ï»żIntroduction to Creative Problem Solving in Business
Timestamp: 00:00
Brad Eather: Hello and welcome to the Selling is Creative podcast, a podcast exploring creativity's role in sales, leadership, and business. I'm your host, Brad Eather, a digital communications consultant helping businesses and sales professionals take the leap into digital.
In sales, we're no strangers to problem solving. We know how to navigate different stakeholders, tailor a value proposition to their needs, and guide a conversation towards the right solution. But there's a part of the equation that we often overlook: the human beyond the title. The lived experiences, cultural backgrounds, and personal identities shape how someone thinks, engages, and makes decisions.
Today, we're going to explore what happens when we bring a people-centered problem-solving lens to that equationâhow understanding not just the business problems, but the people behind them, can transform the way we connect, collaborate, and create impact. That's where my next guest comes in. She's an organizational psychologist and collaboration designer, and she's built a career connecting people, ideas, and communities. Over the past couple of years, she has been focused on creating environments where people can work together more effectively as the Cultural Connections Lead at PwC. She is the perfect person to explore what happens when you bring a people-centered problem-solving lens into the equation. Please welcome to the show, Zoe Teh.
Zoe Teh: Thanks Brad, thanks for having me.
Niche Industry Challenges: Diversity, Inclusion, and Mental Health
Timestamp: 01:34
Brad Eather: Great. I think the best place to start is a little bit about your background. You've obviously worked with so many different people and projects. When you think about your career so far, what are some of the trickiest challenges that you've helped solve for?
Zoe Teh: That's a good question because there's been a number, and I have to think about which ones I can share. What I tend to work in is mainly systems-related challenges. For example, I started my career in youth suicide prevention work. We had to figure out a way forward when the dominant trend was people saying social media is bad and young people should be banned from it. We said, "Hang on, young people are using social media to get help, to seek support, and to receive support." Working in that space showed me that we can collaborate with young people to help solve really big, challenging, sticky questions like suicide.
From there, I worked on a project with Guide Dogs Victoria, looking at digital accessibility and how inaccessible the online world is for people with low vision and blindness. Again, it comes down to asking the people directly, "How do you navigate the world currently? What tools do you use already to manage all of these challenges?" and then working with them to solve those sticky problems.
Most recently at PwC, I lead the Cultural Connections Employee Resource Group. This is a community that supports migrants and people from diverse backgrounds to have a shared safe space at work so they can feel included. Together, we also try to tackle challenges like biases in performance reviews, or any of those sticky obstacles that prevent people from diverse backgrounds from moving up the ladder, getting promotions, and earning pay rises. Those are some of the highlights for meâmainly mental health, accessibility, and diversity and inclusion.
How to Design People-Centered Design Solutions from Scratch
Timestamp: 03:55
Brad Eather: Those are some pretty big, challenging problems to deal with: people with disabilities, people with diverse backgrounds, and suicide prevention. Where do you start solving a problem for people who are in a vulnerable situation when you're trying to help them toward an outcome? In the cases you're talking about, you have to leverage online toolsâenvironments that a person who is blind navigates differently, or where someone with suicidal thoughts can find both help and hindrance. They are complex topics. Where do you begin?
Zoe Teh: Often people scratch their heads around this, but you just start with a simple idea. Start small. Let's say you want to solve for mental health challenges or burnout in your workplace. You start with that core problem statement, and then you find the right people. Gather your crew, your team, your pioneers togetherâa small group of around five people. Hopefully, those people are equally as passionate as yourself and have some influence or power over decision-making.
You start with a simple conversationâa coffee catch-up or a quick meeting to say, "Hey, I've got this idea. What do you think? Do you think it's something we could turn into a project or a program?" Every big idea starts with a conversation. From there, you pull in the right people, build that team, build that network, and hold a few brainstorming sessions to really nut it out a bit more. Once you have that core group of people, you can then start designing what this initiative actually looks like.
Scaling Psychological Safety and Collaboration with Key Stakeholders
Timestamp: 09:20
Brad Eather: One of the challenges I imagine you face when bringing different stakeholders together and gathering your crewâespecially when dealing with vulnerable peopleâis that there are barriers to entry for them to participate. Talk to me about the process of getting them on board so they can see the outcome you're trying to create, and feel safe to contribute in the setting you are establishing for them.
