In conjunction with structured approaches of invention and innovation, the idea of providing individuals with environments that would allow them to dramatically increase their creative output was also undertaken by corporations such as Polaroid. The focus was on “learning to innovate” with respect to the innovation process, i.e. to learn how the elements of providing content, processes, structure, a specific research methodology, training on learning how to learn, and evidence of learning as a scientific hypothesis could all become a Corporation’s Core Competency. Other organizations such as Hoechst Celanese and 3M Corporation investigated open working environments. In these environments individuals were invited to stand up and declare their interest on an issue, concern or opportunity. The project champion invited others that shared similar interests to join them. The focus was on individual passion, responsibility, an unstructured environment; little or no facilitation, no agenda, and a top management commitment provide time to investigate unusual ideas and most importantly “don’t get in their way”. This process works well when the integrity of the group is honored and where employees are responsible adults that take appropriate actions for things which they really care about.
The Association for Managers of Innovation, a working group of the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, NC, formulated 10 principles of innovation to use in constructing such environments where undirected individual invention and innovation were desired. These principles were:
Principle 1: Forget a lot of what you have learned.
Principle 2: Don’t use experts too soon.
Principle 3: Develop knowledge. Use models and prototypes for communication, develop breath and sufficient depth akin to a Renaissance man, be intuitive versus logical, and think like your problem.
Principle 4: Acknowledge there are three phases of an idea. The first phase is ridicule. As an individual are you crushed or enriched by criticism. The second phase is resistance, and the third phase is finally recognition.
Principle 5: The importance of timing. Individuals really need to understand the sequence by which their innovation will impact areas that will intersect future trends.
Principle 6: Think of analogous solutions. Utilizing the previously discussed TRIZ technology is one such example.
Principle 7: Overcome intellectual myopia.
Principle 8: Be a beta risk manager. Be sensitive whether your tendency is to create type 1 or type 2 errors. Type 1 is to call something good that is really bad. This error is relatively easy to avoid. Type 2 is to call something bad that is good. This is the harder of the two do.
Principle 9: Treat patents as refereed articles. One wants to make the idea as bulletproof as possible.
Principle 10: Have an attitude that fosters innovation. This consists of not taking yourself too seriously, being comfortable on the hairy edge of chaos, being curious, being persistent, and embracing fun and creativity. Summed up it is a will-do versus a can-do mantra.
Although the above is good guidance, sometimes is easier to understand what to do in terms of behaviors. Mary Wallgren, a member of the Association of Managers of Innovation did just that with 60 recorded behaviors which stimulate a climate for creativity. This work is unique in that it describes behaviors at three different levels: individual, leadership and organization. These listed behaviors are also a very good source of metrics when one wants to double-check and/or assess an organization’s creative climate.
RISK-TAKING
Individual’s Behaviours
- just do it
- Speak before you think (or talk yourself out of the idea)
- Don’t weigh the consequences
- Don’t worry about approval
- Have confidence in your abilities
- Recognize that it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission
- Remember lack of failure equals lack of effort
- Understand that we learn from failures
- Don’t be afraid to try things
Leader’s Behaviours
- Be a role model for risk-taking
- Allow people to try new techniques and experiment even though you don’t know the outcome
- Express confidence in people’s abilities
- Accept failure, help people learn from it
- Let employees talk with people in another business, even a competitor
- Create a “Do it, then ask permission” environment
- Give positive feedback for work done. . . . give “atta-boys” to encourage taking risks and/or presenting “new” ideas
- Let people know that they won’t be penalized for taking risks
- Support people to take ownership on decisions, give them accountability and authority
- Advise others to make themselves “uncomfortable” at least once a day • Assign multiple projects that require new thinking to get them done
- Don’t weigh the circumstances
- Don’t worry about approval
- Use positive affirmations
- Practice role-playing
