Unlocking Business Creativity

Creativity often gets a bad rap from people who feel uncomfortable with the chaos and freedom that creativity sometimes thrives in. For the control freak micro manager, steps can be taken to strengthen the workplace’s response and engagement with creative energy without stifling it.

Harnessing creative energy can allow business goals to be reached more effectively if employees have creative problem solving mindsets.  Allow creative freedom to happen and you’ll probably see an improvement in productivity.

Check out this infographic illustrating how essential creative skills are.

According to research by Teresa M. Amabile of Harvard University, three components are needed to enhance creativity in business :

• Expertise (technical, procedural and intellectual knowledge),
• Creative thinking skills (how flexibly and imaginatively people approach problems),
• and Motivation (especially intrinsic motivation).

Motivation is perhaps not as simple as what you think! There are two types of motivation:

• extrinsic motivation – external factors influence you, for example you’re afraid your boss is going to fire you so you work harder or you are hoping to be rewarded and want money.

• intrinsic motivation – this is about having a passion which drives you to excel, reach satisfaction etc.

As  a manager, team leader or business owner you can take these steps to encourage motivation:

• Challenge – match people with the right tasks, responsibilities and activities
• Freedom – once they understand the big picture, let people figure out their own ways of reaching the goals;
• Resources – such as time, money, space etc. Give people what they need and don’t expect people to share minimal resources;
• Work group features –  divergent (age, culture etc) these are supportive teams where members share the excitement, willingness to help and recognize each others talents;
• Encouragement from above –and we don’t mean heaven! Authority, management, supervisors etc must support the team, give recognition etc.
• Organizational support – value emphasis, information sharing, collaboration and cross pollination.

If you establish an organisation that is supportive of creativity, you are more likely to find appropriate, useful and actionable innovations surfacing.