Discussion Guide for Corporate Creativity

How Innovation and Improvement Actually Happen

Find out more about this book...

Once you and others in your organization come to recognize the power of the unexpected, implementing the six elements will lead it to higher levels of creativity. The following questions can help guide you in exploring the power of the unexpected, and will spark ideas for how you can implement the six elements in your organization and achieve higher levels of creativity. These questions are helpful in assessing how well an organization is managing its creativity, and to guide and monitor its progress to higher levels of creative performance.

1. Alignment

While many aspects of your company's performance depend on its alignment-that is, the degree to which the interests and actions of every employee support your organization's key goals-creativity is the most sensitive to it. To a large extent, a company's alignment will also determine the nature of its creativity. Your organization cannot be consistently creative unless it is strongly aligned. And the most critical step to align a company is the first one-recognizing the value of alignment and that it has to be done. Once the commitment is made, it is surprisingly straightforward to get the strong alignment that is needed for creativity.

• Is your organization aligned strongly enough for creativity?
• What is your organization aligned for? Are you confident that other employees in your company, regardless of their position, would give the same answer?
• Do creative acts come disproportionately from a few parts of your organization? If so, is it because the nature of your alignment puts some employees in a better position than others to be creative?
• Are there policies and rules in your organization that cause misalignments which interfere with creativity?
• Has your company ever laid people off as a result of productivity improvements suggested by employees? If so, how did this affect the willingness of those left behind to propose further ideas?
• What is your company doing to promote alignment?
• Identify the most important recent initiatives that your company has undertaken to promote its key goals.
• Within the last year, has your company recognized or rewarded any employees for actions that were consistent with its alignment, but had otherwise adverse consequences?
• Within the last year, has your company held any employees or managers accountable for actions that were out of alignment?
• Do you know of any organizations that are strongly aligned? Visit them and see how they do it.

2. Self-initiated Activity

If they succeed, planned creative acts almost always take your company where it already expects to go. Most unexpected creative acts come from self-initiated activity. Fortunately, people have a natural desire to be creative. All your organization needs to do is unleash what is already there. The key to companywide self-initiated activity is an effective system for responding to employee ideas.

• Does your organization have an effective system for responding to employee ideas? Does everyone know how to use it? Is it easy to use? Does it respond to ideas in a fair and timely manner? As a percentage of your profits, how much money does your system save your organization each year? How well is this known in your organization?
• Within the last month, has every employee in your organization proposed or initiated a creative act they were not asked to undertake?
• Does your organization document employee ideas?
• Are managers evaluated on the quantity and quality of creative acts initiated by the employees they are responsible for?
• Is there an easy way for a person in one part of your organization to find out about ideas in a different part?
• Does your organization have formal mechanisms to identify notable ideas and publicize them to stimulate the thinking of others?
• When an idea occurs in one place, does your company have formal mechanisms for ensuring that it gets to all the places where it might be useful?

3. Unofficial Activity

Every unexpected creative act begins with unofficial activity, during which an idea is worked on without direct official support. Unofficial activity may last for minutes, or it might go on for years. Unless your organization makes a place for unofficial activity, it will see relatively little creativity. Unofficial status eliminates many of the barriers to creativity. It provides a safe haven for ideas; allows a company to get more from its employees than it could reasonably ask for; makes it easier for creative activity to cross official boundaries; and leads to better decision-making about which projects to fund. In the majority of creative acts we looked at, the key aspects of the ideas were arrived at during the unofficial period.

• Is unofficial activity legitimate in your organization? That is, when an opportunity arises, are employees encouraged to initiate work on something they have not been assigned to do?
• Does your organization have specific policies to legitimize unofficial activity? Do these policies apply to everyone? Or are they limited to certain categories of people, namely, those who are expected to be creative?
• How would your manager respond if you approached him or her to talk about unofficial work you were doing? If you are a manager, how would you react when those who report to you raise the subject of their unofficial work?
• Are you aware of examples of how unofficial activity contributed to a creative act in your organization?

• Does your organization have a way for employee proposals to be independently reviewed by different people at different times and in different ways? If so, can you think of examples from your company where this process saved an idea that might otherwise have been lost? If not, can you think of examples from your company of good ideas that were killed because they were reviewed by only one person who did not see their potential?

