Companies That Restrain Creativity Can No Longer Compete

Companies that restrain creativity can no longer compete with companies that champion individual creativity.

All too often, companies inadvertently create an atmosphere that discourages creative ideas from developing. When it comes down to it, creativity cannot compete with a company’s political and bureaucratic structure. Creativity happens in the work place. You can’t predict or control who will be creative, how creativity presents itself or what the outcome will be. The best thing you can do for your company is prepare for creativity to happen and leverage it when it does.

So how do you as a business owner or manager go about enhancing your company’s ability to benefit from the creative ideas of your people?

• Make Creativity Mandatory: Diligently work towards developing an environment that champions individual creativity by building it into your company or departmental policy. This may mean building in voluntary time for employees explore new ideas or solutions to existing products.
• Collaborate or Die: Creativity does not happen in a vacuum. Inspiration precedes creativity and not the other way around. Creativity happens by making previously unforeseen connections. By looking for new ways to have your people interact, you can foster new and innovative solutions to existing problems. Find ways to move your people around and open up new communication channels amongst your team.
• Exclude Nobody: Get out of the mindset that only management-level employees are capable of creative solutions. The new college grad or the guy from the mailroom may have the next innovative solution. Find a way to solicit and manage input from everyone in your department.
• Level the Playing Field: As a business owner or manager, it is your job to allow the best ideas to win. Everyone must be included in the process and share in the idea’s success. It is your responsibility to keep political power plays out of the process.
• Make it Safe thru Creative Leadership: There is no worse scenario than to not follow thru with your new commitment to foster creativity or to not create a safe environment for it to be developed. Your people will need an environment that makes it safe for them to come up with “dumb” or “crazy” ideas in order for others to build on them.

Creativity is what separates the organizations that just survive from the organizations that thrive. When people are doing work that they love and when the work is valued and recognized then you have an environment that fosters creativity. By committing to developing creativity, your people will have developed a closer working bond with their teammates and have more flexibility to adapt and compete in a constantly changing business environment.

"American companies adopt about 38 percent of all creative ideas presented to them, as compared to Japanese companies who adopt about 90 percent"
- Corporate Creativity: How Innovation and Improvement Actually Happens.