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TRANSCRIPT
Five Ways to Boost Creativity
Copyright © Inventium 2012. Material must not be reproduced without permission
1. Why brainstorming is bollocks – and what to do about it
How many times do you hear someone utter the phrase “Let’s have a brainstorm” in an
average month at work? If you work in a department where creative problem solving is
critical (which is arguably any department), then you probably hear this phrase quite
frequently.
Brainstorming is a technique that was invented back in the 1930s by Alex Osborn. And
despite the tool being very old and dusty, many organisations still believe it is God’s gift
to idea generation.
There are actually several big problems that come hand in hand with
brainstorming. For example, a lot of us don’t generate our best ideas most effectively
in a group - but rather, when we have time to think about it on our own for a bit.
Likewise, brainstorms suit highly extraverted people who are comfortable putting their
thoughts on the table, but less extraverted people do not work so effectively in these
types of situations. And in addition, Groupthink, in which group members start to think
in behave in similar ways, can significantly reduce the effectiveness of a brainstorm.
At Inventium, we recommend using our technique of Shifting to overcome the huge
shortcomings of brainstorming. Shifting involves firstly getting people to generate
ideas on their own for 5 or so minutes. And then, after people have had enough
individual idea generation time, get the group to remerge, give everyone a turn to share
their ideas, and then as a group, flesh out the ideas that have the most potential.
Over at Harvard University, some Psychologists compared the results of this technique to a group of people engaging in a traditional 20 minute brainstorm. They found that the group that employed the Shifting technique generated significantly more and significantly broader ideas.
So if you do decide to use this technique, you can expect a whole lot more ideas, and more diverse ones at that.
Five Ways to Boost Creativity
Copyright © Inventium 2012. Material must not be reproduced without permission
2. Recognise, but don’t reward
Think back over the past few years and consider how your performance at work has
been rewarded. If you’re like most people, you probably received cash bonuses based on
your performance against sales, profit or market share. The majority of companies have
complex systems of remuneration based on your contribution to the bottom line.
Many universities and researchers around the world have studied pay-for-performance
reward systems. In one such study, researchers from Harvard University found
that individuals who were rewarded in this manner tended to avoid risky
behaviour. People got so caught up in achieving their targets, they focused on
repeating what they had done in the past and tried not to do anything that might mess
up their rewards.
When people try to avoid risk, creativity is one of the first things to fly out the window.
Creativity and innovation, of course, require a degree of risk and often a large number of
failures before the breakthrough leap forward.
On the other hand, recognising employees for their achievements and
contributions will go a lot further than monetary rewards in keeping staff
satisfied and increasing their ability and motivation to think creatively at
work. Recognition drives intrinsic motivation (a deeper and more enduring type of
motivation). In contrast, monetary rewards drives extrinsic motivation, a more
superficial and transient type of motivation.
You can recognise staff in a number of different ways. Some of my clients
have annual awards ceremonies in which people who have contributed great ideas to
the company are crowned Innovator of the Year. Others award an idea of the month and
the winner receives a voucher for his or her efforts and is publicised through the internal
company newsletter or intranet.
Another way to recognise employees’ creative performance is by giving them more responsibility. Responsibility makes people happier at work and increases creativity.
Five Ways to Boost Creativity
Copyright © Inventium 2012. Material must not be reproduced without permission
3. What % of the time do you really feel challenged by your job
One of the strongest predictors of creativity in the workplace is whether
employees feel adequately challenged by their jobs. Those who feel their jobs
are challenging and that the objectives and goals they are set stretch their capabilities
are more likely to behave more creatively.
This effect is enhanced when employees are allowed to work
autonomously, rather than being given step-by-step, day-by-day instructions on how
to reach these goals. Creative behaviour occurs when employees have the freedom to
work out for themselves how to reach their challenging targets.
However, it is important that employees do not feel too stretched, as this can lead to
frustration. Likewise, not feeling stretched enough can lead to boredom.
If you are a manager, take a moment to reflect on how you instruct the people who work
for you to go about doing tasks. Consider how detailed your instructions are, and
whether you allow room for movement.
At many organisations, matching projects to employees is not something that tends to
take priority. Instead, it is simply a matter of working out who is up to their eyeballs in
work and who has time to take on extra work. However, this traditional approach to task
allocation hinders creativity.
