People, Ideas, Action

It is so easy for us to say, “I don’t have a creative bone in my body” or “I am not a creative person”.  Well, I am sorry, we cannot get off that easy.  If we want to take that stance, then we are not human.  It is in our biological makeup!  So, accept the fact that we are creative.  We just haven’t looked at ourselves in that way, or we have worked very hard on other aspects of our mind over the years that we have convinced ourselves that our creativity doesn’t exist.  We just need to get into an environment that challenges us to unveil it or allows us to embrace it once again.

Now let’s take us, as individuals, and put us in a business environment.  We have risen to this position in business for doing what it takes to get the position.  We have achieved the knowledge, we executed the tasks required and we have been consistent in our work habits.  So are we creative?  At first we say no, because consistency doesn’t relate to creativity as general knowledge determines it.  Well, that is where the social definition of creativity falls short.  Creativity is the ability to take something and have the insight to transform it into something else.  A greater level of creativity is consistency.  The ability to repeat the process and have outcomes that, on average, move forward towards goals.   Therefore, we have displayed a high level of creativity in getting ourselves to this position in business.

If we are where we are because of our actions, then we are creative.  Speed of advancement does not necessarily mean level of creativity, because we are all operating with different environmental factors that influence the opportunities and what we have at our disposal.

Now, let’s correlate this to the growth of a business.  In the above dialogue, replace “us” with your company or the business where you work.  The essence of business is to take something and then apply insight to make something else or have something else happen.  Therefore, each business has a basic level of creativity.  Now let’s take it further.  Does your business take the opportunities and different, often changing, environmental factors and use it to its advantage in its process?  Some do this better than others.   Why? 

Is it leaders?  Is it the environment?  Is it the team?  It is all of that.  So what is an underlying skillset that all can rely upon as a core foundation?  Creativity.  Its acceptance as an integral biological trait of each employee that translates to the whole foundation of a business.  Therefore, make it the foundation upon which your business culture relies. 

Now it is up to the culture to establish the systems and support to align the collective, diverse creativity of the team to benefit the business.  Who is in charge of that?  Who is the caretaker of the culture?   The leadership.  The leadership does not have to be the most creative and lead the charge, they just need to set the stage to support and give guidance.

I say guidance, because when the creativity of the individual is given the go ahead, it is like the race horse ready to run.  The leader or the culture needs to be a good jockey to get the most out of the horse, not just to win one race, but build a relationship and partnership to win many races.

Please share your input.