Money, money, money

Money, money, money 

Advocates for creativity in business are often mistaken for airy-fairy artistes without any concept of the reality of business. It is as though creativity is way over here on the left and business is far, far away on the right.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Without creativity, businesses die. John Harvey-Jones, the troubleshooter himself (and former chairman of ICI), wrote in his book

       “Making It Happen – reflections on leadership” – "I believe that in deciding where you would like to be, as opposed to where you are probably going to end up, you need a great deal of discussion and a great deal of development of new thinking and new processes. The idea of doing this through the planning department or through a paper on strategy presented to the board seems to me to be quite inadequate. The process should involve large amounts of time and constant discussion with those involved lower down the line who actually execute the strategies on which the whole picture relies. This sort of circular debate, frequently widening out to involve others within and without the company, should go on until all are satisfied that the result will be as good as they are going to get".

Time and good, creative thinking put in at an early stage saves much wastage of time and money later on, he concludes.

This is a compelling argument from a legitimate source. But the critics of creativity in business aren't satisfied. They concede that creativity has its place. One must think creativity about the overall business strategy, the development of new products and services and marketing and advertising campaigns. But when it comes to the everyday running of the business, the decisions that are made daily and weekly, there really isn't time for creativity. You just have to act. Now.

I argue, however, that every poor decision, even the little ones, costs your business money. Making snap decisions based on accepted ways of doing things does not solve problems effectively. They come back to bite you.

Here are some little, expensive, problems that many companies struggle to solve effectively:

• High staff turnover: Every time your company loses a manager it costs your business £7000.
• Workplace conflict: This costs UK business £33 billion every year (this comprises not only amounts paid in legal fees but also the damage incurred by businesses as a consequence of those disputes – in fact the cost of this damage (£27bn) far outweighs the legal fees (£6bn).
• Health and safety: Around 40 million working days are lost to business in the UK every year due to injuries at work.
• Problems with IT: 62 per cent of UK companies experienced a security incident last year (e.g. a computer virus), with the average cost of a company's worst incident standing at £12,000.

The big assumption that many companies make is that these problems are unavoidable, a fact of life, just the cost of running a business. But what if your company could resolve just one of these problems? What if between you, you could generate a solution?

John Harvey-Jones loved problems like this –

"When I have mentally decided that something cannot be done, for what appears to be a very good reason, I test that apparent constraint, hopefully to destruction”.

Creative thinking can be applied to these kinds of every day challenges – the computers crash, there's an on-going row in the accounts department, someone tripped on a loose carpet, all your best managers seem to join other companies – as well as the big, glamorous problems.

And the results can be measured in pounds and pence.

Tip – Be Provocative
1. Pick a problem, big or small, within your business, department or team.
2. Identify your current way of thinking about this problem e.g. “You can never have computers that are 100% reliable. This is a problem that cannot be fully fixed” or “We've cut down on the number of workplace injuries we have. We handle this just as well as our competitors. No one is perfect”.
3. These are assumptions, not truths. Now you are going to turn them on their head. You can do this in a number of ways –
a) Be radical e.g start with a provocative statement like “Our computers never go wrong” or “Accidents in the workplace don't cost us anything”.
b) Negate it e.g. normally you would think “No one stays with the firm for life”. So, what if you start with the provocation “At our company you have a job for life".
c) Reverse it (even if it doesn't make sense) e.g. normally you would think “The more senior people become, the more they get paid”. So instead: “The more senior people become, the less they get paid”.
d) Wishful thinking e.g. “Wouldn't it be nice if people paid us when they got injured at work?” Or “Wouldn't it be nice if the computers fixed themselves while we were still using them?”.  
4. Use these provocative statements and questions to start a debate. Even those that don't make sense are useful – they send your thinking in to new territory.
• Why would more senior people work for less than their subordinates?
• What might they get if not a large salary?
• What could we offer them, other than cash, to keep them here?
• Do we even want people to stay here?
• Maybe we want them to leave when they become senior to create space for fresh blood and paying them less is how we encourage them to move on?
• Maybe the £7000 it costs us to replace them is cheap at the price? 
The bolder the provocation, the more likely it is to lead to new ideas…new ideas that make or save your company thousands of pounds.