Creativity. Thinking outside the box. Innovation. Whatever you call it, idea generation often starts with a brainstorming session and too often goes no where.
McKinsey alumni Kevin P. Coyne and Shawn T. Coyne offer a seven point guide that will make your efforts much more productive.
Know your organization’s decision-making criteria.
Ask the right questions
Choose the right people
Divide and conquer
On your mark, get set, go!
Wrap it up
Follow up quickly
Sounds like common sense, right? But you’ll see from the explanations how habit, misconceptions and politics often undermine these efforts.
And remember, while the first six points assure you of a productive effort this time, ignoring number seven will cripple not only this time, but all your next-times, too.
In a series of studies, Francesca Gino and Dan Ariely found that inherently creative people tend to cheat more than noncreative people. Furthermore, they showed that inducing creative behavior tends to induce unethical behavior.HBS Working Knowledge
Not good news when your goal is to increase creativity in your people, but not really surprising.
When we think actively, we see more possibilities, and that includes ways to gain an advantage – a survival mechanism. When we think passively, we don’t see the possibilities, so we follow the rules. –Deb Pekin, Change Manager, Kraft Foods Inc (from a comment)
Creativity isn’t a faucet that can be turned off when it’s inconvenient—it’s part of a person’s MAP; it’s who they are, so they will apply it across the board.
“Dan and I are of the hope that managers will start thinking about how to structure the creative process in such a way that they can keep ethics in check, triggering the good behavior without triggering the bad behavior.”
That’s one approach.
Perhaps a better one is to build a strong ethical culture first and overlay it with a culture that encourages creativity and innovation.
One of the most important things is to make sure that unethical behavior is not tolerated, let alone rewarded; in fact, in some cases it should be terminated.
Of course, that means ethics would trump expediency; not the most common scenario in modern business.
I don’t think I’ve ever watched a show on TLC (a unit of Discovery Channel), but I plan to this spring; even more surprising to me is that it’s a reality show.
A reality show about great corporate culture in an industry known for the opposite.
“We were interested in working with Southwest,” said Dustin P. Smith, vice president of communications for TLC, “as it is one of the largest airlines in the country and is known for its exuberant corporate culture and for having refreshing and personal customer service that is regarded as unique in the industry.
I doubt that anyone who travels is surprised at the choice of Southwest; and certainly not Southwest.
Ashley Dillon, a spokesperson for Southwest Airlines, said the airline was chosen also because of its tradition of transparency, which relies heavily on the use of social media, blogs and other media.
In a 2009 post citing the airline’s success even during the height of the recession I linked Southwest’s and Zappos’ success to the same core cultural belief—happy employees (one Southwest flight attendant even rapped about its GAAP results).
They stowed drugs in secret panels inside planes; stole laptops, lobsters and fine clothing flown as freight; and rifled through passengers’ belongings for perfume, liquor and electronics.
Passenger losses in 2009 totaled 5.3 million dollars and for the last eight years American Airlines was the source of more reports than any other airline.
“What percent of American Airlines employees would you say engaged in this conduct?” a federal prosecutor, Patricia E. Notopoulos, asked Matthew James, a defendant in the case who pleaded guilty and testified for the prosecution. “About 80 percent,” Mr. James answered.
Of course, management claims it’s just a few bad apples.
Over the years I’ve read about and listened to hundreds of reasons why creating a culture that keeps employees happy just can’t be a priority— productivity and profit are the top priorities.
Obviously, they haven’t found the correlation, in spite of the high-profile examples that abound.
An interesting interview with Ed Schein, a senior professor at MIT and a “pioneer” on the subject of corporate culture, who now believes corporate culture is irrelevant.
The real answer to that is that Corporate Culture is no longer the relevant topic. I think the relevant topic is macro culture, nations, corporations, corporate culture (where all these nationalities and occupations play out), and micro cultures where you have problems in the operating room and in teamwork because you have multi-nationals, people from different occupations that cultures, all interplaying.
OK, I don’t have a PhD and I’m not a brilliant, recognized expert with an international reputation, but my initial reaction to reading the transcript of the interview was ’duh’.
Of course corporate culture is impacted by having multiple nationalities working together, but it was impacted when the workforce were all native-born, but from different regions or even neighborhoods.
As to the micro cultures created by each boss (leader in the accepted jargon), again my reaction is ‘duh.’
Every person is shaped by their MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™), AKA, values. Every manager (from team leader to department vp) creates a culture in their organization that is based on those values and it can be similar, synergistic or diametrically opposed to the cultures above.
All that said, I think it’s great when recognized experts put shape and definition to the things that most workers know by instinct and they do it with a level of credibility far beyond the reach of someone like me.
Here is the interview or you can read the transcript at the link above.
Today’s post is short because reading the articles to which it’s linked is critical.
Are you a good communicator? Do you provide clear, complete, timely information to your team? Do you ever worry that it’s not as understandable as you think?
Have you ever read or heard a professional communicator and wished you could do that, too?
You would expect the two top people of an innovation consultancy to be good communicators and not make the assumption mistake.
“And that brings us to the ultimate irony. When we talked about firing people, we were thinking about those higher on the org chart, not lower. We meant the boss and senior management team. … We thought we made this implicit in the article. Judging from the response, we didn’t. We should have made it clearer.”
Communicating takes effort and the number one rule of clarity is no assumptions.
Read the articles and save them to read again whenever you find a disconnect between what you communicate and your team’s actions to be sure that you aren’t the source of the problem.
With all the research and resulting proof, much of it expressed in dollars, why is it so difficult for companies to execute good cultures?
There is no lack of advice and how-to help available and in a variety of ways, from consultants to books, blogs to videos.
Real-world facts show that good culture is still elusive; one of those ‘should’ actions that are frequently talked about, but often not done.
