While creativity is often seen as an attribute of the privileged few, any kind of person or group can develop themselves to be creative—better still, be able to breed the breakthroughs that kindle the growth and performance of a company. In fact, findings by McKinsey research, indicate that most corporate groups, from experienced C-level managers to customer service representatives, imply that companies can employ simple techniques to enhance creative output of the workers at any level.
The point here is perception, actually according to one of the leading neuroscientists, Gregory Berns of Emory University, confirms it’s basically linked to creativity of human brain. To see things differently, Gregory maintains, we must shower our brains with some things it has never come across. Such novelty is fundamental since the human brain has evolved for proficiency and regularly assumes perceptional shortcuts to save energy. Forcing our brains to re-group information and move outside our usual thinking patterns we would begin to envision truly novel choices and concepts.
In today’s editorial, we’ll dig out a few practical procedures for CEOs or managers to apply in order to stir up deep-seated perceptions and boost creativity— both individually and with their juniors and extensive work groups. Of course, we’ve not invented these individual techniques, but we’ve discovered their joint power to help business breed different ways of taking on perennial issues—a valuable capability for any organization on the prowl for prospective game-changing progress opportunities.
Absorb yourself in
Professing innovators should open up their pre-existing thoughts. Unluckily, human mind is to our surprise skilled at supporting its entrenched ways of seeing the world while separating facts to the contrary. Sure, academic research implies that even when handed with overwhelming evidence, vast majority (including highly-educated ones) just won’t dump their deeply held views.
The remedy is personal experience: having firsthand experiencing and seeing something can stir people up in ways that discussions around meeting room tables can’t. As a result, it’s enormously valuable to begin creativity-building practices or idea building efforts outside the workplace, by constructing personal experiences that openly confront the members’ implicit or explicit views.
We’ve witnessed that by coordinating personal encounters like these, organizations predispose their staff to greater creativity. CEOs who want to begin strengthening group creative-thinking capabilities —or those of their own—we recommend practices such as:
- The first practice is to have a firsthand experience of a real consumer – going through the process of buying your own services or products— just the same way a real consumer would—and document the experience.