By Dr Mike Rugg-Gunn, CPsychol.
Director,
Norman Broadbent Leadership Consulting
Introduction
Within the science of Psychology the notions of
creativity and innovation are not the same concept. They require different
thinking styles and behaviours to implement. Put simply, creativity is about
idea generation and innovation is about idea implementation and thus is more
concerned about the monetization of the bright idea.
Thus creative people think and act differently.
Creative people are more likely to think in a divergent way – that is to say
that their thinking involves the ability to generate a large quantity of ideas
and to select unusual combinations of ideas that lead to no agreed solution. In
contrast, convergent thinking is the ability to solve well defined problems
that have a single correct answer. This is a skill found amongst innovators who
use convergent thought processes to discriminate between the best idea and the
also-rans.
Creative people behave in different ways too. Current
theory suggests that personality is based on five key factors (Openness to
Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism).
Within this context, creative people tend to score more highly than most for
both Openness to Experience (where this is defined as having a good
imagination, experiencing and valuing feelings and experimenting with new
ideas) and Neuroticism (where this is defined as the intensity and feelings of
negative emotions arising from negative beliefs about life in general). They
score much less well for Conscientiousness where the focus is on goals without
distraction, order and control. Conversely, these are exactly the skills
required of the good innovator whose role it is to project plan to take great
ideas to market; thus giving further credence to the notion that creativity and
innovation are discrete psychological entities with only minimal overlap. This
distinction can also be seen in two high profile corporate failures. Nokia once
heralded as a leading company in creative solutions for mobile phones has been
overtaken by the smart-phones like Apple iPhone and Google Android. However, Kodak’s
failure was less about a lack of creativity and much more about slow innovation.
Kodak invented the digital camera but failed to invest in its own creative
output, fearing that it would cannibalize their traditional business. By the
time Kodak realized this strategic error, it was too late, competitors had
overtaken them leading them to file for bankruptcy protection.
Developing a culture of creativity
Corporate culture matters. It is the social glue that
binds the organization together; it is a differentiator between one organization
and another and creates a social identity for employees. The biggest way to
misrepresent culture is to oversimplify it (‘e.g. it is the way things are done
around here’). This is because culture works at several levels from the most
overt (e.g. the brand, the offices, dress code and pace of working) to the less
explicit (e.g. norms of behaviour and values) to the tacit or implied (e.g. taken-for-granted
perceptions and thoughts). The biggest impact on corporate culture is derived
from the behaviours of its leaders. Research is clear that good leadership
matters as poor supervision or poor role modelling results in equally poor
creative performance. So how do good leaders develop a culture that sustains
creative endeavour?
Creative people value autonomy and professional
achievement over power and status. Because creative people are passionate about
their work the organization is secondary to their personal fulfilment. In this
way creative people’s self-identity is framed by the work that they do rather
than the organization that they work for. The cultural aim here is to create an
environment that frees individuals from routine to enable them to indulge in
more creative activities. Thus there is a minimum of structure and work is
through relationships as there are few, if any, rules. This is because creative
people are intrinsically motivated. That is to say that they enjoy intense
emotional attachments to the creative projects being developed because they are
enjoyable and deeply satisfying and because the journey is the reward. This is
different from those extrinsically motivated where the focus is on external
reward because work is a means to an end. What leaders choose to both recognize
and reward is culturally formative and thus they should focus on fuelling
intrinsic motivation (e.g. praise for a job well done; professional recognition
or funding of professional development); external reward for those
intrinsically motivated will be counter-productive.
Tom Ford (Creative Director) and Domenico de Sole
(CEO) who were credited with the transformation of Gucci’s fortunes ten years
ago enjoyed an almost father/son relationship. Thus senior level relationships
are important and the leadership tone should be supportive rather than
directive. Leaders need to set a culture of organizational encouragement
including fostering of risk taking and idea generation. Creative work is, by its
very nature, uncertain and because such work frequently generates multiple
solutions there is an implication of significant risk. This suggests the need
to tolerate failure and thus leaders need to be very careful how and when they
evaluate creative endeavour. Because creative people will explore first and
confirm later any premature criticism at the embryonic stages of the creative
process runs the risk that they will withdraw. Some creative people are
sensitive and thus carefully crafted praise will be much more motivational than
casual admonition. Furthermore, good leaders should recognize not just the
outputs of creative endeavour but also the process that delivered it and thus
seek every opportunity to recognize and reward those who produce new ideas and re-affirm
this as a core element of the desired culture.
A desired culture can further be re-enforced by what
leaders attend to, measure and control. Creative people will not react well to
commercial goals and targets as these hint at the notion of control which is an
anathema to a creative process. Rather, research supports the notion that
setting output expectations rather than specific goals allows leaders to direct
the work without being unduly controlling as to how such work is accomplished. The
key here is for leaders to keep it broad brush and not to punish failure providing
that reasonable progress has been maintained. Thus keep process off the front
end of the creative drive but rather introduce it at the outset of the
innovation process to ensure that the route to market is well defined.
Leaders need to get diverse people to work together,
build organizational support for risky new ideas or products and create a
climate for supporting the ideas of others. This presupposes that the organization
both values and is tolerant of diversity of personalities. As noted earlier,
creative people frequently show personality traits that may be at odds with organizational
norms of behaviour. While diversity of thought is valuable in the early stages of
the creative process, this is less so in the latter stages, where ideas are
firmed up into concrete proposals as part of the innovation process.
Further
research suggests that information flows are key to ensuring that creative people
have access to stimulating data. Thus leaders should heed the way that channels
of communication are encouraged or dissuaded within an organization and seek to
ensure adequate information flows into it. The culture should encourage push
back, challenge and debate. What is important here is not necessarily that
these emanate from either inside or from outside of the organization but rather
that they help to generate increased frequency of ideas from those with diverse
perspectives.
Finally, leaders influence culture through the organization
design that they put into place. There is a notion within some industries that
the solution to creative endeavour is to bring the brightest and best to work
together. The Italian Renaissance during the fifteenth century was a time of
prodigious creative endeavour; however it was not the case that the great
artists or architects worked together. Rather, they competed with each other,
effectively driving each to higher standards of creative excellence. This is
not to suggest that healthy rivalry should preclude collaborative effort; more
that leaders need to think through how they harness creative competitiveness
within a collaborative work context. One example of this can be seen in GE’s
aviation business where the engine of the Boeing 777 was delivered by two
independent teams. One team won the design competition and the other team was
charged to challenge and debate the others’ team outputs to push the project to
higher standards.
Ten Top Tips For Fostering A Culture Of Creativity
Do:
• recognize your responsibilities as a cultural leader;• take the bureaucracy off the people at the sharp end of the creative process;• cheer the creative process not just the results;• not punish failure and remember that carrot works better than stick;• use intrinsic reward for creative people;• celebrate and foster diversity in all its forms;• encourage autonomy through setting output expectations for performance whilst allowing creative people to decide the means of delivery;• encourage free flow of information both within and into the organization;• ensure that healthy competitive rivalry is harnessed into collaborative endeavour that delivers better creative solutions quicker;• remember that your competitors are working away to be more creative than you; thus a culture of creativity is a ‘must do’ not a ‘nice-to-have’.
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Summary
Creativity and innovation are distinct entities
requiring differing knowledge, skills and abilities to execute well. Leadership
is the critical element in culture formation and indeed some researchers assert
that culture is innovation as it provides the sense mechanism to generate ideas
that may later be implemented as worthy products. Not all industries require
creative people but some (e.g. those at the cutting edge of technology or fashion)
will surely fold without it. Thus for these industries how to develop and foster
a culture of creativity is a strategic imperative.
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