Great companies make creativity and innovation a cornerstone of their culture and strategy. Creativity is driven by people wanting to make a difference. But people are often constrained by culture, regulation and risk controls – barriers to creativity.
Customers say they want creativity. In regulated and controlled environment, this can represent a problem. Being creative is difficult, time consuming and even demoralising especially if not supported by a culture encouraging creativity. You can’t identify creativity as a customer need, communicate it and expect people to become creative.
Creativity involves drawing outside of the lines, experimenting and even making mistakes. If creativity is not part of your culture people will shy away. Management needs to drive a culture of creativity. Management can not ask for creativity if they don’t provide the supporting toolkit – openness to new ideas, rewards (even for failures), incentives and encouraging experiments.
Creativity is no silver bullet. Focusing on creativity may even impact the bottom line negatively in the short term. But if management is bold and seen at the front leading a culture of creativity, then the medium and long term benefits are there to be reaped.