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Learning To Manage Creativity

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We must all learn to manage creativityEmbracing Creativity or running a creative thinking session is not unlike running a theatrical performance – it needs both stage management and direction.
Such activities can of course vary widely in scale. You may be working on your own; you may be chatting informally with one or two others; you may be running a classic small-group brainstorming session or even working with large groups. In all cases you must pay attention to the following components.

People – the ‘cast’ of the drama If you have the luxury of choosing people to work with then this may present a dilemma. On the one hand, you want as much diversity as possible, because that is where new insights and connections will come from.

On the other hand, they must work well together, because creative work requires a high level of personal openness and risk taking, and a lot of interaction.

If possible you should:

  • Choose people who have the skills to manage high levels of difference comfortably.
  • Design sessions/meetings so that they are less sensitive to the adverse effects of large interpersonal differences.
  • Facilitate the session in such a way that you ‘manage’ adverse effects as (or before) they emerge.
  • Choose people who can tolerate wide levels of difference
  • Choose people who are compatible temperamentally, but differ widely in their area of expertise

People are less likely to be ‘thrown’ by minor interpersonal clashes if they have a reasonably solid personality, a degree of self-awareness, and a good sense of humour. Avoid big status differences, unless it is very clear that there are excellent, pre-existing, levels of trust between the people involved.

Have fun! Laughter and a light touch can defuse many tensions and manage the expectations of participants so that they know this will be a somewhat ‘special’ event, with unusual people. Remember, it is usually easier for people to feel uninhibited and take risks with a group they will not see again.

Why Best Practice might be bad for you

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Why best practice is badIf someone knocks at your door and offers you ‘best practice’ you should say no. Best practice is at best a distillation of ‘what has been’ and has worked. It is based in the past and unless the system you are operating in is purely mechanical (e.g. you make nuts and bolts in bulk) then it is not guaranteed to work.

Apart from being fixed on the past, best practice usually consists of ready made methods or processes for you to copy. A consultant or well meaning colleague may thump a large book in front of you and say ‘just follow this and you will be alright’ but the chances are you will not.

Firstly the method or process has been lifted out of one context and dropped into another (probably different) context. The contextual information makes a huge difference. It could contain information on economic factors, industry sector, seasonal factors and many more. Secondly there is one huge factor that can never be identical, people. People are the biggest asset an organisation can have but they also provide the most variables. If you have been given advice like this, please do not blindly follow it, treat it as a reference work.

So what can we do? Sharing is not the problem, you just have to know what to share! Instead of throwing processes and methods at each other we should be sharing experiences (telling stories) and learning from them as well as sharing the tools for the trade (hammers, paint brushes, facilitation techniques, communications tools etc). Find like minded colleagues or business partners, share tools and experiences and use the knowledge gleaned to learn and create pathways into the future. We should be more interested in the journey than the destination.

Undercover Boss – would you try it?

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Undercover BossMany readers will have seen either Undercover Boss or Undercover Boss USA where the boss goes undercover, working with frontline staff to see how the business is really performing. I’m sure that these companies are selected for their entertainment value but they do throw up some real issues.

In many cases the businesses are not performing but the bosses seem not to be playing the blame game and realise that in many cases head office is a little out of touch. What they do seem to get though is that if they support their staff then they will get the best out of them and stand a fighting chance of beating the recession.

So, you’re the boss. Do you dare to go undercover and find out what is really happening? How will you react when employees do not worship your photograph or have less than ideal things to say about you, their pay or working conditions? What will you do when you find that front line staff are abused, spat at or are targeted by armed robbers?

You’re not the boss. Is your the sort of business where the boss would come and find out how you are doing? If so then great, if not then how can you attract his attention? If the boss (or bosses) is not interested then I recommend you look for a new and better job right away!

Finally, no bosses should be going undercover anyway. Employees should know who the boss is and how to contact them (about important issues) and be able to equate those at the top with company vision and values. Bosses should also have their finger on the pulse and have a much better idea of the workings of their business and the opinions of frontline staff. Sounds like a call for a cull of middle management – make up your own mind about that!

Removing blocks to Creativity

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As if dealing with emotional and perceptual blocks isn’t enough, we also need to overcome our cultural conditioning. Cultural blocks are created by attitudes in society and among our peers which have the effect of inhibiting creative thinking. Sometimes these cultural blocks are so much a part of our upbringing that we’re practically blind to them.

