The truth is, most organizations are designed to kill creativity. When I come to a company, the first question I ask is what if someone comes up with a good idea here?
The answer I always hear is: “If I have a good idea, I tell my boss and the idea dies there, either because a) it tells me that it won't work, b) it tells me that there is no time or resources to implementing it or c) steals it to get all the credit, causing no one else to want to come up with new ideas. Many of managers are, in fact, assassins (serial) of ideas.
However, creativity is essential for the success of any business and today, more than ever, it is key to the survival of companies. Unfortunately, creativity has not been on the priorities of most managers. This is perhaps because it is considered something intangible, elusive and difficult to manage, and we are more focused on obtaining short-term operational efficiencies, rather than thinking about creating the future of the company.
This is aggravated if we consider that, in addition, we have mystified creativity and see it as something exclusive to the artists, inventors and "creatives" of advertising agencies, or we consider it as something that applies only to some areas of the business (marketing, advertising, R&D). We have forgotten that creativity is a skill that can be harnessed in all areas and everyone in an organization.
The only difference is that in business, instead of drawing on a canvas, we do it on the market and the needs of customers, and instead of using paints and brushes, we use strategies, design processes, allocate resources and take advantage of capabilities human.
Below is a practical approach to how managers can stimulate creativity in all areas of their business and take advantage of it to turn ideas into innovations that give the business a competitive advantage.
1. Focus on creativity
We generally believe that creativity is something that happens spontaneously and that therefore we must leave it free for it to flourish. Phrases like "let's think with a blank sheet" and "the sky is the limit" come to mind. Actually, in my experience and although it sounds counter-intuitive, creativity must be focused and restricted to be effective. I've seen many companies simplistically tell their collaborators, "We want ideas," and then get frustrated because they get too few ideas relevant to the business.
Creativity must focus on the strategic objectives of the company. For example, collaborators should be told "we want ideas to reduce costs in this process" or "we want ideas for new services for this market segment". Creativity should focus on the most pressing challenges and problems facing the organization. In this way, the collaborators will understand that we do not want any type of idea or occurrence, but ideas aligned with the company's strategy and that give a competitive advantage.
Also, even if we create the opposite, creativity is stimulated the more the number of restrictions we have. For example, "we are busy creating a network of distributors and we have no money." Let us remember that necessity has always been the mother of inventiveness. One of the resources that creativity focuses most on is time: "we are busy finding a solution to this problem before this date." Therefore, we must ensure that our collaborators always have an important set of challenges to stimulate their imagination.
2. Create the conditions to support creativity
Just as a seed requires certain conditions to grow (soil, water, sun), there are certain basic conditions that we must create in the company culture to support the flourishing of creativity.
Don't Kill Ideas: Managers must be humble and recognize that we are not the only source of ideas and that ideas can come from anywhere and from anyone. One of the biggest challenges we face is having an open mind to new ideas to never kill them, however inappropriate they may seem. Often the most radical ideas, those that break with the "status quo", turn out to be the most innovative. When we hear a “bad” idea, we must give feedback to the collaborator so that it can enrich it and align it with the company's strategy and resources.
Intrinsically Motivate: Many studies have shown that intrinsic rewards, such as the satisfaction of doing a good job, are much more powerful than extrinsic rewards (prizes, incentives, or money) to stimulate creativity. This is why we must try to assign work and projects in accordance with the interests and passions of the collaborators. It is commonly known that companies like 3M and Google allow their employees to spend a percentage of their time on the projects they are most passionate about on a personal level.
Give time to think: One of the reasons creativity doesn't flourish in organizations is because we don't have time to get out of the day to day thinking. Creativity needs a certain amount of “leisure” time to incubate and mature ideas. In fact, when I ask people where their best ideas occur, they tell me about places like the bathroom, the car, the gym or the bed, and they hardly ever mention work. Scientists believe that "the Eureka moment," that point when new ideas pass from the subconscious to the conscious, is most easily reached when one is relaxed and stress-free.
Promote diversity: It is well known that new ideas arise when people from different disciplines, experiences and knowledge collaborate in the creative process. If you want to stimulate creativity, create spaces for people from different departments to interact and form multidisciplinary teams to solve specific problems. Also invite people from outside the organization to bring a new and different perspective to the challenges you are facing.
