CREATIVITY...

Although creativity is often considered as trait of the privileged few, any individual or team can become more creative—better able to generate the breakthroughs that stimulate growth and performance. To perceive things differently, we must bombard our brains with things it has never encountered. Only by forcing our brains to re-categorize information and move beyond our habitual thinking patterns can we begin to imagine truly novel alternatives. Four practical ways for executives to shake up ingrained perceptions and enhance creativity—both personally and with their direct reports and broader work teams:

Immerse yourself

Would-be innovators need to break free of pre-existing views. Unfortunately, the human mind is surprisingly adroit at supporting its deep-seated ways of viewing the world while shifting out evidence to the contrary.

When presented with overwhelming facts, many people (including well-educated ones) simply won’t abandon their deeply held opinions. The antidote is personal experience: seeing and experiencing something firsthand can shake people up in ways, that abstract discussions around conference room tables can’t.

Overcome orthodoxies

Exploring deep-rooted company (or even industry) orthodoxies is another way to jolt your brain out of the familiar in an idea generation session, a team meeting, or simply a contemplative moment alone at your desk. All organizations have conventional wisdom about “the way we do things,” unchallenged assumptions about what customers want, or supposedly essential elements of strategy that are rarely if ever questioned.

By identifying and then systematically challenging such core beliefs, companies can not only improve their ability to embrace new ideas but also get a jump on the competition. The rewards for success are big: Best Buy’s $3 million acquisition of Geek Squad in 2002, for example, went against the conventional wisdom that consumers wouldn’t pay extra to have products installed in their homes. Today, Geek Squad generates more than $1 billion in annual revenues.

Executives looking to liberate their creative instincts by exploring company orthodoxies can begin by asking questions about customers, industry norms, and even business models—and then systematically challenging the answers. For example:

• What business are we in?
• What level of customer service do people expect?
• What would customers never be willing to pay for?
• What channel strategy is essential to us?

Use analogies

Five important “discovery” skills for innovators: associating, questioning, observing, experimenting, and networking. The most powerful overall driver of innovation was associating—making connections across “seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas.”

Create constraints

Another simple tactic you can use to encourage creativity is to impose artificial constraints on your business model. This move injects some much-needed “stark necessity” into an otherwise low-risk exercise.

SEVEN STEPS TO BETTER BRAINSTORMING...

Companies run on good ideas. From R&D groups seeking pipelines of innovative new products to ops teams probing for time-saving process improvements to CEOs searching for that next growth opportunity—all senior managers want to generate better and more creative ideas consistently in the teams they form, participate in, and manage.

The most common method of using groups to generate ideas at companies around the world is familiar: a group of people, begins by listening passively as a moderator (often an outsider who knows little about your business) urges you to “Get creative!” and “Think outside the box!” and cheerfully reminds you that “There are no bad ideas!”. The result? Some attendees remain stone-faced throughout the day, others contribute sporadically, and a few loudly dominate the session with their pet ideas.

The trick is to leverage the way people actually think and work in creative problem-solving situations.  Call this approach “brainsteering”, and while it requires more preparation than traditional brainstorming, the results are worthwhile: better ideas in business situations as diverse as inventing new products and services, attracting new customers, designing more efficient business processes, or reducing costs, among others.

1. Know your organization’s decision-making criteria

One reason good ideas hatched in corporate brainstorming sessions often go nowhere is that they are beyond the scope of what the organization would ever be willing to consider. “Think outside the box!” is an unhelpful exhortation if external circumstances or company policies create boxes that the organization truly must live within.

Managers hoping to spark creative thinking in their teams should therefore start by understanding (and in some cases shaping) the real criteria the company will use to make decisions about the resulting ideas.

2. Ask the right questions

Decades of academic research shows that traditional, loosely structured brainstorming techniques (“Go for quantity—the greater the number of ideas, the greater the likelihood of winners!”) are inferior to approaches that provide more structure. Therefore build your workshop around a series of “right questions” that your team will explore in small groups during a series of idea generation sessions (more about these later). The trick is to identify questions with two characteristics. First, they should force your participants to take a new and unfamiliar perspective. The second characteristic of a right question is that it limits the conceptual space your team will explore, without being so restrictive that it forces particular answers or outcomes.

3. Choose the right people

The rule here is simple: pick people who can answer the questions you’re asking. As obvious as this sounds, it’s not what happens in many traditional brainstorming sessions, where participants are often chosen with less regard for their specific knowledge than for their prominence on the org chart.

