Megan Rowlands on creativity

Tell me about your background -?you've always been involved in innovation and creativity.

I started at Heathrow Airport in an innovation role which was looking at different innovation programmes across the airport. It was very exciting because Heathrow is like a mini city, you name it, it happens at Heathrow Airport.

Then I moved into a charity role where I was very much looking at designing propositions to get in the hands of vulnerable children. From there, I moved into government, working for the Department for Education looking at how we access our education programmes across the UK.?

In short, I've done lots of different roles within innovation, but I always use the same kind of skills - which is to help teams to get the most out of their creativity, think about different ways of doing things, explore what the customer or the user really needs and have empathy building products and services that solve problems for people that use them, rather than just assuming what people need in their context.

You’re a massive advocate for creativity in all its many forms, how would you define it and what would you say it looks like in the modern workplace?

I think creativity in its broadest sense is really about solving problems and finding opportunities.?When I talk to people about creativity, I focus on five key hallmarks and how we can build those skills, so they have the confidence to bring those into the workplace.

They are:

1. Curiosity - the ability to ask questions and get under the hood.
2. Optimism - which is very much about having a can-do mindset and thinking that we can solve these problems and there is a way to do this better.
3. Courage - which is the desire to learn and to embrace failure if it means that you're striving to do better.
4. Flexibility - which is being happy to bin ideas, to change your mind, and to seek different points of view.
5. Inspiration - that's not necessarily inspiration in terms of sparks, it's the ability to look at an idea and start to think how we bring this to action, because ideas in themselves are great but if they don't become something then they're just an idea.?

Ideas in themselves are great but if they don't become something then they're just an idea.        

I feel like creativity is often viewed as either something that you have or you don't have. You often hear people say: "I'm not creative," and yet as children creativity comes so naturally and then somehow as we get older that spark diminishes.?How do you think people can connect with their creative side whatever role they do in an organisation?

As children we're really encouraged to play. I think that people can try and tap into their inner child. It's about having the space to be able to play and create an environment where people feel comfortable to be able to do that. That's why brands such as Lego are so successful because they have been able to design great products by tapping into the inner child.

For me, it's not seeing creativity as something that you either have or you haven't, but more around seeing creativity as this set of behaviours that you want to practice and really build small habits around.?

You might say to yourself "I'm going to ask ten more questions today." The minute you start questioning and watching and listening and just giving yourself smaller daily exercises that's how your creativity improves over time.?Using imagination and play to tap into that childlike sense will really help you when you're then trying to be creative in the workplace.

Creative thinking is one of your strengths, can you tell us how can we harness it at work?

It's really about being open to new possibilities and being open to changing the status quo if you think that there's a better outcome.?It's about collaborating with people and thinking that your ideas in isolation aren't the best way of doing things.?Working together with people, bringing in diverse perspectives, being inclusive with your approach.?Creativity has so many facets, it's hard to pin down an exact definition of creativity.?I think it's more of an approach and an outlook - a mindset that you take into the world.

What do you think the barriers are to creative thinking??Have you ever noticed any themes seeing that you've worked in private, public and nonprofit sectors??

I would say that the barriers are twofold.?The first is barriers with the individual. I've seen it across organisations no matter the size, the shape, or the industry and that's a fixed thinking mentality.?Statements like "this is the way we've always done things", "this is how it's done in this organisation" is barrier that comes from the individual.?It comes from a fear to embrace change or potentially a fear around thinking that if there was a new way of doing things that they would be negatively impacted, rather than seeing the opportunity within that.

I think some of the harder barriers to creativity are the cultural barriers within an organisation.?People not having the time or space to be creative - like thinking creativity is just an exercise that can be done within a 30 minute slot in someone's calendar, "We can run this workshop and you only need 45 minutes and we'll come out with these great ideas".?Often, that's not the case.?

Space might also be a barrier in terms of the way we are working now - with a lot of things being online and people not having the right environments to spark new ideas and creative thinking. Other barriers might be organisational risk appetite or things like innovation theatre where you've got high level exec buy-in to have a more innovative organisation, but actually are they really getting to the root causes of the customer and user needs?

So they're the kind of barriers that are slightly harder to try and understand and that requires really transformative changes within an organisation, but people have the power as a collective to help shape those things too.?I really do believe that.?Innovation is everyone's responsibility within an organisation and you will create that momentum if you are starting to put the practices and behaviours in place to demand a more innovative environment.

Ask more questions, be more optimistic, embrace failure.         

Many people are still hybrid working, have you found this has hindered or encouraged creativity or creative thinking?

Hybrid working has some great benefits and some significant disadvantages. The great thing with remote working is there are people that you can bring in that previously would be excluded from the conversation, that for innovation is incredibly powerful. If I think about some of the projects that I've done, we could've brought in customers or beneficiaries that previously we would never have had the resources to go and access and included them into a design session.?

The disadvantages are that for people to be creative, they need to be in an environment that's different.?If I'm working in my office environment all day and then I'm expected to go into ideation session, then it's very hard for me to change my mindset because I'm not being dragged into a different environment.?

I think you have to be conscious of that because that's definitely a barrier I found in getting creative outcomes out of my team. If they're in the exact same environment that they then have to go and do say, a governance call, it's very hard to be in a different mindset.

There are pros and cons to every approach but here are my tips:

• Take some of the good bits like different people being able to be?involved,
• Avoid ideation taking a whole day, let people being be creative in little chunks of time.
• Think about what you're trying to achieve when you're trying to be creative.
• Put some measures in place to make sure that you get the best outcome.

When it comes to creative thinking, what three things could people take away today and apply to their roles regardless of the department that they're in?

The first thing I would say is go and get inspired, whether that's going outdoors, going and noticing something, taking yourself away from your day to day, go and find some inspiration, listen to a podcast, read a book, don't do something that's necessarily obvious or directly related to your role.?Find something that interests you and inspires you and make a new connection, because that's the first step to being creative because you're opening your mind to new possibilities and new ways of doing things.?Think about your attitudes and behaviours.

Secondly, innovation is your responsibility, it's my responsibility, it's everyone's responsibility, so really think about 'what behaviours am I putting out to my team?', 'what behaviours am I putting out to my organisation?', and are they aligned with a more creative organisation??We know that creativity is the needed skill for the future workforce with the rise in automation, with the more uncertain volatile world that we're living in and because of the incredible positive wellbeing impacts of creativity and mental health.?Ask more questions, be more optimistic, embrace failure.

 I think everybody knows that creativity is the needed skill for the future.         

The third thing I would say, is practice makes progress, not perfect.?Do something small, do a fun game, play something, have a conversation that you might not have, watch a movie and think - if I was the producer how would I completely change this ending?

Creative behaviours are only going to improve over time so, yes, practice, practice and hopefully you'll see change within your teams, within your organisation and definitely within yourself.

Megan is also working on the Great Minds with the aim to help turn creative thinking into a daily habit.