Ron’s Short Review: Debunking the myth that creativity is somehow related to genius and comes to you in a flash. It doesn’t. Like anything else, it takes hard work, dedication and commitment. Ashton gives some great practical advice and stories.
Clients often ask me to come in and help them with their creativity. The market place is changing, new more nimble competitors are popping up. Their clients are asking for a more creative approach (although that is usually a code word for reducing prices). The leaders are asking every team to think and act more creatively.
However, my first words to the team under the creative pressure is that your leaders are using the word “creative” but they don’t really want that. They’ll resist your ideas every time. What they are really asking is to be more innovative. I’ll go into the difference of those words in a minute but it needs to be said here that the real need may indeed be creativity, it’s just that the leaders will still resist anything beyond innovation.
Creativity and Innovation: What’s the Difference?
I first learned about the difference between these words from Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan in their book Execution. Creativity is blue sky, it’s outside the normal boundaries, it’s breaking the rules. Innovation is executing what you do well faster than the competition. Regardless of the words used, corporate leaders are usually (not always) looking for better, faster execution, not untried, unproven, rule-breaking creativity.
The “Problem” with Creativity
Our author Farson says “Creative ideas are relatively easy to elicit. To implement an idea is a tougher task. The fundamental problem with creativity is that every new idea requires the manager and the workforce to undergo significant change. Real creativity always violates the rules. That is why it is so unmanageable and that is why, in most organizations, when we say we desire creativity we really mean manageable creativity. We don’t mean raw, dramatic, radical creativity that requires us to change.”
I think manageable creativity is what Bossidy and Charan were talking about when they defined innovation. The challenge for all corporate leaders is to be clear about what is needed and what the team is being asked to accomplish. If it’s innovation, then clearly define what part of the system you’re trying to simplify and execute faster. If it’s true creativity, then the leaders must start thinking more creatively themselves. And creativity always requires letting go of control. That’s a tough one for corporate leaders.
History has shown us that true creativity usually happens in small autonomous groups. Think skunk works. Farson says “When a company wants to stimulate creativity, it may need to organize quite differently. Companies have learned that scale is the enemy of creativity and are finding ways to break into smaller more flexible units.”
Skunkworks require a great deal of risk tolerance. But the alternative may be fatal. If you truly need creativity to survive, take the risk.
This post is a continuation of my series on an in-depth look at a wonderful little book that’s twenty years old this year. The title is Management of the Absurd by Richard Farson. You may want to consider dropping back and reading the previous blog posts about ABSURD! I think it will put each new one in great context.
Ron’s Short Review: My generation had “What color is your parachute?” This is a great book for today’s creative, entrepreneurial environment. Figuring out where you want to head along the way and designing your life to enhance your possibilities. I can easily recommend this book.
Ron’s Short Review: Dean is probably the most humorist neuroscientist that you’ll meet or read. He has a great ability to make complex issues understandable and fun. His book really helps us understand why at times we do such crazy things driving by a supposedly rational brain. Good learning.
A certain amount of chaos is necessary because “quality” chaos stimulates creativity. Organizations that do not create some space for creative chaos run the risk of experiencing staleness, loss, and even death.
“Life exists at the edge of chaos,” writes Stuart Kauffman, author of At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity. “I suspect that the fate of all complex adapting systems in the biosphere—from single cells to economies—is to evolve to a natural state between order and chaos, a grand compromise between structure and surprise.”
If a leader fears the creative tension caused by chaos, trouble is often not far away. Leaders need to understand that creativity comes out of chaos, and even what has been created needs to be exposed to chaos just to make sure it is still viable and working. Even the new creation may need the chaos of re-creation to survive in a highly competitive world.
Meg Wheatley writes in her book Leadership and the New Science,
“The things we fear most in organizations—fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances—are also the primary sources of creativity.”
The question is, how do leaders get people from the scary, agonizing, and anxiety-filled feelings of chaos to the liberating place of creativity, change, and steadiness?
