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Nonconforming thinking

11 December 2015

Organizations face increasing instability that sets hurdles to their effective management and attainment of performance targets. There are several solutions that could help your company improve its ability to achieve excellent results despite the turmoil: improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its people, optimize its production, etc. But any optimization strategy must be backed by a creative, innovative process that is, unfortunately, often neglected by too many businesses. By definition, creativity is the ability of an individual or a group of individuals to design or implement a new project, to create a new physical object, or to find a novel solution. Thus, companies can find the best strategy and tactics to stay ahead of the competition and to ensure their sustainability.

A STRATEGIC CREATIVE PROCESS

We often tend to associate business creativity with the skills and traits of the people within the company. Yet, more and more studies show that creativity is not reserved for the chosen few with special qualities. Researchers and leaders believe that creativity can be learned, mastered and controlled, and that there is a very strong correlation between business creativity and performance. Another good reason to formalize this practice is making up for the stereotypes leading managers to see supporters of the status quo as more effective. According to the authors of the article Plafonnés les leaders créatifs?[1], ‘creative types’ seldom get to the top management spots because, unlike ‘effective leaders’, they don’t crave stability and are often perceived as less reliable to ensure effective management. By implementing a formal creative process, companies establish a favorable framework for innovation thanks to a clear structure that offsets the natural inclination of the top management to foster a stable and secure environment, and thus optimizes the results.

“Performance is 90% the system and only 10% the individual.”[2]

CRITERIA OF A GOOD CREATIVE PROCESS

Designing and implementing a creative process should not be taken lightly. If badly planned and poorly executed, its cost to the company will be higher than the actual gains it generates. Here are some examples of the criteria to respect:

Involve the Right People at the Right Time

It is important to involve the right people depending on the nature of the desired innovations and the stage in the process. According to researchers, it is possible to train and strengthen our brain to create new pathways that will enable us to be better at creativity.[3] But some people have a natural ability to generate ideas and to support creativity with winning tactics. They are at ease with risk-taking associated with innovations or hold information that is essential to generate ideas that are not only innovative but also useful to customers. A useless innovation will of course have no impact on the company’s performance. A creative process involves several steps, each requiring a different set of skills. Idea generation, feasibility analysis, idea prioritization and project finalization all call for distinctive skill sets. The process should involve people with complementary skills to ensure the success of the selected strategies.

We all had to deal at one point with creative leaders who lacked focus, thus making their teams lose a lot of time by continuously suggesting new ideas, yet never seeing any of them through. While such organizations appear highly creative and are skilled at generating ideas, they actually implement very few of them because these ideas are either refused or ignored or simply replaced by something new. The consequences can be disastrous because their key employees become demotivated and lose interest in the innovation and even in the company itself. The creative process helps to make the most of the incredible potential of all employees by structuring the process, thus allowing to maximize actual financial results. Having a structured process in place is proof that the senior management privileges innovation.

Mitigation Tactics and Tips to Improve Creativity

Creativity can be slowed down by several factors. A good creative process should include tactics that could mitigate, even eliminate, such factors.

• Conventions and rules: Our natural inclination to follow the rules leads us to associate certain qualities with the notions that we are familiar with instead of generating innovative ideas. For example, when we think of a brick, we automatically imagine a rectangular, somewhat flat object. And what if the brick were something else?
  • Tips:
    • If it is an object, ask:
      • What if a brick were not flat?
    • If it is a situation or service, state:
      • People would be angry if… we stopped offering service from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. This opens your mind to other ways to serve the customer.

These two statements make it possible to open the door to new ways that go against conventions.

• Common sense: Our mind typically refers to a single solution that we regard as the only possible solution. For example, if we are stranded on the side of a road with a flat tire and no lifting jack, we automatically try to find a jack instead of thinking of other ways to lift the car.
  • Tips:
    • Ask yourself:
      • If the jack did not exist, I could still solve my problem by…
    • Try to find a solution using Six Thinking Hats, a system designed by Edward de Bono which helps the thinking and creative process by applying a number of distinct ways to see certain aspects of issues under consideration (e.g. purely the facts, pessimistic judgment, optimistic response, gut feeling, etc.).

