Albert Einstein said "Imagination is more important than knowledge", and then added "to ask new questions and possibilities, to see old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and is what identifies true advance in science."
- help us think of many possibilities, help us think, experiment in different ways and take different points of view, help us think of new and unusual possibilities, guide us in the generation and selection of alternatives. "
3. Barriers to creativity
The development of creativity has many barriers, some of them internal and some external. To such an extent we have impediments within ourselves that Adams (a student of these phenomena) referred to them as authentic "mental walls" that prevent the adequate conceptualization of a problem in order to reach its solution.
Two important factors that limit creativity are given by the relationship with the environment, which prevents other explanations from being considered. And the other factor is contiguity. Those events that by succession in time have preceded the appearance of a phenomenon will be the first explanations proposed as causes, preventing other explanations from being considered.
Among the main barriers to creativity we have:
- The rules not given: consistently putting in our head restrictions that do not exist. It is about implicitly imposing more rules on us than are actually given. Familiarity: Another source of negative interference is excessive familiarity with the problem. Although knowledge of the environment is essential to solve most of the issues arising from the performance of a function, it works against you when it comes to finding a new path. This is one of the reasons attributed to the success of the consultants. They are effective, not because they know more about a certain topic, but because they are able to see the problem with new eyes. Fear of ridicule: It can also be said that fear of ridicule is an emotional impediment. Anticipating potential negative comments, imagining a lack of support, or even feeling embarrassed at a novel proposal are powerful impediments to developing creativity. Think that the ridiculous is subject to social conventions and that geniuses are precisely the ones who manage to break these molds. ConflictsGenerated by creative ideas, whether on a large or small scale, they are perhaps the greatest impediments to creative development. Consider as an example what the reaction would be in your work environment if you proposed a plan to achieve significant savings in work processes, but which would mean changes in work habits for many people and could even threaten the job stability of some person.
4. Elements that facilitate creativity
Motivation, prior knowledge, independence of character and perseverance are considered fundamental elements to facilitate the creative process. Regarding the experience, we already commented before that an excessive familiarity with the problem can make it difficult to find new solutions; however, a complete lack of knowledge surely prevents any type of solution, creative or not. Therefore, certain experience and above all, knowledge of similar problems are good ingredients to find success.
It has been found that people who are in the habit of trying to find the positive aspects of other people's ideas are actually more creative themselves. The abuse of critical thinking develops a tendency to observe the negative aspects of things that (although it is useful at times) is sterile when the purpose is to build and not destroy. Critical thinking needs to be ahead of the product. Creative thinking has to invent the product.
Being creative requires changing the wavelength in which we normally operate. To find the station, sometimes it is not enough to move the tuning dial, you have to move the radio lever from AM to FM. You have to be aware of this radical change if you really want to come up with a new idea. This change in the way of working, in the way of thinking, is difficult and for this there are various techniques that help in the process. These techniques include: Brainstorming, Synectics, KJ Method and Morphological Analysis among the best known.
5. Imaginization
The challenge is to imagine, which implies imbuing the organizational process with a spirit of imagination that takes us beyond bureaucratic compartments. We have to find creative forms of organization and management that allow us to "go with the flow"; use new images and ideas to create a common understanding that allows us to do new things in new ways.
Imaginization is a way of thinking. It is a way of organizing. It is a key aptitude for management. It is a way of helping people understand and develop their creative potential. Offering a resource for finding innovative solutions to difficult problems. It also provides a means to give people the ability to trust themselves, and to find new roles in a world characterized by flux and change.
The fundamental question is to develop capacities for imaginization in practice and, in that way, to develop new core skills to handle the demands of a turbulent world. Among the objectives of imaginization is learning to develop new ways of thinking about yourself and your organization, exploring creative ways of managing change and perceiving a new vision of the organization, in such a way as to achieve flexibility and innovation..
Imaginization is a powerful creative process that allows us to create new thought guides to see, organize and lead in a new age. It is a process that must be mastered in order to develop our own creative ways of navigating the twists and turns of the uncertain world in which we find ourselves. This is a world in which continuous learning and flexible intelligence are of critical importance, and in which we need our imaginative capacities as never before.
