This week the Globe and Mail published an article titled “How to Shine Again After A Year of Gloom” in which employees as well as candidates looking for jobs are urged to emphasize their creativity as a means of differentiating themselves in the marketplace. This is great advice, provided you are one of the few people who actually are creative. For everyone else it is disengenuous and a waste of time.
Creativity pops up as a coveted capability in tough times as individuals and organizations alike strain to manufacture ‘eureka’ moments, insights or original ideas that will pull them out of their doldrums and catapult them into a brighter tomorrow. And much has been written about this mystical capability/attribute and the extent to which in can be instilled or developed in everyone. For many, creativity is a cognitive muscle, one that we all possess and which can be built and strengthened through specialized training and exercise. Not surprisingly this view has spawned an entire training industry with books, workshops, videos and consultants dedicated to showing each and every one of us how to become innovators in our own right.
But for others this is nonsense. To them, creativity is best conceptualized not as a muscle but rather as part of an electrical wiring system. And either you are hard wired with it, or you are not. They see creativity as a set of inherent qualities that enables those it inhabits to bring together ideas, thoughts, memories, images and the like and make sense of them in an altogether different way. This requires the ability to take in diverse ideas and thoughts, some seemingly irrelevant, trivial or on the surface unrelated, that most of us would ignore or discard. These thoughts are then cognitively tossed about triggering occasional connections and the birth of novel ideas. What would be a maddening, distracting cacophony of mental noise to most of us is to the creative crowd a symphony of sounds. It is as though the cognitive lodgings of the creative are laid out in a manner which allows a greater number of diverse visitors to enter and mingle in a stress-free manner.
Intelligence is not irrelevant. Processing horsepower and the ability to generate mental bits and pieces of information are the base materials from which new combinations are generated. But while intelligence matters, it is the ability to make associations and connections that differentiates the creative from the rest. It is also the ability to make connections with applicability or use. All of this is beyond the scope of a one day workshop.
But before cursing your misfortune at being born in the shallow end of the creativity gene pool, keep in mind that there is also a correlation between creativity and mental illness. Some creative types cannot filter or rid themselves of all of the bits and pieces of thoughts that float and sometimes crash in their heads. Others see linkages everywhere, perhaps even conspiratorial linkages that torment them to no end. Still others generate streams of incongruous, odd or irrelevant connections with almost stunning uselessness. Bipolar illnesses are also associated with creativity as some people appear to be most productive in highly charged periods of mania.
In his new book titled Borrowing Brilliance, entrepreneur/scientist David Kord Murray recounts the time he was asked by his employer to create an innovation training program for his company. After studying hundreds of noted creative thinkers, he concluded that the easiest way for most people to become creative is to take ideas from others, in fields distant from their own, and apply them to their field. In fact, the farther away the ideas are borrowed the more innovative they are likely to appear when applied. While this is hardly the stuff of legendary eureka creativity, it is likely the most efficient way for most of us to become even modestly creative. That said, even such larcenous creativity requires that knowledge to be gathered and borrowed from places unknown, and then contemplated for connections not obvious at the outset. And no matter how many books we read on creativity, a select few of us will prove to be better at this process than all of the rest of us combined.
Robert Hebert is Managing Partner of Toronto-based executive search firm StoneWood Group (www.stonewoodgroup.com). He can be reached @ rhebert@stonewoodgroup.com or at 416.365.9494x777
Looking for a dynamic HR role? Stay away from the entrepreneurial tech sector.
January 1, 2012
In a recent survey of HR graduate students, the technology sector rated among the most coveted destinations to ply their trade. It is viewed as a world of innovative people, technologies and approaches where progressive talent management, OB/OD and related HR work awaits.
The Cry to Replace RIM's CEOs – A Truly Dumb Idea
October 13, 2011
Leaving aside the recent service outages, the shellacking of RIM in the press is a tad surreal to behold.
For the few Luddites not familiar with the firm, Research in Motion is the successful Canadian smart phone pioneer with revenues of $20bb per year, no debt and cash in the bank. They manufacture products that remain popular around the world and continue to boast technological innovations unmatched by any competitor. Their most recently launched smart phone devices have been well reviewed and appear to be selling well. And though the company's first version of its new tablet, the Playbook, has room for improvement, it is a promising piece of technology.