Zoe Teh: In these spaces, there are always certain people who are already champions or who are already doing the work, like lived-experience speakers. In a workplace context, you might have leaders who are already, in their own way, advocating or talking about these challenges. You can seek them out, reach out to them, and test your idea with them. From there, they might know someone who knows someone else, and they become the ones who pull other people into the process.
If you're starting from complete scratch, I've seen examples where people do a general call-out. If it's your workplace, you can put some communications out in your company newsletter. If you're working in a university, you can reach out to student unions or student groups to find anyone interested in being part of the program.
When you are working with vulnerable people, it is crucial to be entirely clear on why you want them to be involved, what their role is, and how you are going to reimburse them for their time. Lived-experience participants are basically your subject-matter experts, and you should treat them as such. They are not volunteers; they are not people who should share their personal experiences with you for free. Doing that would be taking advantage of them, and it becomes tokenistic.
So, there are two main avenues: finding those existing champions and leaders and getting them to pull other people in, or doing a general call-out through your existing mailing list or organization. Most of the time, people want to say yes, especially because it is something they are deeply passionate about. If they have a lived experience of that challenge, they want to chip in and support it because it's empowering for them to have the opportunity to give back to their community and help others like themselves.
Understanding the Creative Process in Business Frameworks
Timestamp: 10:37
Brad Eather: Community and collaboration are absolutely applicable to business. Identifying people who have influence within a communityâlike Dylan Alcott, who is a massive disability advocate in Australiaâand then leveraging that influence is an applicable lesson that can be used across the board for any complex problem-solving.
I attended one of your workshops, and it really opened my eyes to your process. One of the reasons I wanted to bring you on the show is that you lean heavily on the creative process when approaching these complex problems. Talk to me about the creative process in terms of how you develop a workshop to help organizations.
Zoe Teh: Thanks for coming to my workshop, that was really fun. What I spoke about regarding the creative process is a model by MG Taylor. It's a methodology I learned to use during my time at PwC, where we focus on learning, play, creativity, and collaboration to solve wicked or sticky problems. The creative process model consists of seven steps. Steps one to four are quite subjective because they are all about identifying what the challenge is, figuring out what the vision is, mapping the gaps, and making a commitment to actually do the thing you want to do.
Brad Eather: I would love to go through the initial half of that model. The way you expressed it is essentially a circle of steps, where one side is the planning phase and the other side is the execution phase, and the circle goes around in a constant loop. It's always iterative. I think a lot of business people don't spend enough time realizing that creativity requires planning. Let's walk through that first part.
Zoe Teh: The first chunk consists of four steps: identity, vision, intent, and insight. Those four steps are there to ensure you are truly identifying what the key challenges are and what the overarching vision is. Crucially, you use this phase with your core crew to ensure everyone is aligned on the vision. Everyone needs to know where they are going, what they want to do, and what they want to achieve. If you don't have a shared vision, the whole project will fall apart.
A lot of people like to skip straight from the vision to the doing, or the execution, but they forget that you also need to evaluate your resources and capabilities. Can you actually do the thing you want to do? What is the intent? Do you have that long-term commitment to work together to solve this problem? Most of these sticky challenges take years to work on, so it's a multi-year commitment you have to make.
You also need to do the research and gather the insights by asking people the right questions. People tend to skip a lot of the planning phase because nowadays we are very impatient. We just want to execute, but we forget that we don't actually fully know what we're doing yet. Identity, vision, intent, and insight are your first four steps. It can be quite subjective and uncomfortable because sometimes you don't even know what the root problem is yet. You have to create the space to define it clearly so that everyone involved is on the exact same page. That takes time.
Project Scoping, Parameters, and Setting Operational Givens
Timestamp: 19:38
Brad Eather: Would you describe that as a bit of a jury process? We establish what we think we've identified as the problem, and then we ask those with lived experience if they agree with that statement.
Zoe Teh: Exactly, because everyone can have a different interpretation of the problem. If you're in a workplace, someone from HR could say, "Burnout is causing people to quit, so we need to introduce more mental health days or wellbeing programs." But then someone with lived experience of that burnout might say, "Hang on, that's not going to fix the issue. The real issue is that you're making us work long hours and we don't even get time off in lieu." Really nutting out the problem and ensuring everyone is clear on it is super important.
