"Growing Your People Monthly" Newsletter

May 2009

Greetings!

When is the last time you tried something new as a leader? Consider Robyn Waters' exploration of business paradoxes as a source of new ideas in her book, The Trendmaster's Guide: Get a Jump on What Your Customer Wants Next. There is something to be said for consistent processes and defined guidelines, but when is the last time you thought about purposefully designing some creativity into an environment? This month I focus on rethinking the concept of "design" and how it applies to leadership, creativity, and innovation. Read on!

Be Well,
Yvonne Kinney-Hockert
National Speaker, Business Consultant & Coach
Consulting Solutions, LLC.

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Creativity and Innovation by Design

When you consider the word "design" in business, you probably envision the marketing department or your go-to graphic designer, but have you thought about how design impacts leadership? How do you design your meetings? How are you designing your next project or position? How do you design critical conversations with employees or customers?

A constantly evolving area of leadership research suggests that we are in an age where the skills mastered in an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) might be equally as important and maybe more important than in an MBA! Daniel Pink, in his book A Whole New Mind, defines this new time in history as the "conceptual age," and stresses to the reader that we have moved from the agriculture age, industrial age, and information age, and we are now in the "conceptual age." We are all in the art business. Pink distills it down to six aptitudes that are essential in this new era: design, story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning.

One lesson to draw from this idea of the "conceptual age" is the need to focus more on right brain thinking than left brain thinking. One aspect of that might include creativity for self and your team. In the Winslow Assessment trait of creativity, for example, the low end of the scale describes implementers (practical, pragmatic), while the high end describes innovators (theoretical, experimental). Those who have a high creativity score are inquisitive and curious, and often experience frustration in the status quo. They spend much of their time thinking about how things could be improved. Teams want to be supportive of the needs of innovators - as a leader, you want to identify those who are innovators and then design a working environment that supports risk-taking and innovative thinking.

Clients will tell me they want to be more innovative or encourage employees to do so. However, this requires designing an environment where team members have the permission to be creative. Whether employees are responsible for product development, business development, or engineering, we can't expect that those who are designing are also producing widgets at a rapid pace. That's not how innovation works. Often, many ideas may surface and only one works - that's okay! As Mahatma Ghandi said, "Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes." Many teams have lost good people because they have failed to recognize and then nurture innovative tendencies.

Which brings us back to design. As a leader, considering creativity and innovation in this new light challenges you to design a work environment that physically and conceptually supports creative thinking and risk-taking and thus achieve measurable results. Take this opportunity to focus on 1) creating awareness of who is on your team, 2) designing a supportive work environment, and 3) getting results!

Your Call To Action. . .