56 • Creative, Ecient, and Eective Project Management
and objectives.
37
Warren Bennis and Patricia Biederman also agree, not-
ing that autonomy is a crucial ingredient that is necessary without sacri-
cing on a group goal.
38
Hence, individuals have a shared destiny when
each one feels they have a stake in the outcome. If the team fails to achieve
its mission, each feels he or she has failed. ey are emotionally as well
as logically committed to individual and group success. is attitude
enables team members to experiment and do whatever it takes to succeed.
Following the rules and going through the motions is not enough. Every
team member must feel he or she has ownership in the outcome.
39
As a result, members are comfortable with themselves to such a degree
that they allow frank and open dialog without fear of punishment, such as
ostracism and ridicule; otherwise, discussions and free thinking become
inhibited and no sharing of ideas and information, so vital to creativity,
can occur. “Mind guards” and “mental police” have a minimal role or are
nonexistent e last thing a creative group wants is to have groupthink
infect the beliefs and values to the point that free discussion becomes
squashed. In fact, a positive rivalry or competition among viewpoints
that allows dissent to arise can further creativity.
40
Each team member
should be exposed to the ideas of others to reveal shortcomings in their
own and those of colleagues.
41
ey should also feel free to pursue the
advice of others.
42
rough conversation, therefore, better collaboration
can arise.
43
Unafraid to Push Boundaries
ey will take it to the limit to ensure a greater probability of success.ey
are comfortable breaking the rules.
44
ey are more interested in nding
out what works and does not work. is is not a license for doing some-
thing unethical or illegal; it simply means creative teams are willing to
do whatever is legitimately possible within the constraints confronting
them. Aboundary does not inhibit them; in fact, it may encourage them
to bust it. Nothing is sacred when taking a creative approach. As they bust
boundaries and shatter rules, they see connections that others cannot
see.
45
Hence, they have what Warren Bennis and Patricia Biederman refer
to as “creative chutzpah.”
46
Pushing the boundaries means stepping into the unknown, something
such teams embrace. Just the experience of facing the void can bring a
diverse group of creative individuals together. To a large extent, creativ-
ity is tightly interlinked with pursuing the unknown because it involves
Groups and Creativity • 57
challenging the status quo and doing something dierent. e team must
have a sense of adventure when tackling the unknown, willing to face
danger and risk as a result of feeling adventuresome.
47
They Are Small in Size
ey are not of the magnitude of conventional armies but instead more
like guerrilla bands. Small is, indeed, beautiful when it comes to creativ-
ity. Large teams oen require more rules and regimentation, which can
smother creativity to promote eciency. Large teams also require a more
complex ow of communications that can distort messages and require
more time for clarications; small teams allow for more informal, less hier-
archical communications.
48
Leadership, therefore, involves creating orga-
nizations into small, independent entities when it comes to creativity.
49
Seek Balance among Creating, Planning, and Implementing
ey recognize that creativity oen occurs in what some people refer to
as the ozone, whereby thoughts, concepts, and alternative viewpoints
reign. is does not mean that they are not rooted in reality; quite the
contrary! ey just realize that they must rst develop ideas, concepts,
and so on and then, considering reality, make adjustments accordingly;
they consider all signicant constraints to come up with something real-
istic. With a diverse team, the opportunity to develop a creative idea or
concept increases because someone will likely raise an issue, concern, or
shortcoming that the team must consider. e team must then come up
with a plan based upon some improvisation that helps them turn an idea
into a reality. All the key elements of a good project plan, addressing the
who, what, when, where, why, and how exist; however, it may not be at
a depth that people associate with implementing an idea. e planning
grants enough freedom to improvise along the way to allow for explo-
ration, experimentation, and independence. is latitude is essential to
allow creativity and innovation to ourish. A balance is critical for cre-
ativity and innovation to arise, observes Keith Sawyer.
50
He advocates
developing a general plan that enables sucient freedom to respond to
unexpected situations, thereby reducing the need for in-depth planning.
He refers to this type of planning as “opportunistic planning.”
51
Still, these
groups deliver. As Warren Bennis and Patricia Biederman observe, “Great
groups ship.”
52
58 • Creative, Ecient, and Eective Project Management
View Failure as a Learning Experience
It is not an opportunity to blame someone or to treat a member of the
team as a scapegoat. All team members share responsibility for results and
leverage the experience to further the goals and objectives of their proj-
ects. In some cases, failure serves as a catalyst for enhancing collabora-
tion and communication during the next opportunity to be creative as a
team. When failure occurs, the culture of the team is supportive. Warren
Bennis and Patricia Biederman observe that creative groups do not take
a harsh view of failure but use it as a learning opportunity because they
realize that risk involves failure sometimes.
