Creativity in management

"CREATIVITY" - THE MISSING LINK IN MANAGEMENT EDUCATION

Here are some questions for Managers:
Can you hear the unspoken word? Can you look at reality from many vantage points?
Especially, vantage points other than the crowd-followed?
Can you identify and draw out the unique strengths in you and others?

Surely, you do understand these questions. But to act in accordance with the answers,
it would require certain competencies of creativity.

Almost any manager can understand the observation of Kim and Mauborgne about leadership: '…the ability to hear what is unspoken, humility, commitment, value of looking at a reality from many vantage points, the ability to create an organization that draws out the unique strengths of every member.' Anybody can read and understand the 'seven habits' or the 'ten traits of corporate mystics' or the competencies of managing 'trust, meaning, relationships, and self' or fall in love with Peter Drucker. But it requires creativity competencies to convert these and other higher-order streams of knowledge into practice.

In the new world order, there are deep and subtle shifts in perspectives related to managing organizations. Shifts toward customer driven and flat organizations, creative leadership, transformation leadership, leadership greatness, corporate mystic, corporate governance, corporate ethics, social responsibility, total quality, ecological and environmental concerns, the sustainable world and so on. These perspectives are created out of imaginative observation, reflective thinking, and conceptualization by creative individuals.

Can they be internalized and practiced without having an appropriate extent of creative-ness on the part of managers?

What is creative management?

The metaphor of creative writing can be used to throw light on the essential nature of creative management. For instance, the words and concepts used by a poet are equally available to everyone. But the poet is able to focus attention on a given reality - rather than on his or her knowledge about it - from several vantage points. . Moreover, the poet has the competency to describe perceptions and experiences - generated out of that ‘focused’ attention - in appropriate words. He or she has a great desire to express, to communicate, to act on behalf of such a personal experience and insights. That is how the poet started his or her creative-ness in writing. [Compared to this, how a young manager starts his or her career? - by imitation and mimicry..!]

Ordinary managers are trapped in their information clutter of knowledges in the 'scientific devices' - hopelessly entangled in their own learning. On the other hand, a creative manager is in 'tuning' with his or her creative-ness. In other words, creative management is whatever a creative individual does if he develops knowledge and competencies in management philosophy and principles.

In ‘conventional management1', a manager depends more or less exclusively upon the learnt theories, principles, practices, and procedures. A reality is perceived only to the extent of available information, learnings, or knowledge; interpreted rigidly according to those learnings; and actions are in conformity with established procedures and practices.
In ordinary or conventional management, the manager is governed by the fear of self-doubt, failure, and humiliation, rigidity and conformity, fear of the unknown and undefined.
Therefore, a shift is required on the part of individuals who envisage themselves as successful managers. The shift from artificial-mechanical-logical-linear-analytical skills to the core competencies of creativity.

[Note: The term 'conventional management' is used only to differentiate a 'creative' way of management by an individual with 'creative-ness'. Refer to the use of 'average man' - in F. Taylor's quote below:

"Scientific management is not any efficiency device. It is not a new system for figuring cost; it is not a new scheme for paying men. In its essence, scientific management involves a complete mental revolution on the part of the working men engaged in any particular establishment or industry - a complete mental revolution on the part of the men as to their duties toward their work, toward their fellowmen, and toward their employers. And it involves the equally complete mental revolution on the part of those on the management's side. That is the essence of scientific management, this great mental revolution."]

Core Processes and Core Competencies

Research claims to have unraveled nearly 150 creativity-traits and a dozen methods to develop creativity. However, they come with one tragic flaw. The so-called scientific theories and interpretations have by-passed the 'human creature' and its core processes. When the geniuses
of the world are mystified and even deified, the real processes that worked behind their creative outputs were taken for granted. The spell-bounding stories of their achievements, discoveries,
and inventions totally camouflaged the silent processes within. As in most other approaches of
man towards Nature, the 'nature' of the human creature also was subdued by a 'utilitarian' mystique attached with creativity. As a result, legions of people have been led to believe that there is something mysterious with creative individuals. Greater the utility of the 'product', greater the degree of 'mystery'.

