Creativity is a skill, not an inborn talent. It can be learned by anyone willing to take the time and effort. And it’s worth every ounce of energy you put into it because creativity unlocks possibilities that make our lives better, fuller, more productive, and more enjoyable. In order to reap these benefits, however, we have to know what kills creativity and how best to nurture it. That’s why I want to share with you 4 ways to increase creativity at work.
1) Creativity is a luxury
One of the biggest problems in many corporations is that people believe creativity is an extravagance, something to do during good times when resources are plentiful and otherwise ignored.
It becomes a sort of corporate version of "spoil sport," e.g., ‘if we’re not having fun anymore, let’s just stop!’
The problem with this attitude is twofold:
1. First, it simply isn’t true that creativity comes only at certain times in your company; there should be creative activities happening all the time, even in tough times. In fact, if you want your innovation to thrive throughout bad times as well as good (and who doesn’t?), then you need to be creative even when times are tough.
2. But the second part of this attitude is equally damaging: it gives people no recourse for dealing with a situation when they feel that their company has abandoned creativity, often in favor of more short term revenue gains.
Ultimately, if I know that my company will never support me in finding new/better ways of doing things, I have only one option left: leave and go somewhere else where there is actually an interest in innovation.
That’s why we have to really want our people to be creative, not just when we say so, but whenever they need or want to be.
2) We don’t reward being creative enough
A corollary to the first problem is that we don’t reward our people for being creative. Creativity has gotten a bad rap in many companies because the cost of changes brought on by an innovative idea can go up without necessarily going down, and sometimes even when it does go down, it still costs more than not implementing the change at all.
So many companies tie compensation programs to financial outcomes (based upon not just actual numbers but also forecasts of those numbers), giving little or no recognition for creativity because there isn’t any clear ROI attached to creativity.
Often, you simply can’t make the case that your idea will save money in the short term, although with enough time and resources, almost anything can be made to pay off. So people shy away from being creative because they don’t get rewarded for it.
So if we only tied rewards to immediate outcomes, we would never innovate at all!
3) We overemphasize cost cutting in the name of innovation and efficiency.
It is very easy for companies that are looking for ways to cut costs as a way of increasing their profits to fall prey to the temptation of thinking that cost cutting is innovation. My favorite example of this is the company that had a big sign over its production line saying “Stop Coddling the Idiots!” The reasoning behind the sign was:
The company thought it was using creativity to bring about innovation, and all it did was cut costs, not in any particularly intelligent way. Achieving savings without really changing anything often results in what I call ‘sameistency’ (staying the same but hoping for different results), which never leads to new or better ways of doing things.
But if we give too much credence to financial outcomes, then anything that seems like saving money can get redefined as innovative even if it is misguided. If we don’t want your companies to define cost cutting as innovation, then you have to really reward our innovators for being creative not just when they bring about financial outcomes that meet or exceed the forecasts.
4) We don’t reward failure enough
Success in any endeavor is based upon a lot of factors, many of which are out of your control. But when it comes to innovation, the most important bit you have some control over is the ability to take risks and fail often.
We should encourage our innovators to experiment as much as possible, and expect that not everything will succeed in the short term or even the long term; if we punish people for trying new things and failing (and they all do), then we discourage them from being innovative at all.
Success means money while failure means loss of income (or worse). If we want people to be creative more often, we have to do more than just tell them they need to be creative. We need to reward our innovators for it on a regular basis, and not only when they produce the kind of outcomes that will be reflected in their paychecks.
Einstein = End Game
In order to increase creativity at work, companies need to change the way they reward their employees. This can be done by rewarding innovation on an ongoing basis and not just when there are immediate outcomes (financial /paycheck).
We should also encourage risk taking in order for innovators to experiment as much as possible because it is a key factor of success. Lastly, failure needs more recognition too! If people do not fail often enough, they will not be creative and they will never innovate.
