The key to creative leadership and developing a culture of innovation is engaging others. We all have innate, untapped talents that are just waiting to be discovered. Yet very often organizations are restrictive and inflexible and there is too little communication between different areas.
Employees in silos feel disengaged and do not feel a sense of belonging to the “whole”. Organisations that create a culture where every voice matters unlock far more of their employees’ creative talents and this, of course, leads to greater productivity, well-being and success.
The more that we can give the people who work for us discretion and freedom to take initiatives and reward them for doing so, the more they will evolve to become creative. They need to be given a chance to try and prototype new ideas quickly, given permission to fail and then be encouraged to try again.
Rather than the typical ‘command and control’ management styles of the past, organizations need to foster collaboration and communication across departments and celebrate diversity. If you are seeking creativity and innovation then it’s essential to connect regularly across the organization (and ideally across sectors), and tap into people’s senses, perceptions, ideas and passions.
The role of a creative leader is not to have all the ideas: it’s to create a culture where everyone can have ideas and feel that they’re valued. That being said, there does need to be a pipeline to capture all ideas, test them out and eventually prototype and create something new or improved. And don’t forget to develop a rewards system that gives incentives to everybody.
These extremely volatile times and the challenging financial environment mean that being creative is becoming more urgent. Being creative in arts organisations isn’t an added extra. It’s an imperative. To improve your organisation’s impact and performance you need to look of any not just about the work you produce but also in products, processes and services.
Creativity should never be an afterthought and should always be a key part of an organization’s core purposes, not just in words but in deeds. You need to create a culture of creativity and innovation, celebrate diversity and ensure that every voice matters.
Creative leaders continually meet new challenges, and recognize and pursue new opportunities through bold thinking and innovations.
Creative leaders:
- Are great at generating many ideas – innovative, game-changing and even commonplace
- Are always looking to experiment with good ideas – sometimes, trying out a few times
- Have unwavering belief in their creativity and innovation, coupled with originality in thinking
- Are smart and bright with a positive self image – but not often born geniuses
- Are passionate, expressive and sensitive to their teams, colleagues and surroundings
- Demonstrate superior judgment, and do not make quick decisions (although have a gut feel)
- Are non-conformists and independent, requiring less social approval than most people
- Have an innate ability to understand and solve the problem, and manage the consequences
- Are born dreamers with strong imagination; however, manage to keep things in perspective
- Create and launch game-changing products.
Harvard Business Review offers these questions to examine how to improve your organisation’s creativity in an increasingly complex world.
- What cultural, political, organizational and technological barriers should your organization overcome if it wishes to develop a group of creative leaders?
- What structures, reward systems, processes, metrics and goals do you have in place to support creative leaders?
- How do you encourage risk taking and learning from failure? How do you measure it?
- Do you simply adopt best practices learned from industry leaders or do you shape “next practices” that will make your organization the leader in the future?
- How effective are you in partnering with customers, suppliers, employees and even your competition to improvise great solutions and co-create the future together?
Matt Goldberg, CEO of Lonely Planet, puts it this way: “The challenge of the 21st century is to transform our organisations to adapt flexibly and rapidly to the ever-changing and volatile environments we face. We will have to reduce cost structures while increasing productivity, adopt new ways of working and invent business models that challenge old ways of thinking, and maintain our commitment to innovation and growth even as we make the transition away from core businesses that have served us so well in the past. It is a high stakes race to position ourselves to respond effectively to the dynamic challenges emerging around us.”
