News & Updates:

Like the website?
Recommend Us To a Friend

The Creative Executive in Action - Part 6

As was stated in Chapter 13, creativity in a company must come from the top—top and middle management must pave the way. This is so because only at the management level do the conditions exist for the encouragement, development, and recognition of both creative potential and the results of creative action.

Furthermore, it must be an executive responsibility because the most difficult talent to develop in business is that of executive replacement. Not only is such replacement in short supply, but also the quality of it needs a great deal of upgrading. In this respect, it is worth paying particular attention to the current shortage of so-called "generalist" executives: those with the breadth of knowledge and far-sighted vision to be able to cut through the limiting thought patterns of the specialists and think in terms of the over-all good of the company.

In this respect, creative encouragement and even "formal" creative training may prove to be the most efficient and effective method yet found for developing generalists. What is needed to make a generalist is a broad understanding of many different types of problems, and the capacity to think in terms of many different approaches to solving all the problems encompassed in any particular company's activities and interests. With the in­creasing complexity of business today, even in such "formularized" functions as accounting and traffic management, it is extremely doubtful that any company can set up an executive training program which will teach its future managers everything they might possibly need to know about every problem they might conceivably be called upon to solve. Far more efficient would be a program aimed at teaching them to be "at home" with problems of any kind, and to use their imaginations and resourcefulness to produce creative solutions to those problems.

With regard to the business leader's own attitude, he should realize that if, indeed, it is habit that takes us back to where we were yesterday, then it is only an improper attitude that keeps us there. A leader, to be a creative leader, must believe there is a better way before he will be able to find it. He must believe that, in most cases, there is more than one way. He must recognize that he will never have the ultimate in human ac­complishment, but that through utilizing his own imagination and the creative potentials available to him, he can, with persistence, accomplish results that will at least be superior to what he has now. He must make sure that his own scope does not become too narrow and that, if he is going to fail, he will at least fail forward. He may not accomplish all that he sets out to do, but he will at least carry his company forward beyond today.

And the creative executive will look to his own and his workers' strengths as well as their weaknesses. He will learn to work with, and make the most of, the values his company has, while he tries to develop those that don't exist. He will utilize his own courage as an example—rather than give in to his fears of the unknown. And he will not retreat from those things he believes in, even when he finds that he is alone among his peers in his beliefs.

For a business executive to grow in stature and quality in the coming years, he will need to be able to compete creatively— not with other candidates for promotion, but with other busi­nesses, with technologies of competitors, and even with national and international developments. This means that management's preference for the "sound" executives who are able to conform and administer according to set standards and procedures will, of necessity, be forced to give way to a search for executives who will challenge all such standardized thinking and who will be able to apply creative thinking to upgrading the company in every phase of operations.

Ideas are probably the most valuable products any company or organization ever produces. Therefore, under the common law of investment and return, you cannot reasonably expect the job of securing them to be an easy one. It takes persistence, determina­tion, and dedication to make yourself more creative. It takes persistence, determination, dedication, planning, and, above all, imagination on the part of the executive to get more imagination and develop a creative spirit in his company or organization.

As mentioned, this creative spirit is not something you can ac­complish throughout a complete organization overnight—no mat­ter how willing or sold you yourself are. But it could easily be that your personal road to fame, fortune, and success in your company, field, or industry will be that you will use your own imagination to analyze, develop, and solve the problem of infusing your organization with both the necessity and the means of getting all-out, imaginative, creative thinking from everyone.

Related terms include insurance small businesses and business program.