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Category: Creativity

  • Decision Making: Creativity Inhibitors

    In the last byte, we looked at what organization characteristics influence creativity dimension of decision making. In today’s byte, we look at some of the mental blocks that inhibit creativity from emerging to its true potential. 

    One would need to understand that creativity is not hard-wired, it could be developed. It however would emerge only if the mental blocks that inhibit creativity are removed. Following a list of such mental blocks that research has identified:
    1. Search for “the” “right” answer
    2. Attempting to be logical
    3. Be bound by rules
    4. Avoiding Ambiguity
    5. Looking for practicality in the solution
    6. Fright of being foolish
    7. Trying to be in the comfort of only one’s expertise, avoid zones not under expertise
    8. Fearing failure
    9. Believing that one is not creative
    10. Eliminating Play from work!
    Unlocking these mental barriers could release the creativity hitherto untapped both for individuals as well as organization.

  • Decision Making: Creativity Influences 2

    In the last byte, we looked at how individual aspects influence creativity. In today’s byte, we look at the organizational aspects that influence creativity.

    The organizational environment in which one works also has implications on the creativity of an individual working in the organization. The environment could either be supportive to creativity or impede it – i.e. Creative facilitating or Creative impeding.

    Creative facilitating environments could involve aspects like autonomy, teams with diverse skill sets, supervisory staff who is supporting and willing to take risks etc. The environment which is creativity impeding would have a very strict evaluation and monitoring of the activities that one works on, a competing environment where if one wins the other looses etc.
     
    Flexible organization structures, participative decision making environment, strong relationships with supervisors and coworkers, appreciative of efforts etc could all be pushing the creativity horizons.  An organization which is extremely political, criticizing, and risk avoiding is detrimental to creativity in the work place.

  • Decision Making: Creativity Influences

    In the last byte, we were discussing about creativity and its influence on decision making. In today’s byte, we look at what factors influence creativity.
     
    The factors influencing creativity could be classified into two groups:
    1. Individual factors affecting creativity
    2. Organizational factors affecting creativity
    Several variables that are extremely individual specific could influence creativity some of these are: cognitive processes like divergent thinking (thinking of several potential solutions for a given problem), association ability, use of imagery etc are all part of the individual creativity.
     
    Other factors like breadth of individual interests, high energy, concern for achievements, intuition, judgment, self-confidence, tolerance of ambiguity, risk-taking etc have been found through research to be influencer of creative processes.
     
    Importantly, the mood of individuals – preferably good mood – helps achieve creativity.

  • Decision Making: Creativity

    In the last byte, we looked at the role of intuition in decision making. In today’s byte, we look at the role of creativity in decision making. 

    Creativity could be defined as a process influenced by individuals and organizational factors that result in the production of novel and useful ideas, products, or both. (Src: Ref book) The constantly changing environments in which the organizations operate require the employees to think of creative ways to solve the challenges they face.
     
    The process of Creativity could be seen to possess the following 4 stages:
    1. Preparation – seek out new experiences and opportunities to learn
    2. Incubation – reflective thought
    3. Illumination – sensing the insight to solve the problem
    4. Verification – determination if the solution or idea is valid
    It is interesting to note that the creative dimension relies a lot on the relaxation of the brain! So sleep well 🙂

  • Diversity and Creativity in Teams

    In the last byte, we looked at the social benefits of work groups. Today’s byte, we shall briefly discuss about the role of diversity and creativity in teams.

    We understand that teams are united by their purpose – this is like the shared goal towards which the team-members work, however this doesn’t imply that the team members should be similar or they should all follow a strict defined way to doing things. We are hinting here at the role of similarity (a component of diversity) and creativity in teams.

    Dissimilarity amongst team members have varied affects on the team and the individuals involved in terms of the employee’s commitment, turnover intentions, beliefs, self-esteem etc. While the dissimilarity also helps in enhancing the creativity given that the same aspects is observed by team members from diverse opinions. This means that creativity could be looked at in a team context and not just the individual context; there could be a process that could help tap the creativity of individuals and solve the work-team challenges.

    The creativity aspect in work teams could not just arise for the dissimilarities in the social context, but also the prior experience of the team members. This is also one of the reasons why diversity based on the team composition varying in experience levels and the domains could actually benefit the teams in solving challenging problems.