In my observations of creative individuals, reading between the lines in biographies and anecdotes about mystics, I could see only the same set of species-specific 'core processes' operating behind all kinds of competencies and achievements. Whether they are in the normally perceived realms of creativity - philosophy, art, literature, science, and technology - or even in the realm of enlightenment and self-realization.

Sensitivity, attention, observation, thinking, conceptualization, communication, imagination, visualization, intuition, dreaming, and action - these are the core processes present in every human entity. In random and free-wheeling forms at birth. But later, these core processes do not get trained in any specific or special way for a great majority of individuals. When an individual happens to exercise these core processes in a consistent manner, either by intention or by coincidences, they become sharpened, specialized, and demonstrable abilities accessible to the control of the individual. In that form, they may be termed 'core competencies' - denoting their functional superiority and effectiveness. Like, the hand movements - available as a 'core process' with every hand - are exercised in a specified manner to evolve the 'core competency' of writing a particular script.

Writing as a process is trained and exercised for 9-12 years to reach the stage of a competency. On the other hand, the process of focusing attention upon something, observing it from different perspectives, is not trained. Sensitivity is not trained. The 'movements' of the core processes of attention to environment, attention to one’s own sensitivities and experiences, thinking, conceptualization, imagination, visualization, communication and action, and intuition and dreaming are not trained and exercised with any specific intents. Instead, they are left to chance factors.

As individuals grow and develop in a socio-cultural milieu, these processes are exercised in a random, ad-hoc, or surreptitious manner. Most of the time, it leads to wide variations in performance, despite comparable learning, knowledge, skills, attitudes, and experience; and in behaviour, causing dysfunctional or destructive outcomes: attachment or greed, anxiety or fear, defense or attack.

For instance: a non-creative person also could see a ‘solitary reaper’ but, his attention might not go beyond a young girl alone in a highland. His observation would trap him in ordinary descriptions. On the contrary, the poet see her loneliness in a unique time-space-setting. The poet’s attention is such that it goes beyond the boundaries of the given setting. And the only location to go beyond is one’s own self, from where every process originates. In that self, the individual can directly experience the transcendent nature of every phenomenon. In that network of linkages the poet could see his own solitude as a man on earth - related to everything but not related to anything at the same time. He is able to see that everything is much beyond the way it appears to be. As a result, the poet is able to develop an inspiring conceptualization, which can liberate oneself and others from the ordinary and available perspectives; to a more evolved appreciation of a reality.

A great majority of non-creative individuals also can become inspired about a reality and transcend the apparent - provided, their attention is directed by the guidelines offered by creative individuals. Millions of non-poets too can enjoy the wonder of 'Solitary Reaper'. But to 'practice' that wonder, a 'solitary reaper' has to appear in the same way in the same setting, preferably straight in front…! If the setting is different, the reaper and her solitude will go absolutely un-noticed. Needless to say, the science of management is a 'solitary reaper'.

If the highly informed, intelligent, educated, and competitive managers of today cannot lead an organization to effective performance, then the only possible step is in the realm of ‘creative-ness’. Without being trained in at least one or two of these core processes, principles of management or for that matter, any knowledge cannot be translated into effective performance of actions. Actions with he quality parameters of Nature - firm, correct, complete, and elegant - as revealed in every action of a bird, a tree or a cat. As revealed in every action of the internal organs of one’s own body. Action with the qualities and competencies claimed for a variety of consumer goods and services in the market.

Creative-ness: the strategic focus for management education

Why are some business schools rated the best in the world? Why are the others categorized as average or poor, though their syllabus and curriculum are more or less the same? Does something extra happen in a good business school? If so, is it due to unique competencies of the teaching faculty and the curriculum design? Or is it because of the very setting, culture, and climate of the school, which by intention or chance challenge the core processes of students? Or is it a matter of the core competencies of the students who chance to enter there?
Conventional management education is based on a ‘Cartesian, Newtonian, mechanical world-view' - to use the term of Fritjof Capra. Students are inducted into learning in various subjects in an exclusive way. However, the self - the agent who has to apply the learning later - and its core processes - are excluded. Students easily fall victims to rote learning of methods and techniques. It is comparable to a room filled completely with tools and equipment, without space for the operator to move about.

