Managers are Often Afraid to Be Creative

this message was a response to a long time professional friend who was a client several years ago

Managers are Often Afraid to Be Creative

Johnny said...


In marketing meetings I talk about a creativity paradox that happens in business. When times are tough (the VERY time a business needs as much innovation as possible), we tend to hear "we can't risk it... we don't have the funds... let's just keep our heads low until things get better." 


When times are good (when businesses have resources to experiment), we tend to hear "let's not rock the boat... if it ain't broke, don't fix it... this is working, why change it" 


My response was...

Johnny

Same thing applies to highering consultants or trainers.

One of my independent studies I created and did for my PhD was to study the rise and fall of interest in creativity.

My main approach, was ancient by today's standard.  I used the bound volumes of the READERS' GUIDE TO PERIODICA LITERATURE from 1900 to 1980 scanning each volume one by one for articles that were about creativity, creative thinking, creative problem solving, usually because they had those key words in titles (much as Google often does in their work).

The result when charted by numbers of articles and years

was a graph that undulated up and down but was increasing over time with some dramatic drops.

Out of curiosity I made an overlay of it and of the GNP over the same year period that a fellow student in economics shared with me.

Mostly they were opposites much like sine and cosine graphs.

When the economy was flying (1920s, 1950s (in some states) the interest in creativity was high but mostly in arts, crafts, hobbies not in the workplace or business and industry

During World War I & II the interest in some journals in creativity was high when EVERYTHING ELSE WAS GOING TO HELL.

When the economy was failing interest in creativity rose some but not until the bottom was hit.

Some of my teaching points over the past 30+ years consist of...

1) everyone is born with the capacity to be creative
2) cultures, governments, professions, larg groups kill creativity
3) people will be creative when they HAVE NO OTHER #$%^&* choice to survive.
4) the mavericks if given power or those who take power whether they have it or not will be creative.....Walt Disney, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs to name a few of the extreme winners.