53
If they stumble, according to
Keith Sawyer, they learn from failure as a way to avoid repeating the same
mistake and experience the same mishap in the future. He refers to this
concept as “deliberate practice.”
54
Creative teams also err on the side of
optimism, not pessimism; they are lled with an almost unrealistic sense
of condence.
55
Know the Priorities
Members focus their creativity on what contributes to critical com-
mon goals and objectives.
56
In other words, creativity is not something
to dissipates. ey know creativity is not easy because, over time, it
becomes harder to sustain focus on the vision and maintain a strategy.
57
Additionally, common goals and objectives enable them to see how their
individual performance, along with others, contributes to the overall suc-
cess of the project, provides a measurement for ascertaining how well the
project is progressing, and serves as mechanism for resolving disputes that
would ordinarily result in an impasse. If one or more team members want
to experiment with an idea, they can demonstrate its overall value toward
achieving overall project goals and objectives.
Share Tangible and Intangible Assets
If morale is high, sharing becomes easier because competitiveness is
focused on achieving the goals and objectives of the project, and not
the members. Hoarding is atypical of creative groups because it is only
through sharing that a team can succeed. Sharing of ideas, information,
tools, and so on contributes to that sense of interdependence and inte-
gration. Sharing also builds relationships. Weekly meetings serve as an
excellent way to share ideas and information because they oer a venue
Groups and Creativity • 59
to allow disagreements to surface.
58
Ongoing spontaneous communica-
tion is also useful.
59
Are Curious
ey do not subscribe easily to the party line. ey challenge it, andthe
best vehicle for doing so is to further individual and group inquiry.
Facts and assumptions granted from higher-ups are not enough to
satisfy their need to know. ey feel compelled to challenge those facts
and assumptions to satisfy their own sense of validity and reliability.
ey are driven to determine the reasons behind something, that is,
what makes it “tick.”
What fuels this zeal? According to Warren Bennis and Patricia
Biederman, curiosity is what energizes a group, not problem solving. It is
the exploratory nature of creativity that satises them, especially for team
members with highly inquisitive minds.
60
Are True Believers
ey have such extreme faith in the vision of their projects that they will
endure hardships, ranging from long periods of overtime to working in
squalid environments, to achieve something signicant. ey will, using a
trite phrase, “be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause.” Creative
groups of this nature view themselves as David taking on Goliath, tack-
ling seemingly insurmountable odds.
61
What also fuels the zeal is their
perspective of ghting an enemy that must be defeated.
62
is sometimes
leads to being unrealistic over its purpose.
63
is is referred to as collective
denial and delusional condence. If members volunteer, their zeal may
be greater because they committed themselves, and not by the hands of
someone else.
64
Have High Esprit de Corps
Creative teams have considerable unity and solid morale, thanks largely
to a shared vision. ese teams have substantial energy and endurance,
which enables synergistic performance, feeling like members of a cadre,
and being able to ensure hardship and failure. Cohesion can be so intense
that the team can develop its own culture and feel isolated from its parent
organization.
65
60 • Creative, Ecient, and Eective Project Management
Adapt
is adaptability can take many forms, from changing a strategy to achieve
a project’s vision to using a dierent tool or technique. ey are also will-
ing to change roles and relationships if it achieves successful results for a
project.
66
is adaptability is essential for a creative team to accomplish a shared
vision. Collaboration is the enabler for adaptability because people can
share ideas, experience, knowledge, and so on, on what works, and just as
importantly, what does not work. Keith Sawyer suggests that, for instance,
inventions reect an accumulation of “creative sparks” that come together
through collaboration to provide breakthrough results.
67
TEAM TOOLS
From a group creativity perspective, not many models exist relative to
those for individuals; however, some useful ones do exist. For the most
part, models like Myers-Briggs and the Birkman Model are used to mix
and match personalities to create a winning combination. Some models
enable project managers to capitalize on the overall synergy of a team. Two
common ones are Organizational Engineering and People Styles Typology.
Organizational Engineering
Organizational Engineering is one model. It emphasizes the relationships
of four behavior styles predicated on how they process and respond to
information, reecting what is referred to as the strategic style of the indi-
vidual.
68
is strategic style consists of a method and mode; the method
refers to how an individual gathers and assimilates information, and
the mode refers to how a person responds via decision making. Reactive
Stimulator (RS), Relational Innovator (RI), Logical Processor (LP), and
Hypothetical Analyzer (HA) are the four strategic styles.
Reactive Stimulators are characterized best by speed in method and
mode. ey take information only to the extent that is needed to get the
job done aer generating options and selecting one. ey are task oriented
and seek results quickly.
69
Relational Innovators focus on the big picture. ey like to investi-
gate problems and possibilities, and prefer autonomy to explore many
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