104 • Creative, Ecient, and Eective Project Management
• Show the relationship of project activities to the higher organization’s
activities at team meetings.
Encourage Diversity
Most people mistakenly believe that diversity centers on race and
religion. is perception is shortsighted. Diversity also includes peoples’
dierent thinking styles. Why is this important? Dierent thinking
styles encourage dialog, assuming everyone feels free to express them-
selves; helps in raising questions or issues people have seldom, if ever,
thought about due to dierent perspectives; and helps to overcome
groupthink. In other words, diversity can cause people to think outside
the box by providing perspectives, even if they seem out of this world.
e best way to achieve diversity is to enhance creativity by avoiding
too many people of the same personality being on the team and then
determining the other personality types needed to provide a balance on
a team.
10
e best approach to encourage diversity in thinking is to bring on board
people with fresh knowledge and experience. All too oen, leaders pick
people like themselves, from similar looks to the same ways of thinking.
While such selection criteria may make cooperation and communication
easier, the reality is that creativity gets hurt simply because people will
nd it dicult to think outside the box, making it unlikely for someone
to raise questions challenging basic assumptions, thoughts, approaches,
and so on. People with fresh knowledge and experience can upset this
tendency. eir knowledge and experience can shake up the modus ope-
randi by asking, perhaps indirectly, “Why are we doing it this way?” New
knowledge and experiences serve as catalysts for creative thinking by
shaking up the thinking gene pool.
Here are some ways to encourage diversity to further creativity:
• Change working relationships among team members from time to
time.
• Have people from outside the organization join the project team.
• Mix and match personality types on various tasks and deliverables.
• Seek people for their expertise to participate on the project on an ad
hoc basis.
• Seek people with varied backgrounds from outside the project to
participate to give a dierent perspective.
Laying the Groundwork for a Creative Environment • 105
• Seek speakers to come in to address topics that are tangentially
related to problems and issues occurring on the project.
• Use personality assessment tools to determine dierent personality
types needed on the project.
Build and Maintain Trust
Trust is essential for creativity. When trust is broken, either with peers
or superiors, then all else breaks down, for example, communications,
esprit de corps, and collaboration. People will resist sharing their ideas
for discussion because some others might use them as tools to ridicule or
embarrass. People might also be resistant to sharing their ideas because
of the fear that someone might take credit for their ideas. Trust in a cre-
ative environment is best engendered and maintained when management
overtly recognizes and rewards creativity. is also includes whether or
not the creative project is successful. Being creative takes considerable
courage and risk, and when breaching trust, creativity quickly goes to the
wayside. e pressure is so intense in the corporate world, observes David
Whyte, that saying “yes” can become career limiting even though “no”
may be the right answer.
11
Here are some ways to build and maintain trust to further creativity:
• Be accessible to team members at all times.
• Emphasize the need to share information, issues, and expertise.
• Encourage people to seek help if they have a problem.
• Share recognition.
Support People’s Growth
It is human nature that, aer a while, people become restless. ey become
dissatised with their environment and themselves for many reasons.
ey have to grow. Keeping the status quo may make some people happy;
with others it doesn’t. David Whyte cites how the famous John Sculley
of Apple Computer asked employees to unleash their creative energy in
exchange for a corporate contract that provides material comfort. Whyte
sees danger in this perspective because it requires one to submit to another
person or organization’s dreams unless the former can become in sync
with the latter. Otherwise, a person submits to the desire of the system in
exchange for giving up one’s own dreams.
12
Hardly a situation that allows
106 • Creative, Ecient, and Eective Project Management
people to grow in a free, open environment. e trade-o becomes one of
security and innovation.
13
Creativity involves people of a restless nature.
ey want to have new experiences to keep their minds and spirit alive.
People who are not creative or deemphasize creativity cannot understand
this restlessness. To keep creative people engaged and willing to remain,
they require opportunities for growth, especially in the form of creative
endeavors. ey oen need more mental stimulus, that is, giving them
greater challenges sparks their creativity. ey need that feeling of contin-
uous growth; otherwise, stagnation occurs and they will move on.
14
Here
are some ways to support people’s growth to further creativity:
• Allow individuals to experiment more frequently to address a prob-
lem or issue.
• Allow people to attend training sessions relevant to the project.
• Enable people to come up their own solutions to problems or issues.
• Encourage cross-training.
