Sticky Management Issues

Employees with No Creativity

I recently received a call from a senior-level executive who was emitting stress waves strong enough to be heard and felt over the phone. She told me that her firm was having a really tough time closing several important deals that have been in the works for months. They had been through tough times before, but this felt different to her. So, like most inclusive leaders, she turned to her management team for input on the firm's direction. She called her team together for a no-holds-barred brainstorming session. She asked the team to think outside the box; to throw out all of their pre-conceived notions about what would work and what wouldn't. The goal was to create an environment in which everyone could feed off of each other's creative energy and in which there would be so many wild, innovative ideas popping up around the room that they would surely come up with one or two that would pull the company out of its sales slump. That was what she wanted. What she got was a room full of managers who were just as stressed out as she was and whose best idea was to invite their employees to the meeting because aren't 90 heads better than 12? What happened?

During tough times like these, all leaders are looking for that elusive "great idea" that will re-ignite their firms' sales, client impact or team contribution. But what do we do when we hit a dry spot in our creativity and our employees seem to be just as lost in the desert as we are? One idea is to tear down our single-minded reverence for the creative brainstorming meeting. And build in its stead a monument to enthusiasm. I know, that seems a little hoaky to me, too. But take a look at what Dr. Winston Brill has to say about it in his Creativity Comments at www.winstonbrill.com.:

Since 1989, I've been studying the human side behind great ideas. What I was looking for were themes in common to how people think of great ideas. I examined a diversity of disciplines including marketing, sales, research, administration, development, manufacturing and design, and investigated 350 of these great ideas.

Only seven of these 350 great ideas occurred during group meetings! In fact, most great ideas occurred when the individual wasn't actually working on the problem that the idea eventually solved. Many great ideas for work happened when the person wasn't even in the workplace!

So, is there anything in common to people who think of and propose great ideas? From my study of 350 great ideas, I find that the "Eureka!" person was, in each case, very enthusiastic about work. These are people who don't spend most of their energy on office politics or figuring out how to get more from themselves while doing as little as possible. These are people who don't dart out of the building when the minute hand strikes 12 at the end of the official workday.

When someone is enthusiastic about a goal, that person's mind will constantly be open to thoughts and sensory inputs, any of which have the potential of connecting with that goal to yield a great idea. Without enthusiasm, those connections just won't be made.

Dr. Brill concludes that creativity is all about appropriately directed enthusiasm. So, back to the stressed out executive whose management team participated in an unproductive, creative-less brainstorming session during a harrowing time when she needed the team to pitch lots of new, innovative solutions. Given how tense she was on the phone, I asked if the tension in the brainstorming meeting was just as palpable. She confirmed that it was and I had my own "eureka!" moment. Scheduling a brainstorming meeting to encourage innovation is a losing bet if the facilitator isn't particularly adept at leading creative ideation. It's a disaster waiting to happen if the facilitator is tense and modeling a level of anxiety that would dampen even the most creative participant's enthusiasm.

Holding anxiety-laden brainstorming meetings doesn't work. Instead, try getting excited... and taking your employees along for the ride. A major objective for every leader should be to stimulate enthusiasm for work goals... and creativity will be a natural result. Kazuo Inamori, founder of both Kyocera and DDI, said it best:

"Finding out how passionate your subordinates are about their jobs, and infusing your energy into them until they burn with passion, are the most important duties of a leader."

During these economically shaky times, are you consciously and consistently energizing and exciting your team or are you trying to skip over that step to get to the "great ideas" right away? Let me know how that works out for you.