Odds are good that your people are creative. That they LONG to be creative, actually. When their work environment does not give permission for being creative in the workspace, they find ways to be creative in other environments. Like their home…or school…or with their friends…or with their passion projects.
And since there is no permission for creativity in their workspace, their work simply becomes a job…something for them to do until they can go do what they REALLY want to be doing.
Of course, that’s not what businesses want. They want their employees to be creative and engaged where they work, because…well, isn’t that what companies are supposed to do? Promote creativity in the workplace? And so articles abound on how leaders and companies can bring more creativity to their workplaces.
You can offer unlimited vacation, you can implement a telecommuting program, you can ditch meetings…heck, you can even add a foozball table next to the beer keg and the bean bag chairs in your break room. But if you are adding these things in an effort to up your company’s creativity, you are missing the point.
An organization is a living system. Doing “things” to make changes will not work.
Or rather, it will create change that has a very low probability of sticking.
[highlights color=”ffea00″] The only real way to bring creativity back into the workplace is to truly give permission for it to be okay to be creative in the workplace. And that only comes from living, demonstrating, EMBODYING your values. [/highlights]
And THAT means that “creativity” has to be something you actually value…not just something you pay lip service to.
Your current environment is the result of living your values. And people absolutely see when your stated values and your actions are out of alignment. Sure, you can promise your team free pizza and beer, and a 3pm end time on Fridays, because you say you value fun and freedom and flexibility in the way people work. But when the pizza only shows up once, and people routinely work on Fridays until after 7pm…what does that really say about what the company values?
What is it that your company really values right now?
I recently was asked to help a large company convince it’s employees that the company believed in the new mission and values being rolled out in just a few weeks. (That was a red flag right there.) I asked them to send over the rollout documents that were going to be sent to all staff, and said I’d take a look at them. And sure enough, there they were: those statements that we value creativity and innovation, that we value our customer and our people. Big and bright as day, prominently displayed on page three. Yet from there, each of the 37 pages that remained quietly and confidently belied that opening statement. Here’s what I read in between those lines of 12-point Ariel text:
“Sure, we are a company that values creativity and innovation. That’s why we are sending employees a 40-page, corporate-blue memo to tell them this.”
“Sure, we value our customers and our people. That’s why the only face in the entire report is the face of our CEO. Every other image is of a “thing”…the things we sell to make money. And that’s what we really value.”
This company knew what words to say, but their actions belied those words. They were words they were wearing, instead of words they were living.
[highlights color=”ffea00″] And that, in my humble opinion, is the problem with creativity changes in the workplace. They are things you put on your company, rather than values you live throughout your company. [/highlights]
Guess what? Folks really do know the difference between the two. It’s one of the reasons change efforts fail. Something you put on to change doesn’t stick because you can always take it off. The things we “do” to increase creativity, or innovation, or getting our teams to engage in blue sky thinking…these are merely veneers we apply to mask our current state and try to convince ourselves that we are ready to act like we are creators, innovators, out-of-the-box thinkers.
But we’re not. Those artificial veneers keep us from being able to truly embody the values we espouse.
So what’s a girl to do? (Or a guy, for that matter?) Here’s my two (three) cents:
1. Get on the same page. “Being creative” means different things to different people. So while the organization may say that we are bringing creativity back…does everyone have the same understanding of what that means?
Tip: Host a Creativity Cafe at your workplace, where people can talk in small groups about what it means to be creative – or to be someone who is creative – in your company. Start drawing out what that could look like and draw forth a shared vision of your creative organization.
2. Name the elephants, touch the cows, and spot the snakes. It’s not enough to have a vision of what creativity could look like in your organization. Just as important as the vision is a honest assessment of what currently blocks creativity in your organization’s culture. What are the elephants in the room that everyone knows are there, but nobody will speak of? What ideas or values are your sacred cows, so holy that nobody can touch them…let alone question their authority? What snakes lie hiding in the grass, waiting to spring forth and strike as folks walk a new path? Making these barriers and threats visible allows the organization to start to address them.
Tip: Draw out the animals. One of my favorite team exercises is to have folks draw their own answers to, “if your team/organization/company was a vehicle on a journey, what would it look like?” As they do so, invite them to draw the elephants, cows and snakes they see along the way. Then have the team share their drawings with the group and walk people through what they drew.
3. Own the effort. Gandhi got it right, and it’s more than just a nice quote: leaders need to be the change they seek for their organizations. Talk doesn’t stick when the people at the top follow a “do as I say, not as I do” policy. Your values and actions must be in alignment for others to believe in them. Increasing the creativity of a group or organization is really a culture change project…and that starts with you. Not “them.” You.
Tip: Get help. Changing a company’s culture is a HUGE undertaking…certainly more involved than applying some article’s top five tips to your corporate practices. To do it right, get someone who can help you see the existing culture, engage in the necessary conversations to understand that culture, draw forth a collective vision of what’s possible, and keep everyone honest and accountable along the path of culture transformation.
I could keep going with my own ideas here, but I’m really curious to hear your thoughts on what it takes for a company to actually BE creative. [highlights color=”ffea00″] What would you add to this list?[/highlights]