• Physiology: Research shows that we use only between 3% and 30% of our brain capacity. Opinions are shared as to the functions of the right and left hemispheres. Some say that one hemisphere is detail-focused, while the other one gives a global vision. New studies show that the brain works as a whole, with the two hemispheres working together as a system. Whatever the thinking pattern, everyone agrees that creating new pathways between the neurons in our brain promotes creativity.
  • Tips to mitigate this limitation are based on destabilizing the brain:
    • Train your brain to create new pathways: use the other hand to pick up the phone, get out of bed in a different way, etc.
    • Find word associations between notions that seem to have nothing in common.[4]

• Consciousness: Our brain favors known thinking routes and, like electricity, it tends to take the shortest path to solve an issue.
  • Tips to mitigate this limitation appeal to creativity techniques:
    • Use reverse or frugal innovation technique to filter, trim, eliminate, make sustainable and find ways to do more with less.[5] This concept is perfectly in line with the increasing importance of sustainable development.
    • Map out unexplored areas: take a fresh look at the value chain.
    • Focus on the one thing your company does best and apply it in the new marketplace (the Hedgehog Concept by Jim Collins).
    • Create by analogy to adapt the know-how or previous experience to a new problem (the inventor of Velcro got the idea from the burrs that clang to his dog’s fur).

“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” Albert Einstein

An Open Mind at the Core of Innovation

Before, most of innovations used to be about improving or adding business services and products. But not anymore. Nowadays, the innovations that are often the least costly and the least risky to implement are those dealing with, for example, the originality of the business model. Indeed, a recent survey of 4,000 senior managers by the Economist Intelligence Unit found that 54% favored new business models over new products and services as a source of future competitive advantage. For example, rethinking how products are offered, how resources are used, or radically transforming the business model (such as the case of a company in a declining industry sector) must certainly be supported by a solid, sound process. Here are some real-life innovations that prove that fundamental changes can be very profitable for their organizations and especially useful for their customers.

• Distribution: A grocery store launched Grocery Click&Collect that brings groceries closer to the customer by offering a possibility to order products at convenient locations like metro stations (from the list of images on the wall, products are purchased online and delivered directly to your home).
• Needs analysis: GeniCan invented an intelligent device that makes your garbage can smarter by scanning items as you throw them away to automatically create customized grocery lists, saving customers time, hassle and money.
• Customer experience: A shopping mall introduced Slow and Fast Lanes to manage foot traffic, separating fast walkers from those who simply hang out or enjoy a bit of window shopping.
• Supply: Camso, a tire and rubber track/track system manufacturer for off-road vehicles operates its own foundry and goes right to the source of rubber (a vertically integrated business model).
• Production and distribution: MyFab is an online furniture store, similar to the e-commerce business model run by Dell and Zara, which provides a way for customers to buy goods straight from the source, eliminating all costs and expenses related to warehousing, staff and sales facilities, delaying production costs till the items are sold, etc., thus transferring the risks.
• Risk transfer: A call center that uses freelance agents who work from home at peak hours, when needed. This business model offers such advantages as scalability and redundancy, eliminating costs related to paying inactive employees during idle periods.
• Skills transfer: Intuit has created and hosts a community of users who help each other to find answers to various issues, and adopted a culture of problem-solving through discussion forums, resulting in a 10% reduction in the cost per contact compared to standard call center costs.
• R&D outsourcing: Natura Cosmetico, a Brazilian cosmetics giant, outsources its R&D, which allows launching 150 new products per year with 150 staff members only, compared to l’Oréal that employs 3,000 people.
• New use for a strategy: The medication that Pfizer initially studied for use in hypertension treatment became a new product, marketed under the brand name Viagra. And 3M found a new application for a failed super-strong adhesive. An accidentally created weak adhesive was used to launch the Post-it note.

Reward Innovation

To foster a creative environment and to highlight the importance of innovation in the business strategy, organizations need to design and link a rewards and recognition program in order to raise the awareness and motivate employees to pursue creative and effective ideas.

In conclusion, it is important to support the organization through a creative process to ensure that sufficient time and resources are dedicated to innovation and that the investments turn into revenues.

 

Sylvie Grégoire, MBA, CRHA
President, Totem Performance organisationnelle

[1] Magazine Premium #10: A study of 364 employees at a refinery, whose jobs required them to find innovative solutions
[2] Jules Goddard: Experiments in Management: Business Strategy Review
[3] “Creativity Unlimited: Thinking Inside the Box for Business Innovation” by Micael Dahlén
[4] William Duggan, researcher and senior lecturer at Columbia Business School
[5] Adrian Wooldridge, Management Editor for The Economist magazine