My Principles Of Management assignment finally unleashed as the first blog!
Nowadays, many
believe that we are in entering a phase of the next great business revolution
called the “creative revolution”. The most fundamental unit of value that is
said to transcend the agricultural, industrial and information revolutions in
the “creative revolution” is ideas. Since creativity is more than just an
option, it is essential to survival. Allowing people to be creative may be one
of the manager’s most essential and challenging responsibilities. As a CEO of a
company, to encourage, motivate and harness creative ideas and decision amongst
staff members in an organization requires the ability to set the example as a
creative leader, promote the creative environment in the workplace, acknowledge
recognition, avoid criticism and also using the brainstorming technique.
As a leader of a
company, to encourage creative decision among the staff, the first basic step
is to set the good example of being creative themselves. Leaders should
recognize the almost infinite ‘little’ opportunities for creativity and have
confidence in their own creative abilities. This can also mean to obtain
sufficient resources, including facilities, equipment, information and funds. A
leader can learn to be creative by escaping from work once a while, reading
widely and trying new experiences, talking to people constantly about issues
and ideas with which he or she are wrestling, take a course or find a good book
about creative thought processes. To have confidence in their own abilities is
to believe that they have the potential to be creative in various ways. Being creative
with ideas can mean bringing a new thing into being (creation), join two
previously unrelated things (synthesis) or improve something in the form of
modification to give a new application.
Setting the example
may not be sufficient for a leader to motivate their staff into creative ideas
and decisions. To motivate, a leader should promote creative freedom in the
workplace since creative decisions are about making decisions without too many
constraints or to some cases without constraints at all. Identifying these
constraints and assessing them is an early process in providing a creative
environment for the staff at all levels. Sometimes these constraints are rules,
regulations or even procedures that hinder the creative environment in the
organization. For example, in the manufacturing sector protecting engineers
from managers who might block the creative process of coming up with the idea
to enhance production output from an unconventional method. Although the
decision might be a risk-taking one sometimes it may be proven that
unconventional methods reaps results especially when conventional methods are
not producing enough.
Following that, a
successful creative idea or decision should be rewarded as this would further
harness the worker to be more creative in the future. Rewards that come in
forms such as
recognition, salary increment, extra bonuses or even promotion
should be considered by the leader
of the organization. Creative individuals consider recognition for their contributions very
important. An example is Kary Mullis, who was a chemist at Cetus, a
small biotechnology company
in the United States who came up with the
original idea of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for
quickly growing
batches of DNA. Mullis, however, felt that he had been robbed by Cetus of the
credit due him and eventually left the company. However, in 1993, Mullis
received the Nobel Prize
for the discovery of PCR. He felt that his role
in discovering PCR was finally vindicated.
However, when a
creative decision does not produce the desired results a leader should not
punish the workers for it as it would discourage them from making better
creative ideas and decisions in the future because the next time such decision
is required, workers would fear the same situation rather than be bold and
willing to take the risk. In short, to harness creative ideas and decision, a
leader must avoid criticizing their workers creative ideas or decision
destructively.
Using brainstorming is one of the most popular
techniques for generating creative ideas. In brainstorming, group members
generate as many ideas about a problem as they can. As the ideas are presented,
they are posted so that everyone can read them and people can use the ideas as
building blocks Brainstorming gathers
together a set of experts with diverse skills, preferably including client
representatives. Main rules to be followed during the idea generation phase are
defer judgments; build on the ideas of
others; one conversation at one
time; stay focused on the topic ,and think outside
the box to encourage wild ideas. By the time people have exhausted
their ideas, a long list of alternatives has been generated. Only then does the
group turn to the evaluation stage. At that point, many different ideas can be
considered, modified or combined into creative, custom-made solution to the
problem. Although brainstorming is a common practice, some research has shown
that face-to-face groups generate fewer independent ideas than the same number
of people working alone. However the potential benefits of good brainstorming
are clear.
Creative staffs in an organization
tend to be more motivated
because they’ve achieved something. They’ve discovered a better way of doing
things or they’ve solved a problem by thinking outside the box. By successfully
finding solutions, they’re more motivated to work. And the more motivated they
are, the more productive they are. And the more productive they are, the more
satisfied and motivated they are. The cycle endlessly recreates itself.
