The Three Keys to Sustainable Creativity

The Three Keys to Sustainable Creativity

In his book The Accidental Creative, Todd Henry states that there are three components to being sustainably innovative: 

Prolific + Brilliant + Healthy = producing great work consistently and in a sustainable way.

He goes on to say that many creative people consistently perform very well in two of these areas, but are lacking in at least one of them.  For example:

Prolific + Brilliant - Healthy = Burnout

Hardworking, highly motivated and productive people are often the ones bosses look to for heroic efforts, but they rarely can sustain that level of productivity indefinitely, and often fall to burnout when they can no longer sustain their pace and the fruitfulness of their ideas.   Without focusing on maintaining their health, all the hard work can be for naught, as family relationships, friendships, and personal support suffer.

Further, to be prolific means that you not only have great ideas, but that you actually do something with them.  You have to have the discipline, the teamwork, and the competencies to deliver.  If the focus is too much on being creative, but not on the real-world application of the ideas, the result can be a great deal of work for little value to the customers served.

Brilliant + Healthy - Prolific = Unreliable

Lastly, brilliance is about the ability to see clearly and incisively to the core of the problem, and identifying workable solutions quickly.  Being healthy and prolific but lacking the ability to cut to the core of a challenge and identify ways to improve that can be implemented can make work groups churn unproductively without solving the real-world problems that demand attention.

Healthy + Prolific - Brilliant = Fired

Where do you and your work group fit?  What strengths can you build on, and what will you do to enhance those areas that aren't functioning at peak?  Remember to think of all three  --  striving to be consistently Prolific, Healthy, AND Brilliant -- in order to have a sustained capacity for innovation in your organization.

Leadership means never having to say "No negotiating!"

This week, as the people of America and the world watch, Congress stumbles through the shutdown showdown.  Regardless of one's politics or perspectives on the content of specific solutions, it's a good time to reflect on the leadership lessons that a major conflict like this one presents:

1. Most conflicts end in negotiation, so if we want to save time and relationships, start negotiating at the front end. Conflicts in which either or both sides believe that their position is non-negotiable may end up achieving compliance with a forced solution, but research and history show us that compliance with a solution doesn't lead to agreements that last or that are enforced as agreed to.  In order for agreements to be kept as agreed, the parties must develop commitment, and effective negotiation, in which everyone finds a way to collaborate on important values, is more likely to lead to commitment to the solutions.
2. "Lines in the sand" don't resolve conflicts.  Before we pre-announce that there are lines that cannot be crossed, we'd better be ready to accept the consequences of impasse, because public statements of rigid positions rarely lead to quality conflict resolution--they lead to gridlock and impasse because everyone is backed into a corner and must save face by refusing to compromise.  And if impasse is going to be the likely result, we'd better have a strategy for successfully managing the absence of a resolution before we back anyone into a corner with "lines in the sand".
3. Win-win negotiations generate significantly better quantified results, and they work to enhance the relationship in the process.   A commitment to win-win negotiating has been shown to produce better results over the long term on an objectively quantified basis.  Traditionally, people may be reluctant to go the extra mile for win-win negotiations because they feel there is not an adequate basis of trust.  But pursuing win-win negotiations as a default strategy helps to build the trust that will produce better outcomes in the future, so it's a better approach overall.
4. Win-win negotiations require that each side identify their own and the other party's UNDERLYING NEEDS--not just positions.  A labor union's position may be increased wages, but its underlying need may be greater job security for members, so perhaps by agreeing to prevent lay-offs and extending the steps of salary growth, the organization can reduce the financial impact that higher wages would cause.  Creative solutions involve exchanging what's valuable to the other side but lower cost to you.
5. We will never resolve conflicts if we aren't willing to listen openly and constructively to understand the other side's perspective.  Listening is the most important leadership skill we have in our toolkit.

Here's hoping for cooler heads to prevail! 

 

Katy Simon

President, Simon and Associates Consulting

ksimon@simonandassociates.us

775.232.7077

Follow me on twitter @katysimoncm

What's your resilience capacity?

