Everyone’s heard the news: the robots are coming, most of our jobs are in danger, and AI is going to change the face of work as we know it.
We’re all aware, too, that the best businesses are on top of this. They’re trying to anticipate change and to build the kind of skills we’ll need to work alongside our new automaton colleagues.
Creativity in business: it needs to happen, fast
Creativity is key to the game of future-proofing your business model. We’ve moved on from the information age to the conceptual age. Success now depends on seeing patterns, generating ideas, understanding human interaction, having emotional intelligence, and being able to work with story, play and meaning.
Creative people will be hugely in demand as we try to figure out how to use (and how not to use) the new technology creeping into every part of our lives.
Research supports the urgency of creativity as a skill for business:
Yet in general, business is not currently paying enough attention to building creativity. Research shows that 80% of American and British workers feel pressured into being productive rather than creative. Few workers are being given the space to make the creative connections that transform businesses.
Building creativity: what are the obstacles?
Business leaders are working with an education system that does not put creativity first. George Land’s pioneering research back in 1968 showed that creativity levels declined from an average of 98% in his cohort of 5-year-olds to 2% in the same cohort when they reached adulthood.
Many experts still feel that our education system means creativity is ‘unlearnt’. Passing exams and individual success are the measures of success at school. Business, however, requires skills like collaboration, innovation and communication.
As Sir Anthony Seldon, former Head of Wellington College, puts it, ‘the skills around which we have designed our schools and our exam system are the very ones that will be rendered redundant within the next 20 years’.
It’s all the more important, therefore, for businesses to try to build a different culture. Companies need to be actively making space for creativity and the growth it can bring.
What does creativity in business really mean?
The idea of creativity can make people very nervous. Creativity can have an alarming set of associations. We think of dramatic inspiration, huge change, artistic genius and challenging what’s most comfortable.
Often, though, creativity is more prosaic: it’s just about having the space to think. Creativity is connecting the dots, linking information together in unexpected ways, seeing patterns, being able to experiment, and having the space to draw on your life experiences in your work.
Steve Jobs’ take on creativity is this: ‘creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things’.
One of the easiest points to start cultivating creativity in your business is at entry-level: new graduates are a rich resource for companies wanting to make their culture more creative.
1. Your graduates: an untapped creative resource?
Many businesses are not seeing what’s right in front of them. New graduates arrive fresh on your doorstep full of ideas and creativity. This is the point at which their brains are the most plastic. They are in the midst of constant, complex learning as they settle into their roles. They’re primed for the creative analysis your company can really benefit from.
Your youngest, newest employees will constantly be asking why the company does things the way it does. Your answer should not be ‘because we always have’. It should be ‘because this is the best way we’ve found of doing it so far; have you got a better idea?’.
Does your company’s CEO make sure to have a conversation with new graduates in their first three months? If not, you are losing out on an easy win. Senior leadership needs to be talking to graduates, ideally three months in, and ideally in a lot of depth. We guarantee those conversations will yield new and better ways to do business.
2. Creativity feeds on new experience
The renowned science fiction author Ray Bradbury once said ‘If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning with ideas. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting’.
It is likely that your graduates will have travelled, volunteered and participated in sports and societies, constructing the impressive CVs that helped them land great jobs with you. Don’t let this creative engagement with the world finish the day they walk through your door.
How can you cultivate this on a limited budget, though, with pressing work deadlines? There are straightforward ways to help your graduates seek out new experiences:
3. Open networks, diversity and graduates
Do you know the difference between open and closed networks? Open networks are the connections we make with people we don’t already know: these may include people from different backgrounds, different places, who speak different languages, who are older than us, who have different values and different priorities. The shortcuts and the natural trust that exist between us and people from our own comfortable world are not there as a safety net.
Closed networks, in contrast, are the ones where we feel safe. These are full of people we already know, who are likely to agree with us and confirm what we believe.
Open networks bring together people who see things differently, who spark off one another, and who generate ideas. If you recruit a diverse intake of graduates, and encourage them to build their open networks, you will find a culture of creativity emerges.
In a useful recent article, Michael Simmons, author and leading authority on entrepreneurship, explains how radically underestimated open networks are as a predictor of career success.
According to multiple, peer-reviewed studies, merely being in an open network rather than a closed one is the strongest predictor of career success.
The more open our professional networks are, the more we are exposed to new ideas. The more closed they are, the more we simply hear our own pre-existing ideas confirmed. Make sure your graduates understand this, and are challenged actively to build their open networks.
4. Question, all the time
Apparently, at the age of 5, children ask 120 questions a day, at age 6 they ask only 60 questions a day, and at the age of 40, adults ask 4 questions a day. What we need is to return adults to the point where they feel licensed not to know: and where questioning the status quo is seen as desirable and interesting. It has to be OK to be wrong, and to spend time on ideas that fail.
Graduates should be challenged to ask questions. They should also pay attention to questions others ask, including mentors at work, artists, scientists and thought leaders in their field. Get them to keep notebooks where they list questions that spark their curiosity.
5. Constant feedback
Feedback is central to creativity. If graduates are open and relaxed about getting and giving feedback, you will find that they share far more ideas.
Constant, relaxed feedback (rather than formalised appraisals) can help them learn to relish the process of coming up with ideas and testing them out on colleagues. Failure becomes just a part of the creative process, rather than a huge blow to their confidence.
6. Physical space
Creativity doesn’t happen where people are rigidly confined to desks and offices. The physical space your employees work in influences how creative they can be. Research shows that being active is more conducive to creativity. Create a workplace that encourages taking walks, observing lunch breaks and making time for exercise.
Most of us know we have particular activities that make us creative: walking, running, swimming, meditating. Encourage your new employees to identify what works for them, and make it part of their routine.
Many offices are now open-plan and democratic, but for lots of us, this actually won’t work. To be creative, people may prefer private spaces to work in alone or with a few colleagues. Think about how your office might be working for and against creative thinking.
From The Ground Up
Put these building blocks in place with your newest employees and you’ll be impressed at the speed at which creative energy flows upward.
Your business will benefit in ways you hadn’t even expected: not just a more future-proof strategy, but higher retention and happier employees. At its heart, creativity is about the space to think freely and about playful experimentation: what’s to lose?
by
EngageBay
