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- P r o f e s s i o n a l _ D e v e l o p m e n t -
By Stanley S. Gryskiewicz, Ph.D.
How do you develop and maintain a climate that supports creativity in an organization? What does such a climate look like? This is an issue of great importance to the creative leader and is vital for those who must maintain organizations ready for change.
For the past 20 years, I have been searching for organizations that provide stimulating work climates. Some of the examples I discovered have been unplanned, even spontaneous in their occurrence. However, some have been brilliantly implanted into the organization's fiber -- with full knowledge that the result would be a work setting seething with potential for producing creative ideas.
More than 10 years ago, I wrote an article for the Center for Creative Leadership's publication, *Issues & Observations*, entitled "Restructuring for Innovation." I suggested that creativity, and any resultant product/ process innovation, does not have to be random. Organizational structures can, in fact, be put in place that provide for a more predictable occurrence of innovation - the successful implementation of a creative idea. To meet my criteria for creative, the idea had to be both *novel* and *useful*.
I am currently focusing on one such structure for the organization (or one such mindset for the individual) which I call "positive turbulence." It is characterized by "an energizing climate ... one that upsets the status quo and impels people toward creative solutions." The sole purpose of positive turbulence in an organization is to provide stimuli which increase the probability that novel and useful associations will take place. Perhaps it is the responsibility of a creative leader to provide her/his organization with opportunities for positive turbulence -- so that the organization can remain viable, able to both read and respond to change.
Several historical examples help set the stage. In a paper presented by David Kennard, a BBC producer, at one of CCL's earlier *Creativity Week* programs, Kennard told about a 17th century Abbe who traveled around Europe holding dinner parties to which he invited some of the best scientific minds of the day. The Abbe Nolle was indirectly responsible for the invention of the vacuum pump, the barometer, and the steam engine. How? Because he invited to his extended dinner parties the idea explorers who were living the scientific revolution taking place across Europe. His table provided a venue for the exchange of known ideas -- which in turn stim- ulated new, novel and useful ideas.
The Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith once asked what David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus and Adam Smith had in common -- besides contributing innovative theory to the field of economics? In addition to all being Scottish and trained at the University of Edinburgh, they were contemporaries "on the faculty of the management training college" of the East India Tea Company. Thus their ideas were also stimulated by this contact with ship captains and company managers -- people who had seen beyond the horizons of the classroom and who asked "set breaking" questions of the three academics. The stage was set for positive turbulence. Enter the inquisitive mind, capable of making novel associations, once presented with the opportunity.
Who asks the "set-breaking" questions for your organization?
More contemporary research which supports both the power of positive turbulence and its application in managing corporate R&D laboratories was reported by Kasperson -- who demonstrated that the most creative labs are those which encourage scientists to read outside their field of expertise and provide them with resources to attend conferences which only tangentially relate to their field of study. These are professional scientists and engineers who need the positive turbulence provided by rubbing shoulders with experts in other disciplines -- both for stimulation and courage to ask the question, "What if ...?"
Internal individual sources for positive turbulence include foreign assignments, travel, membership on ad hoc cross-functional task forces, and the dubious luck of being present when a crisis occurs. All provide a climate for positive turbulence. Internal organizational sources for positive turbulence include importing external experts, whose expertise does not exist inside the company, to present on a subject which is exciting to them. Organizations which have engaged in and value this type of intellectual/stimulus risk-taking include Hallmark and Bell Labs. Can you imagine what it must be like to defend a budget for bringing in speakers on topics unrelated to the company's expertise? Or what belief must exist that sees value in such an approach?!
External organizational structures for positive turbulence provide the company with an alternative method of competing today and include joint ventures, alliances, and networks. External structures which provide the individual with positive turbulence include conferences, training experiences, travel, attending museum and gallery openings, and reading legitimate fringe business periodicals such as "WIRED", "Fast Company", and newsletters such as "MindPlay" and "The New Leaders." All of these sources offer a glimpse into what will become mainstream and provide the positive turbulence to get people and their organizations prepared for change.
The moderating impact of the creative leader is very important at this juncture. Too much turbulence with- out the right supportive structures in place -- or a management which views creativity as an end in itself -- can result in negative turbulence where wheels spin at the sight of every new opportunity and agreed upon strategy and goals are ignored. In these cases, I have seen organizations discarding useful paradigms and leading with novelty alone. Such knee-jerk creativity is extremely hard on in-place systems such as marketing and manufacturing.
We are experts in our disciplines, and we need the stimulation of positive turbulence to help us break-set and see what is on the other side of the wall. The "velvet ruts" of routine and/or success inhibit our ability to see beyond the new and useful connections. The creative leader will assume responsibility for providing positive turbulence -- both internal and external -- within his or her organization.
Stan Gryskiewicz is a Senior Fellow, Creativity and Innovation, at the Center for Creative Leadership and can be reached at 901-288-7210, FAX: 910-288-3999.