The Paradox of Creativity Management

Creativity Management…another buzzword…another gimmick…another…Well! I’ll call it another perspective. A perspective that many managers toss into the wastebasket for want of objectivity.

The discussion on how to best manage creative people has been raging for some time now, and managers from different industries, around the world are trying to figure out what kind of management works best with the kind of creativity they are trying to manage. If the preceding sentence sounded vague, try comparing the creativity of a steel plant foundry engineer with the creativity of an advertising executive. You will find them massively different, and I won’t be surprised if you’ve already exclaimed– “Creative foundry engineer!”

Though we may find this fact hard to digest but it is true. When a foundry engineer designs an inclined wooden cover to ensure that the cupola cools fast enough to increase its availability by 50%, is he not being creative? On the other hand, when a copywriter writes a jingle that continues to live for years, isn’t she too being creative?

But before we prod deeper under the surface of this debate, let’s examine the components that Creativity Management is made of. As is immediately apparent, Creativity Management is made of two components “creativity” and “management.” I presume that we all understand what management is, and keep the focus on creativity.

So…what is Creativity?

Creativity is a term that has been defined extensively. Almost everyone has at sometime or the other tried to define this term (…that list also includes me,) but I shall pick the definition that I like most and which fits which best with the creativity that instructional designers are expected to exhibit:

"Creativity is the experience of thinking, reacting, and working in an imaginative and idiosyncratic way which is characterized by a high degree of innovation and originality, divergent thinking, and risk taking."
(Source: http://www.usm.maine.edu/~trudy/frame/fgloss.htm)

If I were to define creativity in my own terms, I would propose a more general definition of creativity and say that:

“Creativity is borderless thinking, clipped in the right places to fit the problem template, so that the result is an effective and efficient solution.”

Whichever of the above definitions you prefer, the important point here is that creativity is characterized by an uninhibited thought process. Creative people do not begin to think “in-the-box.” They do not rein in their initial thoughts; instead, they set them free. When they are done with their thinking, then they return to the problem at hand and figure out which thought maps best to the requirement at hand. Let’s call this approach of finding solutions to problems, the Creative Approach.

On the other end of the spectrum is the Pragmatic Approach. The pragmatist approaches the problem cautiously, rummages through the cupboard of his own experiences, talks to others who he thinks might have experienced similar problems, and chooses the path that has produced optimal results in past.

As it is clear, the Creative Approach leans heavily on intuition, while the pragmatic approach finds support in precedence. An instructional designer needs to be creative in certain situations, and pragmatic in others. The eLearning industry as a whole is composed of people who have a high degree of creativity, which they have to rein in at times to become pragmatic.

In figure1, a stereotypical manager is contrasted with a stereotypical instructional designer. It’s good to remember that though the stereotypes may not be entirely correct, yet they are based on real experiences, and make great tools to help us understand people. We do need to take them with a pinch of salt, though!

As the figure depicts, there is a gap that needs to be bridged if the pragmatic manager wants the creative designer to deliver his or her best. Clearly, the first step towards bridging this gap is to understand the nature of creativity and what helps foster its growth. But even before our pragmatic manager takes his first step, his logical mind asks: what use is creativity?

I am sure that there are a myriad answers to this question, some of which are as follows:

• Creativity instils freshness in your product.
• Creativity can make your learning more effective.
• Creativity catches attention.
• Creativity improves productivity.
• Creativity creates value.

When creativity is not given an opportunity to fulfil itself, it leads to disinterest and ennui in the creative person. This is especially true for the eLearning industry, where creativity is the mainstay of business.

ELearning Project Managers are those who manage creativity in our industry, and they need to constantly find ways of ensuring that the creativity of their team members doesn’t die. In other words, they too need to become creative or move towards the creativity end of the “pragmatism-creativity spectrum”.

The question is, what should the project manager do to ensure that the fire of creativity continues to burn in his team, especially, if he is handling a large project, one year into development?

Here are a few pointers. I should re-iterate that creativity management is a skill that we all need to acquire and hone.

• Get to know your team in terms of their likes and dislikes, their hobbies, even their styles of learning.
• Group the members of your team on the above basis. Try to ensure that those of a particular group sit together. A simple example could be – seat the graphic designers together. Another could be – seat the music lovers together.
• Foster creative thinking by loosening the shackles of project guidelines at the beginning of the DLC. Keep it that way for a few days. Allow the team to form their own views on the design (instructional as well as visual.) Then bring them together and share the guidelines. Allow fusion of ideas.
• Be open to discussing the good ideas of your team with the client. Most client love good ideas, especially when backed by sound rationale. Your willingness to take a stand for the sake of creativity will help the designers recognize you as a patron of creativity.
• Understand that creativity comes with some idiosyncrasies as well a huge dollop of ego. You don’t have to love these characteristics, but if you want to manage creativity you need to accept their existence.
• Feigned creativity is a truth of life and fortunately it’s not all that bad. It does end up making people creative, so overlook it as long as you can.
• Creativity and Pragmatism are the Yin and Yang of the eLearning industry. Appreciate the right-brain of your creative team and ensure that they appreciate your left.
• Creative people don’t like schedules, numbers, charts, budget-sheets, timesheets, and other such management tools. It isn’t because they find them unnecessary; it’s just that they find them extremely difficult to manage. It’s a great idea to keep these to a minimum. Write their schedules in days, preferably weeks, and not hours.

This brief list is a starting point. We can chisel into it new guidelines, and erase some others; we can figure out what works best with the current project team; but we need to remember that project teams are often dynamic and even if we have initially carved out our creativity management commandments with care, they may not keep the team happy in the long run. Creativity Managers have to ensure that they keep the project culture alive and moving, only then will creativity thrive!

One last bit…
Creativity management is, in fact, an extension of people management. It isn’t possible to create a set of rules that will work no matter who the individual is, as each individual is different from another and the individuality has to be respected. A manager, who will create his own set of rules for his special design team, is a creative manager – a manager of creativity!

Author: Shafali R. Anand