Creativity, as a thinking process is about developing new ideas, products and services through associating existing ideas, products and services. Creativity is not about trying create something out of nothing. Creativity is basically about keeping an open mind so that we can learn to view new opportunities through combination of ideas and practices. Due to the imaginative nature of creative thinking, we are able to develop overabundance of ideas.

People tend to view the logical/critical thinking and creative thinking as opposite to each other. While there is nothing wrong to view the 2 concepts in that manner, we should not make the mistake that since they are opposite in their emphasis, their use is exclusive to each other. Effective problem solving and thinking strategies demand that we incorporate both the thinking strategies in managing our decision making in work situations.

While accepting the logical and critical thinking style in our decision making as a dominant approach, we should accept the usefulness of creative thinking to generate new innovative solutions. Traditionally managers use brainstorming technique to generate ideas. Unfortunately when brainstorming became a tool to develop alternatives, the focus was on creating as many possible options as possible, hoping the number will give some innovative and unique solutions to the problem that was being discussed. Absence of any focused training on the proper use of brainstorming, also limited the business firms from reaping the full benefits of brainstorming as originally envisioned by Alex Osborne. Osborne believed that using brainstorming in groups will enhance the number of creative ideas. To achieve this, the team leader must be well trained to encourage the team members to think out of the box so that they are able to generate unusual and innovative ideas. The group should continue to work towards combining and improving ideas already submitted. The major challenge facing the team leader is “How do I go about inspiring people to generate unusual ideas?”.

SCAMPER, a checklist type of prompter developed by Bob Eberle became a useful tool that can be used to generate unusual ideas. With right questioning skills, SCAMPER can become a powerful tool that will encourage the team members to think unusual ideas. SCAMPER stands for:

Substitute – Can we replace this material with another … ?

Combine – What can we combine or integrate this to make it …..?

Adapt – Is there a possibility to alter or adapt something —– ?

Modify/Magnify/Minify – Could a change in size, color, quality will make any difference?

Put to another Use – Is there another use for this product/services?

Eliminate – Anything we can get rid of to make it more ….. ?

Reverse – Can we change the process the other way?

The use of SCAMPER model during the brainstorming session, enable the team members continue to generate new and creative ideas.

Business firms are beginning to recognize the power of workforce diversity as a competitive tool. Cascio in his book ‘Managing Human Resource: Productivity, Quality of Work life, Profits (published by McGraw Hill in 2006) recommends asking the following questions in order to justify that diversity is, in fact a competitive factor:

• How can diversity help business corporations expand their operation into global market?
• How can diversity help to build and sustain brand equity and improve consumer spending?
• How does workforce diversity enhances an organization’s HR strategies?
• How does the diversity element build corporate image among the consumers?
• Does diversity improve operational efficiency?How?

Cascio citing studies done by several researchers, answers each of the above question with examples to make a business case for diversity. In the process of discussing the business case for diversity, the author want the readers to ask an important question – ‘What steps can you take as a manager to become more effective in a work environment that is more diverse than ever?”.

Workforce diversity should be seen in terms of age, gender. Race, ethnic composition, religion and nationality. Successful 21st century corporations no longer view diversity as a problematic issue. They view diversity as an opportunity that can be utilized to compete more effectively in the local and global markets.

According to Cascio (2006, p.119) managing diversity means aiming for a ‘heterogeneous workforce’ that is capable of achieving its potential in a non-discriminatory, fair and just work environment.

What are the reasons for diversity being considered as an important activity in managing the human resources? Cascio lists the following 5 reasons as to why diversity has become an important activity:

• Shift from manufacturing to a service economy
• Globalization
• Innovative business strategies that demands teamwork
• Mergers and Alliances
• Changing labor market conditions

Unlike the jobs in the manufacturing industry, service industry (banking, financial services) job holders need to maintain close and constant contact with their customers. Service industry employees are required to understand the needs and expectations of their customers. With increased customer base that is diverse, no business firm has the luxury to ignore the customer groups. To take full advantage of the opportunity corporations need to bring employees who understand and can relate to the diverse customer base. This is to ensure in the words of Cascio “workforce should mirror their customers”. This enables a smooth operations and more cordial interactions between the business firms and their customers.

Recognizing the limited market locally, more and more corporations look at the global market for sustaining and enhancing the market share. With the Globalization of markets, business corporations should learn how to manage the workforce diversity. Successful corporations try to learn from their colleagues around the world. This will enhance corporate performance. That would not be possible without a system to manage diversity.

In their attempt to cope with the problems and challenges facing their corporations, managers realize the limitations of the traditional forms of organizational structure. The strategies that need to be put in place can no longer be managed by the traditional hierarchy based command and control system. For these strategies to work you need team effort. Teams basically means diverse labor force. Successful team management is about successfully managing workforce diversity. To emphasize the usefulness of teams, Cascio (2006, p.123)quotes the words from Ted Childs, vice president, IBM Global Workforce Diversity: “When a company’s vision includes the growing mix of the talent pool and the customer base, then the real argument for diversity is the business case”.

