Management Perspectives

MYTH 1: Creativity is about artistic expression, and it is not a differentiator in moving business, politics, science, and society forward in a meaningful way
Creativity is the most distinguishable skill that sets apart the most successful leaders who defined the modern world by leading business, politics, science, the arts, and societal transformations. Muhammad Ali, The Beatles, Andrew Carnegie, Marie Curie, Walt Disney, Henry Ford, Mahatma Gandhi, Steve Jobs, Martin Luther King, Elon Musk, Pablo Picasso, and JK Rowling are just some examples.

True creatives are always outsiders looking in; rebels with a cause—themselves. They provide something new to the world we live in by overturning the status quo by positively impacting people's lives and moving society forward—and inspire others to do so, becoming our models for ingenuity.

The embrace originality and make unique connections between disparate universes, past and present, to light the way into the future in new ways. They manifest what is inside and around by transcending the obvious, ordinary, and routine. They believe in themself and their ideas, always moving forward, and never giving up!

MYTH 2: Creativity cannot be taught: you either have it or you do not
The ability to be creative exists within everyone. The key is to know how to manifest and channel it. It manifests itself in every domain and profession and at any age. You never lose the ability to be creative. In fact, creativity increases with time because we gain more knowledge and insights as we experience more of life. Life events provide us with more reference points and the knowledge gained through experiencing them, combined with our imagination, and maintaining our childlike wonder throughout life helps foster creativity.

Education is the key to success. It instils creative confidence and sets the conditions for people to dream, make, and do as a collective ecosystem. A skilled and dynamic workforce made up of dreamers, makers, and doers form a social system with distinct values, attitudes, and feelings learned and transmitted from each generation.

MYTH 3: When a business loses its creative edge, the only way to fix it is to buy it
Businesses typically lose their edge because the people running them have become shiftless and self-gratifying, and as a result, the future leaves them behind. This is because they self-destruct through excess and become victims of their own success by cultivating destructive habits and complacency. Creativity cannot be subscribed to or bought off the shelf. It is a social system that encompasses values, skills, craftsmanship, relationships, networks, and a way of living and doing. It is not simply a mandate that gets handed down. Creativity needs to be embraced to allow people to create without fear. It is something that is nurtured, imparted, and practised throughout a team or an organisation. It takes skill, practice, and persistence, but the results pay off, influencing society by changing opinions, instilling values, and translating experiences.

The principles for curating creative cultures are:

• Leadership
  Leading by action to find the future by breaking through the status quo is leadership. Leaders create clarity by synthesising complex concepts. They generate energy by inspiring optimism, creativity, and growth, and they deliver success by driving innovation and tenaciously pursuing the right outcomes.
• Do-It-Yourself
  This means rejecting conventions and originating new ideals. Do-It-Yourself refers to the rebellious impetuosity of non-conformity with direct action and not selling out; doing it in your own style and pace. Embrace challenge, accept failure, persist in the face of setbacks, and learn by doing as the path to mastery.
• Craftsmanship
  Being passionately dedicated to your craft evokes wonder and discovery. Remaining honest, trustworthy, and responsible by taking pride in everything you do helps you achieve the highest quality craft and professional excellence levels.
• Collaboration
  It is essential to collaborate when exploring new ideas and finding innovative solutions. Collaboration is the cross-pollination and sharing of knowledge across multiple domains by combining individuals' intellectual capital and know-how.
• Mentorship
  Stand on the shoulders of giants by seeking counsel from people you trust, respect, and admire. Find positive role models who can share their skills, insights, and expertise to help nurture your ideas. Understand and respect the history and infuse best practices into finding the future to truly innovate and not reinvent the wheel.

Stand on the shoulders of giants by seeking counsel from people you trust, respect, and admire. Find positive role models who can share their skills, insights, and expertise to help nurture your ideas.

MYTH 4: Creativity is a solitary, heroic, and random act of individual genius. It cannot be managed because you never know where ideas come from, when inspiration will strike, who needs to be involved, and how to make it happen
Every single creative will tell you that there is no on and off button for creativity. It is a constant that happens naturally, by design, or by accident in our everyday lives. Though the creative process may seem magical, especially where ideas can come from and how they are brought to form and life, proven techniques, tools, methods, frameworks, and approaches to the art and science of applied creativity make it happen.
It does not mean being fooled into believing that it is simply about following a process and expecting creative results as an outcome. It is all about people and the execution because people with a vision combined with passion and drive make things happen. To pursue your idea with conviction and resilience, be skilled in your craft and expedite quality precision to bring your idea to life. Have true grit to slay the naysayers, push through adversity and ambiguity with leadership, make sacrifices, and execute your ideas in a disciplined way.

The creative process is about making new connections between past and present ideas and infusing economic, political, sociocultural, and technological perspectives in parallel to produce new business models, products, services, or experiences. Blending the art and science of the creative process into three steps: ‘DREAM, MAKE, and DO’. The sequence is iterative and constant, the alchemy lies in the execution of the process, and it is customisable per craft, situation, and opportunity.

It is about discovering and developing insight, involving divergent thinking to analyse a problem, perceiving patterns that are not obvious, generating and evaluating ideas that can become concepts, experimenting, prototyping, constructing, and making a plan of action, and bringing it to life with persistence and collaboration often across multiple expert domains and sources of knowledge input. Applying techniques that drive evolution, synthesis, re-application, reinvention, reimagination, disruption, revolution, and changing direction.

MYTH 5: Creativity is not a competency that can be managed in an organization to evaluate performance and talent
The Creative Excellence Model is a collection of skills and competencies identified as necessary for success in creative leadership positions. It comprises a set of principles defining what creative leaders must know and do and holistically addresses leadership at the individual, team, and organisational levels. By using a competency-based approach to leadership, organisations and teams can better determine and grow their next generation of creative leaders by instilling which behaviours, values, skills, and competencies are required, valued, recognised, and rewarded in their performance management systems.