Before we answer that question, we do need to look at creativity and chaos. The reality of today’s world is that millions of ideas for innovation, change, and improvement lie within any factory, distribution center, high-tech office, retail storefront, or operations center. You can also multiply that number by millions (or so it seems) when you bring people together in a team setting and allow them the freedom to create, innovate, and change. In many organizations this causes chaos and uncertainty.
Leaders, then, who understand the positive side of chaos can begin leading people through the confusing maze that creativity causes. They can help people understand that disruptions are opportunities. They can focus their attention on a building a culture that understands change and brings teams together, creating synergy among the members. These leaders explain how necessary it is for a company to respond to change in order to remain competitive.
Leaders help their employees understand the chaos going on around them by making meaning out of it. It is not easy, but it is so very necessary. “Leaders must have the ability to make something happen under circumstances of extreme uncertainty and urgency. In fact leadership is needed more during times of uncertainty than in times of stability: when confusion over ends and means abounds, leadership is essential.”
Source: Missy Schmidt, Creative Commons
At some point, every leader seems to grapple with the balance between innovation and execution. Many leaders struggle with the notion that one great idea will save the day for the organization. Others spend an inordinate amount of time focusing on “getting out the laundry” and not on new ideas.
Innovation for innovations’ sake can be detrimental. Innovation is best when it helps get things done. A clear vision and strategy are not enough. Competitors have this as well. Success comes from effectively executing strategies and objectives as well as anticipating and preparing for future contingencies. Successful organizations accomplish their objectives faster than their competitors.
Innovation results from creative ideas successfully implemented. Execution and strategy result in competitive advantage.
It seems that everyone wants to innovate, but in practical, day-to-day leadership, only what is accomplished matters. A significant part of getting things done is focus.
My partner and I used to work with the leadership of an international organization. The founder was a man of tremendous vision and creativity. It seemed he had new, out-of-the-box ideas every day. Fortunately for him and the organization, his senior leadership team consisted of people who understood focus and execution. They had the ability to take his ideas and, in most cases, make them work.
One idea, however, was a complete flop. The organization lost millions of dollars. Why? Because the idea was well out of the organization’s scope. It lacked focus, was not part of the organization’s passion, and failed to be executed. The formula for this organization’s success required team focus and execution, not just the leader’s innovative ideas.
Ram Charan, in his Fortune magazine cover story “Why CEOs Fail,” points out the primary reason CEOs do not make the grade: “It’s bad execution…not getting things done, being indecisive, not delivering on commitments.” They have plenty of good ideas and strategies, but in many cases they lack the ability to execute them.
Charan has also written,
People think of execution as the tactical side of business, something leaders delegate while they focus on the perceived “bigger” issues. This idea is completely wrong. Execution is not just tactics—it is a discipline and a system. It has to be built into a company’s strategy, its goals, and its culture. And the leader of the organization must be deeply engaged in it.
Innovation is a strong gift. It helps companies find new markets, new products, and new customers. Innovation alone, however, does not matter. Innovation requires focus, and part of that focus is execution or achievement.
Ron’s Short Review: I just love the idea of curiosity and use it often to help myself and clients learn to listen better. Brian Grazer (Ron Howard’s movie producing partner) makes a great case for how intentional curiosity has helped him live a richer life. I did take a few notes but I think the book could have been written with at least one third fewer pages. I think the books “A More Beautiful Question” and “Learn or Die” have a little more meat on the topic.
Click here to read my further thoughts on curiosity and this book…
Photo credit: Marcelo César Augusto Romeo, Creative Commons
A humble leader, who is not too full of self, has the capacity and good sense to allow others to sparkle and make a difference.
While consulting with a large department store chain, we encountered such a situation with a particular store employee. The management team just did not respect this guy because he did not fit the mold of the “perfect” floor salesperson. He dressed way too shabby. He wore his hair very long. His humor was caustic. He talked too loudly and joked too much. The only thing standing between him and a pink slip was the small matter of performance. He was positively brilliant at what he did!
