Q. What are best practices for finding and keeping creativity in an organization?
A. Like it or not, we've been forced to innovate for the past 15 months.
The pandemic made us find new solutions to a variety of challenges. It made us look for solutions in places where we would not usually look and forced us out of our comfort zones within our designated disciplines. It made cross-functional, multidiscipline teams necessary and that's something we shouldn't lose during the transition to a post-COVID workplace.
Looking outside your discipline is an excellent way to find creativity and innovate. While it's easier to rely on the usual people and resources when it comes to brainstorming and idea generation, it can also lead to groupthink and complacency, as well as discounting ideas because we know too much about a subject or situation and are less open to new ideas.
For example, Apple product development goes against the standard sequencing of development of passing things along from design to engineering to manufacturing to marketing and then eventually sales. Apple gets everyone in the room from the outset of a project where it gets diverse perspectives and input. It's a messy process, which is why most companies use a linear method, but it's proven to be effective for Apple and others that use the technique.
A large retailer I've worked with used a similar approach with representatives from all areas of the company in putting together a big-idea team tasked with innovation.
Finding creativity in your organization can be successful if you're willing to get out of your comfort zone and look in unfamiliar places.
Keeping creativity alive is also something that usually gets people out of their comfort zones because it's not a regular practice. More emphasis is placed on doing and producing versus thinking and discovering. That's a mistake. Once you've found new creativity you've got to nurture it to keep it alive. Regular formal and informal cross-functional ideation can go a long way to keeping creativity fresh once it's found.
Glenn Karwoski is a member of the adjunct faculty at the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business.
