#24: Intrapreneurship in 31 steps - 5. Be Unconditionally Creative
Prakash Baskar
Ex-Chief Data Officer - Transforming companies by developing and enabling intrapreneurs to win with data.
Creativity thrives when we cultivate a habit of keeping the "ifs and buts" out while going through the ideation and brainstorming process. The more free flow of thoughts and options we entertain, the more pathways will emerge for seemingly impossible situations.
When an organization gets habitually creative, the company is a fertile ground for strategic innovation as we become less and less tuned to the constraints and lean into opportunities and possibilities.
No idea is inherently flawed.
If you only have one idea, is it good or bad? Compared to what?
When decisions are being made, the quality of the decision is dependent on the promising options. More ideas give rise to more options, and more options provide better solutions that yield reliable confidence in the final decision.?
Unconditional creativity is about allowing all ideas to flow in, whether from within or outside your area or function. Just because something has always been done a particular way does not mean we should resist ideas from outside. When you resolve to reevaluate and reconsider everything as part of your work and take examples, options, and ideas from other areas, you often arrive at creative ideas, options, and solutions for our most pressing problems and worthy opportunities.?
The basis for this model is my set of core beliefs around creativity:?
Unconditional creativity is also about expanding your resourcefulness, even when available resources seem constrained.
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We have never done it here before
Once, I was trying to build a team from the ground up, but the ability to hire a large number of people in a short timeframe was becoming an issue. I proposed hiring some leadership roles as remote positions (pre-COVID time when most companies mandated most employees to be physically present in their office locations).?
There were serious objections from the Human Resources leaders and concerns from my manager, mainly because that had never been attempted.
The only remote employees at that time were a small number of analysts or developers who were individual contributors.
I identified about fifty open positions within the CIO's organization awaiting recruitment to strengthen my case. I learned that the challenge has been around attracting people to a downtown office location.
Together, we discussed whether or not it was time for the company to consider another satellite office location in a smaller city that also had a sufficient supply of talent that we needed. We proposed the option to build out a 100-seat office to the CEO, who approved it and directed Human Resources to plan for a new office location.?
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We could have limited our thinking to fit within existing limitations and dragged on to explore alternate solutions. But it is only when we start to think unconditionally creatively, by removing all known barriers, that new possibilities emerge.
There are always choices when faced with complex challenges. To create completely out-of-the-box decisions, we must be willing to look beyond the traditional boundaries presented through our roles.
Sometimes, they involve partnering with other leaders, and sometimes, it takes the courage to stand firmly against resistance from people with the "we-have-never-done-it-here" attitude.
People on the ground know better.
I spent the first four years of my professional life working in a factory that makes commercial trucks. After getting a mechanical engineering degree, I wanted to get into production management.
It was usual for the factory to shut down all production operations for an entire week in a year and focus on preventive maintenance. During that time, the production employees had time off while all maintenance personnel were busy working.
It was my second year, and our shop had built a long list of ideas and improvements. If you have ever been in a factory, you know keeping uptime is critical. So, even if ideas flowed, there needed to be a larger window to implement most of them.
What better downtime than a forced shutdown during a maintenance break? That year, we formed a small team of senior production operators and some trainees and implemented a process to handle improvements and changes from our idea list. This was never done before; as far as I know, it's still in practice after 25 years.
Say 'No' more often is terrible advice.
I find it mostly that we as individuals create resistance in our minds, refuse to think outside the usual, and stifle creative thinking.
We tend to apply the "Say no more often" advice on ourselves and stop reaching out for help, asking for clarifications, or avoiding unconditional creativity by throwing all kinds of impediments, self-doubts, constraints, and invalid assumptions.
Forget about what the other person will say. It is their responsibility and right to say 'no' if and when they do not like your idea or do not want to support you with the resources.
Brainstorming and ideation must be without restrictions.
If it is not for the unconditional creative thinking of a few individuals throughout history, mankind may still be in the stone age.
Unleash your creativity and be an Intrapreneur. In doing that, at least you tried; if some ideas fail, it's still okay. Imagine what happens when a group of intrapreneurs works this way. Innovation will not be limited to a few in the transformation team (that approach usually doesn't work), but you will have a company that creates and leads the industry.
If you want to develop a small group of high-performers into Intrapreneurs, my group mentoring service may be a great way to make it happen.