Unleashing your organization’s creativity

“Creativity is seeing what others see and thinking what no one else ever thought.”- Albert Einstein.

The world is full of problems to solve and organizations exist precisely because they create solutions. As the leader of an organization, you cannot depend on your own thinking or the collective thinking of a chosen few. To help your organization thrive, you need to tap into the full intellectual capital at your disposal.

A company’s ability to innovate and tap into the creativity and innovative ideas of their employees, partners, suppliers and other stakeholders will determine how successful it will be in driving growth, improving performance and maintaining its competitive edge.

CEOs and Senior Leaders who want to lead innovation efforts but find themselves struggling to do so need to ask themselves some hard questions. What could they be doing that could be hindering the process? Are they wielding their power intelligently?

Maintain strategic perspective

Clearing defining the kind of innovation that will drive growth and meet strategic objectives and articulating this to employees will help them understand the CEO’s mindset and vision for the organization. It will also challenge them to think more deeply and not just offer familiar and incremental ideas. What are the overall strategic objectives and what does the organization aspire to be? The innovation and change strategy should be tied to the organizational strategy. Additionally, CEOs must not forget the importance of examining the environment and being agile enough to adapt to changing market or industry trends.

Open the lines of communication

The job of a CEO is to define and articulate a company’s mission and take an active role in fulfilling that mission. Are the lines of communication open? When a CEO engages with only his most senior advisers and executives and is inaccessible or disconnected from ninety percent of his employees then he may miss out on many potentially brilliant ideas. Additionally, many innovative ideas may not be voiced because employees lack the confidence to speak up in the presence of the CEO. Effective leadership that spurs innovation and risk taking is about opening the lines of communication from top to bottom.

Design Innovation Networks

Employees may respond to innovation differently. Some may be passionate advocates while others may be very uncomfortable about change. To effectively harness group creativity, the right connections and networks that bring together employees that can examine the potential of their individual ideas and synergize their efforts will help these ideas to be realized more quickly and effectively. New ideas tend to spur other ideas. To capitalize on this domino effect, cross functional project teams can be set up cross-fertilize ideas and tap into a variety of expertise and different perspectives.

Champion collaborative creativity

Diversity can be a catalyst for creativity. When people with diverse perspectives, backgrounds and experience are encouraged to collaborate and challenge each other, the solutions they devise could be game changing. Champion diversity during the hiring process and find ways to bring people together in your organization that would not normally work together. An emotionally safe workplace is a pre-requisite to the success of this endeavour. Ensure that you cultivate the right environment for ideas to be shared freely without fear of judgement or ridicule.

Focus on pain points

Encourage your customer service and business development team to genuinely listen to customers with empathy and interest. Invest in holding focus groups and doing primary research to really understand your customer segments’ needs and pain points. This data can serve as a starting point for creative brainstorming. This should be a regular process as society is constantly evolving as new challenges emerge.

Reward creativity

Designing competitions that challenge employees to solve problems for meaningful rewards can also jumpstart creativity in an organization. Incentivize creativity in your organization through bonuses and other perks to get people motivated. Sometimes, the reward can just be giving people a platform to share their ideas and showing them that they are valued.

Creativity has always been essential since the dawn of time. The organizations that truly prize it and capitalize on it are always one step ahead of their competition. Fostering the right management culture, creating an enabling operating environment, and championing individual creativity, need to be prioritized for your organization to truly be a leader in your industry.

Article by Shailja Sharma, SBS Faculty Member and Leadership and Career Coach