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Creating the Creative Climate - Part 3

One of the most successful attempts to build a creative climate within a company is that of the AC Spark Plug Division of Gen­eral Motors. This company began several years ago to see what they could do in the way of encouraging more ideas from their people. The man most responsible for this program was Mr. Joseph A. Anderson, Vice President of General Motors and the General Manager of AC. His interest in developing a creative program stemmed from the fact that he was impressed with the high cost of ideas in a company which are not thought of, or that come too late, or are never developed to their fullest potential. Too often, he says, we examine a new idea and say to ourselves, "We should have had this ten years ago—if only someone had thought of it."

Mr. Anderson believes strongly that top management must lead in creative development and that the urge for new ideas must be infused into all management in order to clear the way for ideas from below. "Management can bring out creative effort, and management can also stifle creative effort," he says. "Most man­agement does some of each. That is because good management is made up with a high degree of good judgment; whereas, high creativity involves risks and taking chances."

His conclusion: A good manager, exercising good judgment only, could easily become a barrier to creativity.

With this consideration in mind, probably the first step an executive should take to begin building a creative climate in his company is to make a soul-searching analysis of his own attitude toward creativity. The first requirement for a creative manager is that he himself really wants new ideas—that he himself will have the capacity to change with the changes that new ideas require. He must be receptive to new, and even radical, propositions; he must be sincerely interested in them.

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