
Could a creativity culture reframe perspectives in challenging times?
Today, is a very special day. As mentioned in our previous blog, we are collaborating with experts in a totally different field to bring you training and development programs which are focused on empowering individuals and organisations. The blog this week comes from the desk of Samantha Layton-Matthews – one of our collaborators.
The future is now, and few of us are geared for the present, let alone contending with the future. In recent blogs, we have explored the theme of change within our industry. Today we want to continue this discussion, but take it beyond our industry, and explore how we can be more responsive, rather than reactive to change, both from an organisational and personal perspective.
In an age of unprecedented change within globalisation, technological advancement, not to mention socio-political and economic instability, even the nature of change itself is changing. Covid-19 has added a mammoth layer of complexity to this. It is perceived that we are living in an age of anxiety, and organisations are fragile and precarious, inadequately geared to navigate, let alone be preemptively responsive, to changes. A bigger challenge lies in the need to be more innovative to sustain a competitive edge. This goes beyond surpassing competition. This is no longer enough.
Translating this to a very practical level, our resources have become significantly limited and yet our problems, and the demands on us to solve them, have increased and become more complex. With this, pressures on individuals and teams have escalated not only to meet immediate job demands, but to think ahead and be more practically longer-term focused within the present demands.
So, what is the answer to navigating all these challenges, not only more effectively, but more innovatively? The answer lies in creativity. Many organisations have overlooked the importance of establishing a creativity culture that supports ideas generation, capacity building for more dynamic responses to problems, as well as performance management systems that allow for creative space in all functions at all levels of the organisation. Creativity for creativity’s sake. For it is in the flow of pondering and brainstorming ideas that ideas grow, and more reflective solutions are formed to support greater innovation and organisational agility.
Today has become more about reaction and less about responsiveness. Problems and demands are essential. When handled in a spirit of transformation that creates balance, that is. Problems challenge us, grow us and they call on us to be more, to be better, to be greater. To raise the bar significantly and considerately, and not just reactively. But this cannot be achieved in a state of anxiety where we are crisis managing and applying quick fixes. Where the quick fixes themselves inadvertently perpetuate a state of anxiety.
We are living in an age where ideas matter more than ever before. Where we can no longer solve problems with the same approaches as we once did. We are living in an age where change for innovation is going to be an ever-escalating benchmark, where we need everyone to apply a level of creativity to what they do. We are living in high-risk times. Demanding times, but times where opportunities can be harnessed in very real and authentic ways, if we are really shrewd in our approaches and in reframing perspectives.
To achieve all this, we need to integrate creativity into the culture of organisations. Where teams and individuals can not only be encouraged, but practically supported in sustaining more dynamic approaches to what they do in order to be productive. But even more than that, in ways in which they can meaningfully add to the competitive and innovative edge of an organisation as a whole.
Join us for some upcoming bi-weekly blogs on how we can practically achieve this. We will look at how individuals can determine their creative domains and apply them in their work and personal lives. We will look at what an innovative organisation looks like and how a creative culture can be established. We will explore some key practices that are essential to the creative organisation. We will look at how problem-solving can be approached more creatively for more integrated and dynamic results. We will help you tap into the sources of your creativity and how to maximise these as essential resources in your organisational focus, and more.
We look forward to creatively pondering creativity with you. This, as we launch our new collaborative project, CreateAgility More of that later…
Food Bites Team