Every Organization has a Hideaway - 3 Steps to Unleashing Creativity

Want your company to be more creative and innovative?  Are you wondering, as you walk to and from the lunchroom or through the factory, “How can I change the company to be more innovative and forward thinking?”

Companies have spent the last 20 years focused on productivity, do more with the same or worse – do more with less.  It’s no wonder why today we find ourselves in need of innovation and creativity, they are, after all, the key components to an organizations' competitive advantage.   With the "do more" approach it has become even harder to have time to focus on innovation and creativity - there is only so many hours in a week.   Without a doubt, the productivity gains provided the needed results at that time but the time has come to innovate or die (recalling a similar saying from Alan Deutschman “Change or Die”, 2005), but where does innovation and creativity come from and how does a leader tap into it regularly?   For example, Kellogg and the cereal-world is in the midst of major changes.  And General Mills, just last week, is changing by moving away from genetically modified ingredients – or is that just marketing?  That’s for another time.

I have been tweeting and writing about “Thinking Differently” over the last year.  Thinking differently is the first of three things a leader must do in order to unleash creativity within the organization.  The second and third are “Feel and Engage”.   Feeling is that gut instinct we all have yet it comes a distant second to the spreadsheet of data we use instead to make decisions.  No offense to my accounting friends and family but not everything is in the numbers.  Lastly, engaging is not easy for leaders who are often hunkered down in the office, guarded by an executive assistant and busy itinerary – sound familiar?  Engaging is really about removing some walls, turning the lunchroom into a playroom where ideas are encouraged and rewarded, and being more than visible but also approachable, etc.

But let’s go back to the first one and what I’ve learned from my students, who by the way, think differently, and my clients who are challenged with more day-to-day issues than ever before and who hardly have time to think strategically, let alone creatively.   When I am meeting with a client, I make it a point to tour the facilty and there I talk to everyone I can about the product, the customer and their love of the job.  When the tour is complete I often turn to the executive with a recommendation to engage more.  Small businesses do this and inturn we say they are more responsive and flexible, but a big business can do this to.  Every organization has, what I call, a hideaway(s).  A Hideaway can be someone who shows up, does a good job, and never says “Boo!” and that same individual is carrying your starting point for creativity and innovation as they have an idea.  We often make the mistake of organizing cross-functional teams once or twice a year where we include non-management type titles but that is not enough and is probably the reason why step two is data-driven.

Think differently