Why Creativity is a Must-Have Skill for Every Leader
How to cultivate creativity and navigate the unprecedented
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Why Creativity is a Must-Have Skill for Every Leader
This week’s theme is creativity.
Because being a leader can be magical and inspiring; creating a vision, bringing people together, and achieving results.
But the volatility and unpredictability which businesses must navigate is unprecedented. There is no rule book for leaders today.
Whatever your view about the potential of AI, the dramatic rise of ChatGTP shows just how impossible it is to predict and stay ahead of what will come next.
Very few of us could have predicted the degree to which just four months after its public launch, it is weaving into businesses and day-to-day team use.
The world is changing and what it takes to be a leader is changing fast.
Traditional linear thinking - planning a neat strategic route from A to B - will only get you so far.
External factors are no longer predictable.
“Creativity is seeing what everyone else has seen, and thinking what no one else has thought”
Albert Einstein
Surviving, thriving and navigating the volatile, ambiguous, and complex norm we operate in, requires leaders to adapt and move away from what already exists.
To create something new.
And that, by definition, requires creativity.
Yet driving for efficiency and results day to day often leads to a focus on what works, and innovating incrementally.
Rather than leading with true creativity.
And for leaders and organisations who operate at pace, research shows that the more time pressure people have the less likely they are to think truly creatively.
Even for those of us who believe we work best under pressure.
What’s more, as businesses get bigger, more hierarchies, layers of approval, structures, and systems get added; all in the spirit of building accountability and efficiency. But they reduce the freedom which needs to exist for creativity and innovation.
Without intentionally designing for creativity, this happens:
It means that leaders must make space and build environments that are nimble and adaptable. And that requires accepting risk, letting go, and giving your people space to do what they do best.
Leaders must lead with creativity.
The challenge is that leadership isn’t typically known as a creative profession. It isn’t a place for “creative types”.
Perhaps that’s why for those who lead results-driven businesses, creativity is often seen as a nice to do.
Even Google, whose famous management philosophy 15 years ago was "20% time" granting googlers the freedom to allocate 20% of their time for creativity and play, found that only 10% of their teams actually said they used it.
The reality is that creativity in business can’t and shouldn’t be time blocked.
To survive today it must be woven into the fabric of how businesses and leaders operate.
Here are seven ways you can begin.
Ignore: Don’t listen to the myth that you’re either left-brained (logical, objective and analytical) or right-brained (creative, intuitive and a free thinker). It is exactly that; a myth.
But the stories you tell yourself (“I’m just not very creative”) can limit your potential. Said often enough; these beliefs become deep-rooted and self-fulfilling. Whilst some people are especially creative or logical, everyone has the ability to create and analyse. You have both sides of your brain to work with and play with.
What do you believe about your level of creativity?
What would a different belief be?
What could you do if this new belief was true?
Lead it: Most Boards carve out time for strategic thinking and decision-making but often delegate innovation and creative thinking.
As with all things, if you want to create a culture of creativity, you need to do it too and role model what you want to see permeate the rest of your business.
Rank yourselves as a Board on a scale of creativity; perhaps 1 if you have low creativity levels and 10 if you are extremely creative as a group. Think about your interactions and meetings over the last few months. Then answer the questions below:
Where would you be on the spectrum as a collective?
How do your individual beliefs about creativity shape your Board approach?
What would a shift one degree to the right feel like?
Experiment. In my work with leaders and leadership teams, I encourage them to play, and experiment when they are practicing something new.
When the focus is on carrying out an effective experiment and learning from it; regardless as to whether the thing you were trying worked or not; if you learn from it the experiment was a success.
What’s on your learning plan right now?
What does it look like in the form of an experiment?
Fail Well: Creativity and trying out new things means being prepared to fail every now and then. You can read more here about how to get better at failing:
Play, intentionally: To be a creative leader requires more than allocating one or two hours a week to creative thinking.
But research shows that effective leaders do deliberately alternate between two zones; learning and performing.
The learning zone is for play, learning, experimentation, and growth. It is for low-stakes situations, making mistakes and learning from them.
The performance zone is for execution; higher risk situations when delivery is essential and mistakes necessarily minimal.
Eduardo Briceño’s 11-minute brief shares how to maximize the two; and step between them during your day.
Experience: Getting out of the routine can put you in a different, refreshing, and energising headspace. It sparks energy, creativity, and new thinking. Routine is helpful but when your brain becomes comfortable it stops working so hard.
Try something different every day; a conversation with someone you don’t know well, taking a new walk or listening to a different type of music. Start making your brain uncomfortable.
Ask yourself:
Where are you asleep at the wheel?
Where are your habits stifling you?
What one different thing you could do today?
Long Read: In Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration, Ed Catmull shares how leaders can build and sustain a creative culture with a unique business identity; as the founder of Pixar who revolutionised how animated films were created, he is well placed.
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