266 • Creative, Ecient, and Eective Project Management
that of earning a paycheck. As General George S. Patton said, “Challenges
are what makes life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life mean-
ingful.” Again, the fuel for doing that is emotion.
TAKEAWAY NUMBER 9
e ninth takeaway is that creativity must overcome resistance from oth-
ers, and perhaps just as importantly, from oneself. Everyone is a product
of their knowledge, training, and experience. A person’s background may
be an asset or a liability, with the latter locking the mind into a frame-
work that prevents new ideas, previous experiences, and knowledge from
coming to the surface. For individuals, the liability takes the form of a
mental block or something similar to it; for a team, groupthink. Either way,
it hurts creativity and innovation. For example, one of the most creative
of individuals, omas Edison, allowed his mental model to restrict his
thinking. Despite inventing the movie camera, he saw it simply for peep
shows rather than for the large screen.
21
He also believed that his invention
of the phonograph was more for oce use, not entertainment.
22
e key is to free the mind, whether for an individual or a group.
Cracking the metal casing enveloping the mind is not easy, but it can
be done, simply by rst acknowledging its existence and then opening
the mind or minds to varied experiences, knowledge, and backgrounds.
Inventor James Jorasch makes a special eort to do just that, recommend-
ing to “push yourself to do things you’ve never done before, reach out to
people you’ve never talked to before, and ask a lot of questions.”
23
e
result? Perspective changes, opening one’s mind to new ideas, as author
Gordon Parks observes: “My perspective keeps changing. I see the same
events dierently than I did 40 or 50 years ago.”
24
TAKEAWAY NUMBER 10
e tenth takeaway is that creativity requires the individual and team
alike to work together to provide value to themselves and others.
No doubt, history is replete with examples of a solitary genius contrib-
uting to mankind. However, such contributions are rare. More oen than
A Baker’s Dozen of Takeaways • 267
not, creativity and its companion, innovation, arise from individuals and
teams working hand in hand to produce and deliver a product or service
of value. Observes Kevin Kelly, “Innovation is about more than just having
the idea yourself; you also have to bring everyone else to where your idea
is. And that becomes dicult if you’re too many steps ahead.”
25
Gianframo
Zaccar, president of Continuum, agrees: “Real design is seldom done by
one person, but rather it is best done by a group of people, with dierent
skills and sensibilities, working together.”
26
Perhaps the best way to view the individual and team coexisting is to
view a project like a hand. Each nger is dierent in shape and purpose,
but work together harmoniously to execute a common task, such as pick-
ing up a cup of coee or writing with a pen. Each nger contributes and
cooperates with the others to transform a complex task into a simple one;
if the ngers were all the same and did not work together, an ordinarily
simple task becomes a complex one.
TAKEAWAY NUMBER 11
e eleventh takeaway is that creativity requires all kinds of people.
Diversity is the spice of life on a project. Dierent personality types with
varying backgrounds, knowledge, and experiences contribute a variety of
perspectives and ideas that enhance rather than impede creativity. Project
managers nd this variety challenging, but they will also discover the
richness of insights. ey can then capitalize on the strengths of others
while simultaneously compensating for their weaknesses.
e diculty, of course, is that reaching consensus, let alone agreement,
can be extremely challenging, if not impossible. Some people may be
mavericks, whose unconventional insights and uncompromising attitude
might pose a challenge if not managed and led well. Others, such as
procrastinators and indecisive people, may add to delays without the right
incentives, thereby killing the creativity of others on a team. Such people,
fortunately, are the exception rather than the rule.
Perhaps the best rationale for having a diverse team of people is the one
oered by Steve Jobs in his description of the Beatles. “My model of man-
agement is the Beatles. e reason I say that is because each of the key
people in the Beatles kept the others from going o in the directions of their
tendencies. ey sort of kept each other in check. And when they split up,
268 • Creative, Ecient, and Eective Project Management
they never did anything as good.”
27
In an article in Fortune, John Byrnes
wrote about who he considered to be the twelve greatest entrepreneurs of
all time, which all seemed to come from recent memory. Nonetheless, the
article was striking in that all these creative individuals—from Je Bezos
of Amazon, who was described as a dreamer and patient, to Narayana
Murthy of Infosys, who could create a business out of limited resources—
brought dierent personalities and capabilities to the environment and
created something of value.
28
TAKEAWAY NUMBER 12
e twelh takeaway is that creativity on projects requires taking a
holistic perspective, meaning the importance of using both sides of the
brain to create and deliver a product or service. e right brain is oen
associated with integration and the le is associated with burrowing into
the details. e combination of the two provides a powerful opportunity
to generate creative and innovative results. e perspective of using both
sides of the brain becomes useful when determining the levels and types
of creativity.
From a thinking perspective, the parts of the brain need each other
to do divergent and convergent thinking, the former generating many
unique ideas and the latter combining them. e right brain is used to
produce several creative ideas and the le brain to combine them in some
organized manner to produce something of value.
From a creativity perspective, Wendell Williams of Scientic Selection.
com takes a dierent perspective, suggesting that there are two types of
creativity—breadth and depth, the former drawing connections among
ideas and the latter doing so in a narrow eld, again reecting the impor-
tant relationship between le- and right-brain thinking.
