July 21, 2009
Is Your Company a Creativity Killer?
Over drinks one night a friend who I admire for his business smarts griped about how many of his improvement ideas died in the suggestion box. “Yeah, when anything new comes up around here, the corporate immune system kicks in pretty fast to kill it,” he confided. I saw some of his ideas and a lot of them could have saved his employer considerably more money than they were paying him. It made me wonder about the economic impact of all the ideas that get lost just because they’re new or unfamiliar or “not invented here.”
Granted, no team can function without discipline and ground rules. Things would collapse in chaos if everyone spent their work day aimlessly reinventing everything. The bad news is that over time, this kind of regimentation squashes the creativity companies need to grow and stay competitive. The good news is that it’s possible make room for creativity in a set of balanced business practices. If you want a fun and thought-provoking read on this subject, check out Orbiting the Giant Hairball by Gordon MacKenzie.
How can you get more creativity out of your staff? People need to know that their input is valued and rewarded. How many of these killer phrases do you hear on a daily basis? “We tried that once and…” Or, “The problem is…” Or, “The reason that won’t work…” These little devils and their legion of cranky relatives are guaranteed to shut down the flow of profitable ideas into your business. The trick is learning to keep the internal editor from kicking in too early in the creative process. Try setting aside a time and place where it’s okay to capture spontaneous, half-baked thoughts without judging them. Let everyone’s minds wander on the possibilities first. The “editor” can sort and evaluate them later in a separate setting.
Yes, some ideas might sound wacky at first, but if you make a habit of allowing them to surface, they’ll inevitably reveal the seeds of a major new competitive edge. Remember how it felt to be picked for a school team or get accolades for that science project? Imagine what could happen at work if your whole staff felt that way. Making “what if” an official and protected part of your company culture can pay big dividends in productivity and profitability.