The evolved goal of individual development and effective performance are all relegated to the easy activity of rote learning and knowledge gathering - following the paradigm of 'I think, therefore, I am'. This leads to a lot of 'articulation' on the one side and dismal incompetencies on the other. As a result, the latest knowledge gained at the business schools - content learning - is easily displaced as the new recruit is 'process trained’ in whatever an organization has always been doing. He or she does not have the competencies to observe and identify the details of a reality in any situation, to creatively conceptualize the observations. Or the emotional competencies of courage and self-confidence to hold on to insights and convictions. Eventually the manager does not even recognize that he or she has entered into a career path which contradicts one’s own precious insights and discoveries, ideals and values.

Creative-ness: the missing link between knowledge and practice:

In my behavioral event interviews with several management students and practicing managers, the missing link between knowledge and practice - content and process - was always evident. It is a perpetuated assumption of the society that theory and practice are different. This appears to be the logic of the majority who has never attempted to know about their own creative competencies. Their reliance on the contents - theories, principles, and methods - has created one of the major blocks to creative-ness. When the contents are by themselves rigid, the reality varies.

Creative-ness and Core Competencies

The term 'creative-ness' refers to a state of mind-setting, quality of intelligence, and consciousness governed by one or more of the core competencies listed below.
• To focus attention in a correct, complete, and dedicated way to a thing, individual, or phenomenon under observation, and to proceed beyond its boundaries or contours to the 'setting' in which the phenomenon occurs, and further. To maintain relaxed alertness to all kinds of 'signals' in the environment. To 'receive' a perception of the different sides of reality. Also, to focus attention upon one's own sensitivities.
• To 'read and see between the lines', to develop what I call 'Concept-Sense'. The commonly perceived five senses belong to the human 'organic being'. The sixth, which is the 'Concept Sense' is identified as the sense organ of intelligence. The major source of our knowledge is 'printed concepts' or books which contain nothing but concepts and their clarifications. It is well known that, individuals differ in their sensitivity to a given stimulus vis-à-vis their other five senses. Likewise, individuals differ in their sensitivity to concepts also vis-à-vis seeing the 'referent realities'.
• To imagine linkages other than the identified, apparent ones - of the 'referent realities' designated by the concepts and ideas - in print format, dialogues, or class-room teaching . To imagine the 'organic totality' of a thing or live phenomenon; its invisible, subtle, and even remote linkages with many other things in the environment near and far.
• To visualize the way the observed phenomenon would look like or behave if it assumes the properties of its linkages.
• To develop the humility to reflect upon the observed details - both the available and the imagined; and to incubate upon one's own expressions, experiences, and insights; to temper emotional competencies like, courage, self-confidence, internal locus of control, and so on in order to develop a mind-setting to act according to the knowledge created out of these processes
• To convert the perceptions thus generated, into appropriate symbols or concepts and ideas using the optimum scope of one's language competencies and related logic, with strong self-confidence; to develop an 'internal locus of knowledge' - conceptualization or knowledge creation.
• To convert an idea, perception, or knowledge into sequential phases of activity - expressions, movements, communication; and any relevant skills, abilities, or competencies vis-à-vis the variations and requirements of a reality.
• To develop self-knowledge: by focusing attention on the configuration of sensations and awareness of the trinity of 'body-mind-spirit' and their core processes. When an individual develops tuning with his or her 'inner self', it generates 'internal dialogue' - 'intuition'. .

End-note:
It is unlikely that the original idea of a business enterprise occurred in the mind of an average individual. It is unlikely that, he created an enterprise out of vested interests or greed for wealth and power. It could have been out of his love and concern for the others. But when the 'method of business' was imitated and mimicked, the principles and philosophies of management were practiced in a ritualistic-mechanical way - merely as a set of 'efficiency devices' as Frederick Taylor could see.

Management education should transcend its habit of 'escaping from reality' of the creative dimension of students. Their 'unique strengths' should be 'drawn out'. Their core competencies should be trained to translate higher-order perspectives into practice. Without the assistance of those core competencies, the very purpose of a knowledge cannot be fulfilled.

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