Today the demand for creativity and innovation is
everywhere, due to the rapid pace of change. The explanations are familiar – new technologies, the
reach of the Internet, the telecommunications revolution linking everyone
everywhere, the globalization of culture, growing diversity and
multiculturalism, and a variety of changes in corporate structure – from
reengineering to reinventing.
Then, add to that the many new approaches to revitalizing
corporate culture, such as empowering employees, team building, and
cross-functional work groups.
Plus add in the pressures from an increasingly litigious society
raising specters of employee termination, harassment suits, product
liability challenges, and employer liability for negligent employees, and
it’s no wonder Human Resource managers are under pressure today.
So what’s the answer? Well, if you apply your creativity and
innovation skills at coming up with new effective approaches when you
encounter new and complex situations that will help. Such situations are more and more
common today, because it is difficult if not impossible to draw up a
clear guide for what to do given such rapidly changing conditions. Not only is it hard to think of all
the possible scenarios and develop responses to them, but often, given
rapidly changing conditions, even if that were possible, by the time the
guidelines are developed, it is likely that conditions have changed,
making those guidelines no longer appropriate.
Thus, more than ever, you need
to use your creative thinking cap to come up with innovative
responses. In fact, using your
creativity goes with the territory of empowerment. Employers have to delegate authority
and responsibility to front-line employees in order for them to feel
empowered and act accordingly.
At the same time, with authority and responsibility comes the need
to take the initiative and be creative in making decisions and acting
proactively when there are no specified rules for knowing what to
do.
Thus, employees more and more have to combine their
ability to innovate with a good dose of common sense. And Human Resource managers have to do
this too, both in making their own decisions and in working with
employees who may have questions and issues about what to do. Likewise, HR managers need to bend in
response to changing conditions, or they may find they may not get the
best performance possible from employees or lose them altogether.
That’s what happened when Judy
hired an outside contractor to supplement the work of a team of people
she worked with who summarized conference reports for a client. She had set up a basic cost structure
based on the time of each conference session. Then, she arranged for one group of employees or outside
contractors to listen to the sessions, take notes, and write up the
summaries. However, Judy didn’t
use transcribers, since the objective was to produce summaries, and she
thought it would take too long and be too expensive to have her employees
transcribe the tapes before writing them up. Then, after the writers drafted up the summaries, she sent
the drafts on to a small team of editors who edited the drafts and
formatted them for publication in a hard-copy report. Plus Judy had other employees who
developed a Web site and posted the reports there.
The program seemed to be
working well based on the way typical sessions involved a few
introductory remarks from panelists, generally lasting about 5-15
minutes, followed by some general questions and discussion from audience
members. Commonly, the meat of
the session lasted for about a half-hour, and the ensuing discussion
mainly supplemented the main points of the initial speakers or echoed and
repeated the main points, as audience members shared their opinions. Thus, it seemed to make sense to base
the payment to employees and contractors on the time of the tape, with
payments ranging from $150-450 accordingly.
However, one of the
conferences involving lawyers and academics resulted in much more packed
detailed discussions, as presenters gave lengthy, detailed reports
highlighting critical facts and chronologies. As a result, it took much longer for the writers to take
notes from the tapes and write up much lengthier reports to be
comprehensive. When one of her
chief writers mentioned this problem to her, Judy said she liked the
detail and try to keep the summaries as compact as possible. However, it wasn’t possible to make
the summaries shorter, yet keep the detail necessary for a good
report. And when the writer
suggested bringing in a team of transcribers to make the process faster,
Judy vetoed that approach, too.
She already had a system she felt worked, and thus she turned down
any changes. Judy also didn’t
think there was a problem in her approach, when the editor had a number
of questions for the writer which were hard to answer without the editor
going back to the tapes, since there were no transcripts and the writer’s
detailed notes had missed those points.
Then, when the writer finished the project, but found it took over
20 hours more to do it than usual, Judy turned down the writer's request
for additional payment, telling him she would only pay what she agreed
according to the original payment schedule. Although she acknowledged there might be some variation in
the time required to summarize the sessions from conference to
conference, she felt overall the system had worked, so she didn’t see any
reason to change it now.
But in the long run, Judy’s
resistance to change and her unwillingness to engage in creative
innovations to modify the system had negative repercussions. Not only did she lose the writer whose
work she liked for future projects, but the writer filed a warning about
Judy’s practices with several writers organizations, so Judy found it
more difficult to find outside writers.
Additionally, Judy continued to use a less efficient system for
the team of writers, editors, and Web designers she hired for each
project, based on her method of structuring the work and paying for it.
Yet, there were many possible
alternatives Judy might have adopted – including one that had been
suggested by her writer – splitting the work between transcribers and
writers, and paying the transcribers less and the writers more, resulting
in faster, more efficient production for about the same amount. Then, too, Judy might have adjusted
the way she figured the payment scale for each conference to factor in
the length of the finished reports, not just the time of the session.
