A creative environment is one where people feel comfortable in expressing their
ideas and where constructive support is given in the development and analysis
of those ideas.
You are in a creative environment when
Your ideas are listened to and investigated before being judged.
You feel appreciated when you suggest new ideas.
You can suggest solutions to other groups without feeling like you are
intruding.
Your manager spends time with you and explains the reasons and politics
behind projects.
You are given the freedom to do your work in your own way.
You are not observed or judged all the time.
You do not have to pass all of your messages through your manager.
Experimental methods are encouraged.
You feel comfortable talking with anyone in your organization (top managers
included).
You feel comfortable talking to your subordinates without having to order
them about.
There is someone that will listen to your ideas.
The generation of good ideas is rewarded, verbally or otherwise.
You are treated with respect and as someone who can contribute to the
organization.
You are appreciated for what you do.
You are appreciated for who you are.
How do you start creating this environment?
Of course, you say, this sounds great, but how can I create such an environment?
The answer is simple (and nothing new!): do to others what you would like done
to yourself. You will find that if you give creative space to other people,
they will give you space to be creative back.
You need to stop criticizing or prejudging other people's ideas and should
actually encourage people to share them with you.
It's your job to help people turn their unformed ideas into reality by
giving encouragement and suggestions and by asking helpful questions.
You must never steal their ideas or pretend they are your own or people
will stop sharing their ideas with you.
You must be bold and ask people for their ideas even if you appear slightly
foolish for asking and even if you have a valid suggestion yourself. If
you do not use their ideas, explain why not but remember to thank them anyway.
Seeking opinions builds respect and confidence. It also builds a creative
environment.
"Seek first to understand, then to be understood."
Tips for specific roles
Tips for directors
You are in a much easier position to change the environment of your company.
However, you must bear in mind that the current environment has been established
by yourself, your colleagues and your predecessors over a long period of time.
To really change the environment of a company it is your influence and power
which will make the difference. You have the authority to make the changes happen
to the whole company whereas people lower down the management structure can
only influence a much smaller part. They may be struggling against a wall of
critical thinking and rules whereas you are in a position to change those rules
and create new ones which will increase creativity. You are a role model for
how to succeed in your company so you cannot just tell others to be more creative
if you do not accept their ideas.
Start an initiative into creativity and brainstorming. Make someone responsible
for it so that it actually happens.
Recognize that it will not take a short time to change the whole company
culture.
Give training to all your staff on creativity and brainstorming (eg.
contact us
to arrange for this website to be installed on your own network).
Send a message to everyone to say that your company lives by the ideas
of its staff and that you are backing an initiative to increase the generation
and introduction of new ideas.
Tell every group to discuss creativity and the need for new ideas.
Start an employee suggestion scheme with prizes for the best ideas. Reward
all ideas and the people that make them. (Read up about employee suggestions
schemes - it's a complex issue.)
Let your employees know that you are open to suggestions and that just
because you give a specific solution doesn't mean that you aren't open for
alternatives and you don't like to be challenged. (Too many employees are
worried to speak out against the ideas of their managers even if they know
the idea will not work.)
Thank people when they challenge your ideas. Be careful not to be defensive.
They are challenging the idea, not you!
Reward people who have lots of little ideas, not just those that have
the biggest ones.
Run your own brainstorming sessions and actively join in. Be the first
to suggest radical ideas and to put forward proposals which contradict the
current way of working. Acknowledge that the ideas are only put forward
as a stimulus.
Ask to be invited to brainstorming sessions held by people lower down
the corporate ladder. Be a good role model and let someone else lead the
session. At the end, thank and congratulate the facilitator however they
perform. You could later send any suggestions with a lighthearted memo.
Discuss corporate strategy with people who are not normally the decision
makers. The people in the field are often the people who really know the
direction the market is going.
Start up lists of problems and opportunities which you would like answers
to and invite suggestions from everyone. Publish the list of probortunities
and ask people to add to them. (NB. You don't have to publish the lists
of the solutions if you don't want the competition to know about them.)
Get everyone in your company to prepare probortunity
lists for their own work and to share them with their managers. If you ever
wanted to spot gaps in the market this is an ideal way.
