I recently visited an organization I worked with in the past and spoke with members of the original team about what once was a cutting edge operation recognized by clients, stakeholders and regionally by our profession.  As a full participating member of the state professional association they held leadership roles and served as host to state conferences.  They were highly regarded for their professionalism, quality training and well attended events.  Sadly, today the newly created department that now stands in its place is but a shadow of its past services, professionalism and successes. Rather than building on what had already existed, a whole new vision was created that eliminated the very services that stakeholders depended upon for their success.

How did this happen?   Leadership didn’t understand that the very people they employ create the success.  Leadership can only claim part of that ‘glory’ and only if those under their supervision are encouraged to reach their full potential and drive this success. (www.successworkonline.com)

 “Yet, far too many executives today continue to regard HR as a non-strategic cost and to under-invest in hiring and employee development solutions. Why would astute executives take this position? It is my contention that organizations have long had a difficult time connecting human performance costs with their root cause. Underperformance, and its associated costs, results in large part from having the wrong people in jobs. Until the person-job match connection is made, organizations will continue to under-fund proactive investments to ensure that the right people are filling jobs in their organizations, and to over-fund reactive investments in dealing with employee performance problems.” (www.shl.com/edge)

My experience has been that this skill mismatch is not exclusive to subordinates but also includes top executives who in their climb to fulfill career aspirations, find themselves faced with a choice: a) do the things you love and are good at and stay where you are or b) move up in the chain of command taking on that which you do not love, and stay in a constant state of dread that someone might find you incompetent.

A quick lesson from my husband about cars explained that the battery sends electricity to the spark plug, igniting the fuel air mixture in the cylinder chamber that explodes and forces the pistons down sequentially and that pressure moves the crank shaft which in turn moves the car.

So in other words without that first spark of energy which causes an explosion, that car will not move unless of course you are pushing it downhill

Do you feel like you are being pushed downhill and somewhat out of control in your life or profession right now?   Now is the time to find the spark that will ignite your own creativity to get you turned back around and moving ahead in your business or personal life.  But YOU have to turn the key! 

Turning the key opens you up to your own creative power, your true purpose in life, new opportunities and new relationships or partnerships. But first you want to reassess your situation.  What’s working for you?  What do you want more of in your life? What new direction are you seeking? The best step you can take next is to turn that car around, head back up that hill with new determination and a clear vision for your future. 

For more information about creativity, your essential life skill go to www.successworkonline.com.

The same goes with creativity.  We are all born creative with innate abilities to use our ingenuity to create, solve problems and find opportunities.   But that doesn’t mean we automatically know how to use our creativity to reach our full potential.  Just as driving requires a certain skill set and knowledge, developing our innate creative talents requires an understanding of what creativity is, the ways we are creative and what types of thinking we bring to the problem solving table.  And if we want to be high performance creatives, we also need coaches and teachers that show us how to develop and leverage our creativity. 

Whether we are creative in the arts, sciences, business, education or everyday life, creativity is our essential life skill that sustains us and takes us to our cutting edge. In all cases practice, hard work and perseverance are critical to success.   So yes, you can teach creativity!   

Want to know how to get your organizational growth spiraling upwards in this current economy?  The answer is so basic and it doesn’t cost a cent.  According to a new book From Workplace to Playspace by Pamela Meyer, just released by Jossey-Bass, there is a 52% gap in operating income between high engagement and low engagement organizations.  So, quite simply, getting your workforce fully engaged in all aspects of your organization results in increased net income, better job satisfaction and less turnover.

So what does a high engagement organization look like?  First the employees actually enjoy coming to work and are fully engaged in their job.  The culture is vibrant and workers thrive in this open atmosphere where they think creatively, question old assumptions and immediately respond to the unexpected. The impetus for coming to work each day is commitment and not simple compliance. Not sounding like your organization?  Keep reading…

Pamela Meyer rightly admonishes “The idea that strategies that engage the whole person are soft, while those that target operational aspects of organizational life are worthwhile, overlooks the very core of organizational success…the living, breathing people who must fulfill its mission each day.”   Go to www.successworkonline.com for more information.

But the one commonality is that positive change is  driven by creativity which requires moving away from the norm. Exploring novel and endless possibilities is what ignites creativity.  An environment that encourages and supports diversity, bringing many types of thinking and personalities to the table  is what fuels creativity much like oxygen does to a fire.  Change leaders need to be willing to break the rules of the “norm” or the organization becomes stagnate. That may be what happened to GM.

If you create an environment in an organization that encourages diversity in thinking and values the individuals who courageously break with the norm to bring new insights into an organization, you will have a vibrant and strong organization that always anticipates the changes in its future. Change is accepted as a normal part of the ongoing problem solving process.

Great leaders are really facilitators of their talented and diverse teams and their main role is to encourage diversity in thinking and lead their teams in the creation of a global vision and policies for the organization that are a result of input from many levels within the organization rather than closed door policy making. I have seen it time and again that major decisions are made without the consult of the very people most in a position to understand the problem.

So the only hope for an organization with a culture of sameness is a leader that “breaks rules” but it is a precarious position to be in because often that leader easily becomes the “messenger who gets shot”.  Usually that individual is an “innovator” style of creativity and is willing to take risks and walk away from a situation once their “job” is done. Unfortunately, many organizations have lost their innovators or stifled their voice in the name of uniformity.