The assignment of tasks needs to be based instead on skill level, and
whether the employee would feel challenged by the task. A task should be
assigned to an employee who can understand the task and not be completely daunted
by it. Likewise the task should challenge them and not be too simple for them to
complete. Assigning the right task to the right person ensures that they feel stimulated
by their work.
In addition, consider assigning tasks based on interest. This requires
understanding the types of projects employees like and matching available tasks to the
employees’ interests. If you match tasks in this way, you will find employees deliver
much better results. Creative thought will increase and employee satisfaction will
skyrocket, because people will be more intrinsically motivated to complete tasks.
Five Ways to Boost Creativity
Copyright © Inventium 2012. Material must not be reproduced without permission
4. The happiness hangover
Our emotional state in fact has a big impact on our ability to think
creatively. Researchers at Pennsylvania State University conducted a study which
examined the impact of happy and sad moods on idea generation. To put them into the
required mood, participants were first asked to describe a recent life event that made
them feel happy or sad. Following the mood manipulation, participants were asked to
write down as many things they could think of that could fly. On average, participants
in the happy group came up with almost 50% more ideas than the sad
group.
The happiness hypothesis was also explored by Teresa Amabile at Harvard University.
Amabile asked several hundred people to keep a work diary that detailed their daily
activities, moods and other workplace events. An analysis of these diary entries showed
that people were more likely to come up with breakthrough ideas when
they were feeling happy, even if this happiness was experienced the day
before the idea was generated.
When we are happy, the level of a brain chemical called dopamine increases. In the
frontal lobe, dopamine controls the flow of information to other parts of the brain. When
people feel happy, thoughts or images of one concept – such as ‘thick’ – activate
thoughts or images of many other concepts – such as ‘paint’, ‘stupid’ or ‘make-up’.
Opening up connections between concepts that are only remotely associated with one
another increases our ability for divergent thinking. In contrast, when people feel sad,
they become more detail-oriented with their thinking which means that they often will
not see the greater possibilities. In other words, they get focused on the trees to the
exclusion of the forest.
So if the mood in your organisation is a bit flat, chances are staff are not performing at their peak creativity. Consider implementing some initiatives that could boost employee mood and thus drive creativity.
Five Ways to Boost Creativity
Copyright © Inventium 2012. Material must not be reproduced without permission
5. Crush some assumptions
Assumptions are one of the biggest creativity killers in organisations of
all sizes. Those nasty things that sit around in the back of your head and stop your
thinking going anywhere interesting. Chances are, if you have a problem you are
trying to crack, you hold a whole lot of assumptions or pre-conceived
notions that are boxing in your thinking.
For example, if you run a services business and you want to grow it, one assumption
that you may be making is that to make money, you actually have to be working - given
that’s how services work. You provide something and your client pays you. But this old-
fashioned business model means that to increase profit, you need to work harder or pay
more people to work harder on your behalf. A very limiting assumption.
So something that we recommend to our clients is to actively challenge and crush any
assumptions that they can identify.
In relation to the above example, I would recommend crushing the above assumption
that ‘to grow the business, you need to work more’. What if you flipped the assumption
on its head and instead, asked yourself, ‘How can I make money while I sleep?’ This may
sounds a bit crazy for any accountants and lawyers reading this, but imagine the
possibilities if you could create automated ways of doing the work for you. Deloitte
Digital is a beautiful example of this crushed assumption in practice. They are basically
a business unit within Deloitte that were created to make money while the form slept,
through inventing and implementing innovations that were technology or digitally
driven.
So what are some assumptions you hold onto in relation to problems you are tackling for
your business? What are the things that you take for granted and would never think of
challenging? Or have you recently crushed some assumptions to help you generate
breakthrough solutions to problems?
Take some time to identify all the assumptions you hold in relation to the problems you are currently facing, flip them on their head, and start generating ideas based on the new realities that the crushed assumptions give you.
Five Ways to Boost Creativity
Copyright © Inventium 2012. Material must not be reproduced without permission
Want to learn more?
These are just a small sampling of tools and techniques that we have developed
at Inventium. If you would like some more information on how we can help your
team or organisation, you can contact us on the below details. Alternatively, you
might also like to check out Dr Amantha Imber’s book “The Creativity Formula: 50
scientifically proven creativity boosters for work and for life” at
www.thecreativityformula.com
p. +61 3 9018 7455
m. +61 (0) 412 6565 38
www.inventium.com.au