6. The art of creative management
A synthesis of what imaging entails is given by the following five fundamental concepts:
- Imagination is about improving our abilities to see and understand situations in new ways. Imagination is about finding new images for new ways of organizing. Imagination is about creating shared perceptions. Imagination is about empowering yourself. Imagination is about developing skills for continuous self-organization.
The image of the modern manager is that of someone equipped with a sophisticated radar system that allows him to feel and read what is happening, and to use this special reading to shape or write an appropriate response. It is the image of a creative manager who has the ability to develop new visions, understandings and actions to face the challenges of the moment. This unique leadership allows him to break the limitations of the existing paradigms and generate new interpretations about the organization and its missions. The current manager must have the capacity and sensitivity to perceive the dichotomy between the phenomenon of globalization with its process of technological and knowledge standardization, and the individualization of people and nations within the framework of their identities and cultures.
- The generation of images as a creative process
The current manager and professional must open up to the world and to other disciplines, capturing both new substances and new essences. Opening your mind to capture new forms, processes and events that nature, history, machines and tools, sports, and the various arts show us, allow the human being to capture by analogies, comparisons, definitions, concepts, operation, processes, activities and differentiations, new creative and imaginative ways of seeing their problems and their environment. "Those who continue doing what they have always done, will continue to obtain what they have always obtained." Doing things in other ways requires seeing reality in another way.
What individuals do as a habit, they make dependent because they have programmed it for themselves. When the professional or director is a product of his culture, without questioning anything, he becomes a robot. He sees everything according to paradigms, to programs that have been imposed on him by society and circumstances. Deprogramming to see a new reality is the watchword. Whoever succeeds will have a significant competitive advantage. You will see what others do not see, and therefore will do what others do not. Seeing a production process with new eyes, or the design of a product or service makes a difference. When the majority automatically repeat what they learned at university, without questioning anything, or adapting their knowledge to new circumstances.
Let's look at two examples of the comparisons made by the Japanese in their conception of Just in Time. In the first place, they compare the inventories with the flow of a river, the higher the level of the river, the less problems there are to navigate on the huge rocks constituted by the imperfections of the production processes, call these: excessive preparation times, waste of time due to repairs, product failures, lack of input or poor quality of these, excessive waiting times between the different sub-processes, among others. But as we lower inventories, those huge rocks that prevent us from navigating come to light. To do this you can only destroy those rocks. So systematically lowering the flow level is one way to uncover the problems hitherto protected by excess inventory.Inventories that are very expensive for the organization and therefore make it lose competitiveness.
The second aspect revolves around the Kanban. This was the product of the comparison that Ohno made of the demand for inputs and parts in the factory, with the demand for products that is produced in a supermarket when the gondola stocks run out. To the extent that the existence in a gondola ends, this is a sign to cover the existence of such a product in it. The same was applied in the factories, as the parts or inputs in a process are finished, this constitutes a signal to send the replacement inputs from the previous process and start a new production process.
There is a Chinese proverb that says: “When the eye is not blocked, the result is vision. When the mind is not blocked, the result is wisdom. You have to remove the bandages to see. If you do not see, you cannot discover the impediments that are not letting you see. Questioning everything is a way of taking off the bandages, it is a way of seeing other ways of doing things, creating different processes, and different products and services.
The most difficult thing is the ability to see, to see simply, with sincerity, without being deceived, because seeing means change. There are those who stubbornly see perfect processes where there are none, who see satisfied customers when there are none. In such a way, by deceiving themselves, they do not generate the change that is necessary.
- The power of language
In his analysis of the role of language and communication in human and insect societies, Lewis Thomas relates the following interesting fact about a sighting of the species sphex. When it is time to lay its egg, it flies in search of caterpillars. Upon finding one, he paralyzes her and leads her to the entrance of her nest. He leaves it at the "front door", enters the nest and verifies that everything is in order. Then she goes out to find the caterpillar. Meanwhile, if someone has displaced it even a little, the limitations of such structured behavior appear. The watcher will search for the caterpillar, place it on the door, and repeat her nest inspection. If the caterpillar is moved again, the wasp will repeat the entire procedure. Thus, if one wishes, one can ensnare the creature in an infinite cycle of thoughtless behavior.Thomas uses this example to reflect on some characteristics of human intelligence and the role that language plays in helping us explore and understand our world. The wasp is trapped in a routine of unproductive activity because it cannot imagine that there is another way of doing things. Humans, on the other hand, have the ability to be much more flexible. Faced with new, ambiguous or paradoxical situations, we are able to intensify the search for its meaning. Language gives us the ability to play with nuances and reflect on the contexts in which we find ourselves. We can unravel complex situations and create opportunities to act in different ways. As Thomas says, one of the great virtues of human language is that it prevents us from concentrating on the immediate.