Mergers, acquisitions and alliances are becoming more common then ever before. When two business corporations decide to pool their expertise and other resources following mergers, acquisitions and alliances know the difficulties they will face, if they do not have an effective system in place to make them work together. The cultures of merged companies differ. The strategic partner’s way of doing things may be different. The values, beliefs and the norms may not be an 100 per cent match. To avoid culture shock and clash of culture, organizations should put a system in place, so that employees at all level understand and accept their differences, while working towards taking full advantage of diversity that came about following mergers, acquisitions and strategic alliance. Here the focus is on seizing the opportunities arising out of diversity and being proactive in managing the diversity related issues. To make this work, managers at the top level must be convinced of the competitive advantages of workforce diversity.

The labor market is changing rapidly. More women are entering the labor market and they continue to remain in the labor market for longer period of time. Business corporations should adopt appropriate measures to meet the unique needs of the women. Balancing work and life appears to be the main focus, when it comes to managing female workforce. Cascio’s Managing Human Resources: productivity, Quality of Work Life, Profits lists the following six ways that corporations may adopt to take the interests and well being of their women employees:

• Alternative career paths
• Extended leave
• Flexible work scheduling
• Flexi-time
• Job sharing
• Tele-working

Organizations need to train their employees about diversity and its usefulness to the well being of the corporation. Diversity training is a critical part when managing diversity. According to Cascio (p.124) employees need to ‘understand and value’ the differences among them. The acceptance of differences in a positive manner is critical if the corporation is keen to enable innovation thorough creative thinking in the workplace.

Successful organizations, adopt effective management system and policies that are able to generate profit through their employees. Cascio (2006, p.27-29), in his book titled ‘Managing Human resource: productivity, Quality of Work Life, Profits‘(published by McGraw-Hill) lists seven practices/dimensions that form part of the ‘management systems that produce profits through people’ . They are:

• Job Security: Though the life-long employment is no longer possible, successful business organizations continue to offer high degree of employment security for their employees. It is not uncommon to come across situations, where employees are reluctant to go all the way out to improve performance through improved productivity, for fear of making themselves redundant. Unless the organizational and HR policies reflect the organization’s commitment to their employees’ job security, it will be impossible to get the employees full support and commitment. There are organizations that take extra-ordinary steps to keep their labour force at the optimum number from day one, to avoid any subsequent lay-offs. To these successful organizations, hiring employees is a last option. This is radically different from those firms which hire and fire without any strategic HR planning. Job security to become a reality, HR managers and senior management need to adopt strategic human resource planning.

• Selective Hiring: Not every Tom, Dick and harry get a job. A well planned and carefully administered recruitment and selection is the basis for the selective hiring to be managed. According to Cascio, it is only possible to hire selectively when the following requirements are met.

  • There is a large number of potential candidates

  • Organisation is clear about its human skill requirements – Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, Attitudes, personality attributes and Talents.

• Selection focuses on attributes of candidates that are difficult to change. If you can select the right candidate with the (Talent, Abilities, Skills and Knowledge) in the first place, you need not spend your time and resources to train them.

• Decentralisation with Autonomous Teams: The traditional centralized structure depended on command and control approach to get things done. Employees working in teams are able to respond to the unique and demanding business situations much more effectively. Enabling employees to take responsibility and depending on other team members.

• Comparatively high Compensation: Successful 21^st century corporations pay well, compared to their competitors. These organizations adopt unique and innovative compensation practices for all their employees

• Comprehensive Training: Management systems that recognize the power of training invariably do well. Despite the fact that they practice selective hiring, successful organization know the importance of keeping their employees knowledge, Skills and Abilities current to suit to the changing needs of the enterprise. They focus both on technical and people related soft skills training. Training is seen by these firms as a competitive tool in terms of recruitment, retention and employee performance. Training is also a powerful tool that enable the employees meet their self-actualization need – a top order need identified by Abraham Maslow as part of Hierarchy of Needs theory.

• Active Involvement of Everyone regardless of status: The management systems of successful organization incoprtate policies and HR practices that take full advantage of employees’ ideas, talents, skills and knowledge. It taps the expertise of everyone in the organization. Recognizing the talents and skills of all employees and enabling and encouraging them to offer solutions and ideas for the well being of the organization, breaks the status barrier that is common among majority of the organizations. Every employee in the firm is made to feel important and their contributions are valued and recognized.

• Practice Open Book: In successful organizations, the access to information is not restricted to a small group of elite managers. Information is shared among the employees, so that they are able to use the information to make better decision. In the modern world, it is difficult to argue that knowledge is power, unless that knowledge is put to practice. To apply the existing knowledge to changing business situations, employees need information. Management systems of organization ‘that produces profit through people’ recognize the power of information sharing.

The qualities of management systems of successful 21^st century corporations highlighted by Cascio can be the basis if you are serious to transform your business practices. Be practical. Identify one area from the above seven dimension, and work towards improvement. Start reviewing the current HR practices. To move forward you need to ask questions. The best way to unfold new ideas is to use the 5W + 1H model (What, When, Why, Where, Who and How) extensively.

