In today's fast-paced business landscape, the intersection of creativity and efficiency holds the key to sustained success. This article dives into the critical role of creativity within the workplace, emphasizing the need for businesses to find a delicate balance between systemization and innovation. By exploring metrics for measuring creativity and advocating for collaborative communication, the article sheds light on how businesses can transform their organizational frameworks to become both systematically efficient and creatively agile, to ultimately gain a competitive edge in the dynamic business landscape.
We are all familiar with IQ Testing designed to scientifically measure so-called intelligence in adults and children. While there is a great debate over the accuracy and relevance of IQ testing in today’s business world, there is no doubt that fostering and measuring innovation is critical to business success. Innovation is a direct result of creative thinking, and if a business can crack the code to foster a more creative workplace, it could have a distinct competitive advantage. But where to start?
Some might start with the TTCT test or the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking. Designed by Dr. Ellis Paul Torrance in the 1960s to measure creativity in children. This series of tests were designed “in an attempt to measure divergent thinking”. But what type of evaluation tool is available for adults?
There are several online tools and evaluations to help business owners measure creative or divergent thinking in their teams and often they boil down to measuring four criteria.
Fluency: how many responses a person, team, or process can generate
Flexibility: how many different types/categories of responses are generated
Originality: how different are the responses from the norm
Elaboration: how detailed are the responses
Most businesses just want consistency and efficiency, (thus establishing Standard Operating Procedures for everything under the sun), seemingly draining the creative juices of their teams. System overload bogs down their teams when every step-by-step activity is mapped out and systemized, repressing the creativity of team members.
“When systems are set up that restrict freedom of thought, and when individuals perpetuate those systems through controlling approaches and actions, creativity has no room to flourish.”
Systems don’t have to be the killers of creativity. Conversely, they should be the catalyst to foster creative thinking. Systems are not supposed to slow progress, they are by their very existence designed to enhance productivity and efficiency. So why do so many businesses fail on both ends of the scale? Because they haven’t found the balance between systemization and innovation.
Let’s take the Apollo 13 mission as an example. This historic moon mission in April 1970 sent four highly qualified astronauts up into space for the seventh moon mission in United States history. During the flight towards the moon, the Apollo space capsule experienced an electric fire that damaged the oxygen tanks and the mission to land on the moon was aborted. Even more pressing was how to get the crew back safely under extremely precarious circumstances. Famous for the quote, “Houston, we have a problem”, astronaut Jim Lovell reported the emergency to the ground control who was then tasked to solve the problem of low oxygen, reduced power, and a capsule that was too heavy to enter the earth’s atmosphere safely.
Faced with life-and-death decisions, the ground control crew and support teams spent hours breaking down process after process and examining each system to find the right answers that would bring the Apollo 13 crew home alive. They used the systems and processes at their disposal to come up with creative solutions for both oxygen generation and for re-routing the Apollo module around the moon and bringing the crew back home safely.
This seven-day mission, which didn’t achieve its original objectives, was actually a success. The recovery of the astronauts and the splash down in the Pacific Ocean sparked innovation that was the catalyst for future advancement in space travel for the next two decades.
The team at NASA, using their creativity, knowledge, and skills, avoided tragedy by using the systems and processes available to solve a “new” problem.
In Brad Sugars book, Instant Systems, Sugars discusses the importance of systemizing business to foster efficiency and creativity.
As the CEO and Founder of ActionCOACH®, the world’s largest business coaching franchise, Sugars and his coaches have helped thousands of business owners unleash the power of systems and processes in their organizations and foster creative problem-solving simultaneously.
“This is one of the most misunderstood areas of business today. I find this rather strange
because it’s one area of business that’s easy to implement, and one that will make
your life, and those of your team members, so much easier.”
- Brad Sugars
Sugars outlines four board areas to systemize your business and goes into more detail about the types of systems and processes any successful business should have in the book. The four areas are:
People and Education
Delivery and Distribution
Testing and Measuring
Systems and Technology
Sugars stresses planning, communication, and team involvement when systemizing your business to improve both efficiency and problem-solving. Focusing your team’s creativity on specific areas will help you gain a competitive advantage.
The journey toward business success is not a contrast between strict systems and uncontrolled creativity; rather, it is an integration of both. Sugars emphasizes that fostering a workplace culture that values creativity within the framework of well-designed systems is not only feasible but imperative. Businesses stand to gain a competitive advantage by embracing the harmonious relationship between innovation and efficiency. By recognizing the potential of systems to fuel creativity and engaging in strategic planning and communication, organizations can navigate the complex terrain of modern business with resilience and adaptability.
Edited from the original article by ActionCOACH Carmen Gigar
Systems Don’t Kill Creativity. - ActionCOACH
November 21, 2023
