10:26 AM Tuesday August 10, 2010 | Comments (24)
When IBM recently polled 1500 CEOs across 60 countries, they rated creativity as the most important leadership competency.
Eighty percent of the CEOs said the business environment is growing so complex that it literally demands new ways of thinking. Less than 50 percent said they believed their organizations were equipped to deal effectively with this rising complexity.
But are CEOs and senior leaders really willing to make the transformational moves necessary to foster cultures of real creativity and innovation?
Here are the six fundamental moves we believe they must make. In all my travels, I've not yet come across a single company that systematically does even the majority of them, much less every one.
Meet People's Needs. Recognize that questioning orthodoxy and convention — the key to creativity — begins with questioning the way people are expected to work. How well are their core needs — physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual — being met in the workplace? The more people are preoccupied by unmet needs, the less energy and engagement they bring to their work. Begin by asking employees, one at a time, what they need to perform at their best. Next, define what success looks like and hold people accountable to specific metrics, but as much as possible, let them design their days as they see fit to achieve those outcomes.
Teach Creativity Systematically. It isn't magical and it can be developed. There are five well-defined, widely accepted stages of creative thinking: first insight, saturation, incubation, illumination, and verification. They don't always unfold predictably, but they do provide a roadmap for enlisting the whole brain, moving back and forth between analytic, deductive left hemisphere thinking, and more pattern-seeking, big-picture, right hemisphere thinking. The best description of the stages I've come across is in Betty Edward's book Drawing on the Artist Within. The best understanding of the role of the right hemisphere, and how to cultivate it, is in Edwards' first book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.
Nurture Passion. The quickest way to kill creativity is to put people in roles that don't excite their imagination. This begins at an early age. Kids who are encouraged to follow their passion develop better discipline, deeper knowledge, and are more persevering and more resilient in the face of setbacks. Look for small ways to give employees, at every level, the opportunity and encouragement to follow their interests and express their unique talents.
Make the Work Matter. Human beings are meaning-making animals. Money pays the bills but it's a thin source of meaning. We feel better about ourselves when we we're making a positive contribution to something beyond ourselves. To feel truly motivated, we have to believe what we're doing really matters. When leaders can define a compelling mission that transcends each individual's self-interest, it's a source of fuel not just for higher performance, but also for thinking more creatively about how to overcome obstacles and generate new solutions.
Provide the Time. Creative thinking requires relatively open-ended, uninterrupted time, free of pressure for immediate answers and instant solutions. Time is a scarce, overburdened commodity in organizations that live by the ethic of "more, bigger, faster." Ironically, the best way to insure that innovation gets attention is to schedule sacrosanct time for it, on a regular basis.
Value Renewal. Human beings are not meant to operate continuously the way computers do. We're designed to expend energy for relatively short periods of time — no more than 90 minutes — and then recover. The third stage of the creative process, incubation, occurs when we step away from a problem we're trying to solve and let our unconscious work on it. It's effective to go on a walk, or listen to music, or quiet the mind by meditating, or even take a drive. Movement — especially exercise that raises the heart rate — is another powerful way to induce the sort of shift in consciousness in which creative breakthroughs spontaneously arise.
These activities are only possible in a workplace that doesn't overvalue face time and undervalue the power of renewal.
Tony Schwartz is president and CEO of The Energy Project. He is the author of the June, 2010 HBR article, "The Productivity Paradox: How Sony Pictures Gets More Out of People by Demanding Less," and coauthor, with Catherine McCarthy, of the 2007 HBR article, "Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time." Tony is also the author of the new book "The Way We're Working Isn't Working: The Four Forgotten Needs that Energize Great Performance" (Free Press, 2010).
More on: Creativity, Innovation, Managing people
http://blogs.hbr.org/schwartz/2010/08/six-secrets-to-creating-a-cult.html?cm_sp=blog_flyout-_-schwartz-_-six_secrets_to_creating_a_cult
============================================================
George Sibbald 5 months ago
This is not real world. Nor is empowerment.
