Business Insight Zone

“I’m an artist, and if you give me a tuba, I’ll bring you something out of it.”

–John Lennon in Rolling Stone, 1970

Expectations of creativity

Average performers, in business or anything else, tend to believe that they need highly favorable conditions to do their best work. The best performers, by contrast, tend to believe that they can do their best work under a wide range of conditions — and they also work to create conditions that will be favorable for their work. Smart businesses will work with all of these expectations.

If you manage people, you’re well-served to hire at least a few highly creative types — the John Lennons of sales, the Twyla Tharps of marketing. In fact, plenty of business titans like Warren Buffett and Steve Jobs and Anne Mulcahy obviously bring a probing, creative intelligence to their work, even in “boring” businesses like insurance.

But you’re also well-served to help create the conditions where you, I, or any other ordinary person can flourish creatively. Plenty of companies talk a good show about innovation, but then they don’t do the things that allow their folks to be innovative.

Ways to promote creativity

1. Bone up on how creative people work.

One nifty — and short! — introduction to this comes from Darren Rowse at ProBlogger:

9 Attitudes of Highly Creative People

Even a short primer like this will get you thinking about the conditions that favor creativity — and, by implication, what conditions tend to suppress it. For a lot of managers in corporate America, it won’t be hard to spot creativity-stifling practices or rules within their own organizations. Once you start looking for these black holes for innovation, you’ll probably see them everywhere.

When you’re ready for more ideas about creativity, you’ll find many great sources waiting for you, like these:

• The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp.
• Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards.
• A Whack on the Side of the Head and other books by Roger von Oech.

What’s that? Do I hear you say, “These might be fine for art, but how do they apply to business?” Well, now ’s the time to . . .

2. Get creative about fostering conditions that favor creativity.

Maybe it’s not obvious how a dancer or an artist can inspire you to creativity in accounts payable or sales management. But if, as Darren rightly says in the ProBlogger item linked above, creative types demonstrate curiosity and optimism and perserverance and an attitude that regards hurdles as opportunities for growth . . . surely there’s some way you might promote these traits in your own organization?

You don’t have to be Mozart to be a creative person. You don’t even have to do music or art or any of the other traditional disciplines that we think of as “creative.” No, you just have to open your mind.

By the way: if you’re going to promote creativity in your organization, one of the best things to do is to show some creativity in the way you promote it. In other words, pick up that tuba and start playing!

3. Spread the good news about creativity.

You have the tuba. You’re playing it with vigor. Now comes the hard part:

Don’t stop.

Here’s the easy — and fruitless — path to promoting creativity in an organization:

• Call a meeting. Say rah-rah things about how “We have a new initiative around creativity.”
• Put up a few posters, maybe say a few things about creativity at the next couple of meetings.
• Set aside the initiative when “real” business issues come pressing in (as they surely will).
• Wonder, months later, “Why nobody around here ever comes up with any fresh ideas.”

And we’re back to Square One. Or maybe Square Zero, since now people will have more evidence that corporate initiatives never really go anywhere, and that the organization isn’t really committed to fostering creativity.

Here’s the hard path — the better path:

• DO something creative, something that you personally control that affects a lot of people.
• DO something else creative that also attracts attention. Simple is good.
• PROMOTE the creative idea of someone who works with you.
• At a ripe moment, TALK about how your organization can do more around creativity.
• KEEP bringing it up at ripe opportunities. Host brown-bags. Put up a creative-ideas wiki on your corporate intranet. Keep building momentum around the process.
• FIGHT every anti-creative practice, habit, or rule you find in the organization.
• CELEBRATE successes along the way.
• Help to CREATE THE EXPECTATION that creativity opens the door to even more creativity, and that all of it helps the bottom line while freeing people up to do better, more fulfilling work. (All of which is true, by the way.)

Be willing to show the sustained zeal of the true believer. Don’t stop just because your old standard operating procedures are biased against creative solutions. Don’t give up just because the Ogre Manager in Purchasing makes it their personal duty to crush out any sign of creative thought.

Hanging in there

At first you’ll feel lonely. At first you may be playing a long, painful solo on that tuba. But people — ordinary people — have a desire to create. Some of the bold ones will join you. Then some of those who are less bold, but who welcome the opportunity to break out of the ruts that so often scar our corporate lives.

Somewhere down the line, you’ll realize you’re playing in an ensemble, and that the group is really starting to cook. Your sustained effort will show people how much fun is to be had — and not incidentally, how much money is to be made — by thinking creatively. And then you will find that you’re playing in a symphony.

Now, doesn’t that sound a heck of a lot better than complaining about a lack of fresh ideas?

Pick up that tuba and start playing!

~

(Photo by celesteh.)

Category: Innovation & Entrepreneurship