What I found most interesting is his comment that “people who work in a friendly environment that is tolerant of mistakes, and who are empowered to make decisions about how they do their jobs, arrive at the best possible solutions for serving customers.”  He also suggests putting your staff first, listening to them and following up on their ideas and suggestions.  All of these can be linked back to creative leadership.

Isn’t there research out there supporting “happy employees make for happy customers”?  What about happy and engaged employees lead to happy and engaged customers? 

Does anyone have supporting research and/or experiences?

1. Complexity is here to stay and will likely accelerate in the coming years
2. Their orgainzations do not currently have the skills or capacity to effectively deal with this complexity
3. Creativity is the #1 leadership skill needed over the next 5 years

I would push further on creativity as the top leadership skill to advocate for creative leadership.  To effectively address complex problems, leaders need to be more than just creative themselves.  Creative leadership is about leaders who encourage, support and create the climate, conditions and opportunities for others to express their own creative leadership and deliver valuable solutions to complex problems.

Creative leaders exhibit, encourage and support the following behaviors related to creativity and risk-taking:

• Ambiguity: are friendly with and tolerant of ambiguity; are willing to play with the unknown
• Inner-Directed: have an internal locus of control and are internally motivated; beat to their own drum
• Self-Acceptance: know and like themselves; are satisfied with and approve of their own behavior
• Independent: while they desire and have the ability to take in diverse data before making decisions, they make their own choices without worry about what others will think or do
• Uniqueness: value, respect and are open to differing perspectives, ideas and approaches (including their own) and leverages those differences to develop elegant solutions
• Authentic: are honest, genuine and respectful; act with integrity; seek first to understand and then to be understood; “walk their talk”
• Resilient: are flexible and adaptable; learn from both successes and failures and apply that learning to future actions

Knowles, Holton and Swanson (2005, pp. 256-263) offer the following characteristics of creative leaders:

• Have faith in people
• Offer challenging opportunities
• Delegate responsibility
• Involve their clients, employees, students, etc.
• Believe in and use the power of self-fulfilling prophecy
• Value individuality
• Encourage teams in which members work at what they are best at and enjoy most
• Seek to help others become their own self-actualizing persons
• Stimulate and reward creativity
• Exemplify creativity in their own behavior
• Provide environments that encourage and reward innovation in others
• Are committed to continuous change and are skillful in managing change
• Emphasize internal motivators over external ones
• Encourage people to be self-directing
• Are skilled as facilitators and consultants / coaches

Additionally, Sid Parnes (1985) offers the following qualities of creative leaders:

• Believe in the creative capacity of all people and communicate this expectation to others at work
• Open to ideas and different viewpoints
• Look for the positive in people and ideas (also offering political and resource support)
• Prone to question rather than tell
• Enthusiasm, self-evident sincerity and intrinsic motivation
• Sense of humor and playful
• Live happily with ambiguity
• Can remain on the sidelines
• Emotionally intelligent, express concern for others
• Model creativity to others, take calculated risks
• Spontaneous, flexible and accepting
• Build groups, leverage style differences, facilitate communication and exchange of ideas
• Recognize and reward creative efforts

References:

IBM. (2010). Capitalizing on complexity: Insights from the Global Chief Executive Study. 
http://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/en/gbe03297usen/GBE03297USEN.PDF

Knowles, M. S., Holton, E. F., & Swanson, R. A. (2005). The adult learner. Burlington, MA: Elsevier.

Parnes, S. (1985). Referenced in Creative leadership skills for the 21^st century. CREA Conference 2011 presented by Gerard Puccio, Laura Barbero Switalski and René Bernèche, April 2011, Sestri Levante, Italy.

A few insights from Rams:

• Design should be about making our lives a little bit easier and better.
• His credo: “Less but better.”
• He advocates that designers report to high-level management, like the Chairman of the Board or the entrepreneur versus marketing.
• Only a max of 10 companies in the world, he says, are taking design honestly.
• Gestalt is about design and the world needs gestalt engineers or engineering design.

How often do you hear in meetings: “We tried that before. It didn’t work.”?  That kind of thinking keeps people, teams and organizations living in the past and, in effect, destroys the space for creativity. It shuts people down from generating options that might work.

