09/ 29/ 2005
by Charles R. McConnell
In today’s competitive business world, few qualities are as important as creativity. Yet creativity is regularly stifled.
Whose creative potential is discouraged? Nearly everyone’s. Especially that of rank-and-file employees who may already feel like they don't have many helpful ideas to offer. Everyone has something to offer. Creative potential or imagination is as universal as memory. Everyone has it and can exercise it to some extent. Further, creative ability itself, comprised of knowledge and talent, is not as important as the desire or drive to create.
Businesses have a continuing need for creativity of two kinds: innovative and adaptive. Innovative creativity gives us new products and services. Invention forms new ideas from bits of existing knowledge and seemingly unrelated information. Adaptive creativity involves putting old ideas together in new ways, putting the creative ideas of others into practice or simply finding better ways to do the same kind of work.
Who is creative? Everyone is – or could be. Some, of course, are more creative than others. Highly creative people exhibit a sort of restlessness; rarely are they satisfied with how things are done at present. We've all heard the phrase: Necessity is the mother of invention. Perhaps this is so, in strictly limited circumstances. Invention, however, usually has a set of parents – intelligence and dissatisfaction. When intelligent people are dissatisfied with the state of affairs, that’s when the creative processes kick in.
Probably the strongest barriers to creativity in business are: unquestioning acceptance of the status quo and the tendency to prejudge ideas. If a company’s culture strongly endorses compliance and conformity, stimulating creativity in the staff will be an uphill struggle. Most likely, the worst setting for creative behavior is the classic bureaucracy, where rules, structure and rigid attitudes stifle creativity at every turn.
Nevertheless, it’s possible for the conscientious manager to stimulate creativity among employees. Doing so can involve:
- Allowing employees the freedom to fail, giving them the flexibility to develop and try new ideas and letting them know that you will never punish honest failure. They need to be able to take risks and make mistakes without risking their jobs.
- Doing whatever is reasonable and possible to allow employees to feel relatively secure (not always easy in these days of frequent layoffs). The employee with a shaky sense of job security is less likely to be creative.
- Offering aids to creativity, such as brainstorming sessions and other idea-generating exercises, improvement groups, such as quality circles, as well as visible and timely recognition of successes and suggestion systems with real evaluation and follow-up.
- Providing resources and discretionary time as much as possible.
- Making in-house and external educational opportunities available to those who show promise.
Back to the deadly tendency to prejudge ideas: Once, in a problem-solving meeting, an employee offered a spur-of-the-moment potential solution to which the manager running the meeting said, “That’s about the dumbest thing I ever heard.” The employee didn't talk for the rest of the meeting. Later, another employee who offered a sound, workable solution was asked how he arrived at the idea. The response was, “That dumbest thing you ever heard set me to thinking about the problem in a new way.”
Never discard an idea, no matter how foolish and unworkable it may sound. Today’s useless suggestion might be the first step on the path to tomorrow’s advance. Always avoid shooting down an idea upon first hearing.
It’s vital for the manager to always remember that the rank-and-file workers, those who do the hands-on work every day, are in the best position to see how the job can be improved. Through the intimacy of actual task performance and the reinforcement of repetition, workers become better able than anyone else to see opportunities for improvement.
The innovative manager knows that employees are a strong source of creative behavior. In tapping that source, the innovative manager is rarely if ever satisfied with the status quo and is always on the lookout for a better way to get the job done.