Once you've overcome that hurdle, you can move into the actual doing: engineering, building, and using the thing. Engineering is about planning, pulling in the right resources, and setting the budget. How many days are you going to spend? What approach will you use? Are you going to be agile and work in sprints, or will you be more workshop-based?
Then you build the prototype, iterate, and play with it. Next, you use it, test it, and gather feedback. Then you go right back into the loop again to the start: "Okay, we've completed this first round and tested it. Is this actually still solving the problem, or has the problem changed? Have we unexpectedly found another problem that we need to fix before we can even address the first one?" It is a cycle that never really ends, to be honest. That can bring challenges in terms of scope creep, but with hard, sticky challenges, you have to have the courage to remain open to the process and see where it takes you, because you might unexpectedly discover something vital along the way.
Brad Eather: I've had a chat with one of my previous podcast guests, Erin Fairman, about the concept of play in the workplace. She runs Lego Serious Play workshops. She described essentially that first half of your model, where you are identifying the vision, intent, and insights. In that phase, all ideas are on the table and there are no wrong answers. It's a collaborative, safe space. It's the execution phase that a lot of businesses rush into because they always feel an urgent need to execute. They don't give enough time to those moments where you collaborate, put ideas on the table, test them, and then cycle back around. Do you think that's a fair assessment?
Zoe Teh: Everyone does that. Literally everyone just skips the play and the creativity bit and jumps straight into execution. Then they realize, "Oh whoops, we actually aren't solving the problem because we didn't spend proper time thinking about it." Consequently, they end up spending more money trying to fix it later down the line because everything is delayed, they got it completely wrong, and they have to start from scratch. There is a common misconception or belief that play isn't productive.
I completely disagree. If you look at how kids solve problems, they always come up with the most creative, amazing ways to solve a dilemma. We as grownups forget that we were once kids ourselves. Play, creativity, and problem-solving all belong in the same bucket. We need to stop thinking that play isn't productive because it leads to solutions that solve a vast array of problems.
Look at past innovations like the iPhone, for example. Before the iPhone came out, companies were completely committed to using phones that had physical buttons. But then Steve Jobs asked, "Hang on, what if we just had no buttons? What does that look like?" And now, we all use touchscreen smartphones. You need to value the power of play and creativity and spend time in that subjective, ambiguous zone of figuring out what the problem actually is before you jump into the fixing part.
Brad Eather: I find it so funny because so many businesses want the tagline "innovation" next to their name, but you cannot innovate if you're not actively participating in the creative process. Because I wanted to focus heavily on the planning part, let's look at problem-solving and how you prepare that first half of the circleâthe process, the preparation, the scope, and the design before execution. Let's use a scenario to illustrate how you would go about prepping, scoping, and designing a workshop to test those ideas in the first half of the creative process.
Zoe Teh: I'm open to that. We can use the burnout example because I think that will be highly applicable to most people.
Brad Eather: Perfect, let's do it.
Zoe Teh: Let's say you are in a small-to-medium company where burnout is increasing. People are quitting their jobs, or they are just coasting and "quiet quitting," as they say. To prep, I start with the scope: what is it that we are trying to solve for? The scope is basically the what and the when.
Brad Eather: In this case, you have the visible symptom, which is high staff turnover, and your hypothesis is that the root cause is burnout. You work backward from the problem you're having to figure out what the research says.
Zoe Teh: Exactly. You put your psychology hat on and establish a rough hypothesis: workplace burnout leads to staff attrition. Your scope could then be something like creating a mental health program to reduce burnout in the workplace.
From there, you start mapping out the objectives of the project. What do you want to achieve by the end? Under objectives, you think about your outcomes and your outputs. Outcomes are the intangible benefits, like teaching people new skills or learning a new way of working. Outputs are tangibleâsomething you can physically hold in your hand, like a physical copy of a report or a step-by-step guide on what to do if someone is experiencing signs of burnout. Your outputs and outcomes together make up your objectives.
Next, you establish your givensâthe things we know to be undeniably true. Givens set up the parameters and boundaries of the playground you are going to play in, and they must be entirely factual. For example, a given could be: there are X amount of people reporting burnout in our specific workplace, or psychological health and safety is now legislated, and we have a legal duty of care to our people. You can map out a comprehensive list of givens.