This week finds me in Boston for the 99th annual conference of the International City/County Management Association, where the executive leaders of the world's cities, counties and other local governments come to connect and to better lead the 50+% percent of the world's population that lives in cities into the future.

As the conference opened, an apropos theme song played: Ain't No Mountain High Enough...to keep us from our goal of a world that works for everyone.  And how aligned that theme is with the resurgent spirit of the city of Boston and Boston Strong, in rising out of the ashes of this year's Boston Marathon bombing.

The people of Boston have demonstrated a characteristic that is increasingly critical for our communities--resilience.  As noted on the website of the Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities Challenge, building resilience is about making people, communities and systems better prepared to withstand catastrophic events, both natural and man made.  No tragedy of mass violence, no natural disaster, no "mountain" of economic devastation can defeat resilient people and resilient communities.  The core characteristics that resilient systems share, both in good times and in challenging times, are:

• Redundancy or use of spare capacity to insure a back-up or alternative when a vital system fails.
• Flexibility--the ability to change, evolve and adapt in the face of disaster.
• Limited or "safe" failure, which prevents failures from migrating or "rippling" across multiple systems.
• Rapid rebound--having the capacity to quickly re-establish functions and provide continuity of operations.
• Constant learning, with feedback loops that anticipate and implement new solutions as conditions change.

What's your resilience capacity?  What can you and your team be doing today and tomorrow to best provide the needed leadership that builds resilience, whether it's about food security, energy use, smart grid technology, floodplain management, or the establishment of partnerships with community organizations for business relocation if needed?  What should we all be doing to honor the spirit of Boston Strong?

Learn more at www.rockefellerfoundation.org/blog/building-resilient-cities.

Innovation + Action

As I write this, a shooter has fired on workers at the Navy Yard in Washington, DC. SWAT teams have mobilized, and victims have been rushed to area hospitals, with at least 12 dead.  Flooding still rages in Colorado, and heroic rescues have been watched by millions worldwide, while more than 17,000 homes have been lost or damaged.  And off the coast of Italy, the shipwrecked Costa Concordia is being righted in a first-of-its-kind salvage operation involving a ship two and one-half times the size of the Titanic, with only one chance to get it right.  Our thoughts are with all the courageous people dealing with these historic crises.

 

Each of these events grabs our hearts and our attention and each demands a level of disciplined execution that seems almost unimaginable.  Lives are at stake, and the world is watching as dedicated law enforcement officers, fire and rescue workers, engineers, and just plain compassionate citizens organize and take action to do extraordinary things...things that they would never have wished to be called upon to do.

 

These incidents and effective management of them illustrate some of the very same principles we know about innovation + action.

1. The greatest achievements come from shared purpose.
   Whether it's finding and neutralizing an active shooter, or organizing the logistics of a complicated and dangerous rescue, or simply finding a better process by which to meet our customers' and citizens' needs, a clear, shared purpose will focus and energize our actions.
2. Use and share data to make better decisions.
   We can't act effectively to move forward without objectively knowing where we are and what others around us require from us.  Making good decisions demands that we take the time to determine what we need to know, discovering it, and then sharing the information with those whose performance we rely on.
3. Communicate fully, timely, inclusively and regularly.
   Timely and thorough information to those affected is crucial when facing change or action, and is most effective when people are provided knowledge of what the problem or situation is, what you plan to do about it, how it will affect them, how regularly you will update them, and then what the results are once you've taken action.  This builds trust and confidence, and will help others to give you the benefit of the doubt when you need to move forward through uncertainty.
4. Have courage.
   In order to create something that does not yet exist or to take action toward creative solutions, we need to clarify the goal and purpose, use data strategically, communicate, and then demonstrate the courage to monitor results transparently, correct course if needed,  but keep moving forward to achieve the shared purpose.
   The future belongs to those who risk.

Katy Simon, ICMA Credentialed Manager
President, Simon and Associates Consulting
ksimon@simonandassociates.us
775.232.7077 (wireless)