His specialty was the children’s clothing department where the kids (and moms) loved him. To them, he was a funny, warm, and highly entertaining friend, a trusted adviser in selecting the best things to wear. Because the customers understood this man’s intentions—he loved meeting kids on their level and serving them—his counter-cultural appearance and behavior didn’t matter much. As long as his creative approach and personality accomplished the mission, he deserved to be a hero of management, not a personnel headache.
This man definitely was a diamond in the rough.
Sure, this example may be a bit extreme, but it illustrates the principle beautifully: A humble leader, who is not too full of self, has the capacity and good sense to allow others to sparkle and make a difference.
Many times a humble leader discovers strengths in his or her coworkers that even they have failed to detect. Sometimes you just don’t know what precious unexpected gems are buried beneath the surface of another human being.
A humble leader—one not caught up constantly in personal needs—is able to explore, develop, and encourage the strengths in others.
A humble leader wants to create a company of giants, to help people become “bigger” than they ever dreamed possible.
Humility absolutely fuels high staff morale and achievement in an organization. This is possible because the leader’s ego isn’t sucking all the air out of the creative environment. There is plenty of oxygen left over for others to breathe and make significant contributions.
And it’s fun. Yes, it can be positively exhilarating to learn what qualities have been “hard-wired” into others.
If our hippie friend’s potential had not been recognized by a humble leader, how would the children’s clothing department in that store suffered?
Humility is costly, but there are incredible and often surprising rewards for leaders who recognize their own personal strengths and limitations while seeing and encouraging the greatness in others.
Are people surprised when you select that person that has complimentary skills to your own? Or do they expect you to appreciate and promote similar skills?
Ron’s Short Review: Written about child development but you can correlate child development learning to the corporate team environment pretty directly. Note the subtitle: Grit, Curiosity and Character.
Ron’s Short Review: The subtitle says it all. Dispels most of the myths about performing under pressure and why some do and some don’t. Offers some great advice that anyone can follow to perform better under pressure. Performing under pressure is what people remember about you.
Ron’s Short Review: Assuming we need to continually foster insights in an ever changing world, Klein provides some good tips for not missing, not interfering and fostering insights.
In my executive coaching work, both with individuals and teams, one of the most useful techniques is bringing alternate or multiple perspectives. We so easily get entrenched in our own perspective, it can be difficult to see solutions or other possibilities.
I recently experienced heart bypass surgery. During one session in the post op process, I was lying in the hospital bed with the doctor on my right, his physician’s assistant on my left with my two nurses at the foot of the bed, and my wife over my shoulder.
At one point when the pain was severe, even the nurses had to look away. I thought, “I’m not sure how much the human body and psyche could stand more pain than this.”
But my mind immediately shifted to my father, lying in a muddy field hospital, (I’ve seen some of the hospital photos.) 4,500 miles away from home with no family around, with doctors and nurses who I’m sure cared very much, but had no time to spend comforting a patient, having his leg amputated.
Image Source: Ulf Klose, Creative Commons
My conditions, while seeming extreme, were nothing compared to what my father had experienced during WWII. My change in attitude and experience at that moment were such that even the doctor noticed and later asked me about what happened.
Nothing really, just a change in perspective. Perspective is very powerful. It can even change the level of pain we’re experiencing.
The next time you’re in that extremely “painful” corporate situation, see if you can help yourself and your team gain a different perspective. It often takes a jarring experience or question. “What would this look like to a chimpanzee? How would this be viewed from a four person jazz band? How about a 100 person symphony orchestra?” None of these questions make sense or they certainly are all out of context. But that’s the point! Get out of your context. Look at this from a new perspective, not just a different point of view from the same context; “How would our competitor view this issue?” Shake it up! Gain a new perspective.
Tell us about the last time that four year old child asked you a question that shook your perspective? Share with us a story or two.