New thinking for the established stuff

To All Presenters:

Engage in creativity with a purpose.

3M used to allow employees to dedicate 15% of their time to near-unbridled creative exploration. Sadly, unguided creative thinking led to a lot of bloated ineffciency within that organization. In recent years, 3M has required a more process-oriented approach to the application of creativity within the workplace.

Creativity for creativity's sake has its place, but its value is difficult to quantify.

So often in the agile modern business world we are so focused on creating BestIdea 2.0 that we often overlook opportunities to achieve tangible results by reviewing current operations. If we took a little time to examine each highly ingrained procedure within our sphere of influence, took time to explore all the things that are "the way they've always been", what might we learn? If we couldn't do things this way, how would we do them? What would we do differently if money didn't matter? What opportunities for improvement does such a simple line of thinking present? Can the value of these opportunities be measured in a tangible way?

This last point being the most important because quantifiable value has a strange tendency to strengthen business cases, and to many managers - money does matter.

Rather than "free thinking" focus creative energy on an area which aligns with organizational objectives, ideally one over which you have some control and responsibility. In such a case you are best able to alleviate fear, remove constraints and try to move the organization from "yes but" to "yes and. . .".

Dedicating a fixed percentage of time to creative thought is a noble pursuit, but not necessary for achieve measurable advancement. More often a procedural trigger can be cause for creative review. Consider, you need to make a routine hire to add support to an established but growing product line. If you could manufacture an ideal universe for the management of this product in your organization - what would it be? Would this person report to you? Would this product even remain with you, or could there be new opportunities for growth if it, and the new hire, were integrated elsewhere? As you make one transition, are there others which could be beneficial, but had not previously been considered?

Sometimes there is value to looking in directions other than forward.

THE POINT: Evolution comes from revolution.