Innovation is inclusion not empowerment. This looks like HR or OD wrote it. Perhaps the hammer saw a nail when there was none.
Most CEO's want action with a sense of urgency. Action should have relevance to mission or strategic agenda. Innovation is relevant action
Taking a high leverage selection process (10:1 payback) with an iterative Pareto perspective (5/67 rather than 80/20) Leaders can get results fast, tap tribal knowledge, grow innovation capability, and overcome management paralysis.
Training and education for improving culture or innovation skills is a RAT HOLE. Don't go there. But rather set the organization, structure, process, and maintain consistent and appropriate leadership and you incubate a culture of innovation in all employees through high energy action (lots of small action, learning from failures and adding resources to successes make taking action mare important than being right) "feed the winners & starve the losers".
Leadership is process and action, NOT charisma. Innovation is leaned through experience so just start doing. Maintain a portfolio id ideas and a relevant action portfolio. The innovation culture will happen.
More importantly the process directly advances the strategic agenda.
5 people liked this. Like
Reply
Drsmiel 5 months ago in reply to George Sibbald
I can't tell what you're talking about or what industry you're in. I tried. Maybe sales?
2 people liked this. Like
Reply
Tony 5 months ago in reply to George Sibbald
"Taking a high leverage selection process with an iterative Pareto perspective"
Whew, sounds like a bunch of Gobbledy gook to me. Who said anything about leadership being about charisma? Who suggested action shouldn't be relevant to a particular agenda?
A lot of hyped up jargon here packed into a small space! Chill baby!
2 people liked this. Like
Reply
George Sibbald 5 months ago in reply to Tony
Tony you may not know the Pareto curve, but it is the top tool of leverage in management time and resources. You may have heard of the 80/20 rule. 80/20 is only one point on the Pareto curve. Even greater time is 5/67. But if complexity of initial design of any innovation is 35-50% over designed the Pareto curve tells you that there is not enough time or resources to succeed. (also a 10% overdesign is requires 20 fold the effort and resource)
Iterative Pareto if fundamental business.
Prototype at 5/67, then look at where you are and do a second prototype 5/67 and perhaps a 3rd. After 3 prototypes you have 15% of cost and greater clarity of the end design.
Innovation culture follows these principles.
Look to Dave Evans of Evans and Sutherland as the Gold Standard of leadership in setting an innovation culture. Who is largely responsible for starting the innovation culture around computer graphics. Spin offs include Adobe, Netscape, Pixar.
The 6 secrets are NOT REALISTIC, although there is a essence of truth. What CEO has the luxury to meet peoples needs? Rather the people need to meet the needs of the organization. A preoccupation with unmet needs is more about too much time or bad attitude (assuming there is proper organization, structure, and process for people to gain earned respect) CULTURE will thrive on negativity of bad attitude. Any move to create an innovation culture must first ferrite out the bad attitude and cull those people.
As for leadership where is that in the 6 secrets? Corporate culture does not thrive without leadership. Innovation culture across a whole organization is counter intuitive to most managers making leadership the most important component.
As for "relevant action" it is all about the metrics. Can you link the portfolio of actions to expected results on the strategic agenda?
Culture starts with tribal knowledge and implicit strategy. What you have now. Most CEO's are not proactive leaders so they miss the opportunity to orchestrate an innovation culture. Instead they hand off culture to OD or HR (staffers) who almost never have the operations perspective and sense of urgency of line management.
Tony I have been around in the trenches as turnaround and productivity consultant and CEO, and I see innovation culture from a different perspective. "Bottom Line results"
People love to work if it is fun and they feel respected, and innovation is fun. A corp with organization, structure, process, and leadership that creates opportunity for earned respect for all people for their participation in innovation and relevant action will incubate the innovation culture.
