How Can We Boost The Creative Thinking Process In Life by Mel Feller
One of the most important traits of a workplace leader,
creative thinking, is essentially the ability to think in new and different
ways when applied to everyday problems. In this regard, contrary to popular
belief, every leader can and should be creative, at least some of the time, and
in this brief article, we will explore how this might occur and where creative
thinking, in general, be applied.
Before we look at areas of application for creative thinking
let us initially focus on how we can become more creative and/or devote more
time to this activity. The first thing to say is that creativity needs a leader
to have time to think and reflect about his or her biggest and most challenging
issues and problems. If this isn’t available (too much work or work life seems
to be a mad rush from one task to the next) then the first change is to “carve
out” some time every day to ask the question, “what are the alternative ways we
might tackle the most pressing/important issues that we need to be
considering?”
In addition, once we have committed some extra and regular time
to his kind of thinking, the other skill set for every leader to develop is to
start asking many more carefully considered questions and then engage in active
listening, rather than making quick decisions and talking or issuing commands
too hastily. This is somewhat
counter-intuitive for many leaders, who often think they are there to appear
confident and “call-the-shots”. However,
this can stifle creativity and innovation, if done to excess, so a leader has
to learn to curb this urge.
So, if we now have more time and a more listening and
question-oriented approach to what areas should we broadly apply our creative
thinking?
Being more creative
about better marketing, customer acquisition and service
Although marketing and customer acquisition will very much
depend upon the size of an organization, the industry or sector in which it
operates and how mature or long it has been around, there is always some room
for creativity or new ways of doing things differently or better in this realm.
This is mainly because customer expectations change and there is always
competition some of whom are new and some of whom change their approach to customers
too. Creative thinking and questions here need to be directed at what customers
want and how well these needs are actually being met. If the answer is not well
enough the discussion can quickly turn to creative ways to change the
situation.
Being more creative
about employee/team well-being
No matter what the business or organizational type, even a technological
one, people are always at the heart of the operation. As a result, finding
creative ways in which people can best and most happily perform as individuals
and as teams is critical. This area of creative thinking is often best aimed at
questions such as “how do we create a high performing culture, in what better
ways can we align organizational and individual values, which people across the
organization can best work together and how and who amongst our employees has
the most skill, knowledge or talent to help us succeed the most, etc.? Nevertheless,
the questions to be asked in the people sphere do not stop here.
We can often
be creative about the best size and compositions of teams, ways in which they
are led, performance measurement systems that provide the greatest motivation
and fair rewards and even how communication systems can be better streamlined
or improved? It might even include questions about what is the most creative
use of workspace and conditions under which people might feel most relaxed or
inspired. In the end, we know the more engaged and happy employees are the more
creative contribution they are likely to make.
Being more creative
about workplace operations and productivity
Although productivity can take many forms, depending upon
the particular workplace, creativity and innovative thinking can be the major
force behind much greater potential effectiveness and efficiency across the
organization as a whole. This often means applying creative thinking to current
major workplace processes and looking for new ways to get things done faster,
with less cost, to a higher level of quality etc.. Once again, insightfully
asked questions are likely to offer up many possible ways to streamline
operations in new ways and question examples here might be “how long is our
order to delivery cycle, how quickly do we deliver products or services
(internally and externally) and how good are we at recovering from mistakes
when mistakes or errors are made, what do our suppliers or customers tell us in
terms of what could be operationally better than it is now”, etc.?
Being more creative
about overall financial health
All businesses, even government offices and nonprofits have
to “add-value” or make sure that they spend money wisely and create at least as
much as they spend, and ideally a lot more. In a for profit company this would
be simply stated as generating as much profit for the organization as possible.
This simple outcome can be achieved in a range of ways however, so teams have
considerable choice available to them both in terms of how to invest its money
(usually in people, fixed assets, equipment and projects, etc.) and how to create
an outcome or series of outcomes that are valuable to customers and for which
they will happily pay. Creative thinking in this sphere can and should be
applied by asking questions about “how can we best access capital and at what
costs, where should we invest our money and why out of all of the alternatives
available to us, are we getting acceptable returns for all of our projects, can
we control costs/cash flows more effectively and how might this be done, are we
missing out on revenue streams that we could readily access given our
resources”, etc.?
As we can see, then there are many areas in which creative
thinking can be applied and every one of an organization’s leaders can
contribute. All they need to do is find regular time to think in more creative
and “lateral” ways and learn to ask searching questions about why and how
things work today and how they might be improved tomorrow.
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