Why do organizations have so much trouble enabling employee creativity? The answer lies in subtle and deeply ingrained behaviors that prevent companies from creating a creative culture. Managers make three common mistakes that prohibit new ideas and suppress suggestions that don’t align with their own. The authors identify three misconceptions that managers must overcome to effectively build creative cultures.
The Productivity Illusion
- Trying to resolve things too quickly, especially for complex problems, is detrimental to innovation because you fall prey to premature closure
- To avoid premature closure, teams should arrive at an “almost final” decision and then intentionally delay action in favour of additional incubation time
- During this time, everyone should commit to thinking about the problem and sharing their ideas
The Intelligence Illusion
- Creative thinking is more cognitively demanding than logical thinking
- It engages more parts of the brain across the left and right hemispheres and places higher demands on working memory
- In that sense, creative thinking is a higher-order skill
- In practical terms, this means that analyzing an idea is easier than synthesizing a new one from multiple sources
- Leaders can improve group creativity by paying close attention to how ideas are discussed in diverse group settings
The Brainstorming Illusion
When you ask people to describe an ideal brainstorming session, the most common elements you hear are people getting together, an energetic and exciting mood, and lots of ideas flying across the room. Simply put, most teams associate successful ideation with group work. Surprisingly, that’s not true.
Because of the social effects, group brainstorming feels more productive. The social connection we experience with each other during brainstorming makes us happier, and we confuse that with productivity. In practice, nominal brainstorming consistently outperforms traditional group brainstorming.