Allow for experimentation and failure: When I want to know if an organization is really creative and innovative, the first question I ask is: What happens here if someone makes a mistake? The response I receive clearly indicates the level of creativity of the company. Fear of failure is the number one enemy of creativity. If the collaborators do not feel an appropriate environment to take risks and experiment, they will not think of anything very creative. The most appropriate environments to stimulate creativity are where being allows "serious play." An atmosphere of humor and fun has been shown to promote the search for more creative solutions.
Create the appropriate environment: In relation to what I have previously commented, it is clear that a cubicle is not the best place to be creative. This is why leading companies like Google, Pixar, GE, and many others design their work environments to stimulate creativity.
3. Provide stimuli that spark creativity
Contrary to popular belief, it is very difficult to be creative with a blank sheet of paper. Our brain needs stimuli that allow it to generate new ideas.
Be Fresh: If we look closely, our life is a great routine. We go to work the same route, we listen to the same radio station, we read the same newspapers and magazines, we have lunch with the same people and we go to the same places on the weekend. Routine is the antithesis of creativity. Having freshness means cultivating the habit of submitting ourselves to new and different stimuli to get out of the routine to generate new and different ideas. For example, you can bring a special guest every Friday who talks about a completely different topic than the company's business. These types of exercises open the mind and stimulate creativity.
Break Paradigms: Pablo Picasso said that "the creative act is first and foremost an act of destruction". This means that if we want to generate creative ideas, we occupy ourselves by questioning the assumptions and beliefs that everyone has taken for granted to find new and different ways of doing things. But questioning our assumptions and beliefs is one of the most difficult things in the world, because we are so used to them that we take them for granted. Many times, we are not even aware of them. Our beliefs and assumptions form the box from which we must get out if we want to be more creative. It is for this reason that it is often easier to be creative for someone who comes from another company or another industry,Because you have no preconceived beliefs about the way things should be done or about what is possible or impossible to do in an industry. I have seen companies that have a team that meets monthly to question the paradigms of the company.
4. Train on tools to think differently and “out of the box”
One of the complaints I frequently hear from managers is that their collaborators give them incremental ideas, that is, more of the same, while what they want are radical and different ideas that have the potential to transform the business. Here are some concrete tools managers can use to stimulate more radical and revolutionary ideas in their collaborators.
Mind Maps: One of the most powerful tools for creative thinking is mind maps. A mind map is a graphic technique of organizing ideas and connecting them visually created by Tony Buzan, where you start from a central node and ideas unfold like tree branches radially. This way of organizing ideas breaks with linear thinking and helps us create new connections between our ideas. Mind maps, being a graphic tool, promote the use of the right hemisphere of our brain, which is associated with visual thinking and creative thinking.
Lateral Thinking: Lateral Thinking is a term coined by the Maltese psychologist and writer Edward de Bono as a set of techniques to provoke creative thinking. Rather than waiting for ideas to come as if by magic, de Bono posits the use of lateral thinking consciously and deliberately to change thought patterns, breaking logical and predictable thinking, to produce new and unexpected ideas.
TRIZ: TRIZ or systematic inventive thinking is a method that is based on research developed by the Russian engineer Genrich Altshuller, who obtained his first patent at the age of 15 and spent his entire life working on systematizing the creative process. As part of his investigations, Altshuller investigated more than 200,000 patents and discovered that they all followed a series of similar patterns which he organized around a series of principles and created a technique which he named TRIZ (Inventive Problem Solving Theory in Russian). TRIZ is a method that helps you find creative solutions in a structured and systematic way. What sets it apart from other methods of creativity is that it is based on certain thought patterns that have historically led other people to think creatively.This is why this technique produces a shorter and more applicable list of ideas than other methods.
There are many other tools available to generate creative ideas. The goal of all is to get people out of their normal thinking patterns, showing them new ways of seeing things and helping them make new links.
Conclusion: As we have seen, creativity is a skill that can be developed in all employees of a company. What should be done is to focus creativity, create the conditions to support it, provide stimuli that awaken it, and provide staff with practical tools that help them think differently.