• Remove or lessen the impact of bureaucratic controls on individuals
and the entire team.
Encourage Ownership
is requirement covers not only the project, but also its deliverables.
Without a sense of ownership, people will be likely not to fully engage
because the work is too extraneous; in other words, it lacks the personal
touch. It feels like someone else’s work, not theirs. ere must be that emo-
tional component if that emotional commitment becomes a reality. If the
emotional component lies dormant, it can cloud our spirit and judgment.
15
Large projects tend to reect this situation; the product is so immense in
size and complexity that even a major contribution to its success can seem
miniscule, even meaningless. Even under this circumstance, it is important
to encourage ownership so people feel compelled to apply their creativity.
If they invest their own time, energy, and emotion, the chances increase for
creative contributions because of a sense of ownership.
Here are some ways to encourage ownership to further creativity:
• Have individuals report on performance for their respective
responsibilities.
• Have people plan their own responsibilities’ dates of completion.
• Have team members participate in the overall planning of a project.
Laying the Groundwork for a Creative Environment • 107
Stress Communications
is requirement is more than just talking or sending emails; it is an
exchange of ideas in a way that encourages further discussion. People begin
to ask for feedback as well as insights on how to improve their creative out-
put. Others feel comfortable giving feedback. e exchange occurs up and
down the hierarchy as well as laterally among peers. Ongoing communi-
cations also help to identify aws and explore dierent ways to improve as
long as, of course, people can keep their egos in check.
Here are some ways to stress communications to further creativity:
• Communicate frequently on performance status.
• Encourage greater sharing of information, problems, issues, and
soon.
• Encourage participation in the development and review of reports
and other project documents.
• Encourage team members to reach out to peers for insights on
addressing problems or issues.
• Provide templates for sharing information, for example, reports.
• Provide the tools to enable sharing locally and with team members
at remote locations.
Emphasize Coordination
Most organizations today require applying multiple skills to roll out a
product or service. Due to the growth of technology and expansion of
our knowledge in many dierent elds, coordination among all specialties
becomes absolutely critical in a creative environment. While exceptions
exist, most creative endeavors involve people participating with dierent
technical skills that necessitate working together to deliver a product or
service. e eectiveness of coordination and communication can make
the dierence between success and failure. erefore, creativity requires
people working together as a team, contrary to the frequent perception
that creative people must always work alone.
16
Complexity is associated
with the number of interdependent variables involved. is complexity,
observes Dietrich Dorner, makes it dicult to act independently, espe-
cially in a complex system, because the variables are interrelated to a
degree, causing side eects that have consequences that must be dealt with
at dierent levels of abstraction, for example, subsystems and the entire
system.
17
108 • Creative, Ecient, and Eective Project Management
Here are some ways to emphasize coordination to further creativity:
• Assign people to work jointly on a set of tasks or deliverables.
• Conduct meetings requiring people to interact with others to address
a problem or issue.
• Publish weekly and two-week look-ahead reports so stakeholders
can see what is and will be happening.
Relax Rules and Procedures
Nothing can stie creativity more than burdensome bureaucraticrules
and procedures. Creativity requires freedom to experiment and think,
meaning not being unimpeded by constraints from bureaucratic overhead.
While rules, procedures, and so on are necessary, they oen become a
hindrance rather than an aid when it comes to creativity. David Goleman,
in e Creative Spirit, discusses the work of Dr. Amabile on the topic of
“creative killers” in children. Some of these killers include surveillance,
overcontrol, and restricting choice, which oen exist in the work envi-
ronment.
18
Too much bureaucracy cannot help but stie creativity, says
David Whyte, likening corporations to acting as a parent controlling and
providing everything through rules and procedures.
19
Creative conditions
necessitate judicial application of rules, procedures, and so on. Short
of doing something illegal or unethical, applying rules and procedures
should depend upon enabling creativity while simultaneously ensuring
some consistent behavior with the parent organization. e result may be
looser managerial oversight so creativity can ourish.
Here are some ways to relax rules and procedures to further creativity:
• Distinguish between what rules, procedures, and so on are more
important than others.
• Place most emphasis on completing the project over satisfying
administrative requirements.
• Shield team members from complying with administrative requests.
Align Individual and Organizational Goals and Objectives
Because creative people and groups thrive on independence, a tendency
may arise that is something akin to an unaligned two-layered cake;
in other words, the top layer does not line up with the bottom layer.
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