Consider instead that the conditions and people involved today may  be different from “back then”.  How might you engage what is now, what is current, to generate ideas and move forward?  How might you step out of the past to engage the imagination of yourself and others to think differently about the current situation to move forward?

Additional questions to consider:

• What did you learn about the “last time”?
  • What aspects worked well?
  • Which ones did not work well?
  • Why?
• What were the conditions at that time?
  • How are they same or different from now?
  • How might you apply learning from before to what you are attempting to do now?

Learning from the past is important in moving forward.  Being stuck in the past blocks forward movement.  Which one will you choose?

“new discoveries in neuroscience, social psychology, and anthropology offer provocative insights into the barriers of transformation. They show us that our views of reality are embedded largely in our unconscious mind. Operating below the threshold of our conscious awareness, our beliefs and assumptions shape our experience… (p. 39)”

Her comments support the idea that beliefs and assumptions drive our behavior and that we often are unaware of those driving forces.  They also align with the Theoretical Elements of Behavior model I created in 2006 and modified in 2007.

Ms. Schlitz comments, “the data calls for humility to question our deepest assumptions” (p. 40).  Through reflection, meditation and/or energetic work, hidden aspects of the personal subconscious can become known, allowing us to change our beliefs and assumptions and thus modify our thoughts, fears, emotions, words, actions and our experiences.

Behavior change is difficult without understanding our underlying beliefs and assumptions. Something in those underlying beliefs and assumptions holds us back from moving forward in change. When we uncover what is holding us back, we can make new choices about what to belief, assume, think and do and thus overcome the resistance to change.

When talking with clients about culture change, a crucial component is discussing the underlying beliefs and assumptions that drive current cultural behaviors as well as the beliefs and assumptions that will be needed for a cultural shift. Unless the beliefs and assumptions held by members of the organization are addressed, you will likely be left with behavioral shifts that are only temporary or have unknown or undesirable consequences.

Ms. Schlitz also writes that “experiments reveal a truth about human nature: belief blinds us to alternative points of view and can even lead to dogmatic assertions about things we know nothing about” (p. 40). The impact that dogmatic belief can have on ideation is that we judge ideas too early – including our own. We negate what is outside of our belief system as not possible. The realm of the new and different requires us to ask the questions: “What if…?” and “What else…?” in order to continually question and challenge us to go beyond what fits with our current beliefs.  Yet, even so, until we reflect upon and challenge underlying beliefs and assumptions, we still may not see what is possible.

To move beyond what is not only requires an open mind and willingness to question, it requires that we question and reflect upon the underlying beliefs and assumptions that drive our behavior. To scratch the surface of only looking at action leaves us vulnerable to temporary or superficial change. It leaves us vulnerable to only accepting the idea that best fits with how we think things are or should be instead of how they could be.

Go deep. Question. Reflect. Challenge. Shift.

This is my first foray into a blog and I’m quite excited to have a venue for my passion for writing.  Who knows where the thoughts and ideas will take me (or you)…

Contact us with questions or for a FREE GOLD call to discuss your needs and opportunities to drive sustainable growth in your organization.

Innovation is creativity in action.  It is applied creativity.  Organizations that develop a habit of applied creativity or a “creative habit” are more likely to be innovative and have long-term success.  Louis Musante states that “Only cultures that can help companies anticipate and adapt to change will be associated with superior performance over long periods.  Nonadaptive cultures were found to be complex, bureaucratic, usually risk-averse, and low on creativity.”

Forming a creative habit requires an organization to change its current habits, so that all employees work from the same habit and collaborate to innovate.  Creativity and change are interwoven; creativity spurs change and change requires creativity in thought and action.  Creativity and change also involve uncertainty, risk, and deviance from the norm, all of which many humans seek to avoid because our habits, our normal and unconscious way of acting, are challenged.  While habits help us think and act faster and specialize in various areas, they generally limit our ability to break free, make new connections, and generate novel ideas.

Therefore, to increase creativity, organizations need to exert conscious effort to overcome their current habits.  They need to move from current ways of doing business to develop a creative habit. 

Another habit, you say? Yes. The difference is that, with a creative habit, organizations follow a process that intentionally moves employees to continuously think and act in a way that encourages, supports, and delivers new, novel, or breakthrough ideas. 

Read more: Creative Habit_MNODN_Sept 2005

Or, learn more about how you can develop your creative habit with our Innovate Like an Artist™ workshop.