This example of the wasp reveals many of the problems and challenges facing the world of organization and management today. As humans, we have amazing aptitudes for creative thinking and behavior. We can use these skills to do wonders. But often we get stuck. We are ensnared by time-honored ways of thinking and inappropriate actions to solve immediate problems and situations. We are like the wasp. Or to use another metaphor, our thinking becomes a hammer and all problems become nails.
The concept of imaginization is intended to be a means out of the dilemma. It encourages us and our situations with fresh eyes, to use our skills for innovative thinking and action. In this way we can read and interpret the situations in which we find ourselves, and look for new perceptions that allow us to develop different actions.
Through imaginization, new ways of thinking about management styles, organizational design, ways of approaching planning and change, and basic products and services can be developed.
It is necessary to be aware of the imperative that the managerial activity has the imaginative and innovative intellectual aptitudes necessary to provoke a strong explosion of creativity, of which it so much needs.
The enormous creative capacities have been displaced and relegated by technical and petty interests, typical of the mechanical age in which most of our ideas about organization were developed. We live in a new era, where the stability of Newton's world is in retreat from Einstein's mobility and relativity. This world presents the challenge of developing the skills of self-organization rather than "organizing" - that is, developing organizational styles capable of changing with change. The imaging process is a fundamental means to achieve this purpose.
Imaginization helps us to find more innovative ways to deal with and change situations.
- Social construction of reality
Imaginization as a method to understand social reality and as a way of approaching change belongs to the social-constructivist school of thought, based on the idea that human consciousness and knowledge have a transforming potential in development, and that images and ideas that people have of themselves and their world decisively influence the future of their realities.
For imaginization the role of the leader is crucial. Change, although difficult, begins with individuals; that whoever wishes to change the world must begin by changing himself; that individual change becomes social when a critical mass of people begins to push in the same direction. The fundamental idea appears in the so-called "hundredth monkey syndrome." According to investigations carried out with monkeys that lived on an island off the coast of Japan, when they were offered sweet potatoes as food, the animals rejected them. They were picked from the sand, and although tasty, they were unpleasant to the palate. Until one day it was observed that one of the primates washed the sweet potatoes before eating them. Little by little his example spread. Finally, from a critical point (the symbolic hundredth monkey),all the apes, even those on neighboring islands, got into the habit of washing the sweet potatoes. The change in human societies, and in companies, usually follows this procedure. When interesting ideas or new customs are "infected" in large numbers, entire fields of activity are transformed.
Imaginization as a method of change tries to mobilize the power of understanding and transformation that resides in each and every one of us. It challenges established and incidental ways of thinking, awakens and expands the capacity to act in new ways. Although it emphasizes the art of the possible and of finding the means to help people discover and modify their realities, it is also sensitive to the reality of power. But it does not allow these to generate a feeling of immobility.
By delving into mental processes, interrelating images with language, it gives the person the ability to analyze their ideas, conceptions and images of reality, thus allowing them to restructure in order to generate a new vision. Generating a new way of understanding quality, productivity, organization, consumer satisfaction, costs, and social interrelationships at work allows the development of enormous potential to create new potentialities.
- Applied imagination
La nueva economía es una economía basada en la innovación. Para ello “haga obsoletos sus productos y servicios”. Para los planeadores, estrategas, ingenieros, desarrolladores y gerentes de productos de Microsoft este tema está bien claro. El énfasis en todos los aspectos de su trabajo, comenzando con su primera orientación durante el primer día de labores, es constante. Si usted acaba de desarrollar un gran producto, su meta consiste en producir uno mejor que haga obsoleto al primero. Si para usted esto no es posible, otro lo hará.
A key driver in the new economy is innovation, which includes a commitment to continual renewal of products, systems, processes, marketing, and people. Compare this perspective to that held by many mainframe hobbyists at IBM, who initially fought against the shift from massive IBM resources to PCs, open systems, and the development of client / server technology. Their goal was not to make other products obsolete or innovate but to preserve and endure. Rather than making their own products obsolete, they allowed their competitors to do so for it, and the results soon became apparent in the marketplace.