You are in a position where you can highly influence the creativity within your
group, yet will often find it hard to change the corporate structure and company-wide
rules. You will be able to help your company become more creative but you will
be much more able to make a creative environment for those employees under your
direct supervision. The expectation is that by doing this for your own group,
you will all exceed expectations and that you will be able to tell your colleagues
how to do it. Meanwhile, you will try to manage your managers using a creative
probortunity list which will highlight to more senior managers what can be achieved
through the creative brainstorming process.
Tips for workers and new starters
When you have no management authority or you have just joined a company at the
bottom of the management ladder then you will probably think you are in a very
weak position for developing an environment where you and others can be creative.
When there seem to be strict rules for doing everything and there is an adversarial
corporate culture it can be a daunting task seek any kind of change and it's
easy to feel that you should just go with the flow, keep your head down and
do what everyone else is doing. This is especially true if your manager tells
you how to do your work and they check regularly to see if you are doing so.
If the top managers of the company have got there by being purely analytical
and by ordering their subordinates about then it is easy to follow their example
and forget about being creative and just follow what everyone else did to get
promoted. Unfortunately you will become bored, uncreative and critical, and
you will be sacrificing yourself for a meaningless existence. You need to decide
if you can change the working environment around you. If you decide you cannot
change it then leave and get a better job.
Learn about creative thinking techniques and practise them so that you
can turn on your creativity instantly.
Organize training on (and become a trainer of) creative thinking courses
for your colleagues. Say that it has always been an interest of yours.
Organize brainstorming sessions, initially with your peers and then invite
your managers along later. Tell them about our great website with free training
(www.brainstorming.co.uk).
If there are no people to brainstorm with then start individual
brainstorming using the advanced techniques. Buy software
or other materials that can assist you.
Show the results of your brainstorming to your colleagues and managers.
Show them the long list of initial ideas and then indicate which ones you
have selected. Explain how you arrived at the final ideas from the initial
ones. Explain the thinking behind it and tell them that you find the techniques
useful.
Whenever you have a superb idea, tell people that you got it from using
advanced brainstorming techniques. This will not only make them interested
in the techniques but they will also give you the freedom and credibility
to be seen using them at later dates.
Start up lists of problems and opportunities facing your department, company
and industry. Share them with your boss. Specifically tell them that you
are not putting forward suggestions but that you are thinking about the
wider picture and want to find out if these problems were the real ones.
Tell them that you will think about the solutions later.
Start up lists of problems and opportunities facing you and your job role.
Share them with your boss at the earliest opportunity so they learn that
you are always looking for problems to solve. This way they learn not to
just expect polished and finalised solutions to be presented to them.
Encourage your managers to produce their own list of problems and opportunities.
Explain how useful they will find it and how beneficial it will be to show
their own manager that they are thinking of the future and trying to influence
it.
Learn the reasons why creative thinking techniques work so that if anyone
is critical of your ideas then you can readily explain your reasoning. Why
not educate others in what has worked for you?
Be forgiving and understanding of ideas given by other people. Your own
tolerance of challenging ideas will be reflected by others. Be open to ambiguity.
Openly thank your manager for the flexibility and space that they give
you to be creative. Explain to them how helpful this is to you and how good
and productive it makes you feel. Thank them to their face and also tell
your manager's manager and your manager's colleagues. Become the person
that people want to give creative space to, because they will be rewarded
for it.
In a very harsh environment you may need to analyze all of your ideas
and only ever present your best ones. It may be necessary to just tell your
manager that you have specific ideas and that you got them using creative
thinking techniques, but not to reveal the intermediate ideas if they will
be criticized or taken into consideration.
If your company encourages training in creative thinking you could go
on the course or become a trainer yourself. If they don't have a course,
ask if you can set one up using software and all that you've learnt from
this website.
If you can, speak to a director and ask them what they are doing to increase
the creativity of the company. They may not know that they can. Too many
people think that they need to employ "creative people" and they
do not realize that everyone is creative and that their creativity can be
brought out using creative thinking techniques.
One of the key things for workers to realize is that once people think you are
a creative person, it is only then that they give you the space to be creative.
They will also attribute your successes to being creative. The more you mention
your use of creativity and how helpful it is, the more people will accept you
having good ideas because of it, and they will also accept that you need thinking
time to generate your ideas.
If you have any tips and help you would like to add to this list, please
email them to us
and we will share them with the world.
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