Context: When Companies Confuse Start-up Experience for Start-up Experience
October 7, 2011
I had the occasion this week to chat with an entrepreneur still licking his wounds from a stalled startup venture. His tale is a reminder of how easily companies misunderstand organizational context when hiring. For startups, such a misunderstanding can be fatal.
The CEO Hiring Practices at HP
October 3, 2011
The press tells us that Hewlett Packard is the largest technology company in the world with revenues of $126bb. Impressive as those numbers may appear, they do not seem to impress HP's Board of Directors. You see they do not believe that any of the firm's 324,600 employees are capable of leading it. Not one person. Not this year or last year when CEO changes were made. In fact they were apparently not capable six years ago or even eleven years ago when CEO changes were also made. But before summarily indicting the firm's succession planning/leadership development programs, it is useful to consider the track record of the external candidates who were considered better choices than the firm's internal candidates. This analysis decidedly shifts the spotlight to the competence of Hewlett Packard's Board of Directors.
The Folly of Believing What You Read
September 19, 2011
Some time ago we posted a blog titled ‘So you REALLY want to be a CEO?' which looked at the human costs of climbing the upper rungs of the management ladder. The blog was based on a series of articles immediately following the ‘resignation' of Pfizer CEO Jeff Kindler. All of these articles presented a cautionary tale of life in the fast lane, the long hours, the extensive global travel, and the shareholder pressures that accompany an uncooperative stock price. They also spoke poignantly of the physical and emotional toll that such unrelenting pressure took on the Pfizer CEO who eventually resigned in order to attend to his family and health. As it turns out however, much of this narrative may not have been true
Before sending us your resume (and then getting frustrated with us) ask who we work for
July 25, 2011
A friend of mine is a trustee in bankruptcy. As his title suggests, he and his firm serves those contemplating the ‘cleansing' process of personal bankruptcy. Potential customers compare service providers, select one, and then pay the chosen firm a fee to initiate and manage the ensuing process on their behalf. However, as soon as the relief-seeking customer signs on the dotted line, the trustee's allegiance shifts to the creditors for whom they then seek to maximize debt recovery. This shift in who works for whom must be a tad unsettling for people who already have a heap of problems and stress on their hands.
What Dating Services Can Teach Companies About Hiring
June 1, 2011
Executive-level hiring is a decidedly aspirational endeavor. Organizations idealize their workplace cultures, select for attributes that will fit into those romanticized environments, and then immerse unsuspecting hires into their ice-cold reality of their works-in-progress.
How to Survive a Startup - by Jill Ram
April 20, 2011
If you're an executive and you're thinking of joining a start-up, know what stage of a start-up to join. If the company is in its first year or so, don't expect to make significant changes. If you join after the company is somewhat established and mistakes have been made and learned from, you'll likely be more successful from the outset. If the founder has stepped aside, well, by then, the company is likely not considered a start-up anymore. It won't be functioning like a big company yet, and it won't have all the structure in place that it needs, but it will be run with more practicality and with less emotion. Timing is everything so choose it well.
Good News for the Old, Overqualified and Overlooked
March 18, 2011
It is expected that a significant percentage of the baby boomer generation will drive right past the Freedom 55 highway exit. For many the goal of early retirement will have proven to be unattainable hype, while for others the ups and downs of working will appear more attractive than the prospects of working up and down the local lawn bowling leadership board.
Pressed for time? Blame those Benedictine Monks.
February 24, 2011
It is among the principal reasons candidates tell us they are open to consider a change in employers. They are tethered to it, yet somehow it still flees. It is time, the most precious of resources, and for many harried executives they want some of it back.
Though their relationship with time may be strained, it is worth pointing out that it was not always this way. In his fascinating book Time Wars, Jeremy Rifkin chronicles the evolution of our modern relationship with time. He points out that in traditional agrarian and pastoral cultures, time was a very naturalistic notion maintained in cyclical, repetitive, biological and even sacred terms. The ‘passing of time' was cued via the changing seasons, biological lifecycles and lunar patterns and thus, the cadence and tempo of those societies were finely tuned to the cyclical rhythms of their physical environments. As he states, "Our early ancestors coveted the circle, perceiving time as eternal return, a ceaseless repetition of an endless cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth". Since these cyclical rhythms could neither be accelerated, nor altered, the cadence of these societies' was natural and harmonious.
Creativity: Hardwired or A Skill We Can All Develop?
September 17, 2009