Unlocking Creativity

Leaders and organizations claim to value creativity, but they often harbor biases and perpetuate environments that discourage new ideas.

Established leaders and experts frequently fail to recognize the merit of out-of-the-box or innovative ideas. Their expertise and success often leads them to devalue novice or outsider contributions. Organizations tend to value concrete, measurable outcomes over creativity, and their employees may not want to be seen as nonconforming thinkers.

Leaders can cultivate employee creativity by overcoming “six mind-sets” – beliefs that discourage employee capabilities.

Leaders may not realize that their company's underlying attitudes and practices block creativity or that its work environment stifles its most brilliant minds. However, they must acknowledge that they have a “situation problem” and not a “people problem.”

To remedy the situation problem, leaders must overcome six mind-sets that oppress creative thinking:

One: “The Linear Mind-Set” believes success comes from using sequential, stepwise processes, but iterative, exploratory methods better foster innovation...