The Impassioned Workforce

One of the intended outcomes of creating an impassioned workforce is a clearly differentiated business. The theory being best talent x optimal creativity = superior performance. How then do you go about creating an environment where people apply their talents creatively in the pursuit of organisational objectives?

I believe in 3 contributing factors:

• Space for exploration
• Support for creativity
• Percolation/thinking time

Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected.

William Plomer, Author

When you think about it, creativity doesn’t come from staring harder at whats already around you. As Sam Harrison reminds us in his book Ideaspotting, lightbulbs weren’t invented by exploring candles, Walkmans weren’t invented by exploring turntables and cell phones weren’t invented by exploring landlines. True creativity comes from exploring beyond what’s already staring you in the face. And as someone once used to say to me, “There’s no monopoly on good ideas”, meaning that the best ideas can come from anywhere in the hierarchy.

Many years ago, when I was fresh-faced and enthusiastically inexperienced, I had a wonderful opportunity to explore, create and percolate. I was working for a major bank in the UK and we were at the leading edge of the call centre revolution. We were looking for ways to improve service delivery from remote centres, removing traffic from the retail branches and improving transaction efficiency. In my naivete, I suggested we try benchmarking other more established service operations outside the banking industry. While call centres were a new venture for banking in the early 80’s, they had become well established in the telecoms and automobile insurance business. I suggested we set off on an expedition to investigate what was working and not working elsewhere and bring back our findings to aid the bank. To their credit, my managers at that time allowed me time away from the office (unprecedented for a very junior team member at that time), supported my drive to seek out new findings and allowed me sufficient time to pull together recommendations. When you consider I probably ranking 5765th in line to the organisational throne at that time, that was a lot of trust they were showing in me and my ideas.

From that experience, and others to follow I learned the following:

• Give people the space and time they need to explore new ideas.
• Allow them reading and thinking time, to look beyond their immediate surroundings to find new connections to bring to your organisation.
• Allow junior members of the team to explore beyond their job description. As mentioned already, there’s no monopoly on good ideas. Minds not yet entrenched in organisational patterns are likely the prime breeding ground for new connections.
• Be careful to avoid not-invented-here syndrome. And its close cousin “we’ve tried it before and it didn’t work”. Fresh ideas plus new timing plus new champions may just be the combination needed to make it work.
• Let people get OUT of the office. As Sam Harrison writes, “nobody spots hot ideas in cold offices.”
• Senior managers and executives already have extensive freedom. Providing them with more freedom delivers only incremental satisfaction. By giving a small taste of freedom to your junior staff and they will love you for it. That may include a small discretionary expense account, invitations to away days and off-site meetings, license to go out and interview customers etc.

What other ways have you found to build space to explore, create and percolate? Please share your ideas and add to the conversation.