84 • Creative, Ecient, and Eective Project Management
• Recognize and reward people who initiate taking risks, regardless of
outcome.
• Select a diverse team of people, from personality to experience.
Hierarchy
is challenge implies formal power over other people. It also implies that
certain people determine direction, values, and priorities. In traditional
hierarchies, creativity is dicult at best because parameters and other con-
straints are heavily imposed. Fortunately, many organizations are work-
ing to reduce the layers of hierarchy and the micromanagement that oen
accompanies it. Less hierarchy enables greater creativity; more hierarchy
reduces it. Creativity requires latitude; too much oversight kills it. Eugene
Raudsepp sums it up well, noting that an idea oen has to travel up the
food chain before getting implemented, if it ever gets that opportunity.
33
From a creativity perspective, here are some ways to counter the aect
and eect of hierarchy:
• Allow some team members to assume project management
responsibilities.
• Apply job enlargement for team members.
• Have project manager and leads assume some of the responsibilities
that other team members have.
• Increase span of control for project manager and leads.
• Provide opportunities for cross-training.
Not Listening to Inner Voice
All too frequently, especially in externally focused cultures, the inner
voice that has proven helpful in being creative is squelched. In the
corporate environment, the pressure to quiet that voice oen sties
creativity. Pressures like regular pay increases, evaluations, and not
being tagged a team player can pressure people to focus externally rather
than internally. Only when the external world rewards creativity will
the innervoice surface. Yet, suchcircumstances are rare for most people
who are very likely hired to do just what they were hired for and nothing
more. Sometimes, however, the inner voice can become the worst enemy
of creativity if we can become our own worst critic by not suspending
judgment to explore ideas.
34
By suspending judgment and exploring an
Challenges and Constraints • 85
idea further, we increase the chance of appreciating and realizing an idea’s
potential.
35
From a creativity perspective, here are some ways to counter
the aect and eect of not listening to one’s inner voice:
• Bring on board a mix of le- and right-brain thinkers.
• Encourage greater use of right-brain thinking on problems and
issues.
• Encourage the solicitation of feedback involving both logic and feel-
ings of team members.
Taking on Only What Is Known
Creativity, by its very nature, requires embracing the unknown. By tack-
ling the unknown, a chance of failure, oen with a high likelihood, occurs
along with all its undesirable consequences. So a natural inclination is to
embrace what is known, such as patterns of behavior; and if it involves
creativity, then it will be incremental change at best. Naturally, the
unknown is scary, but it can pay big dividends if, and only if, it succeeds.
But many organizations squash any tolerance for tackling the unknown.
e focus in most organizations is working on ideas or problems deter-
mined by others, which encourages very little emotional involvement or
ownership by an individual or team tackling them, thereby decreasing
the likelihood of coming up with anything creative.
36
Organizations, in
order to encourage and embrace a culture of creativity, are recognizing
the need to break patterns of behavior on a personal and organizational
level, according to Allan et al., as people nd themselves working on topics
that they would not ordinarily address or like to do so.
37
From a creativity
perspective, here are some ways to counter the aect and eect of taking
on only what is known:
• Encourage people to take on problems, issues, and so on with little
available information.
• Encourage team members to embrace ambiguity.
• Encourage team members to experiment with new tools, techniques,
and procedures.
• Have team members visit other projects to see how other tools and
techniques are applied dierently.
• Identify anomalous results and have people investigate the cause to
learn dierent ways to perform responsibilities.
86 • Creative, Ecient, and Eective Project Management
• Perform benchmarking to obtain new ideas.
• Recognize and reward risk taking.
• Visit other projects and organizations to learn new ideas and
processes.
Management’s Lack of Responsiveness
Nothing can kill creativity in an organization more quickly than man-
agement’s attitude of “we don’t care.” Management may go through the
motions of talking about creativity but not bother to do anything regard-
ing the topic, thereby hurting its credibility. People, either individually or
as a team, will be reluctant to continue to oer creative solutions because
management simply gives lip service to the topic. Aer a while, creative
thinking stops or creative people go elsewhere. Management needs to
demonstrate its commitment to creativity if it hopes to ourish in an
organization. As Allan et al. observe, senior management sets the tone for
acceptance or rejection of highly creative ideas through how and what it
says. Even the bravest can feel intimidated if senior management sets the
wrong tone.
