Create Lions before you are trodden over by your own herd of sheep.
By Ferey Kian
Kian Finance Authority
Graft Innovation and creativity as the principles of your business strategies, because, later, it’s much harder to change what has become the culture of your organization.
Just as individuals need support to come up with new ideas, organizations need fertile ground which supports creativity and innovation, whether your business is in service industry or product driven.
I like to share with you some of the most useful topics I have learned from various experts, my clients, students, and 20 years of my own experience on innovation, creativity and design. You will find more sources (and more ideas) in the references below.
Your business strategy should call for everyone in the organization to innovate–daily. Creativity and innovation need to become a fabric of your organization (as the example of Innovation in business strategy at Whirlpool can show). Please check out the link after you read this.
How is your organization set up?
To set the stage to unleash creativity in your business, look at its foundation:
- Is your organization structured its strategies to permit innovation and creativity to flourish?
- Do you have creative and innovative team?
Do you encourage people to think creatively or your expect them to follow the rules.
Walt Disney created an organization that everyone who ever worked there, think of himself/or herself as Walt Disney. Don’t you want to duplicate yourself?
You want your clients “come back and bring their friends” to your business, as Disney suggested, don’t you? So you need your team to be so charged with inspiration that cannot wait to tell their friends about how THEIR ideas contributed to innovations in your business.
An excellent example of an organization that embedded creativity in its core strategy is the Disney Organization. Although Walt himself did not support his staff to venture outside his ideas, he created an organization that, even today, everyone who works there, think of himself/or herself as Walt Disney. He found a way to duplicate himself, many times over–you need to do this too.
To see if an idea can be implemented, it’s best to set up processes, procedures and structures
See more on these in my Business Strategy video.
Steps to take to make things happen:
Naturally, generating new ideas is the first step, but “application” has to come next; think how one walks naturally: once your right foot stepped forward, the left has to move, and if you have ideas applied, you start going! Once you came up with an idea, you need to find ways to set things in motion, and see how practical it is, therefore, Implementation is putting ideas into practice.
From among a dozen ideas you have lying around…
- Select one idea–or approach, to solve a problem or create new opportunities.
- Develop it to a bite size segment, or try to show signposts and benchmarks to measure progress.
- See if the idea can be duplicated and commercialized, and then…
- Commit to it and take action despite naysayers.
To see if an idea can be implemented, it’s best to set up schedules, processes, procedures and structures; A to Z, that allow the timely and effective execution of projects
Release the power of your imagination:
The best way to unleash your creativity is to actually DO this exercise. Be sure to type answers as completely as you can:
- What are the areas you organization can venture in that has so far been overlooked? What is it that prevents you from seeing the opportunities?
- What is it that limits your imagination?
- Is it that people may not grasp it and welcome it?
- Are you aware of your own mental barriers? What are they?
- Why haven’t you taken any action?
- Fear of failure? What are at risks?
- How will you feel if you succeed?
- What prevents your team to innovate in products or services you already offer, or create a new line of opportunity?
- Are you an inspirational leader who leverages the collective wisdom or you like to micromanage your staff?
Maybe your staff is throwing party when you are out,… and then, when you need them, they hide behind their works. Is this the culture you have implanted?
The one with the nose on the grindstone does not innovate!
Some people think that to be a creative problem solver, one has to have experience on the field. Not true. There was no personal computer for Steve Jobs to come up with the Apple. Neither, was there a plane around before the Wright Brothers took off; and (if Tesla wouldn’t mind) there was no electricity before Tom Edison. (See my blog on how they raised from ashes below) On the other hand some people take innovation to be their only objective in life, as some people think money is their main goal. You and I know that ideas, innovations, and money are only tools to achieve our goals, and, hopefully, they are not mistaken for goals.
Having said that, once you did come up with an idea, now you need some time to develop it, and work on it, until it’s proven to be commercialized; and to weed out all the unnecessary steps to develop a short path to the goal.
Just as you can develop leadership, creativity is nurtured by motivation, positive feedback and inspirations. Creativity and Innovations don’t magically happen. They need to be sowed, and carefully imbedded in the vision, mission, and strategy of the organization. It has to be the heir apparent in all your services and products.
Despite common belief, creativity is not intrinsic, intuitive, and genetic, although these are inarguably a plus for those who may have inherited such qualities, even Mozart couldn’t be the genius we have come to appreciate without inspiration, encouragement, and…. practice.
If a job can capture one’s mind and soul, there’s no meaning to TGIF.
To watch the act, set the stage!
I have had many experiences with people who told me creativity or innovation is not their little thing . I know a cashier who worked for over 20 years at the cash register, who told me creativity is the boss’s job. One of my old set-up crew at the Miami Arena told me that the reason Bono fell off from the stage during a rehearsal (on the long stage set up going through the Arena), could be fixed (as he did it) with a minimum cost, saving us millions in damages, lawsuits and embarrassments. You CAN encourage your staff to step gingerly outside the red circle you may have drawn around them. In short, innovation has to be all around us just like the atmosphere around the earth–even within the 6 feet radius of anyone’s desk. Creativity and innovation engages our heart and mind, and if a job can engage one’s mind and soul, there’s no meaning to TGIF. People look forward to speak about their passion 24-7.
Having said that innovation and creativity can be honed and nurtured, I am not holding my breath to see if everyone is on the wagon. All I’m saying is this: You need to have the door open. Innovation will enter when the time is ripe. The picture hopefully says the rest.
Complacency is such a lovely Dungeon-Master.
Although it takes leaders to inspire creativity, it needs managers to implement it efficiently. We need both: One to untie your wings, the other to show you the nest, and help you lay those golden eggs.
One of the persisting old school practices in most American enterprises is the over-dependency on how things were done in the past, and how to increase the quantity to beat the past performances. The ingenuity of Americans however, as Mark Twain once observed, and Jim Rohn rephrased is this: To succeed doing the opposite: to do things that has never been done before; to pull things out of the thin air; to envision what wasn’t there, to be perceptive amidst confusion. This is the American way.
Exactly as our kids can relate to aliens better than they can relate to cows, oaks, or pelicans all around them, if we can visualize your ideas, we will relate to them. Little kids may not have a clue about what their burgers are made of, but they have a good image of a spaceships and aliens. This is the secret of Hollywood: imagination can be more real than the real thing. For that matter we are all in a different Matrix?
We can relate to fictions out of Hollywood better than facts of Washington. {as a side note, that’s perhaps why we need politicians to look and act like celebrities, and fib about problems that don’t mean anything, instead of addressing the real issues.}
Let your staff and your clients see how your innovation can help them in the way they can visualize your ideas. This needs to be your major focus. Do you have a plan that can help us visualize your work before you tell us about it?
To summarize: Your business strategy needs to harness everyone’s imagination, creativity, and innovation. Don’t try to shoehorn your creative staff back into their cubicles.
Some of the sources used in this article and more reading material:
Creative Intelligence, 1/e (A. Rowe)
No additional online materials are available for this textbook.
>>Click here to access the Rowe website
Managing Innovation, Design and Creativity , 1/e (B. Stamm)
No additional online materials are available for this textbook.
>>Click here to access the Stamm website
The Power of Impossible Thinking, 1/e (Wind and Crook)
No additional online materials are available for this textbook.
>>Click here to access the Wind/Crook website