Creativity to unleash potential, drive innovation, and secure competitive advantage

Most businesses have leadership teams skilled in analytics and logic. It makes sense. The language of the board room in big businesses requires this, and even in small organizations the majority of people at the top lean towards traditional left-brain or analytical skills – the skills that are measured by success in examinations and traditional teaching methods. This is fine, but it lacks balance. Too much left-brain analytical thinking means that right-brain thinking, gut instinct and the kind of creativity that can lead to step changes are less valued. If every decision is based on evidence and proven techniques, there isn’t any room for judgements based on instinct guided by experience which can lead to real improvements and new ways of moving forward. Our new book , A Year of Creativity, 52 smart ideas for boosting creativity, innovation and inspiration at work, will give you the opportunity to stop looking in the rear-view mirror only, and instead create exponential growth and innovation. We are living through a rapidly changing era where artificial intelligence (AI) and large learning models (LLM) like ChatGPT and Bard, among others, are revolutionizing working practices. However, when everyone is using these tools, where is the edge that can lift your business above the norm? The answer lies in developing your own creativity, and that of your team. It’s you who can make the difference. People sometimes misunderstand creativity. This book explains that all creativity comes from somewhere, and often from mashing up different existing ideas from different places, to create something new. Every creative person stands on the shoulders of others. This is how creativity and innovation works, it is to be encouraged.?

Perhaps the overriding reason to adopt the strategies of this book is that it will make you happier. You unlock a part of yourself that isn’t bound by rules or custom, that is open to possibility. It’s more fun to work with creativity, and your team will benefit from this as well. Therefore, of course, so will your clients, customers, suppliers and partners.

Here’s one technique to try.

Use new

We all like familiar things at least some of the time. The daily rituals

of everyday life. A favourite mug, a regular walk, the autopilot of the

normal commute to work.

The creativity training company ?What If! calls this staying in your

stream. In their book on innovation at work, published in 1999, they

talk about breaking the pattern to which our brains default. Human

brains make shortcuts and rely on previous experiences in order to

make decisions fast. ?What If! says, ‘On average we put on seven or

eight pieces of clothing each morning. Imagine if we had to try each

one out every time to find out where it fitted best . . . . There are over a

million possible combinations. Fortunately, our brains don’t bother us

with all those possibilities. Instead the brain simply says, “that looks like

a sock, it’ll go on your foot”.’ The brain leads us to make assumptions

that if something is familiar, if you know where it goes automatically,

then you won’t challenge this.

This is where conventional wisdom wins. Every time you try to

break conventional wisdom, you’ll find resistance. First from your

own brain – every instinct might be screaming at you to conform –

and secondly from everyone else’s similar reaction. The more there is

conventional wisdom surrounding you, the less likely you are to come

up with an innovative and creative solution. In fact, you may keep

everyone around you happy precisely because you aren’t challenging

the status quo. You are very unlikely to make them happy because of

your innovative solution to any ongoing or new problems.

Embracing the new is crucial for growth, and one way of ensuring

that you do this is by trusting new people, and those who lack

experience but bring fresh outlooks.

Arsène Wenger OBE was the longest-serving, and most successful,

manager of Arsenal Football Club, a football team based in north

London. Appointed in 1996 he was at the helm during a celebrated

period of successes including trophies, unbeaten runs (42 league

matches without defeat) and participation in the Champions League in Europe. Football managers usually don’t last long in England – the

average tenure is just a couple of years. Wenger remained in role until

2018. And he did so by embracing the new. As well as making changes

to training and diet regimes (out with junk food, in with boiled chicken

and vitamin injections), Wenger was famous for backing youth.

Over his 22-year stay in the role he cultivated raw talent and

emphasized the importance of training and scouting young kids. He

regarded trusting youth as one of the key values he brought to the club,

saying: ‘We want to be very successful without neglecting the need to

give a chance to people.’

Rich clubs had a tendency when Wenger took over to buy in talent

that had proved itself already in another club. Wenger prioritized

investing in youth instead. So much so that Arsenal became a feeder

club to bigger teams. But he found and developed dozens of young

players, including Patrick Vieira, Bukayo Saka and Robert Pires.

The Youth Academy he set up is one of England’s most successful

and many of the players sponsored by Wenger are still playing at

the top level.

Who have you got in your youth team at work? When a role comes

up, can you promote someone into it who is short on experience

but long on potential, and give them extra coaching and pastoral

care? It’s possible that the lack of experience and understanding

of how we do things round here will lead to better ideas and new

breakthroughs.

Take Action

Use new people to add challenge to solutions that you are

defaulting to. Bring the outside in, and don’t wait for people or

ideas to prove themselves before you try them. Introduce na?ve or

inexperienced team members and listen to their first impressions.

Bloomsbury Business

Brainlabs

Kathryn Jacob OBE