How the Work Environment Can Crush Our Creative Spirit

“Many business leaders subscribe to a belief that in order to stay competitive in an ever-changing world, they must embrace creativity and innovation as primary goals of an organization. Yet, despite an overwhelming embrace of creativity as a significant factor in the success of a business or organization, many companies have practices and principles in place that actually crush the creative spirit of their employees and seriously hamper the generation of new ideas and dynamic change. Michael Roberto, Director of the Center for Program Innovation at Bryant University, describes several organizational mindsets that tend to inhibit creative expression in the workplace. These mindsets include:

• The Linear Mindset: Many business leaders envision creativity as a linear process—one that moves from problem identification to analysis to idea formulation to execution to solution. By rule, creativity is frequently discontinuous.
• The Benchmarking Mindset: It is not unusual for many businesses to copy or reproduce the solutions proffered by their competitors. “If it worked for someone else, it must work for us” is a common misconception.
• The Prediction Mindset: Predicting what will come next and relying on experts to foretell the future impedes creativity. Managers often become overconfident that “experts” have “inside information” on what will happen next.
• The Structural Mindset: Redrawing and redesigning the organizational chart is often seen as a way of improving performance and stimulating creativity. It rarely does!
• The Focus Mindset: Establishing rigid time, place, and setting parameters for “creative work” seldom works. Creative thinkers oscillate between periods of focus and un-focus. Creativity seldom happens in confining circumstances.
• The Naysayer Mindset: An organization that allows or even encourages naysayers (“That’ll never work!”, “Are you kidding me?”) causes many good ideas to wither and die. More importantly, it significantly reduces the number of good ideas in the first place.”

Read the whole article at Psychology Today

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