Creativity doesn’t live in one person’s head. The best creative organisations are the ones that have built systems and cultures that unlock creative thinking across their whole team. You want your people to bring their bad ideas, celebrate the worst one, just get the juices flowing and to normalise these kinds of conversations. They can work wonders for morale and genuinely open up lines of enquiry you may not have considered.
Why organisations kill creativity without meaning to
Creativity gets killed by:
Hierarchy: Ideas only flow upward and approval only flows downward. This is also known as ‘founder syndrome’, where the business remains an extension of the founder and doesn’t have its own distinct voice or brand.
Risk aversion: A culture where being wrong is punished produces people who don’t take creative risks. The unsubstantiated fear of doing the wrong thing or flying too close to the sun. You’d have to push the envelope pretty freaking hard to get to this point. Chances are the risks will be minor and show you that you’re only scratching the surface.
Time pressure: Creativity needs space. Organisations that are permanently in crisis mode don’t give people the mental room to think creatively. Similarly with organisations that are highly compliance-obsessed. I endorse compliance obviously. But we’re talking about human services here, there’s room for grey and the creative.
The expert trap: Assuming that only certain people get to contribute creative ideas. You’d be surprised where great ideas come from, and that includes bringing in your participants. Why not invite some of your customers in and give them some paid work (a few hours – paid) to come up with ideas and explore their perspective. Inclusive creativity for the win.
Building a more creative team culture
Create safe spaces for ideas: Regular sessions where all ideas are welcomed and none are immediately judged. I’ve typically run weekly or fortnightly creative sessions with everybody invited. Put the problem or requirement in front of them and see where they take it. Enthusiasm leads to more enthusiasm, shutting them up will become the challenge if you do it right.
Tap the frontline: Your support workers and coordinators see things you don’t. Ask them.
Celebrate creative risk: When someone tries something creative and it doesn’t work, celebrate the attempt. Unless it led to the closure of the business or jail time for people it’s not that big of a deal. The facebook post didn’t resonate or bring in any leads, oh well, move on and good effort.
Make it part of the rhythm – A standing 30-minute creative session in your weekly team meeting signals that creativity is part of the job. You won’t be short of ideas.
Some of this may read ‘easier said than done’ but an inescapable reality is that growth requires some level of marketing and differentiation, marketing and differentiation require creative ideas with execution. NDIS businesses especially are content businesses, whether they want to admit it or not.
Next week we start making things.
Exercise
Run a 15-minute brainstorm with at least two other people in your organisation. The brief: how could we tell our organisation’s story in a way we’ve never tried before? Capture every idea.