My last blog post, by far, was the most viral piece I’ve written in four years of blogging. Provocative titles and edgy content seem to win readers. And it would appear that creative style is a hot topic.

If Steve Jobs Worked For You, You’d Probably Fire Him, is about a concept called Creative Style. Creative style can be measured, there are a couple of great assessments available. One is the KAI (Kirton Adaptor-Innovator Inventory) and the other is FourSight.

Creative style is about how you think, how you solve problems. Steve Jobs was probably a high Innovator on the KAI. Innovator’s think “different”, while Adaptors think “better.” And listen carefully —both are creative. Edison was thought to be a very high level Adaptor (per Michael Kirton).

Would Steve Jobs have fired Thomas Edison? He might have.

Style matters. It can be the difference between innovative success and failure.

Everyone is creative, but — in different ways. Think a bell curve. People next to you on the curve think very much like you. People at the other end do not. That creates communication and approach problems. Then it gets personal. Before long solving the companies problem has taken a back seat to personal agenda’s and issues. Why Steve Jobs would fire Edison is because he might be at the other end of the Adaptor Innovator scale, and because he see’s the world through an entirely different lens.

And of course your lens is the “right” lens.

And if you fire Steve (or his counter-part at the far end of the Adaptor scale, Edison) you’ll be losing exactly what you need to innovate. Even if the outliers don’t get fired, if they are ignored it’s almost worse — they cause trouble.

Diverse teams that have a wide mixture of creative styles have been measured to come up with more innovative solutions. This is a drop dead fact. The bad news about diverse teams is that it’s also a drop dead fact that they have more conflict. Call it the Diversity Dilemma.

There are two solutions to the Diversity Dilemma. One is awareness and the other is wise and tolerant leadership.  Awareness of what your style and your team members styles is a great first step towards improving communications. The FourSight measure is very good at parsing out which part of problem solving you do best, giving you a sense of whether you are a Clarifier, Ideator, Developer, or Implementor.   Most of us have peaks and valleys in this profile. For instance, I’m a high clarifier and ideator, but a rather low developer and implementor. So, on a team I would hope to be coupled with someone who is a good finisher.

It’s hard to say how Jobs would profile on FourSight, but if I had to guess, he’d have high scores in clarification, development and implementation. Notice that I’m leaving out idea generation — my sense is Steve didn’t have a million ideas, he had a few really good ones that he worked to death. He was also good at recognizing who’s idea to pick up and run with. Having a very high IQ matters by the way, and that is not style, it’s level.

Gerard Puccio and Chris Grivas have written a very good business novel that illuminates the Diversity Dilemma — I recommend it — The Innovative Team: Unleashing Creative Potential for Breakthrough Results.  Puccio is the developer of the Foursight measure.

So,what’s your creative style? What are you strengths and weaknesses in problem solving? It would be worth knowing wouldn’t it?