By creating teams that celebrate their diversity of thinking and talents a leader insulates an organization from “group think” and positions it to be able to weather any storm. In this time of great change, leaders need to prepare them selves to navigate these turbulent waters by leveraging their own talents and creativity and training their leadership teams to do the same!

It isn’t easy to look within to how we may have been contributing to our own demise and what changes we might need to make in doing business to dig us out and begin creating profits again. During downturns smart businesses will be looking within on what they can do differently rather than on which employees to cut. Those very people might offer critical information to help a company survive. Unfortunately many employers do not see their employees as their greatest asset. Common sense should convince us that our businesses are built on the people who do all of the critical jobs that make up the entire business. No job should be overlooked in terms of its importance to the overall success of an organization.

So why is it when the going gets tough, the first thing employers do is lay off? Obviously sometimes it must come to that but I maintain if an organization is not asking the following questions, they are heading down a dark and slippery slope. Here are a few hard questions to ask: “Where might there be some opportunities in all of this economic mess?”, “How can we improve operations?”, “How might we build high performance teams?”, “What types of training do our teams and leaders need?”, What other businesses can we partner with to create a win win, and “Which items can we drop from the budget without hurting our ability to grow the business?”

There is an old saying that when the going gets rough, the tough get going and that is exactly what needs to happen. If you are still doing the same old things to address this very different economy, you are shooting yourself in the foot. The best thing you can do right now is to take aim and rally the troops. Start looking at where you want to grow with your business, do some staff development and training and begin asking yourself and your employees some of those tough questions I mentioned above!

So if we are all creative, why don’t we jointly leverage that creativity to solve the world’s problems?  Good question.  The answer lies in the type of environment in which we live where people are confused by mistruths and untruths.  Over much of the past nine years, critical thinking and open expression of views has been suppressed to the point that for many, creativity became a risk they did not want to take.  If creativity and the positive change it brings to society is seen as the enemy, it will go underground in society or for some even be extinguished by disillusionment.

For years now, the workplace has nobeeen too little about quality and passion for the job and too much about bottom line costs and corporate profits, resulting in mediocrity.  How could it be otherwise, when you have thrown out the baby with the bathwater, the baby being creativity?  Often the very people who alert organizations to the problems within and are able to solve the problems are the first to receive a pink slip. The irony is that this waste of creative talent is not limited to corporations but educational and non-profit organizations as well.  Does that make sense?

The repression of critical thinking over a long period of time puts a society in a mode of thinking which does not question the status quo.  Whether out of either fear or just habit, the results are the same.  Status quo thinking  encourages sameness in thinking, draws its strength from keeping things as they always have been.  Security is based on the false premise that what we have always done to solve our problems will always be the best solution for the future.

In January 2009 we returned to an environment of free thinking, questioning of the status quo and collaborative answers for the most serious challenges such as health care and war.  But many people don’t know what to do with this type of thinking.  If you disagree with someone, the easiest thing to do is lash out, focusing more on winning than being right.  The essential thing to do to reach innovation is to listen to all view points and discern after careful consideration, the option that best solves the problem, given all of the circumstances.  Paramount to this kind of thinking is the understanding that change is constant and critical thinking must always drive that change.

How interesting it is that we so quickly have forgotten the past effectiveness of these characteristics that brought us civil rights, an end to the Viet Nam war, the international space program, social justice initiatives and so many other rights we experience on a daily basis.

Currently with the O’bama administration, we have a new opportunity to reclaim our individual voices and celebrate our birthright to leverage our own creativity for the greater good of our nation.  With that birthright comes the responsibility to become critical thinkers and challenge all facts for their accuracy and authenticity. The cost to our society as a whole to not having a fully engaged and questioning public is huge when we see the cost both in actual dollars, lives and life quality over the last nine years.

It is time to join in the renewal of a nation by bringing together our creative energy and leveraging it against our challenges to come up with innovative solutions.  There is no right or wrong, it isn’t democracy vs. socialism, nor democrat against republican.  We are seeking the best answers to our problems not a defense of the status quo which may have gotten us here in the first place.  We are not victims, without options here but citizens with choices to make using our own creative minds to separate fact from fiction.

Let’s come together as engaged citizens, respectfully listen to other view points, courageously find our own voices and critically think through our own decisions.  Let’s base the outcomes of this national group process on what is best for all people, not just those in power. Our focus needs to return to the values this country was founded on which is that all people are created equal and have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

What got me excited this morning about writing this message is that I was experiencing it first hand and the revelation came to me.  When I push myself beyond my limits with work that may or may not be a creative energizer for me, I feel exhausted, a little irritable and definitely out of creative energy.  I begin to look at the things I love to do in my work as “have to’s” instead of “want to’s” and that is not a healthy place to be.  Yes even those things we love to do that generally energize us can actually drain us if we push ourselves too hard without a real break.

Think of your creativity as your favorite pet.  You would never consider starving it for days at a time would you?  Your pet would probably get vocal about the fact that you did not feed it and maybe even a little mean.  I bet it might even do some irritating things like chewing up slippers or worse.  Do you ever get that way because I certainly do although I don’t usually chew on my slippers!

We take our creativity for granted on a regular basis. But creativity is our essential life skill. The revelation I had this morning is that my creativity barks at me to feed it on a regular basis.  When it is really starving it barks the loudest and I usually end up on my back with some illness.  But when I take a break and exercise or go shopping or take a day off, it rewards me with renewed creative energy to work on the things I love and better tolerate those things I don’t love so much!

So the morale of the story is feed your dog and your creativity.  Otherwise you never know what might come back to bite you!