Like Jack Welch, cull the bottom performers and bad attitude people to build you team. Of coarse you must use objective measure to evaluate, therefore expectation must be clear. Include innovation in the expectations and metrics and start with 5/67 leverage selection of ideas and you can get any corporate culture supercharges in 6 weeks plus generate big cash flows (audited results over 23 companies 3,800% ROI)
Tony, some times I think that academics and speakers like you are over doing the complexity. Most people have the socialization and creative ability to take what they already know and make it better. Small but relevant actions / successes earn self respect
and maybe the leaders, which enhances capabilities and innovation prowess.
2 people liked this. Like
Reply
nimmypal 5 months ago
Superb! Loved the article especially because it indicates that what is needed for innovation is empowerment of employees and letting employees' natural talents emerge by providing an appropriate environment (as opposed to focus on training and direction - which reflects an attitude that employees are not capable of innovation themselves and need to be led).
David M. Kasprzak and 1 more liked this Like
Reply
Doug Lowell 4 months ago
Tony, you nailed it. It applies to every business and every person in a business. Enough said.
1 person liked this. Like
Reply
capojac 5 months ago
Pixar's culture of innovation is unparalleled...Ed Catmull and John Lasseter have created a safe haven where employees are accountable to one another another. As Pixar founder Alvy Ray Smith told us, Ed and John are a "technical and artistic collaboration of the first order...it's because they both have great respect for one another. They both know that they couldn't do what the other does, and couldn't do without what the other does." The Pixar leadership playbook simply calls for an open playground where leadership serves as a catalyst in the pursuit of big dreams.
1 person liked this. Like
Reply
Mitch McCrimmon 5 months ago
I think it is a sad state of affairs that CEOs think that they need to be more creative. Do level 5 leaders need to be creative? No, because they draw ideas for new strategies out of their teams. Surely, a CEO needs to learn how to foster creative thinking in others, not be the source of new ideas. This is part of the old heroic model of leadership that still infests too many companies, the idea that executives are supposed to have all the answers. In an age of the "wisdom of crowds" we should be moving beyond our obsessive fixation on individual thinking at all levels and learning how to tap into group thinking.
The other point that, for me, is missing from this article is the need to change the culture that expects executives to have all the answers and to train them on how to foster creativity in others and how to react non-defensively when they are challenged by lower level employees. See my article on creative class leadership for more on how all employees need to develop and promote their creative ideas: http://www.lead2xl.com/creativ...
George Sibbald liked this Like
Reply
Heather Brynn 5 months ago in reply to Mitch McCrimmon
The author doesn't seem to contradict anything you're saying here. He is talking about creating a culture of innovation--in other words, developing an environment where OTHERS come up with great ideas. Not to say that CEOs shouldn't think creatively as well, but obviously the point of this article is to explain who high-level leaders can develop more creative people.
To your second point, the author is not at all saying that individuals don't have responsibility for their own creativity. He is simply explaining how leaders can help with the process. You yourself say in the first paragraph that a CEO should "foster creative thinking in others." Well, that's what the author proposes.
3 people liked this. Like
Reply
Tony 5 months ago in reply to Heather Brynn
Thanks Heather, very much, You said exactly what I was thinking, and said it well! Cheers, Tony
Like
Reply
Rus 3 weeks ago
I love the URL lol
Like
Reply
Nigel&Nigella Noone 4 months ago
We could not agree more with this post. We constantly write about how creativity is stiffled. There are so many companies that could be classed as those where people go to retire and therefore, rather than a lifecycle of jobs, innovation and creativity, a culture of protect within management is created. Through media, technology and the influx of constant disjointed processes and procedures, we have created a Corporate World of too little time to think and with no support for creative ideas.
It creates a de-motivated, lacklustre and unhappy workforce.
Like
Reply
Guest 4 months ago in reply to Nigel&Nigella Noone
After working for a number of years at IBM, I can say that it's the height of irony that this company drove a leadership survey. Then again, maybe they need the ideas.
1 person liked this. Like
Reply
Bastiaan Walenkamp 4 months ago
Interesting topic.
the six secrets of innovation has are a mix of hard (structure) and soft (culture) factors. George Sibbald argues more on the side of hard factors. I think that both factors influence each other.
