Let’s ask a question in a slightly different way – do you as a manager, a team member, as a parent, or as a friend, allow creativity and innovation to thrive AROUND you? It’s not a simple question. It’s not about you being creative – it’s about you enabling people around you to be creative. Evaluate yourself against the five factors listed below and see how you score on them.
- Informal Emphasis on Hierarchy: Let’s say that you supervise people or are in a position of some power. How much do you informally emphasize hierarchy? Do you sit at the center of a table? In meetings, are all conversations directed at you? Do people look up to you for approval of any idea that comes to the table? Do you avoid going for coffee or lunch with people at lower levels in the organization? If so, knowingly or unknowingly you are emphasizing hierarchy. While in some situations hierarchy is important, in complex decision situations it can be very detrimental to creative decision making. It is a natural tendency among employees to stay on the right side of bosses (job security is a huge issue, after all) and hierarchy naturally inhibits those lower in the hierarchy from speaking out. No one wants to appear foolish in front of their boss. Ed Catmull, President of Pixar and Disney Animation recently wrote a fantastic book (Creativity Inc.) that describes the rise of Pixar and how it keeps the creative juices flowing. He begins the book with a vivid description about how a long table that was used to hold meetings was a huge impediment in Pixar’s way of working. During critical meetings name cards would often be placed on the table and the closer you were to the middle, the more senior you were. And in his words, ‘…the farther away, the less likely you were to speak up…your participation felt intrusive.’ He had the table removed. Leaders who foster creativity around themselves recognize that good ideas can come from anywhere and go out of the way to break down barriers of hierarchy. And if their presence will reinforce hierarchy they even remove themselves from those meetings.
- Nurturing the Creative Idea: Have you been in a meeting to discuss a strategic issue when a seemingly crazy solution was proposed? Did you derisively laugh? Did you pose a barrage of questions that highlighted why the idea was operationally unfeasible or why it wouldn’t work? Then, despite any good intentions, you killed creativity around you. Not only was the idea shot down, a message was sent that ‘out of the box’ ideas would be shot on sight in the future. Individuals who foster creativity around them, know that all creative ideas need nurturing…that they are imperfect when first articulated, that they have not had a chance to be developed and that even the best ideas will not survive if they are subjected to the third degree very early in their lives. Almost always the best creative ideas need massaging, they have to get input from people around them but in a way that does not dampen enthusiasm. At inception creative ideas are rarely well thought out – and it may be hard to defend them. In his book, The Idea Factory, Jon Gertner recounts an interesting story about Bell Labs. Almost 60 years ago, when Bell Labs was struggling to increase phone calling capacity between America’s East and West Coast, a key scientist idly wished that they could have a series of hot air balloons floating high up which could be used to bounce phone signals across the continent. The seemingly crazy idea found its champions, was implemented and led to the development of technologies that subsequently led to satellite communication.
- Keeping Hold of the problem In the 1970s a model of decision making called the garbage can model was introduced. In a very interesting way, the authors suggested that we view an organization as a garbage can where problems are rustling around looking for solutions, and solutions are searching for problems. I see this all the time. Organizations develop champions of certain software, technology or processes. I remember a manager at the time computer databases were gaining traction – he was enamored by them –and wanted them applied to every possible situation. Some of the problems made sense (inventory management) and some made no sense – writing letters in response to unique customer queries (this was back in the late ‘80s and most queries could be answered in a couple of lines). Lots of chaos was caused by his insistence that all letters be automatically generated through a database management software. Perhaps he was ahead of his time, but an individual who fosters innovation constantly keeps an eye on the problem…what is the problem that is being solved by the innovative solution. A creative solution may be initiated in response to a problem, but it is important to guard against continuing to polish and develop an idea without losing hold of the problem it was trying to solve. And of course if you as a practice informally meet with diverse people around the organization it is just a matter of time before you encounter someone with a problem that can be solved by the solution you are carrying around.
- Fostering divergent thinking: So you have a team that you trust (or are part of one). You’ve been together for a while and are comfortable bouncing ideas off each other? That’s wonderful. It’s also dangerous. We tend to like people who think like us and have similar views and those are the people we will naturally trust. But those who nurture creativity make sure to get honest opinions as a creative idea evolves. They are not scared of criticism and different opinions. They get divergent views by involving people who are NOT part of their core group and think differently. Rather than using the same set of people to critique every idea, they vary the composition of their brain-trust for different ideas. They involve people who may be opposed to the idea. I have learnt that doing so has so many benefits – it lets you gets perspectives you would not normally get from people close to you, it allows you to identify the opposition you will face when you roll out the idea, and it just leads to a lot of personal learning. And yet, many otherwise excellent managers get tons of feedback without realizing that they are getting feedback only from like-minded individuals.
- Letting Go: So you supported a new idea, it was implemented and it did not work. Well, many creative ideas don’t and we have to accept that and be tolerant of mistakes. But it is also important that we identify in advance the minimum conditions that must be met in a given time for continued support of a creative idea. Many times, individuals are great at championing an idea but then get married to it. Failure of the idea is seen as a personal failure, and rather than admit that a creative idea did not work, they pour more effort and resources into it. This phenomenon, referred to as non-rational escalation of commitment, is well documented. AT&T was convinced it had a unique idea of using hollow tubes to transmit phone signals in the early years of telecommunications. It poured vast resources into developing it, well after it was apparent that alternate technologies such as fiber optics could be more beneficial (Ironically fiber-optics was a technology that AT&T already possessed). By hanging on to creative ideas even when they are not working, we significantly increase the losses from those ideas. And it has a double whammy because the next time we champion a creative idea the huge losses from a previous failure dominate everyone’s thinking making them that bit less enthusiastic to support the new idea.
Today’s world is hypercompeititve and complex. The rules are ever-changing and being creative in addressing these situations is one of the best ways to thrive. While there are definitely situations where creativity can be harmful, it is hard to get ahead without fostering some levels of creativity. Some of us may be less creative than others but all of us have the ability to ensure that there is creativity around us. And while the above five factors are definitely not a complete set, they are likely to make a huge difference.