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Creating the Creative Climate - Part 8

A fairly common practice in larger corporations when they want to "season" a promising executive is to rotate him through a variety of job assignments. This is the cross-fertilization prin­ciple and it can, in modified forms, be extended to help develop promising line workers, foremen, and other supervisory person­nel. It can also be used to acquaint representative workers with problems and solutions from other departments or plants to broaden their own frames of reference for ideas pertaining to their jobs.

Some companies, including AC Spark Plug, report good results from specialized courses in creative thinking or creative problem-solving methods. These are usually aimed at developing potentials among middle-management executives, or men who are consid­ered good prospects for the middle-management corps. The ob­jectives of such specialized training are, first, to increase the individual's own creative output, and secondly, to make the ex­ecutive more receptive to ideas from others. Generally, a man who has invested eighteen to twenty hours in a classroom study­ing and experiencing the creative processes will be more conscious of the need for a creative climate than one who has never had such specialized instruction and practice.

Along with any more or less formal training program should go some form of development program. This differs from training to the extent that development is usually something you can guide a worker into, but probably not control to the extent you can a training program. It is usually aimed at helping the employee gain self-confidence and to develop as a person. In far too many com­panies, workers are made to "live by the book"—required to do only what they are told to do. In time, they become as helpless as an unfeathered baby bird in exercising initiative. On the other hand, in companies where authority is delegated and workers are tested with responsibilities by being put "on their own," they do make mistakes, but simultaneously, they also develop initiative, exercise their imaginations, and grow as people. If you can guide employee or executive development in the direction of a more creative approach to living and to problems, the company will, needless to say, also benefit.

Since this guidance does not always allow dictation of direction, your efforts will probably be limited to making imaginative sug­gestions of things the particular employee should take an interest in. Encourage him to study company problems—which means, of course, letting him know what the problems are and cooperating in his efforts to get information for the study. Encourage ques­tioning—and, if it is you that is being questioned, be sure your answers really do answer. Try to explain a problem or situation in full, but without prejudicing or restricting subsequent thinking by the worker. Another method, fairly obvious, is to encourage workers who have ideas to try them out.

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