Welcome to the club of Successful 21^st Century Corporations.

John Arul, co-owner of Centre for Creative Thinking, a training agency based in Singapore (www.creativityasia.com), facilitates training workshops on creativity and related soft skills for clients in Asia and Middle East. As a Trainer, John facilitates management seminars and workshops in the areas of Creative Thinking, Supervisory Skills for new managers, EQ Skills for Team Leaders, Customer Service Excellence, Managing Difficult Customers, Communication Skills, Change Management, Personal Development Workshops, and Public Speaking Skills. He also manages a blog lifeskills4success to discuss topics related to personal and professional development. John holds an MBA and majored in strategic human resource management. He is a member of the American Creativity Association.

Organisations who wish to survive and grow need to adopt innovation as one of their basic strategies. Innovation demands that the people in the organization learn to THINK differently, so that they are able to bring about new ideas. Managers must recognise that creativity and inovation are not meant to be limited to R&D department. Creativity and Innovation should become the norm in all types of activities. Once we become committed to the reality that innovation is required in all our processes, management policies, marketing, services and products we will be able to convince the employees of the need to THINK more Creatively.

The million dollar question is – How do we make people think creatively? First you must accept the fact that all of us are creative. If that is so, why are the majority of employees reluctant to think more creatively? Generally, the processes and structure in the workplace discourages creativity. The best place to start is to take a comprehensive review of the present practices and processes that are in place and ask whether each of this practices encourages or discourages creativity.

One should be prepared to slaughter sacred cows if you want to move on to become a more creative and innovative organization. Business organizations need to think of new products and services so that they can stand out from their competitors. Thinking and developing new products and services demand that the employees be equipped with creative thinking skills. Innovative business organizations know how to create the right work environment for innovation.

Employees at all levels must be trained on creative problem solving techniques, so that they will be equipped with competencies and skills that will enable them to generate creative ideas, when dealing with problems in the workplace. One needs to create the environment that supports creative thinking first, so that employees can move to a higher level of creating new products and services. To take the innovation and creativity to a higher level, you must remember that creativity is about generating new ideas, while innovation is about introducing feasible business products or service. Gaining an insight on creativity is the best way to develop effective problem solving skills.

Centre for Creative Thinking, based in Singapore conducts seminars and workshops for clients in Asia and Middle East.

•  How often we provide feedback in the form of appreciation?
•  How often we recognise good performance?
•  What is the ratio of our positive and negative feedback?
•   Are we in a position to say that our positive feedback outweigh the negative feedback?

The feedback that emphasise the negative behaviour, attempts to tell the person that he/she need to change towards a positive level. Unfortunately most people will not accept negative comments. The worst is the receiving party criticise  not only what was said, but also find fault the person who  was gave the feedback. This would mean the feedback would no longer bring about any meaningful change at personal level.

Almost all the motivational theories highlight the human craving for attention and recognition. Unfortunately, our normal day-to-day managerial activities do not take note of this important fact. Some argue that the negative feedback is one form of recognition. That may be true. Recognition with punishment element along with creating low esteem is not going to work. Recognition should focus on highlighting the positive aspects of the person, so that the person feel recognized and praised.

Recognition can take the form of ‘Praise’. Praising employees is not an easy task for many of us. Some may ask: Praise an employee for what – for the quality of work they are expected to do, or praise only when the work exceed the set standard. You praise on both occasions.

The next question is how do we praise? Remember the following points:

•  Praise immediately – the sooner you recognise the better is the effect
•  Praise sincerely – your words and body language should harmonise the message.
•  Be specific  – refer to the specific situation/action
•  Highlight the contribution  – as far as possible try and quantify the results
•  Praise in public, whenever possible.
  What else can we do to recognise employees contribution, other than praise. Recognition can incorporate rewards. Rewards can be in the form of financial or non-financial. At operational level, the best option is to focus on non-financial rewards. What are our options at this stage?  Bob Nelson’s 1001 ways to reward employees (obtainable at www.Amazon.com provides practical and inexpensive ways to reward employees. Adopting spontaneous and informal rewards initiated by line managers and immediate supervisors are some of the best ways to reward employees.
   
  To take full advantage of the power of recognition, we must make sure the reward practices are fair, just and reflect the element of equity. Any employee who meet the standards should be recognized.  Employee recognition meet almost all the human needs identified by Abraham Maslow.

Arul John Peter, is a Facilitator with the Centre for Creative Thinking, a training agency based in Singapore www.creativityasia.com. He conducts training workshops on creativity and related soft skills for clients in Asia and Middle East. He holds an MBA and majored in strategic human resource management.  He is a member of the American Creativity Association.

“To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; …. ;To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded”

John

www.creativityasia.com

The purpose of this blog is to share the various Internet sources that will be useful to everyone who aspire to be successful. Make this a hub for learning that will eventually bring success to each and everyone of us.

John

www.creativityasia.com