Fredrik Härén gave valuable insight into the question, “Is creativity important in your job?” at the Global Leadership Summit. During the Global Leadership Summit people from all around the world gather to find inspiration and learn applicable skills to improve themselves and their communities.
Keeping Up With Innovation
Härén explained how creativity is especially important nowadays because of how fast the rate of innovation is. You have to keep up with this pace or else you will get left in the dust.
All around us new innovations are coming to life. Within one generation modern day computers, as well as the ENTIRE internet have emerged. At this point virtually all businesses have to have an online presence to stay relevant.
Entire fortune 500 businesses such as Google have sprung up solely because they had an amazing idea and brought it to life.
You don’t have to be the next Steve Jobs, but this goes to show just how important creativity is in business.
The Zion Lutheran Church is a fantastic example of how an organization can benefit from keeping up with innovation. If you Google search “Zion Lutheran Church” you will find a very strong online presence. Each location has its own, well crafted website.
By doing this it makes it very easy for people interested in the organization to learn more about what members of the church believe in, as well as where the nearest location is and when their services are.
This makes it super easy for interested individuals to become a part of the church.
Increased Productivity
Creativity also has a huge role in productivity.
Just look at the assembly line. One idea shortened the time it took to make a car from 12 hours to 2.5 hours. Although the assembly line is an extreme example, this spirit can be brought into everyday business as well.
There are a plethora of things you can do faster in your business by doing them just a little bit differently. Even if each process is shortened by 10 minutes, when you continue to do this for more and more processes your business becomes more and more efficient.
Problem Solving
Issues spring up out of nowhere in businesses. You won’t always have the answer readily available and that’s where creativity comes into play. As Härén brought up, creativity allows you to take the knowledge you already have and create new ideas out of it.
You can’t always tackle a problem head on. Sometimes you will have to look at the situation at hand and find out a unique way to fix the issue.
It may not always be the perfect solution, but it’s a thousand times better than letting the problem get worse as you flip through countless manuals and leadership books, attempting to find the exact way to deal with the problem. The more you exercise your creativity the easier it becomes to look at things in a new light.
Leading Creatively
Finally, Härén goes on to say the best way to bring creativity to your business as a leader isn’t by teaching it, reading about it, or adding it to your mission statement. It’s by being creative as a leader. By leading through example you will inspire the people on your team to find creativity in their own work.
Telling your employees to work more creatively is abstract and they’ll have no clue what you’re talking about, but if they see you put your creativity to work as a leader they’ll become inspired to bring creativity to their own work as well. Your employees will also be more willing to approach you with new ideas on how to do their work more efficiently as they’ll know you are receptive to new ideas and ways of doing things.
At Marketing#360 we’re not here to magically give you creativity. You have to find that creativity in yourself. We can however assist you finding creativity within yourself by providing an outside perspective to bounce ideas off of and get your wheels turning as we work with you to enhance your business.
Next time you’re at work see if there’s anything that could benefit from being done just a little bit differently.