Here are some of the most common cultural blocks:

“We must be logical about this”
Why is this so? You might need to specify your desired outcome but not the journey. Once in a awhile you might like to ban logic altogether and see what happens. Remember these three things:
  • Logic can solve problems, but creativity often requires a leap of the imagination
  • Creative ideas often don’t make any sense at first
  • Just because an idea is illogical doesn’t mean its ‘bad’
Role stereotyping
Our inherently conservative culture sees to it that most of us grow up with the idea that creativity is not possible without advanced training, higher education, superior intelligence, etc. This is simply nonsense. Also creativity is often seen as the preserve of a particular function within a business.

“Playing is for kids”
Being creative means being willing and able to play with ideas, materials, and even your most basic ideas about reality. Creative thinking is a form of mental play. Relax your grown-up inhibitions and let your mind out to play more often. Also, many of us already work with prototypes which is simply a slightly restricted form of play.

“Fantasy and daydreams are useless distractions”
Early in life, we’re taught that fantasy and daydreaming are unproductive and even dangerous to our health. Creative thinking requires that you be able to daydream and fantasize without feeling guilty for doing so. Strive to recognize and get past your conditioning. Those daydreams can also be useful as part of a futures programme where we predict the future many years in advance.

“Though shalt try nothing new”
This is the great unspoken commandment that directs many of our thoughts and actions. While change for its own sake is rarely creative, creativity requires openness to challenging the status quo. Ideas such as the wheel and space travel must have been as a result of trying something new. Just think what you could do!

“Creativity is too abstract”
Well yes and no. The techniques that we use to help generate and explore ideas can be a little strange but we can calibrate creative processes so we know how much return we get for a particular amount of time and effort. Those who like to plan and budget have no excuse for not joining in.

“I don’t like to ask questions or criticise”
In many cultures it is not natural to openly question or comment on the ideas of others or examine the status quo. This can prevent progress so you can try and gently nudge people and show that questioning is ok but also we can use techniques with the ‘challenging’ built in or which concentrate on building ideas. There is no excuse not to embrace creative thinking.

An afternoon of Strategy

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Can Strategy really be put into the same category as a good book, your favourite CD or a celebrity chef? Can you really do it justice in an afternoon? The answer is most definitely yes and you can make it just as pleasurable with or without a teapot and a plate of custard creams.

No, I have not lost my marbles, I just believe that many organisations spend too much time sitting around a polished table poring over management accounts, making poor decisions and crafting strategies that they are unable to communicate to their workforces. And what is the result, a thick document that ends up in the shredder, and even worse does not help the organisation in any way at all.

So how is this feat to be achieved, read on.

First of all we have to make an assumption that those running the organisation are at least technically competent, even if their management and leadership styles are less than ideal. They should have a good idea of the state of the company, the competition, the environment and of course the employees.

Step 1, stare hard at your organisation and look at all aspects of it, not just the balance sheet or profit and loss account. How adaptable is it, have you got the right skills, is it too big or too small or perhaps suited for other markets? Record this information in a suitable fashion, maybe using sketches, mindmaps or pictures (you will see why shortly).

Step 2, gaze into the future (how far in advance is up to you) and create a really good idea of what the organisation needs to be like in order to fend off the competition, where it will be, how it will work, what markets it will be in. If your time horizon is short then you can simply extrapolate from existing data. If you have a long time horizon then you may need to consider scenario planning or some sort of Futures Programme. Don’t be influenced too much by the present, your organisation should be succeeding on its own a a point in the future.

Step 3, create a storyboard. A simple version may consist of 6 boxes on a sheet of flip chart paper. Number the boxes 1 to 6 and put the output from Step 1 into box 1 and the output from Step 2 into box 6. This is easier if you use visual items such as pictures but adapt everything to suit yourselves. You can even add or remove boxes if you wish. By now you will have guessed that the Step 4 is to fill in the intermediate steps but going backwards from the future to the present, by asking ‘how did we get here?’ rather than ‘how do we get there?’. This way you will always get to your desired end point!

The results of steps 1 to 4 is a storyboard that many in the creative industries will be familiar with. It tells a story which is how we prefer to take in information. It also allows others to add their own perspective without actually changing the story (try doing that with a strategy document). This raw document can also be used immediately by Human Resources and Marketing to communicate this strategy to employees and other stakeholders and it can be updated regularly.

This method really does work, why not give it a try?

