Creativity in Crisis – How Might the Public Sector Recognize the Value of Creativity During this Pandemic?

“We need creativity in order to break free from the temporary structures that have been set up by a particular sequence of experience”. Edward de Bono

History shows that events of this magnitude mark the end of one era and the beginning of the next. The pandemic, for the moment, has drastically changed our daily work life. Our daily work and life routines ways have been thrown up in the air, forcing us to adapt and create new ways of being. We have been plunged into a world of extreme uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, a world where we don’t know what will happen next, where there is no road map for how to proceed. The good news is that we are not defenseless - we as humans have an innate skill that can help us in crisis mode, creativity. 

As a public servant, I can share that during times of stability and certainty, skills like creativity tend to take a backseat to our ability to comply. Compliance thrived in the pre-pandemic world where certainty ruled and where our established processes and routines lead us down pathways to repeatable success. Today we find ourselves in a very different place, where the rules of the game have flipped on us seemingly overnight, a world where creativity can thrive and provide us with tools that we can use to navigate these unprecedented times. Creativity found in design methods such as Human-Centred Design have mindsets and tool sets that are uniquely suited for these times. Tools that are empathy based, collaborative, flexible and accessible and are accompanied by the design mindset of experimentation, building to learn, human-centricity and curiosity. To date, there have been many examples of how the design mindset has emerged in our “new normal”. We can all point to examples of experimentation that we have seen during the crisis, where project teams have prototyped ideas, tested them, learned from failure and then refined a process or a project. Additionally, we have likely all seen situations where curiosity has fuelled new and better solutions, by asking more and better questions up front. Finally, it is crystal clear that at the core of everyone’s efforts is the human element. Decisions are clearly being made from the perspective of the person, the client, the mother, the son, the employee. The bias towards the human factor is helping to balance how solutions get implemented. Traditionally, viability (can it be done?) and feasibility (can we afford it?) were considered first and foremost, the crisis is forcing us to question these deeply held decision making criteria to include the importance of the human.

 As demonstrated above, the crisis has challenged our established practices and has created the space for these examples to emerge, by rethinking what is possible, challenging “sacred cows”, cutting red tape, and re-structuring how we work. In just over a period of 6 weeks we have measurable success in addressing an extremely volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous situation. This would not have been possible if space was not created for new, creative thinking and for challenging our established mindsets and tool sets. The goal would be to see continued success and to look for opportunities to ensure that space is consistently created to develop and refine creative thinking skills, where structures, processes and governance are continuously reviewed and that learning is at the core of organizational development.

During a crisis, our survival instincts take over and what evolved and worked for one environment may no longer helpful in the face of change. A crisis will often, by default, create space for new and different thinking to emerge to help us through it. A momentum of creativity has naturally materialized, demonstrating the value it can bring to our organization. It is imperative that we design leaders in the public sector take this situation as an opportunity to continue building momentum to ensure that creativity does not slip back into crisis mode but instead can be called upon as a tool to propel us out of future crises.