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To help us understand how creativity can be promoted, it is useful to examine the factors in the workplace that affect creativity. 

The following classification of factors in the work environment which affect creativity is drawn from Amabile, Coni, Coon, Lazenby and Herron (1996):

Organisational Encouragement:

• Encouragement of risk taking and of idea generation, a valuing of innovation from the highest to the lowest levels of management.
• Fair, supportive evaluation of new ideas
• Reward for and recognition of creativity
• Collaborative idea flow across the organisation and participative management and decision making.

Supervisory Encouragement:

• Goal clarity
• Open interactions between supervisor and subordinates
• Supervisory support of a team’s work and ideas
• Lack of rigid formal management structures, conservatism and internal strife.

Work Group Encouragement:

• Diversity in team members’ backgrounds
• Mutual openness to ideas
• Constructive challenging of ideas
• Shared commitment to projects.

Autonomy:

• Relatively high autonomy in the day-to-day conduct of the work.
• Sense of ownership and control over their own work and their own ideas.
• Perceived choice in how to go about accomplishing tasks.

Amabile, T.M.  Coni, R., Coon, H., Lazenby, J. and Herron, M. (1996), ‘Assessing the Work Environment for Creativity’, Academy of Management Journal, Vol 39 (5), pp. 1154-1184.

“…our fleeting lives do not simply ‘happen’ and vanish – they take place”

JANE HIRSHFIELD

Events do not slip away into the past, but carve a place in our historical or physical or present selves.

We all have those moments when the big idea, inspiration just refuses to come. It doesn’t matter whether you’re trying to solve a complex strategic problem, develop a new approach to marketing or trying to work out how to get people to work more effectively together.

Most of us tend to battle on and often find ourselves becoming tense and anxious, and staring at our computer screens or our pieces of paper filled with seemingly meaningless hieroglyphics, until our eyes glaze over and our brains shut down. Ironically most of us realise that this isn’t an effective way of dealing with the situation. Before you grind to a halt, there are some things that you can do.

For example, you could

1. Take a walk.  Even just a a few minutes taking a stroll outside will revitalise your brain, ease your tension, and give your mind the the space for a solution to slip in.
2. Park the issue.  Put the problem aside to be tackled at another time. Let the unconscious mind work on the problem – we often do this when we say “sleep on it.”
3. Talk it over – with a friend, colleague, or your kids.  It’s amazing how often a fresh perspective a can lead you to a solution a problem – especially a someone who has no interest in the outcome.
4. Explain it to someone from another field.  Go back to the basics, and explain your context in a way that others will clearly understand the problem and what you’re trying to achieve. They may or may not be able to help you, but your process of review can work wonders in putting the problem in perspective.
5.  Let someone else solve it. Give it away.  What seems irresolvable to you may be perfectly straightforward to someone else.  Pass the problem on to a colleague – that inspired solution may be just waiting to be unleashed