CE one person at time.

As I observed the struggle to grasp CE principles during a recent training event for professionals, I was reminded of a passage I once wrote in a publication back in 2000. I titled this book Reach for the Stars: Achieving High Performance as a Community Rehabilitation Professional, and my underlying theme was identifying the core characteristics of high performing employment consultants. I shared ten basic qualities that separate high performers from the rest of the crowd enabling them to produce consistent, high quality outcomes. And I dedicated an entire chapter to creativity and imagination, the capacity to deliver person-centered employment services and manage complex problem-solving in unique, individualized ways. There’s little question the highest performing employment consultants approach their roles with a firm grasp of creativity skills that are challenging to package into a formula and to teach.

In my research for writing this chapter, I was introduced to the principle of lateral thinking, a term coined by Dr. Edward de Bono. In de Bono’s research on creativity, he refers to lateral thinking as low probability or sideways thinking. Lateral thinking is complete freedom of our thought processes regardless of its contradictory nature or logical acceptance. It’s stepping outside of an existing paradigm (i.e., people can’t work) and examining a problem from every possible angle (i.e., What will it take for this person to work). And it’s recognizing that setting aside the dominant factors in a problem-solving process (i.e., we don’t have transportation) is sometimes the best way to begin a search for new ideas.

In most problem-solving situations, there is a tendency to use high probability or vertical thinking. Vertical thinking is both linear and high probability because it takes into account common cause and effect laws. Vertical thinking is usually driven by a logical assessment of the “facts” as we understand them. Although vertical thinking is a sound process for many basic problem-solving activities, it’s not necessarily effective for the most challenging ones.

According to de Bono, a lateral thinker’s goal is to search for different (creative) ways to look at and approach a particular issue under study. While vertical thinking is grounded in rules of logic and requires a definite direction to be effective, lateral thinking has no particular direction, form, or rules. In other words, lateral thinking offers complete freedom of thought without any rigidity or inhibitions.

Here is sage advice about the use of lateral thinking from Dr. de Bono’s research:
  • Use lateral thinking to generate an abundance of ideas.
  • Be wary of using logical judgments in problem-solving because: a) we can only deal with the facts we’re aware of; and b) the “facts” we’re aware of may not be true or relevant.
  • Conventional thinking is to accept something as adequate or true until something else proves it to be inadequate or untrue. What if we reversed our thinking process?
  • Be wary of letting rigid paradigms block your thinking about a situation or problem area. And you should consider the usefulness of getting an outside view of a challenging problem (i.e. use of consultants).
  • Remember that trying to be right often interferes with one’s ability to see what is wrong.
  • One simple, helpful technique is to shift the focus from a part of your problem to another. By placing each element into the spotlight, you’re sometimes able to generate new ideas and associations.
  • Lateral thinking has no fixed direction so it’s important to look at your presenting problem from every possible angle including the top, bottom, and sides.
  • It’s acceptable, and sometimes helpful, to move entirely away from your problem in order to solve it. (hint, hint....the workshop!)
  • Chance is important to the generation of ideas. And chance offers something for you to look at when that something could have never otherwise been a serious consideration.
  • It’s sometimes helpful to examine associations from outside fields because a standardized idea in one field can become an original idea in another.
  • Be wary of seeking out relevant information alone in your problem-solving; it's often a hindrance because relevant information is usually borne of old ideas not new ones.
  • Brainstorming ideas with others is mutual cognitive stimulation with no inhibitions. Brainstorming activity is often helpful to generating new ideas and building on associations for possible solutions.
  • Simplicity and effectiveness are your two major aims of lateral thinking.
  • Logic should only be used to confirm your conclusions not to solve your presenting problem.
  • If you do not use lateral thinking, you will eventually be eclipsed by someone else who does. 
If you think about it, CE is an example of lateral thinking at its very best. For many decades, people with significant disabilities were presumed unemployable in the competitive labor force. It was lateral thinking by the pioneers of supported employment and customized employment that challenged false truth claims about the employability of individuals with disabilities. Supported employment and customized employment are replacing old ways of thinking with bold new practices.

Lateral thinking is fundamental to the success of employment consultants because their ultimate goal is to come up with winning ideas and strategies to resolve challenging unemployment and underemployment problems. For this reason, lateral thinking and creative problem-solving ought to be integrated as critical skills components in the job training and preparation of employment consultants and other practitioners of CE services.

Is this training really necessary? Well, here’s one thing we know for sure—vertical, linear thinking has resulted in a 21% employment participation rate for Americans with disabilities nationally. We need to transform practices and perform our job roles with higher creativity if we hope to achieve better results. And this goal will require fundamental changes in approach. Here's a thought--Think laterally! 

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