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Creativity and the Organization
A new survey suggests employee creativity is being stifled at work. HR leaders need to step in to make the necessary changes so their organizations can profit by that creativity.
Most American workers think they're creative. As for their employers? Not so much. That's according to a recent survey conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs, which found that almost nine in 10 (88 percent) respondents consider themselves to be creative. It also found that while three-quarters of respondents said their employers value their creativity, just 63 percent said their positions were creative and 61 percent thought their companies were creative. "Creativity is openness and receptivity to new ideas. It's the creative employee who enables a company to step out of what it normally does and drive it in new directions," says Gerald L. Gordon, president and CEO of the Fairfax County (Va.) Economic Development Authority. Although "creativity" may often be associated with the arts or technology companies, it's also commonly found in areas such as manufacturing, says Gordon, whose organization sponsored the survey in conjunction with its National Conference on the Creative Economy, which will be held in late October. (Fairfax County is a Washington suburb that's home to many high-technology companies.) The chance to be creative struck a chord with many respondents: Of the 564 employed adults surveyed, 21 percent said they would change jobs if it meant having the opportunity to be creative at work -- even if it required taking a job with lower pay. Sam Bacharach, the director of Cornell University's Institute for Workplace Studies in New York, says he's "not surprised in the least" by the survey results. But, he says, "everyone forgets that while people are creative, they're also risk-averse. You have people saying 'I want to be creative, but what if I'm wrong? I'll get hung, so why should I risk it?'" That's where HR needs to step in, he says. HR leaders who want their organizations to thrive must invest more in helping employees master the art of promoting their ideas and navigating the corporate culture by teaching them to be "politically smart," says Bacharach. A key criteria for being successfully creative in organizations, he says, is the capacity for not only coming up with new ideas but seeing them through to implementation. "Good ideas are a dime a dozen," Bacharach says. "There are tons of people with great ideas, but very few who have the capacity to implement them." This is exacerbated by organizational structures that -- inadvertently or not -- discourage most employees from pushing their ideas forward, he adds. "If you want a great organization, HR has to tackle the simple issue of giving people the skills to maneuver their way through the organization and develop their capacity to mobilize people." It must also change the organizational structure, he adds. "When people tell you they're not creative at work, what they're really telling you is that they haven't been given the tools to move things forward. We don't give people the capacity to be creative -- to give them the right to fail and the autonomy and capacity to risk their ideas," he says. Indeed, Bacharach says doing this should be a key part of HR's mission: "If HR can't make people more creative, than what's their value proposition?"
September 27, 2007 Copyright 2007© LRP Publications |
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