Once you have those parameters, you look at your stakeholders: who are the people impacted or influenced by this challenge? Who do we need to design for? You can do a quick stakeholder analysis at this stage. Then you evaluate your risks. What are the risks of doing nothing? What are the risks of doing something? You have to think through both scenarios. Finally, you look at your dependencies, your resources, your budget, and any hard deadlines.
You also want to curate a list of core questions you want answered. You can run a quick discovery workshop with your small group or with lived-experience participants to brainstorm the questions that will shape your program, and you can leverage tools like AI to help you expand on those questions too. Those are the foundational elements I map out first when setting up a project or initiative. Once those core elements are knotted down with your group, you can design the next phases.
Active Listening vs Telling: Consultative Leadership Lessons
Timestamp: 24:29
Brad Eather: The common thread throughout this entire conversation is that while there is rigorous planning and parameters, success hinges entirely on listening and taking feedback from stakeholders. How important is the difference between active listening and telling when you're navigating these challenges?
Zoe Teh: I think a lot of people think they're listening, but they're actually not. I'll start with an example from earlier in my career. I used to work at Apple, and when we were trained there, they drilled it into your head that your job is not to aggressively sell merchandise. Your job is to listen intently to the customer's problem and then match them with the right product, solution, or service.
I remember a mom and her daughter coming into the store. The daughter was starting year seven and needed a laptop for school. She wanted the fanciest, most expensive luxury device available, so she told her mom, "I need the MacBook Pro with the quad-core processor"âa super expensive $3,000 laptop. The mom didn't know anything about technology, so she turned to me and said, "Yeah Zoe, we need this MacBook Pro. Do you know if there are any educational discounts? I know it's incredibly expensive."
Instead of just telling them, "Yeah sure, you should buy this, here are the specs," I took a moment to ask open-ended questions. I asked, "What are you going to be using this laptop for? Are you going to be editing heavy videos or making music?" The daughter said, "I don't think so, it's just going to be for looking at my school textbooks and doing homework."
I turned to them and said, "Okay, if it's primarily for textbooks, have you considered the MacBook Air? It's significantly lighter, so your school backpack isn't going to get heavy. The battery life lasts longer, and it comes in cool colors like pink." The daughter paused and said, "Oh, I actually didn't realize I have to carry this heavy thing around with me all day. Yeah, I think I want the laptop to be lighter. Let's get the MacBook Air."
I managed to down-sell the customer to a more appropriate product because I was listening and putting myself in her shoes. If I were 12 years old, walking to school every day with a massive backpack, a heavy MacBook Pro would give me back problems. The MacBook Air was highly portable, light, had a longer battery, and perfectly solved her actual problem of completing homework.
When you ask targeted questions, you have to actively listen to what they say, practice high emotional intelligence (EQ), and read between the lines. I knew the daughter wanted the flashiest status symbol, but I also knew she would suffer from carrying a heavy machine for the next six years. You have to watch out for what you are not hearing or seeing, and paint a holistic picture of the problem. It certainly helped that the MacBook Air came in pink, which the Pro range didn't! Listening, asking the right questions, and using your intuition allows you to think ahead and solve problems that the customer will encounter, even though they don't know they will have them yet.
Brad Eather: I didn't know we had a master salesperson among us, that's fantastic! That is a highly transferable experience. You brought up the EQ pieceâhaving genuine empathy for the buyerâand paired it with intuition. That innate intuition is where you find the real opportunity in a sales context. You are utilizing the creative process to probe for an outcome when you don't initially know what their unique situation is. You just need to continue asking open questions so you can uncover the core reality. It's a beautiful bridge between empathy and intuitionâusing questions to discover a solution together rather than forcing a predefined product onto them.
The True Importance of Play in the Workplace for Adults
Timestamp: 31:25
Zoe Teh: Exactly, because most of the time, you might not even have the correct solution at the start. Until you and the other person have collaboratively figured out what the problem is, you can't work together to engineer the solution. Asking probing questions and coming from a place of curiosity and learning rather than judgment is key. It's just like when you meet someone for the first time and you ask interesting, open-ended questions just to get to know them as a person. When you approach interactions with pure curiosity, the real problems naturally emerge, and the solution eventually presents itself at the same time.