Ironically, in the pre-industrial economy, innovation was very important. Each weapon or shoe was different, handcrafted by an innovator. The number of units generated for each product was very small, often only one. If the weapon or shoe needed to be repaired, the craftsman would innovate with a solution. In the industrial economy, the number of units per type of product was increased for the mass production of standard goods. In the new economy, there is a shift from mass production to mass individualization of goods and services.
In an innovation company, product life cycles collapse. Japanese automakers work on a two-year life cycle, and Japanese consumer electronics manufacturers estimate a three-month cycle. Some financial products in certain markets have a life cycle of a few hours, by then the competition will be ahead of the game. Most large and medium-sized companies in North America introduce more than one new product daily. Last year, Sony introduced 5,000 new products. And even something as seemingly stable and low-tech as beer requires innovation; 90% of Miller's revenue comes from beers that didn't exist 24 months ago.
Only a decade ago the steel industry in the United States was in deep trouble, not competitive with the low cost and high productivity of the Japanese plants. Rather than give up, the industry innovated by creating mini-plants like Chaparral Steel and Nucor, which reinvented the steel sheet manufacturing process with new production processes based on novel technologies. This enabled small plants to produce high-quality steel sheets at a lower cost. Plants were also located closer to markets, were able to establish better customer relationships, and used different models of employer-employee relationships. The result: the industry is once again productive, competitive and generates the highest quality steel sheets in the world.
Innovation drives all aspects of economic and social life. Completely new forms are emerging in the arts based on interactive multimedia. The multi-volume encyclopedias are replaced by a single CD-ROM that can contain 360,000 pages of text. Not long ago, music videos were a promotional aid for a singer; now, they are necessary for the achievement of success.
Innovation is also beginning to drive educational curricula. In the old economy, a curriculum remained in place for years and was appropriate for various careers. In the new economy, in order to be relevant, the education system must constantly change content, instructional tools, and approaches.
The winners of the 21st century will be those who can transform their organizations into something that resembles a 4 × 4: a four-wheel drive all-terrain vehicle that is strong, lightweight and highly maneuverable. A vehicle that can move and change direction quickly in unsafe terrain, reacting to the changing nature of the business environment, the changing nature of competitiveness, and changing customer needs. Despite the mechanical metaphor, this new vehicle will have to have the nature of a biological organism, not a machine. It will consist of a network of well-distributed brains, people who will work together and learn together, some of them within and some of them outside the organization. It will be an intelligent organism, driven by the engine of human imagination.
In the 21st century, the winners will be those who remain at the head of the curve of change, constantly redefining their industries, creating new markets, blazing new trails, reinventing the rules of competition, questioning the status quo. As Charles Handy said, the winners will be those who "invent the world" not those who follow.
The 21st century requires a new kind of leaders. They won't be content to sit back and let the autopilot drive for them. They will be looking ahead, examining the environment, observing the development of the competition, detecting emerging trends and new opportunities, avoiding impending crises. They will be explorers, adventurers, discoverers of new paths. The new leaders will decentralize power and democratize strategy by involving a great mix of different people from inside and outside the organization in the process of inventing the future.
- Bibliography
- Inner self-liberation - Anthony de Mello - Editorial Lumen - 1988 Learning to See - Mary McCabe and Edwin Greer - Ediciones Obelisco - 1998 The managerial challenge of innovation - John Adair - Legis - 1990Paradigmas - Joel Barker - McGraw Hill - 1992The Digital Economy - Don Tapscott - McGraw Hill - 1992Imagin-I-zation - Gareth Morgan - Berret-Koehler Publishers Inc. - 1997The creative decision making - HB Gelatt - Editorial Iberoamárica - 1993Empresa Quántica - Clemente Nobrega - EDIOURO - 1999La Quinta Discipline - Peter Senge - Granica - 1992La Quinta Discipline in Practice - Peter Senge / R. Ross / B. Smith / Ch. Roberts / A. Kleiner - Granica - 1995
Author: Mauricio León Lefcovich
Consultant in Operations Management and Business Strategy
E-mail: [email protected]
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