4. Divide and conquer

Don’t have your participants hold one continuous, rambling discussion among the entire group for several hours. Instead, have them conduct multiple, discrete, highly focused idea generation sessions among subgroups of three to five people—no fewer, no more. When you assign people to subgroups, it’s important to isolate “idea crushers” in their own subgroup. These people are otherwise suitable for the workshop but, intentionally or not, prevent others from suggesting good ideas. They come in three varieties: bosses, “big mouths,” and subject matter experts.

5. On your mark, get set, go!

Remember, your team is accustomed to traditional brainstorming, where the flow of ideas is fast, furious, and ultimately shallow. Today, however, each subgroup will thoughtfully consider and discuss a single question for a half hour. No other idea from any source—no matter how good—should be mentioned during a subgroup’s individual session.

One last warning: no matter how clever your participants, no matter how insightful your questions, the first five minutes of any subgroup’s brainsteering session may feel like typical brainstorming as people test their pet ideas or rattle off superficial new ones. Better thinking soon emerges as the subgroups try to improve shallow ideas while sticking to the assigned questions.

6. Wrap it up

One thing not to do is have the full group choose the best ideas from the pile, as is common in traditional brainstorming. The experience of picking winners can also be demotivating, particularly if the real decision makers overrule the group’s favourite choices later. Instead, have each subgroup privately narrow its own list of ideas to a top few and then share all the leading ideas with the full group to motivate and inspire participants.

7. Follow up quickly

Decisions and other follow-up activities should be quick and thorough. The odds that concrete action will result from an idea generation exercise tend to decline quickly as time passes and momentum fades. Participants are often desperate for feedback and eager for indications that they have at least been heard. By respectfully explaining why certain ideas were rejected, you can help team members produce better ideas next time. They will participate next time, often more eagerly than ever.

CHANGING ORGANIZATIONS...

General Motors, IBM, and Sears: Three companies facing a need for dramatic change that have already tried, but failed, at major change efforts. The most important idea of all for companies like GM, IBM, and Sears is that those pushing for organizational improvement--whether they are external members of the board, major investors, or top executives--must deal with cultural and behavioral obstacles to change. Specifically, attempts at organizational change must consider three key features of organizational life: the firm's culture, the leadership of the change effort, and the existing network of power. The key point here is that rather than changing culture directly, management must work with and through the existing culture to transform the organization. Whether the culture itself changes is secondary; the important objective is to improve the company.

One of the discussions of organizational culture to reveal (1) the role of leadership in dealing with culture and (2) the form that leadership needs to take. There is a need to consider organizational power in organizational change efforts. Goals are accomplished in organizations largely through the use of power and politics, so it seems fairly obvious that changing an organization also requires their intelligent use.

Organizational culture was the hot topic of the management literature of the 1980s. New techniques for assessing and changing culture appeared in the organization development (OD) field, and a wide range of consultants on culture appeared almost overnight (some promising to change a firm's culture almost as fast).

A key finding here comes from a study performed by Geert Hofstede and his associates (1990), who examined organizational culture in 20 units of ten organizations in Denmark and the Netherlands. They found that differences among the cultures could be explained by the practices employees of each firm said they shared in common (similar to what Schein called "artifacts"). Hofstede et al. further concluded that differences among organizational cultures can be described by focusing on very few--perhaps only six to eight--dimensions of organizational practice. Two key dimensions they found were the extent to which the culture was employee- versus job-oriented and whether it was process- or results-oriented.

Assessing a firm's culture is not the same as changing it. Furthermore, it cannot be changed by top management. Note that the most recent attempts to change GM and IBM involved pressure from outside board members to replace top management teams. GM's team was from the Roger Smith school, and IBM's had come up through the "mainframe" ranks. It's too early to say, but bringing in new top management teams---with new interactions and relationships--may be what is needed to turn those two companies around. The influence of outsiders--the firm's environment--is further highlighted in a study by George Gordon (1991). He concluded that the basic assumptions and values of business organizations are influenced substantially by three outside factors: customer requirements, the competitive environment, and societal expectations. Organizations facing dynamic and complex competitive environments can be successful with cultures that are flexible and adaptable. U.S. auto makers have known for some time now that they face this type of environment and must change accordingly (note Chrysler's efforts in recent years to downsize). Companies in the high-technology area, facing rapidly changing consumer demands, support cultures that call for risk-taking and individual initiative. Intel's culture has shown recognition of this idea since the company's inception.

Getting Started...

Learning comes with every step we take in life...

Sometimes we realize that we have learnt and sometimes the learning is so small that we fail to recognize it...

I hope... the day we start recognizing each n every (Good) learning (and start practicing them) is the day we would say that, "LEARNING is my PASSION..."

                                                                                    -- Altamash