38
From a creativity perspective, here are some ways to counter
the aect and eect of management’s lack of responsiveness:
• Communicate continuously about the project to key members of
management.
• Invite key members of management to attend team meetings.
• Invite key members of management to participate in important
decisions.
Success
At rst, it is dicult to understand how success can inhibit creativity.
Aer all, success frees one from worry and other negative concerns. Yet
success also breeds comfort and even arrogance, leading to a decline in
creativity simply because the incentives for creating are no longer there.
Creativity requires some degree of anxiety and discomfort either internally
or externally. Otherwise, many people would simply be satised with the
status quo and see no reason to change. Success must beaccompanied
by failure for creativity to occur continuously. As Eugene Raudsepp says,
experience and failure go hand in hand as a consequence of bad judgment.
In other words, failure becomes a means of growth as much as success
Challenges and Constraints • 87
does.
39
Also, both success and failure are required for an individual to
attain self-fulllment by enlarging his or her experiences and obtaining
a sense of accomplishment.
40
From a creativity perspective, here are some
ways to counter the aect and eect of success:
• Bring on board team members who question the status quo.
• Encourage team members to embrace ambiguity by tackling tasks
with little or no data or information.
• Pollinate the team from time to time with new team members with
dierent knowledge and experience.
• Recognize and reward failure as well as success.
Too Many Positive and Negative Incentives
Too many positive incentives can hinder creativity. ey can entice peo-
ple to create only if they receive something in return. People can reach a
threshold point of satiation in which they nd that positive incentives no
longer motivate them to create. As Ross Perot reportedly once said, the
hardest part of motivating people is aer you’ve made them millionaires.
Having too many negative incentives is just as inhibiting to creativity.
Every time something goes awry, which invariably it does when creat-
ing, and people get slapped by management (e.g., a negative performance
review), then creativity will quickly decline and they will become very
risk-averse. Eugene Raudsepp observes that change, as a result of creation
and innovation, can be detrimental to one’s career, such as a loss of status
or position.
41
ey will see, or perceive, that taking a chance by being
creative costs more than it gains. Regardless of using positive or negative
incentives, motivation, or more specically demotivation, becomes the
critical issue because the environment lacks the stimulation necessary to
motivate people to be creative.
42
To a large degree, corporations encourage
this consequence, add Allan et al., due to a lack of intimacy with the indi-
vidual that is oen found in small groups. Instead, salary and promo-
tions eclipse strong emotional commitment by the individual.
43
From a
creativity perspective, here are some ways to counter the aect and eect
of too many positive and negative incentives:
• Develop clear standards of performance.
• Provide an equitable distribution of awards, balancing individual
and group ones.
88 • Creative, Ecient, and Eective Project Management
Team Composition Imbalance
Nothing can kill creativity on a team more quickly than having too
many people of the same psychological prole as members. ey all
think and act alike; they perceive the world in the same way; and
everyone gets along like one big happy family. e problem with this
scenario is that it can wreak havoc on creativity. No one questions
to any other team member, or the questions are not very challenging
because they all think the same.Few if any think outside the box, being
locked into the same paradigm. Everyone may work together and share
tools, knowledge, data, and so on, but the likelihood of creative think-
ing will be low simply because no one is available to challenge the domi-
nant thinking style.
From a creativity perspective, here are some ways to counter the aect
and eect of team composition imbalance:
• Bring on board a diverse group of people varying in skills, knowl-
edge, experience, and personality.
• Provide training that focuses on improving the skills and knowledge
that individuals lack.
• Solicit input from outside experts, either from other projects or
outside the organization.
Dominance of Brain Thinking
Management oen wants creative, right-brain thinkers, but the hiring
and incentives are for le-brain thinkers. Right-brain thinking is less
rigorous and emphasizes the emotional, intuitive side of work. Le-
brain thinking focuses more on rationality, structure, and so on. While
you need both in the work environment, most rms prefer to hire
le-brain thinkers. Right-brain qualities are predominantly taught in
schools, especially aer grade school, in the United States. is adher-
ence to the le brain is a cultural preference. According to William
Sonnenschein, the display of emotion is unacceptable despite the fact
that emotions are instrumental in the shaping of insights, ideas, per-
spectives, and clarications, which in turn help form strong relation-
ships.
44
Not surprisingly, activities like daydreaming are discouraged.
45
e right-brain qualities are harder to dene and assess, although most
people agree that they can make or break an organization. Too many
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