Encyclopedia of Leadership

6.7

CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION:

THE LEADER’S ROLE

Inspired by Edward de Bono, Gerald Nadler, Shozo Hibino, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and Roger Von Oech.

In the world of Fast Company,“more of the same” or even “getting better at the same” rarely

works. Would you want to fly with an airline whose motto was, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”?

One of Jack Welch’s famous one-liners is, “If it ain’t broke, break it.” Writing about the new

economy, Lester Thurow is blunt: “Businesses must be willing to destroy the old while it is still

successful if they wish to build the new that will become successful. ...Both creation and

destruction are essential to driving the economy forward.” In other words, no creativity, no

survival!

This tool will give you an overview of some typical creativity tools and their implementa-

tion.

We use a distinction made by some creativity gurus:

Creativityis the process of generating new ideas.

Innovationis creating the conditions for creativity and for implementing the best ideas.

Many books and workshops rightfully focus on creativity (generation of new ideas); yet in

most organizations the bottleneckis actually innovation (getting a new idea accepted and pro-

ducing results). Most organizations are designed to continue on the path they have set (implic-

itly or explicitly). Your role as leader is crucial in encouraging a culture that can generate ideas;

high-grading and selling those ideas; and ensuring successful implementation and results.

CREATIVITY TECHNIQUES

Creativity experts have designed and promoted thousands of techniques. Here is a sample list.

SECTION 6 TOOLS FORCRITICALTHINKING ANDINNOVATION 189

Lateral Thinking

Brainstorming or

Mental Popcorn

Reframing

Technique What is it? Some how to’s:

Exploring many different

ways of looking at an issue,

rather than accepting the first

logical definition and

solution.

Assigning a defined period to

no-evaluation thinking, when

novel or unusual contribu-

tions are encouraged.

Exploring a set of

assumptions about the scope

of an issue and the range of

solutions available.

✔ Encourage low-probability thinking, rather than what de Bono

calls high-probability but uncreative (vertical) thinking.

✔ Always ask for the second right answer.

✔ Probably the most used (some would say abused) technique in

groups and teams.

✔ A step in a process in which “mental popcorn” is used for the

purpose of increasing the scope of thought.

[☛6.9 Brainstorming]

✔ Make it acceptable to challenge the often narrow assumptions

that are embedded in a problem definition.

✔ Ask questions that broaden or narrow the scope of the issue.

[☛7.1 Problem Framing]