- Have confidence in the abilities of yourself and others
- Reward risk-taking
- Avoid creating a culture that rewards the least mistakes
- Challenge others to explore the parameters of a risk
- Challenge others to explain why risk is worth taking
- Make a decision to take a risk not only on the merits of the idea but on the passion of the person involved
- Remember: determination can steer risks into rewards
- Personally encourage those willing to take risks
- Celebrate the failures
Organization’s Behaviours
- Support the message that failure is OK, we need to learn from it
- Arrange a talk with a manager in another business
- Allow room for failure
- Allow people to make their own decisions
- Give positive feedback for work done
- Let folks know that they won’t be penalized for taking risks
- Look to make changes that no one else has
- Find ways to improve
TRUST/OPENNESS
Individual’s Behaviours
- Be responsible for setting your own goals
- Know people that you work with; spend time together
- Incorporate team building and bonding
- Do fun things outside work or during work
- Be honest and tactful
- Discourage whispering; it destroys trust
- Be honest
- Acknowledge the importance of work-group dynamics
- Create an atmosphere of openness to communicate new ideas and challenges
- Respect the need for privacy and confidentiality
- Give timely feedback to co-workers, both positive and negative, rather than going around them and speaking to their boss
Leader’s Behaviours
- Get to know people that you work with on a personal level
- Communicate after meetings telling folks what happen/talked about
- Discuss ideas openly
- Listen to ideas
- Share information with everybody
- Depend on everyone to contribute
- Have social time away from the job site to get to know one another
- Establish a sense of ownership
- Flex work hours during business and lunch
- Minimize follow-up
- Recognize publicly
- Give approval
- Value diversity
- Reward diversity
- Allow discussion with judgment
- Be informed about what’s going on in our department and Company
- Make it OK to express any opinion — no “wrong” ideas
- Encourage an open-door policy
- NEVER violate a trust
- Try to spend some time with co-workers outside the work hours
- Remove any hidden agendas (they are usually transparent anyway)
Organization’s Behaviours
- Share information with all employees
- Have social time away from the job site to get to know one another in a less threatening environment (off-site). Company picnics, holiday parties, and include the families
- Enjoy your fellow co-worker-workers, enjoy your job, and feel an openness to communicate new ideas and challenges
- Establish athletic leagues or sponsor company teams
MINIMIZE CONFLICTS
INDIVIDUAL’S BEHAVIORS
- Get the people who disagree together to talk it out with no consequences
- Support an environment of mutual respect
- Work as a team
- Overlook the little things
- Openly discuss conflicts with those involved, keep others informed. Keep communication open
- Establish a direction and goals
- Don’t be a third party to a conflict
- Listen, don’t discount ideas
- Be honest
- Don’t belittle or speak condescendingly
- Invite peer to lunch or, when sharing information, include all Department members
- Go for it
- Focus on the process
- Invite a neutral 3rd party to keep emotions manageable
- Bring in a facilitator for team meetings and/or for 1 on 1 conflicts
- Use conflict to stimulate problem-solving as part of team process
- Establish common principles by consensus — make decisions based on those principles
LEADER’S BEHAVIORS
- Eliminate competition
- Don’t reward the individual, reward the team
- Have people talk with each other
- Don’t be a third party to a conflict
- Listen, don’t discount ideas
- Establish common goals
- Attend group seminar on communication
DEBATES
INDIVIDUAL’S BEHAVIORS
- Feel free to challenge one another’s ideas because you have worked together for a while; group feels comfortable with one another; they have trust
- Agree to disagree
- Listen to everyone’s opinions
- Be open-minded / allow people to recognize, evaluate and re-apply ideas and/or proven techniques
- Have an agreement that everything said is confidential
- Tell everyone that “It’s okay to agree to disagree”
- Have thick hides
- Don’t pre-judge
- Don’t take things personally — use humour as a stress breaker
- Do not start with the right vs. wrong paradigm. This is a real idea killer or stifler
- Suspend judgment as long as possible
- “Pushing back” is allowed and encouraged when appropriate. If nothing else, learning occurs!
- Use tools like ALU, PIN, or PPM to critique ideas. They all focus on the positive first
LEADER’S BEHAVIORS
- Set up ground rules for debates
- Make sure everyone has a chance to speak and be heard
- Play “Devil’s Advocate”
- Bring together divergent perspectives to generate thought.
