How Creative Constraints Innovate Decision-making

The session is highly interactive and experiential, designed to keep participants actively engaged throughout. Monica combines brief creative exercises, guided reflection, and small-group moments to help audiences apply the concepts directly to real workplace challenges. Using practical examples from acting and storytelling, she encourages participants to test new perspectives in real time, making the session dynamic, accessible, and immediately relevant for professional audiences.

• Creativity as a Problem-Solving Skill: Creativity is not about inspiration or talent, but about making and fulfilling. It is a skill everyone can develop and apply to everyday workplace challenges.

• Balancing Duality for Better Decisions: Effective creative thinking requires holding opposing states at once, such as focus and openness, solitude and collaboration, pressure and relaxation. This balance enables deeper insight and more nuanced problem solving.

• Embracing Failure and Iteration: Innovation depends on experimentation and repeated iteration. Viewing failure as a natural and necessary part of the process leads to stronger outcomes and more resilient teams.

Monica McCarthy, facilitator and creative professional with a background in film, theatre and education, explains how artists naturally work within constraints and shows how the same mindset can help professionals navigate complexity, uncertainty and decision overload in the workplace.

She then explores how creativity has been historically misunderstood, from divine inspiration and genius myths to modern misconceptions about left-brain versus right-brain thinking. Drawing on insights from psychology and neuroscience, Monica reframes creativity as a practical form of problem solving that relies on both focused thinking and mental flexibility.

The session continues by examining the neurological foundations of creative thinking, including divergent thinking, pattern recognition and the importance of understanding the “problem behind the problem.” Monica uses examples from acting and storytelling to illustrate how imagination and empathy allow individuals to see situations from new perspectives and generate more effective solutions.

Monica also addresses why creativity often feels difficult, particularly in high-pressure environments. She explains concepts such as resistance, fear of the unknown and amygdala hijacking, showing how stress can limit perception and decision-making. Drawing on techniques from acting, she highlights the role of relaxation, movement and awareness in breaking habitual responses and entering a state of flow.

The session concludes with a focus on the necessity of failure and feedback. Monica emphasizes that meaningful innovation rarely happens in one attempt and encourages organizations to normalize iteration, frequent feedback and experimentation. By reframing failure as part of an ongoing process, teams can build the courage needed to innovate and make better decisions in today’s workplace.

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