3 Ways To Bring Creativity Into Your Management
Nothing inspires uniformity like the supposed prioritisation of creativity. I was at an event recently where diverse companies, senior managers and business plans had all managed to generate remarkably similar soundbites. A fellow attendee created a bingo card with the words data driven, agile, metaverse, and corporate responsibility. Without fail, talk after talk managed to include these terms.
Did these people set out to deliberately echo each other? Maybe not, but as Walter Lippman said: “When all men think alike, no one thinks very much.”It made me think a fundamental truth needs to be confronted. The further you ascend on the corporate ladder, the more incentive you have not to rock the boat. Still, how many ideas that could have benefitted humanity have been lost this way?
When individual success depends on saying the right thing not doing the right thing, that can be dangerous for any organisation. These 3 methods below will help you encourage creativity and innovation in your organisation without making people feel at risk.
1. Allow space for alternative points of view
Amazon has revolutionised the online retail world in no small part thanks to a ritual that keeps their customers top of mind.
In the company’s early days, no matter what the meeting agenda, whether 5 or 50 employees were attending, there was always one empty chair. This chair represented the customer.
Today, this ritual has evolved, and one chair in every meeting is taken up by an employee, who has the freedom to speak frankly and ask the difficult questions.
By having an employee representing the user, Amazon is always thinking about the needs, wants and desires of their customers.
2. Never underestimate the value of a mentor
Did you ever wonder why Richard Branson’s face is often used to publicise his latest venture?
Richard Branson credits his success to the advice of legendary airline entrepreneur Sir Freddie Laker.
When starting Virgin’s airline there was a problem. It lacked the big budgets of its competitors.
Freddie Laker, instead of seeing the financial constraints as an obstacle, encouraged Branson to become the public face of the airline.
Richard Branson described his advice as such: “'Use yourself. Make a fool of yourself. Otherwise you won’t survive’. That piece of advice influenced my entire approach to business,"
He credits Laker’s support with the success of Virgin as a conglomerate.
3. Get comfortable with failure
Sweden has a “Museum of Failure” in Helsingborg proudly celebrating all the weird and wonderful failures.
As you’d expect the Google glass, Sony’s Betamax and the Amazon Fire phone all make appearances.
However, the most interesting failure isn’t the $1,000 juicer or the Magneto inspired Nike glasses.
It comes from Nintendo.
Nintendo created a menacing looking electronic arm called “The Power Glove’ in 1989.
The arm was a huge flop, but the hand motion sensing technology came in useful when developing another device – the Nintendo Wii.
Even when something appears to be a failure you never know when it will come in useful. That motion sensing technology is still used in Nintendo’s devices today.
To conclude, to improve creativity you need two counterintuitive things: Freedom to experiment and an environment which provides the psychological safety to do so. As Edward De Bono said “There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns.”
If you’re looking for more ways to be more creative, why not sign up for our How To Be More Creative course featuring some of the world’s top experts and certified by Cannes Lions.