Understanding The Innovation Equation

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To see my innovation equation please take a look here where you will see the various components explained. This equation is both simple and profound. It states that innovation is simply a blend of creativity (coming up with new ideas), managing know how (the things we already know) and the frameworks that we put in place to help these processes along. Note that I have not mentioned Research and Development, High Technology, Science or any of the other keywords that both companies and governments like to use in their strategy documents. Cutting edge R & D is simply applied creativity with the emphasis on the ‘R’ whilst Product Development uses some Creativity but using existing ideas and Know How. Production is simply a physical manifestation of Know How. This may not suit those who have a drum to beat but it does keep things nice and simple.

This equation also helps to show that it takes a variety of different types of people to make innovation happen. We are talking about an innovation system rather than group of innovative people. After all, a truly creative person is the last person who you might want to look after your company accounts! On the other hand, just because your company accountant is logical, any system that you have for capturing and managing good ideas must not prevent them from making contributions.

The other main ideas to take away from the Innovation Equation are:

  • Try to bulldoze changes through your company and output can go down

  • The more mature and refined your innovation frameworks become, the greater the benefit you will derive from them

  • Innovation is essentially about people not technology

  • Innovation can be measured directly

Innovation – who needs people?

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The chances are that you do! Innovation is viewed as a “soft” science, hard to measure and hard to define. Other business functions such as purchasing, finance and manufacturing are easier to define and seem much more established and “concrete”. Purchasing, finance and manufacturing are accepted business functions with hierarchies and responsibilities. When we talk about innovation, however, the measurements, metrics and operations are less obvious. Few firms have an “innovation department” and even less have metrics around innovation or systems and processes to support innovation.

That’s why people are so important in an innovation initiative. Much of the work of innovation is at the “fuzzy front end” where there may not be as many clear cut milestones or metrics, and traditional transactional systems can’t provide much value. It is this ambiguity that is handled so well by people. In business as in life , the important things boil down to people.

I ask you to go to the cinema to watch a film and you say “who’s in it?” If you are browsing in a bookshop you will read the jacket notes to see who has recommended it and what the critics say about it. If you join a new company, project or team, you will ask “who is the boss, what are they like?” and “who else is working on this?” A venture capitalist’s main concern is the management team—who will be making this venture (and my money) work? The focus is always on people.

Innovation is an outgrowth of the people and the culture of the firm. If people are encouraged to innovate and compensated and motivated appropriately, the culture and processes will follow. If they are not motivated or compensated to be innovative, no amount of systems or processes will drive an innovation initiative. The people are the key to the success of innovation.

Why focus on people? Success in any endeavor is based on having the right people doing the right things the right way at the right time. If you want to implement a successful innovation initiative, you need the right people in place to succeed. People are going to implement the processes and systems to make things work. You need to identify those people. Additionally, different people bring different skill sets and viewpoints to any project, so exposing ideas and innovations to a broad team within your firm can improve the chances of success with new ideas. Finally, a few people who truly believe in an idea can overcome many barriers and management hurdles.

Just as Meredith Belbin defined his Team Roles, so there are a number of people that you need to make your innovation initiative work. The second part of this article – Innovation, the people you need describes the characteristics of these people.

Taking the ‘In’ out of Innovation

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There have been many articles recently that have focused on putting the ‘Lead’ back into Leadership or the ‘Man’ back into Management. But what about Innovation, I thought, what does that need that it doesn’t already have? One of my recent articles focused on Slow Innovation, going back to basics and making sure that everyone understands the concept, the parts that they play and the overall objectives.

This is, however, an internal issue for organisations. What is happening in the external environment that is helping or hindering Innovation? One possible problem is ‘spin’. Innovation as a word is incredibly fashionable and sexy. To coin a phrase, it is ‘in’. Unfortunately to take the ‘in’ out would take quite a bit of work, the best we can do is warn the participants in this fashion game.

Who is taking part and what is the problem here? First of all we have a message that ‘Innovation is good’ from governments, with grant funding for the wrong things, targeted at the wrong organisations, with advice from the wrong people! At a slightly lower level, Innovation is seen as a panacea for all ills. Wrong! If you hear this, an out of touch consultant is trying to sell you a ‘thinly disguised’ change program. Embedded within organisations are people jumping up and down shouting ‘eureka’ and wanting to set up innovation projects. Some may be well intentioned but they want to play with pet projects in their spare time.

This is making some very sweeping statements but next time someone in you organisation mentions innovation, think about what it is intended to do, and that everyone is speaking the same language. Ensure that Innovation is not just a fashion accessory, but an essential part of being a successful organisation.

Please feel free to browse more blog entries or visit the Creative Business Solutions website for more information.