In my view/experience; Creating an innovative culture starts with the selection of the right employees (and management!). These have to be surrounded by the right organisational structure (stage-gate funding, clear objectives, etc). Then the appropriate culture (pro-active, curious, room for failure -brilliant failures-) will be created. The C.E.O. has a huge influence on both the structure as the culture.
This discussion has also an old academical background; "Does culture follow structure or does structure follow culture?"
Like
Reply
Chris Frost 5 months ago
A very simple set of innovation ideas, thanks for sharing. My view is to let people be creative and let them fail while pushing the boundaries.
Like
Reply
Rick Ross 5 months ago
While this is an outstanding checklist for supporting the creation of an innovative culture, it may be one of the best of its kind for other reasons. Enacting these recommendations would notably impact employee engagement and morale.
Like
Reply
athroop 5 months ago
Tony,
This is great content. I agree 100%! These are all very good practices and it's important to have a good culture and enjoy your workplace if you want to get good work done! Innovation and hard work are crucial in a great work environment.
Like
Reply
David M. Kasprzak 5 months ago
LOVE it! Great article. Thanks for posting it.
Much of what is presented here is discussed in detail in Pink's book, Drive. The key to unleashing creativity is to allow autonomy, mastery and purpose to take place. People are naturally creative - they learn to be complacent, compliant, and conformist.
My favorite part of this entire post might be in point #1: If you want to know what people need, ask them! People aren't dumb, they've just been conditioned to do what others expect, rather than what what the individual wants for him or her self. Remove that expectation, and watch the magic happen.
I have some posts on my blog that speak to the use of creativity in the workplace. Feel free to check it out: http://myflexiblepencil.com/ta.../
Like
Reply
Geri Stengel 5 months ago
Six very good practices and all have one thing in common: respect for the people who work for you, respect for their needs, their talents, their contributions, and their time. From that respect all sorts of good things can flow, as you point out, including innovation and hard work.
Like
Reply
George Sibbald 5 months ago in reply to Geri Stengel
Geri you have the most important point of any culture. RESPECT but it is only valued if it is earned. Setting up an organization where earned respect is delivered is a simple concept, but required management committed to appropriate organization, structure and process. Earned respect includes clarity of expectations and delivery of objective results.
Organization for delivery of earned respect will deliver more results than innovation culture, but they are almost the same.
Like
Reply
CharlieS 5 months ago in reply to George Sibbald
George, while I admire your obvious passion for this subject, I must say that your use of CAPS is distracting in the extreme. I hope that your efforts at managing are not accurately represented by the frenetic and almost aggressive tone of your posts.
It also seems to me that the crux of your argument is maintenance of the status quo culture. I wonder whether the current culture might suit you quite well and you feel it is reasonable to expect it to suit others also?
Many a person has slammed a great idea in its early stages because it is not realistic. As long as we confine ourselves to considering only the realistic or practical, we consign ourselves to achieving only incremental improvement, rather than opening up the possibility to achieve quantum leaps. Realistic is overrated.
1 person liked this. Like
Reply
Paul Runko 5 months ago
Tony, I completely agree. I'm in the process of completing my first book .. . Smiley Balls: Building Successful Companies from the Middle Up, which references your research, but provides examples on how to address these issues and build world class collaborative teams.
Paul Runko 203-767-3208
Like
Reply
George Sibbald 5 months ago in reply to Paul Runko
Lower your foundation. Make it from the bottom up. Delivery of any success requires the rank and file, but more importantly they embody tribal knowledge, which is essential to any business transition.
1 person liked this. Like
Reply
Dmytro Lukianov 5 months ago
Very important add-on for set of behavioral competence IPMA ICB (International Competences Baseline for project managers)! And for PMI PMBOK "Tool's&Method's" too.
"...Look for small ways to give employees, at every level, the opportunity and encouragement to follow their interests and express their unique talents. ..." Very good idea for your dayly activity as a team leader.
No comments:
Post a Comment