Torrance Journal for Applied Creativity

Table 9: (Continued) Deepening Expectations Strategies, Descriptions, and Their Possible Uses in Coaching
Cognitive Strategy Description Possible Uses in Coaching
Getting Out of
Locked Doors
Solving the unsolvable;
going beyond those “more
and better of the same”
solutions that make matters
worse;
opening up new vistas,
new worlds
When players are stuck because they:
Are afraid to move beyond the “tried-and-true” within their organization or industry;
become limited by their own pasts or those of their organizations.
To regain mobility, players must:
be willing to risk tackling the biggest, most intractable problems or opportunities
by refusing to settle for what has been done before. Players must want to make
“second-order” changes, which was Torrance’s way of describing significant, fundamental
changes vs. the much more timid “first-order” changes that really are the
“same old same old” (Torrance & Safter, 1999).
be willing to import strategies and tactics from other fields or industries. All too
often, players miss the most obvious of opportunities to look into other fields or industries
to see if they may have found similar solutions to their challenges, or more
interestingly, if some of their approaches may spark new ideas within the players.
Sometimes, even elements from the natural world spark ideas (Benyus, 2002).
ask: “how might we…?” This is one of the most powerful of the CPS:TSM statement
starters because it throws the door open to any possible answer to the question
(Miller, Vehar, Firestien, 2001). It does not make reference to what has existed or
does now exist. It is the ultimate blank slate that many credit for innovative breakthroughs
– it even had its own Harvard Business Review blog post (Berger, 2012).
Lindsey Kourafas
At-N Ausara-Lasaru
Grant Young
Binh Nguyen
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