- Interactive teamwork planning activities
- Discuss the pros and cons of new ideas with open discussion
- Allow time in meetings to digress from subject to build team effectiveness
- Team meetings
- Multi-functional group meetings
- Set up ground rules for debates
- Allow debates. but ensure they are focused on the question at hand, and free from any additional (personal?) conflicts that may spur the debate further or in a direction away from the original question. If discussing a problem, perhaps display pros and cons for all to see, and solicit input from the group on each point.
- Play “Devil’s Advocate” and challenge each statement to encourage more thought and possible counter-ideas from others in the group. Insist that groups talk to each other, not to one person in the room.
ORGANIZATION’S BEHAVIORS
- Bring together divergent perspectives to generate thought.
- Hold interactive teamwork planning activities
- Discuss the pros and cons of new ideas with open discussion
- Ensure an open environment
DYNAMISM/LIVELINESS
INDIVIDUAL’S BEHAVIOURS
- Keep a positive attitude
- Remember we have just one life to live
LEADER’S BEHAVIORS
- Expect a positive attitude
- Appreciate ideas
- Use teamwork
- Discourage conformity; encourage individualism.
- Clarify that PERFORMANCE IS PERFORMANCE (quality/quantity of the work accomplished should be the sole criteria for management)
- Have specified celebrations (anniversaries, birthdays, etc.), but also impromptu
- Instil a feeling of camaraderie in the group
ORGANIZATION’S BEHAVIOURS
- Encourage team action, everyone pitching in on a project
- Provide inspiring materials
PLAYFULNESS/HUMOR
INDIVIDUAL’S BEHAVIORS
- Stay relaxed during stressful situations
- Bring toys to work
- Use humour
- Incorporate playful areas with posters or fun things
- Read inspiring materials
- Eliminate drudgery — put fun into the workplace by reducing stress and rigidity
- Create a different “work?” atmosphere — redefine work
- Talk about things that are not business
- Use one-liners to open conversations — lighten the mood
- Socialize together, lunch, etc.
- Allow people to be who they are
- Practice enthusiastic behaviour
- Get “team” tattoos for team members when on an out-of-town trip
- Share cartoons / Post a cartoon of the week
- Tell jokes / Share jokes
- Change business stereotype, loosen up
- Practice the creativity that management preaches
- Encourage laughter
LEADER’S BEHAVIORS
- Plan off-sites
- Talk about things that are not business
- Know that when people are laughing they are also working
- Appreciate the use of humour
- Practice enthusiastic behaviour
- Celebrate birthdays at the office
- Have Department events
- Laugh to promote relaxation which creates creativity
ORGANIZATION’S BEHAVIORS
- Don’t suppress it, let it happen naturally
FREEDOM
INDIVIDUAL’S BEHAVIORS
- Empower yourself
LEADER’S BEHAVIORS
- Allow others to work independently
- Delegate open-ended problems when appropriate
- Encourage stretch
- Go beyond everyday responsibilities
- Lessen review of work
- Let them do the job and not check-up
- Allow “owner” to work details when given the goal, don’t ask for play-by-play
- Give freedom to manage own business
- Empower others
- Allow people to come out of the box
- Encourage individuality in expression
- Allow people to make own decisions
- Ask the employee about what the challenge is and what to do vs. answering to go execute
- Define the result, not the path
- Give broad outlines and outcomes, let individual or team define the process
- Incorporate more TQ principles in work environment
- Drive out fear
- Focus on the outcome, not the method
- Eliminate micro-management
- Determine points for review, then allow the freedom to perform as desired
- Create a comfortable atmosphere (relaxed dress codes and office decorations)
ORGANIZATION’S BEHAVIORS
- Tolerate open-ended problems
- Give freedom to manage own business
- Have your daily responsibilities handled by someone else
- incorporate more TQ principles in work environment
IDEA TIME
INDIVIDUAL’S BEHAVIORS
- Identify resources who have done this before in similar circumstances
- Generates ideas to reapply
- Walk and talk with others at work
- Set aside specific time for ideas during the week — commit to it
- Integrate it into other activities, like driving
- Take 15 minutes to focus on a specific idea
- Establish a goal as “something to make me laugh”
- Spend time alone in an environment you like to stir up ideas
LEADER’S BEHAVIORS