In a workplace context, ask your peers what they are up to, what they are working on, and listen to how they respond while observing their body languageâit tells you a lot. Use your intuition to gauge what else is going on beneath the surface that they might not be explicitly telling you. Often, it helps not to offer a solution straight away. You can just actively listen and be there in the moment. Later on, you can do a follow-up call and say, "Hey, I recall you mentioned you were struggling to find an organizational psychologist to help with your burnout problem at work. I actually know a fantastic specialist; let me connect you." It always comes back to the human element.
Brad Eather: That is incredibly helpful in a complex, modern selling environment where you have multiple stakeholders and you're architecting an entire system solution rather than just selling a standalone product. Bringing people together to collaboratively work toward a solution is incredibly powerful. Looking at my notes from today, the fundamentals are clear: collaboration, community, empathy, intuition, planning, and execution. Those are the absolute pillars for solving sticky problems.
To wrap everything together, what is your personal definition of creativity?
Zoe Teh: We talked about play and learning from how children operate. For me, creativity is like handing the car keys of your life over to the younger version of youâyour inner childâand saying, "Hey younger Zoe, you've got the keys. You can jump into the driver's seat now. It's your turn to play, let's see what you've got."
Creativity is giving yourself permission to be a kid again, to go all out, and see what happens when you use different ways to produce and make things. You will surprise yourself if you allow yourself that freedom. For some adults, it can feel scary because they worry other people will judge them or view them as childish. But if you honor your younger self and grant that inner child permission to create, you are going to enjoy your life so much more and have fun along the way. Creativity is like being a kid. That's what it is for me.
Brad Eather: Putting your psychology hat on for a moment, talk to me about that fear of judgment. You mentioned that people often feel a strong sense of judgment when applying themselves to creativity. What are your thoughts on that?
Zoe Teh: I work in corporate spaces, right? In big consultancy environments, people are historically expected to show up in a formal suit and tie and carry themselves very formally. You can always tell who the brand-new graduates are the moment they walk into the building because they are super formally suited up. They think they have to look the part perfectly because they are terrified of being judged as unprofessional. By week two or three, they start showing up in t-shirts and jeans because they realize the workplace culture is actually safe and no one is judging them for what they wear. We have a policy called "dress for your day"âif you have a casual day with no client meetings, you can wear comfortable clothes.
The fear of judgment is a universal human struggle. Social media has made it significantly harder for us to be compassionate to ourselves because we are constantly judging others and being judged by others online. To combat that, creating an environment that feels psychologically safe breaks down those barriers and allows you to show up authentically.
That safety links directly back to collaboration and creativity. You cannot collaborate effectively if you feel like someone is going to instantly shoot your idea down or tell you it's stupid. You must first establish a foundation of mutual safety so that people feel comfortable bringing their most wacky, weird, vulnerable, and authentic ideas to the table to solve the problem.
The flip side of that is when a salesperson comes to the table all gung-ho with a predefined solution before they even understand the customer's problem. They tell the customer, "Okay, your problem is X, and here is my solution, I'm going to sell you all of these products." As a customer, you immediately feel like, Whoa, this person doesn't care about my problem at all, they just want my money. Building trust and giving people explicit permission to be vulnerable opens up doors. It helps you uncover the correct customized solution, and along the way, you build immense customer loyalty. That person will continually return to you for help because they know you listen, you trust them, you don't judge them, and you accept them for who they are.
Brad Eather: Absolutely. Zoe, thank you so much for joining me on the Selling is Creative podcast. Where is the absolute best place for our listeners to get in contact with you, and what is next on your professional horizon?
Zoe Teh: The best place to connect with me is on LinkedIn under my full name, Zoe Denise Teh. Where I'm at right now, I am actually in between jobs. By the time this episode airs, I will be starting a new role with Court Services Victoria, focusing on psychosocial health and safety.
My psychology passion project is supporting young Asian-Australian professionals. Initially, I had the idea of building a brand-new community called the Breaking Bamboo Crew. However, I realized there are already so many fantastic existing communities out there. Instead of creating a new one, I am going to embed myself within those existing groups to support them. My long-term vision is to build strong collaboration and connections between these separate communities so they can start talking to each other and working collectively. Right now, everyone is doing amazing work in their own silo, but no one is really communicating across the ecosystem. I want to bridge that gap.
Brad Eather: That's fantastic, and I will include all of those details directly in the show notes. Thank you to everyone out there for listening to the Selling is Creative podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please make sure to like and subscribe. And in the meantime, happy selling!