Thus, as Judy’s story illustrates, it’s important to be open
to being creative and innovative in making changes to adjust to a
changing situation. In some
cases, as in this story, the suggestion for productive change might come
from someone else and you need to be receptive to alternative
possibilities. Or you can think
of ways to be proactive and identify areas that could be productively
changed to make the procedures or system you are using even better.
Ways to Become More Creative and
Innovative
Following are suggestions for
steps, which you can take.
A first step to becoming more creative and innovative
is to be receptive to change and view it in a positive way. Often there is great resistance to
change, because people are afraid of where it will lead. They fear it may be disruptive, even
dangerous, such as leading to a loss of jobs in a work situation. And certainly change can be
disorienting and destructive, particularly if it is unanticipated or out
of control.
However, if you embrace change
with an open, flexible frame of mind, so you are ready to adapt as needed
or even anticipate future change, you can find many ways to gain from
change. In fact, by anticipating
possibilities and using your creativity to design alternative scenarios
and responses, you can shape and guide the change process yourself. It’s an approach you can use anywhere
as well as in your job as an HR manager.
A good way to get started in
responding creatively to change is by thinking about the major changes
you are experiencing now or that you anticipate in the near future. Also, think about what you might
change in what you are doing to improve your own actions or the procedures
or system itself.
The group brainstorming technique is one way to do
this thinking in a group. Or to
deal with a more personal and individual problem, it is better to take
some quiet time on your own where you can reflect on change possibilities.
To get your creative juices
flowing, get comfortable and relaxed in a quiet setting. Use a notebook, paper, or laptop
computer to write down your answers or talk them into a cassette recorder
as you think of them, so you can easily recall and apply them later.
Then, ask yourself a series of
questions, listen for the answers, and write or record them. The
following questions will get you started. Additionally, ask questions
that relate to your own job experience.
It’s important to be receptive to the answers and let them come to
you, rather than trying to consciously and rationally shape the process.
This way you will tap into your creative unconsciousness, which is a
source of many creative ideas.
·
· What major changes have occurred
recently at work? How have they
affected the work I am doing?
·
· What have I done to respond to
these changes? Have I tried to
resist, ignore, accept, or otherwise react to these changes?
·
· How well do I feel I have
responded? (Rate your responses
from 0 to 5 for each of these changes and your responses).
·
· What should I do now, if anything,
to respond to these changes?
·
· What major changes do I anticipate
occurring in the next 3 to 6 months that will affect me? My work? My department? The
company? The industry I am in?
·
· What can I do to respond to these
changes? What are some
alternative possibilities? What
can I do to change the change process itself in ways that I would like?
·
· What major changes do I anticipate
occurring in the next six months to a year that will affect me? My work? My department?
The company? The industry
I am in?
·
· What can I do to respond to these
changes? ? What are some alternative
possibilities? What can I do to
change the change process itself in ways that I would like?
·
· Plus any other questions you want
to ask….
After
you have finished answering your questions, let go of this relaxed state
of consciousness and return to your normal state of consciousness. Now review your answers and consider
which of these responses you want to implement.
You might use the following
format to write down your responses and what to do:
Responding to Change Chart
List
each one individually, rate, and compare to other changes to see how
you’re doing now.
Current Changes
Major
Recent Changes
How I
Responded
(What
did I do?)
Rating
Scale:
(Rate
from 0-5)
What
Might I Do Now?
________________________________________________________________
Anticipated Changes
List
each one individually, rate, and compare to other changes to see what you
might do in the future.
====================================
Changes
in the Next 3-6 months:
What can
I do?
Ratings
Scale:
(Rate from
0-5)
What
Else Can I do?
====================================
Changes
in the 6 months to a year:
What can
I do?
Ratings
Scale:
(Rate
from 0-5)
What
Else Can I do?
You can type up a copy of this
chart on a large sheet of paper, then fill in your responses.
This is a good exercise to use
on a continuing basis, perhaps every few weeks or every month or two, to
assess where you are now and how you might respond to current changes or
to anticipate new changes coming along the pike. You can also use this exercise in
response to a sudden change you haven’t expected to help you in thinking
about what to do.
While the exercise will help
you in responding to particular changes, as you repeat it, it will help
to change your attitude as well, so you become increasingly responsive
and creative in reacting to change generally. Then, whatever change throws your way, you will be better
able to adapt accordingly.
* * * * * *
This article is based on
techniques for developing creativity and innovation described in The
Empowered Mind: How to Harness the Creative Force Within You and
Mind
Power: Picture Your Way to Success in Business, both
originally published by Prentice-Hall and now available from Changemakers
or PublishingOnline.com.
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