- Brainstorm as a team
- Have regular section meetings to discuss projects arid share ideas
- Plan time-out off-site to generate ideas without evaluation
- Appreciate some daydream time; gears are whirling behind the blank stare
- Informal team conversations — no evaluation
- Set aside some time to go to lunch together
- Allow working at home
- Allow for team meetings, committee meetings to share new ideas (brainstorming)
- Have a team session at the “Idea Lab” at SWIG (or HCRC)
- Create enough breathing room from daily work to be creative
- Set aside an hour or two each week to research and discuss new ideas or how other companies are accomplishing their goals
- Backup for people when they are off-site or at conferences or seminars (idea time)
- Applaud the blank stare
ORGANIZATION’S BEHAVIORS
- Hold team brainstorming sessions that allow individuals to spend time developing new ideas
- Provide sufficient resources
IDEA SUPPORT
INDIVIDUAL’S BEHAVIORS
- Defer judgment
- Agree on issues, methods, and ideas
- When listening to an idea, build on the idea, suggesting ways to improve, expand
- Put up the problem on a common wall and have everyone around put up suggestions on the paper, post-its, etc. Keep issue up for 3-4 days
- Send folks to functional/non-functional outside seminars and conferences
- Encourage people to build on other’s ideas
- Ask leaders for what is needed from them to develop an idea
LEADER’S BEHAVIORS
- Recognize that employees are people
- Encourage to pursue an idea
- Listen to all ideas, don’t eliminate any
- Offer encouragement for ideas and plans
- Appreciate suggestions and consider them carefully
- Say “Thank you” often
- Look at the idea right away, do no just shove it aside
- Offer new projects with new tools
- Ask people to write up their idea in a report
- Comment on a “good job”
- Establish concurrence
- Listen
- Set up routine meetings to share ideas and share personal things — format for getting help and support for ideas of all members of the group
- Review project with the supervisor, he/she “asks”: “What other approaches might work?” “Have you considered. .?” “How else can this be done?” “What kind of support do you need?”
- Listen to an idea, build on the idea, suggesting ways to improve, expand
- Provide the freedom to develop a plan to resolve a problem
- Say “That was a great idea” or that I “…did a really good job.”
- Recognize hard work and effort
- Share ideas in a team setting which allows discussion without judgment
- Create a non-evaluative E-mail conference for idea generation
- Have an idea room for idea generation
- Encourage a synergy that often is not realized because management does not take/have time to coach, critique or add to ideas. Ideas often die on the vine because they do not receive the necessary initial nurturing
- Ask “How can I help you achieve your goals?”
- Ask for people’s opinion, make them feel valued
- Knockdown barriers that employees can’t conquer
- Maintain a genuine openness for new ideas, but insist they be well thought out. Listen attentively and thoroughly, and give them full consideration until they are accepted, or circumstances divulge their faults
- Set up an award system for those ideas that benefit the organization the most. Recognition should be public. If an idea isn’t used, explain why and encourage more
ORGANIZATION’S BEHAVIORS
- Provide sufficient resources
- Provide an environment conducive to creativity such as “idea labs”
- Organize E-mail conference for brainstorming
- Permit off-sites, outside seminars, and conferences
CHALLENGES
INDIVIDUAL’S BEHAVIORS
- Look to make changes that no one else has
- Force yourself to be creative to get a heavy workload done
- Find ways to improve
LEADER’S BEHAVIORS
- Build self-esteem
- Give responsibility
- Challenge others to make something happen
- Give visible, interesting opportunities
- Impose a deadline to meet
- Assign a special project
- Give a broadening responsibility, something never done before
- Stretch goals
- Benchmark
- Establish best in class objectives
- Make performance targets known to all
- Encourage competitive goals ( the most, the biggest, the weirdest)
- Set aside time for implementation and management buy-in
- Don’t offer the solution–offer the opportunity
- Say “Yes, you can!”
- Graphically depict goals in a public area — mark progress
ORGANIZATION’S BEHAVIORS
- Permit individual schedule and flex time
- Use review time for the positive feedback and constructive criticism