Keys to a Creative Culture

You can hire Creatives, you can have them teleworking or sitting in an open-air office, your can pay them better than your competitors can match, but that doesn't guarantee you creativity. Your employees can't just be creative on demand, or on certain days of the week if they're going to be most effective. Instead, they need a culture of creativity, an environment that encourages and rewards creativity on a regular basis. Just as you can't ski in a desert, you can't expect to be creative if you've got an organizational culture that doesn't support it.

A survey of 300 executives by the Economist Intelligence Unit identified six factors that are necessary conditions for a creative environment.

Clarity of purpose: the sense people have that innovation is a business priority. Your employees need to know they are there to be creative, that the firm exists to be creative. A good understanding of your firm's mission is critical at all levels, not just among the senior leadership.

Outside-in perspective: the sense that the organization is open to ideas from external sources, especially from customers. Real Creatives understand they always can learn more and they don't have a monopoly on good ideas. If leaders listen to outside views, the employees are more likely to as well.

Innovation discipline: the sense that innovation is managed through a disciplined process. It's easy to sit around and fill up a dry-write board with ideas. It takes discipline to turn those ideas into reality. Creatives are more energized to be innovative if they know their efforts will have a result.

Idea generation: the sense that employees are expected and encouraged to take initiative and try new ways of doing things. If leaders don't want to move forward and try new things, employees won't wither. That's death for a creative firm.

Idea support: the sense that the environment in the organization is supportive of the development and implementation of innovative ideas. This includes not punishing people for trying something that doesn't work. As we've written before, if you never fail, you aren't taking enough risks. Creatives need to know their leaders will support them when it comes to new, unconventional thinking.

Recognition: the sense of being rewarded for identifying and implementing innovative ideas. If the whole idea of your firm is to be creative, then you need to reward those who meet your mission. Give your Creatives the tools they need and then watch to see how they perform. If you want success to be repeated, you have to let people know when they've been successful.

These ideas don't guarantee success -- it's not a checklist for every firm -- but they tell you what the minimum is.

How do you achieve all these factors? Well, that's another discussion for another time...