The creativity gap

The Creativity Gap

In last month's newsletter, I wrote about how to encourage ideas in your organisation. I said that ideas were the life blood of business and without them business stagnates.

Well, it's not just me who thinks so. Research carried out last month by Arts & Business, a UK organisation that encourages and develops partnerships between business and the arts, found that many businesses are facing a competitive disadvantage because of a shortage of creativity skills at senior manager and director level.

Well over three-quarters (86%) of prospective candidates for board level appointments were seen to lack the necessary creative skills sought for these positions.

According to 60% of the respondents, businesses in the FTSE 500 see boardroom creativity skills (the generation of new ideas) as one of the main engines to business success. As a consequence, creative skills are being prized more highly than ever and are now a prerequisite in more than four out of five appointments.

Those interviewed for the research cited a number of reasons for the shortfall, including:
  A lack of creative mentors and suitable training (36%)
  A dull and unexciting physical work environment (27%)
  Work ethos, where the atmosphere and working practices are not conducive to the development of creativity skills (23%)
  Lack of training in general education (14%)

What are the chances that your organisation bucks this trend? And, if you do fall in to this category, what impact would it have on your business if ideas were prioritised?

Tip for the month
If you aren't sure what is causing the shortfall of creativity in your firm, don't dive in head first in an attempt to revolutionise your company in a month. Instead observe the “creativity culture” within your organisation:
  Are there opportunities to brainstorm and create?
  Are ideas valued?
  Is there a willingness to fail as part of the process of testing out new ideas?
  Is time for creativity curtailed when the company goes through tough times or are ideas encouraged at these times?
  Is creativity sought in new recruits?
  Are ideas allowed to filter up from the grass roots to the top?
  Is anyone questioning the assumptions or conventions within your organisation or your industry? What happens when someone does?
  Are ideas really open for debate and contribution or are decisions actually made by one or two people without creative input?

Getting the balance right
Of course, there is a time for decisiveness, a time to stop creating and start “doing”. Complete participation in decision making can make organisations slow and lead to lowest common denominator actions that everyone can sign up to but no one feels passionately about. So I am not suggesting you go too far the other way!

But the fear of “too many ideas” impacting efficiency is partly what holds companies back from developing a creativity culture. Instead, they end up with a culture that fears ideas, shies away from innovation and ends up slipping behind the competition.
If your company is one of the 86% where creativity is struggling to survive the chances of you going too far the other way are pretty slim. By the end of this month, if you keep your eyes open, you will have identified numerous opportunities to redress the balance.