You create the culture in which those subordinate to you work, no matter your level of management, from team leader to CEO,
CEOs set overall company culture, while subordinates then create, intentionally or not, their own culture that either copies it, is synergistic to it or diametrically opposed to it.
The only guarantee is that whatever culture emerges will accurately reflect its creator’s thoughts, values, beliefs—in other words, MAP.
And therein lies the reason and the problem.
All the cultural intelligence focuses on good culture, with touchstones such as fairness, trust, authenticity, merit, etc.
If those attributes aren’t the bedrock of your own MAP then it’s impossible to implement a culture that embraces them.
So if you are looking to change a non-performing culture or improve a mediocre one, be sure to look deep inside yourself first to know what is possible and what won’t stick unless you change first.
I write a lot abut the importance of culture and now and then someone calls or writes asking why I keep harping on it (BTW, I love when readers call, that’s why there’s a toll-free number in the right-hand column.)
I’m not the only one fixated on the role culture plays in everything from acquiring, motivating and retaining employees to creativity, innovation and overall company success.
Booz’ strategy + business annual innovation survey focuses on culture, not money to improve results.
Booz & Company’s annual study shows that spending more on R&D won’t drive results. The most crucial factors are strategic alignment and a culture that supports innovation.
“My turnover was non-existent. Our turnover is only two percent. We also hire the right people almost every time, because we know that core values are more important than skills. We can teach the skills. Now that we’re all aligned for what the vision is and what’s important to us as humans, we have a culture of resilience and efficient productivity.”
Lani Hay, founder/CEO of defense contracting company Lanmark Technology, turned over three COOs in the same year she won a prestigious national women’s entrepreneurship award and quadrupled company revenues.
“I don’t want to let anyone in the corporate culture who’s going to disrupt the culture and isn’t a good fit.” … Hay says she’s learned that she needs to listen to a wider array of Lanmark staffers, and make sure she values effective communications and an ability to work well with her team. She’s also paying more attention to cultural fit in hiring.
Lynn Blodgett, president and C.E.O. of ACS, a Xerox company, believes that all 85,000 ACS employees should think entrepreneurs. He sees a direct correlation between accountability and great the performance—increase the former and the latter goes up. This includes pushing P&L deeply into the organization, which encourages people to spend as if it was their own money.
“So you give people control, hold them accountable, give them control of their resources, and then monitor what they do.”
He also believes the right kind of incentives fuel motivation and engagement.
“I believe that a really important management principle is that if you get the incentives aligned, people will motivate themselves far better than you’ll ever motivate them. But, again, you have to get the incentives right.
It’s not only financial. It’s being able to feel like they have a level of control over their destiny, that they are valued in what they do, that they’re being successful, that they’re contributing. Those things are actually probably more important than the money. But you’ve got to get the money right, too.”
An additional benefit of this approach is that people will “self-select,” i.e., if they can’t/don’t achieve the incentives they will realize much faster that they’re in the wrong type of work.
I especially like this because it is a better career development tool. Being terminated for non-performance allows people to rationalize, whereas missing incentives tied to viable goals offers the insight that they may need to find more fulfilling work and not keep making the same mistake over and over and that’s not a bad thing
Notice I said “viable goals,” which mean feasible, possible, doable; not goals that only one in a hundred can achieve them.
Goals that set people up for failure have a boomerang effect; they’ll return to their place of origin and smash a large hole in that manager’s reputation.
This is also not a bad thing, since “holey” managers seem to align with “holey” companies making it easier to avoid them.
It’s always surprising how often different sources address the same problems offering similar solutions, but in such different ways that at first glance you wouldn’t notice.
Within days of each other, both Fortune/CNN and BNET offered up good information on employee motivation. Fortune/CNN article was science-based, while BNET was experience-based, with a leavening of humor.
They both said essentially the same thing with one exception, which I’ll get to in a minute.
Motivating employees means providing real purpose in their work; it requires challenging them and encouraging them to learn and grow; and it requires clear communications, including well-defined plans, roles and responsibilities.
Pretty standard stuff.
Now for the exception; the science offered up a new twist that just might help your implementation.
Removing obstacles is not the flip side of providing purpose, challenge and clear communications.
In other words, this is not one of those times that removing the negative means the positive will automatically rush in to fill the void or vice versa, that having the positives will overcome the negatives.
In this case you need to address the two as totally separate subjects.
First, remove any obvious negatives.
Next, start implementing the positives.
Third, be on the lookout for new obstacles.
Fourth, and most important, be sure that you on the side of the angels and not one of the obstacles.
I am a major fan of HBS professor Jim Heskett; I like his thinking and especially like the questions he poses and the responses they draw.
In 1992 Heskett questioned the impact corporate culture had on success, but in his new book, The Culture Cycle: How to Shape the Unseen Force that Transforms Performance he identifies the missing connective link and talks about it here.
But they ultimately found that what really distinguished good and bad performers was the adaptability of cultures. They concluded that organizations need both strong and adaptable cultures to survive over long periods of time.
Not to minimize Heskett’s research, but from where I sit it seems so obvious.
All living things, especially humans, find ways to adapt to their particular situation; they have to or they won’t survive.
Corporate culture is also a living entity and the desire to preserve it by rejecting change is akin to encasing an insect in amber.
Corporate culture must adapt quickly to global, economic and political happenings or it will die.
All that said, it’s great that someone such as Jim Heskett, who has real clout and academic rigor, has proven it.
Creativity. Thinking outside the box. Innovation. Whatever you call it, idea generation often starts with a brainstorming session and too often goes no where.
In a series of studies, Francesca Gino and Dan Ariely found that inherently creative people tend to cheat more than noncreative people. Furthermore, they showed that inducing creative behavior tends to induce unethical behavior. 
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