29
Still another
perspective on creativity is taking an incremental rather than radical
approach toward creativity. An incremental approach involves improv-
ing on what currently exists, while the radical approach involves seek-
ing a breakthrough that entails creating something dramatically new.
30
Regardless of perspective on thinking and creativity, the bottom line is
that the entire brain is needed to create and innovate. e le side provides
the necessary depth, while the right side oers the required breadth.
Combining the two bridges the gap between imagination and practicality.
A Baker’s Dozen of Takeaways • 269
TAKEAWAY NUMBER 13
e nal takeaway is that creativity requires action as well as thought. To
a large extent, that explains the dierence between creativity and innova-
tion; the former results in something unique, and the latter converts the
creation into something of value for the customer. ought and action
transform imagination into the reality that both sides of the brain created.
From a creativity and innovation context, two parts make up the mix-
ture of thought and action. e rst part is that the knowledge of the day
along with contemporary technology and the laws of physics enable the
development of a creative idea, and then the technology and the laws of
physics turn it into something real.
e other part, and just as important and perhaps even more so on proj-
ects, a creative idea requires the support of an organization’s infrastruc-
ture, as omas Davenport, Laurence Prusak, and H. James Wilson in
the Harvard Business Review observe: “No business idea takes root within
an organization purely on its own merits. Instead it has to be sold—to
senior executives, to the rank and le, to middle managers.”
31
Rolf Smith,
whose company oers thinking expeditions, summed up the relationships
among creativity, thinking, and action very well:. “Being creative is when
you think about your thinking,” he says. “Being innovative is when you act
on your actions.”
32
Projects that are nothing more than gloried thought
experiments have their place, of course; so do projects that seek solely to
implement ideas. Combining the two provides a synergistic eect of har-
nessing the combinatorial qualities of people, processes, systems, and data
to deliver a product or service of value.
CONCLUSION
roughout this entire book, emphasis has been on tapping everyone’s
creative potential and the role of project managers doing so. Whether by
design or accident, project managers oen fall into the role of “good cop,
bad cop,” with the emphasis on the latter. Unfortunately, such a perspec-
tive is too negative and, quite frankly, counterproductive from a creativity
and innovation perspective. ink about it: How creative and innovative
would you be if a cop was continually looking over your shoulder and
270 • Creative, Ecient, and Eective Project Management
correcting your every thought and action? Chances are that you would
probably consider it countercreative and counterinnovative, which trans-
lates into being counterproductive.
What project managers should and need to do is stress the positive side
of people’s potentialities by laying the groundwork for creativity and inno-
vation and then leveraging such contributions to increase personal satis-
faction, add value to customers, and contribute to the overall success of
the parent organization—a win-win for all stakeholders.
ENDNOTES
1. Marina Krakovsky, “Father of Invention,” Psychology Today, November/December
2010, pp. 31–32.
2. “Creativity Step-by-Step,” Harvard Business Review, April 2008, pp. 48–49.
3. Mariette DiCristina, “Let Your Creativity Soar,” Scientic American Mind, June/July
2008, p. 26.
4. Gardiner Morse, “Sparking Creativity at Ferrari,” Harvard Business Review,
April2006, p. 23.
5. Steven Levy, “Ringside at the Revolution,” Wired, December 2011, p. 234.
6. Craig Mindrum, “Harvesting Innovation,” Talent Management, May 2010, pp. 20–21.
7. Levy, “Ringside at the Revolution,” p. 234.
8. “ink Really Hard,” PM Network, November 2007, p. 17.
9. Jerey H. Deyer, Hal B. Gregersen, and Clayton M. Christensen, “e Innovator’s
DNA,” Harvard Business Review, December 2009, p. 34.
10. Joshua Kosman, “Yo-Yo Ma,” Smithsonian, November 2005, p. 87.
11. Michael Part, “Maya Lin,” Smithsonian, November 2005, p. 101.
12. DiChristina, “Let Your Creativity Soar,” p. 24.
13. Kevin Kelly and Steven Johnson, “Where Ideas Come From,” Wired, October
2010,p.124.
14. DiChristina, “Let Your Creativity Soar,” p. 28.
15. DiChristina, “Let Your Creativity Soar,” p. 29.
16. Stacy Collet,. “Ready, Set, Compete,” Computerworld, January 14, 2013, p. 20.
17. DiChristina, “Let Your Creativity Soar,” p. 29.
18. Nancy F. Cohen, “His Legacy,” Fortune, November 23, 2009, p. 110.
19. Brent Schlender, “I Just Knew in My Bones at is Was Going to be Very
Important,” FastCompany, May 2012, p. 82.
20. Woulter Alan and Adi Alan, “Promote Innovation as a Business Discipline,” Talent
Management, May 2010, p. 22.
21. Richard Corliss, “Lights. Camera…Edison!” Time, July 5, 2010, p. 51.
22. Randall Stross, “e Incredible Talking Machine,” Time, July 5, 2010, p. 49.
23. Krakovsky, “Father of Invention,” p. 9.
24. Roy Rowan, “Gordon Parks,” Smithsonian, November 2005, p. 68.
25. Kelly and Johnson, “Where Ideas Come From,” p. 122.
26. Steve Hamm, “Fiy Years at the Drawing Board,” Businessweek, January 21,
2008,p.39.
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