The Creative Business, an overview within I.T. and Innovation

Every business, whether it has a core IT function or deliverable or not seeks to achieve and strengthen their own market differentiator. But how do we create the behaviour that will ensure that we truly achieve what we believe we can?

It follows that every business, especially in the current climate, needs to innovate. Do you rely on the Developers, the analysts or the Directors to be creative? No – it should be a core behaviour right through your business – however big, or however small it is.

So how do we get our people ‘unleashed’ in this area?

Thinking – Challenge the norm – Innovate

There is a school of thought that says that creativity, something most people regard as a talent you either have or you don’t, is actually a skill like any other. It can be trained in the same way as you condition the brain to excel in any other skill. So if you can train IT skills, you can train creative thinking?

The key ingredient in getting people to innovate and be creative is to take away the barriers that naturally prevent it in a normal business environment. For example, you might expect the following thought process in almost any business.

1. Why should I try to be creative? I might fail. I will have to persuade others to get on side. Better that I just keep my head down.

2. Things are going ok, why change it? And if things get bad, then no one will want my crazy ideas with all their uncertainties. Better I keep my head down.

3. If I go public on that idea I had, it might not be 100%. Better I keep my head down.

4. The only great ideas get backed up by fact and logic in the end, so logic should come up with the good ideas – where’s the need for me to be creative? Better I keep my head down.

Great ideas don’t come from the sky in a flash of creative genius, they come from the confidence to challenge the norm – with the authority of knowledge and experience.

So what’s the short answer?

Have the confidence to be creative yourself and have the confidence to allow your people to be creative.

Confidence is the key.   Successful innovation comes when people have the confidence to challenge, the confidence to know from experience that new ideas are possible and better ways can be found.

The norm is most people do what you want them to do – what they think they are paid to do.  The minority, a few rebels, don’t.   It is expected that the challenge to the norm will come from the rebels, so the rest, the majority, don’t challenge by nature.

Make creativity and challenge a norm in your team, not the sole jurisdiction of the rebels.   Make it an expectation of behaviour – finish every team meeting with an opportunity to air new ideas.   Give your team the confidence to have them.   Most importantly, expect your team to have them.   If they do not, then the job is not being done – that is a shortfall in performance.

Eventually you get a new ‘norm’ – the Creative, innovative business or team you have set out to create