4. Serendipity

We believe that serendipity plays a role in every creative act. Unfortunately, the original meaning of serendipity-a fortunate accident that meets with sagacity (keenness of insight)-has been all but lost. Armed with the knowledge of what serendipity means, your organization can do much to promote it. A bias for action, a "just-do-it" attitude that encourages tinkering and experimentation, will lead to more potentially fortunate accidents. An understanding of the role of serendipity in creative acts helps employees notice accidents when they do occur. Every accident is an exception to what was expected: don't overlook exceptions. Beyond this, your organization also has to increase the likelihood of potentially fortunate accidents meeting with sagacity. And this means deliberately creating redundancy-unused human potential for change.

• Is every employee in your organization aware that serendipity plays a role in creative acts?
• Can you identify fortunate accidents in your organization that have led to creative acts?
• Do employees in your organization know that every "exception" is an opportunity that should not be overlooked?
• What is your organization doing to increase the frequency of fortunate accidents that might lead to serendipity?
• Can you identify specific policies or practices in your company that promote a bias for action and experimentation?
• What about policies or practices that work against this?
• What is your organization doing to increase the likelihood that a potentially fortunate accident will meet with sagacity?
• Is every employee in your organization rotated into all of the jobs he or she is qualified for?
• Does your organization support opportunities for all employees to develop skills in areas unrelated to their present jobs?
• Is there redundant human potential in your organization? Pick one of your colleagues. Make a list of that person's knowledge or skill that is not being put to use in your company. Think about how this unused knowledge or skill might play a role in a creative act.

5. Diverse Stimuli

A stimulus either provides fresh insight into something a person has already set out to do, or bumps that person into something completely unanticipated. It is impossible to predict how an individual will react to any particular stimulus, and what provokes one person may not even be noticed by another. This being the case, while your company should do all it can to bring diverse stimuli to its employees, it should recognize that most creative acts come as a result of stimuli that arise in the course of work or daily life. It is far more important to help employees find stimuli, and then put them to use in the company.

• Can you trace examples of creativity in your organization to the stimuli that provoked them?
• What were these stimuli, and how did they come about?
• Does your organization have programs to bring diverse stimuli to employees?
• Can you identify any creative acts that were provoked by these programs?Are the programs aimed at all employees?
• How diverse are the stimuli they offer?
• Are some of your programs open-ended? That is, like study leaves and sabbaticals, do they offer employees the freedom to pick an area they think might be a fruitful source of stimuli?
• Have any creative acts occurred in your company as a result of employees rotating into another job, and noticing a stimulus that others before them had not?
• What were the stimuli involved?
• What made the employees notice them?
• Does your organization make it easy for employees to bring stimuli in and put them to use?
• Do all employees have regular opportunities to discuss the potential implications of stimuli with their managers and other employees?
• How does your organization help employees get stimuli from customers, suppliers and others who deal with it?
• What is your organization doing to bring employees who do not normally interact with customers or suppliers into contact with them?
• Are customer complaints used as a source of stimuli for new activity? Can you trace a creative act in your organization to a complaint?

6. Within-company communication

One of the things that seems to happen naturally at smaller companies but not so easily at larger ones is within-company communication. Every organization carries out planned activities and should establish the necessary channels of communication to support these. But official channels are of limited usefulness for creativity. Since the majority of creative acts in companies are unplanned, they often must bring people and information together in ways that cannot be anticipated. It is precisely these unanticipated exchanges of information -- exchanges that allow projects that have not been planned to self-organize -- that occur so easily in smaller companies. The larger the company, the more likely it is that the components of potential creative acts are present within it, but the less likely that they will come together without help. There are two ways your company can promote these unanticipated communications. It can provide opportunities for employees who do not normally interact with each other to meet. And it can ensure that all employees have enough understanding of how the company works to be able to tap its resources and expertise.

• Can you identify a creative act in your company where unanticipated within-company communication played a key role? Did your company help this communication to occur, or did it just happen?
• Can you identify the ways that employees in your company who do not normally interact with each other can come together?
• Are you a member of an informal group of employees that have a common interest in a new type of activity?
• Do you know of any such informal groups in your organization? Did your company play a role in bringing them together, or did they self-organize?
• What does your company do to build or support such networks?
• Can you point to some recent instances when a manager in your organization took advantage of an opportunity, however small, to bring together some employees who would not normally interact with each other?
• Do all employees in your organization have a sufficient understanding of how the company works in order to be able to tap its resources and expertise?
• Can you identify specific programs that are in place to ensure this?
• Are you confident that anyone in your organization is either aware of your special expertise or could easily find out about it?
• Is it clear to everyone in your organization that a request for information or help from another employee-no matter what level or part of the organization they are from-should be given a high priority?
• Think about the last time you contacted someone from a different part of your organization for information or help. How did that person respond?
• How often do others from your organization contact you for information? How do you treat their requests?