A recent BusinessWeek article reported on a survey by IBM regarding the leadership competencies valued by CEOs. In the survey, CEOs identified “creativity” as the most important leadership competency for the successful enterprise of the future.

I feel it’s not a big leap to say that CEOs are interested in creativity that forwards the business. And, I also feel it’s not a big leap to say that what we are already doing – we’re doing to forward the business. So, how do we bring creativity to the work we are already doing?

As we’ve been speaking about in this blog, most of what we do is habitual. If you expand the view from our habits as individuals to the habits in an organization – both the sum of the habits of the individuals in that organization and habits that are shared and tolerated across the organization – it can seem pretty daunting to be able to function, let alone bring creativity.

In addition to the weight of habits, it could be considered that where creativity makes a difference is in changes that have a dramatic impact across an organization, such as development of new products, corporate restructuring, etc. While these are unquestionably areas for creativity that make an impact, focusing solely on those areas could have us miss some of the most fertile ground for creativity – what we are doing on a day-to-day basis.

As part of an experiment, I started looking at my day-to-day actions to see how I could bring at least a degree of creativity to them. At first, I came up with a number of ideas; some worthwhile, some silly. However, doing this felt somewhat artificial. Like I was trying to “do” creativity.

With some of the things I was doing I took a different tack. I began to consider, “Why am I doing that? Why is that important?” This turned out to be more disruptive, and more fruitful, than trying to bring creativity to the activity. I began to question assumptions in a way that allowed me to set aside some things and to focus more clearly on doing things that were more consistent with what is important. This allowed me to consider approaches I had not considered before, and take new, creative actions.

The experience of bringing creativity was also very different. It felt like creating from the heart of what’s important rather than feeling artificial – like attempting to impose something from the outside. The experience was also more fulfilling. Where I have attempted to bring creativity in this manner, I have found myself more engaged and less bothered, worried and preoccupied.

I will also admit that, while simple in principle, this was not always easy. Bringing creativity in this manner took a level of intellectual effort beyond what is typically required. It also took interrupting the mostly automatic flow of work to reflect, consider and think. And, I had to notice and set aside what I knew about the way things “had to be done” and the “right” way of doing things.

The results so far have been promising. Not only that, but I have found that in the areas in which I have begun to take this approach, the creativity has continued.

We invite you to join us in this exploration in our free webinar Creating Clarity – Cutting through the fog of what there is to do and handle coming up on June 29, 2010.
As always, we would love to hear what you are noticing!

Tags: creativity, effectiveness

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