11 Tips for Integrating Creativity with Business Strategy
This is a guest post from Jill Goodwin – thanks Jill.
“Creativity is one of the last remaining legal ways of gaining an unfair advantage over the competition.” —Ed McCabe
Creativity is not exclusively reserved for artists, photographers, and designers. It’s a critical tool for every business where a problem needs to be solved, or an idea needs to be developed. Creative thinking and ideation are both instruments for innovation, originality, and progress that play indispensable roles in helping business strategists form fresh ideas, overcome unexpected challenges, and become more adaptive thinkers. However, integrating creativity into a business strategy can be a challenge when people aren’t sure exactly what it means or how to tap into the more inventive parts of their thinking process.
These eleven tips can serve as guidelines for inspiring employees to think outside the box, collaborate with each other more effectively, and generate truly original ideas that can set your business apart from the rest.
Offer Flexibility When Possible
Creative ideas can only go so far when strict limitations are imposed on when, where, and how they should be executed. This can be stifling to both creative thinking and the people who are trying to generate fresh ideas.
Offering flexibility when it is feasible is one of the simplest ways to cultivate a more creativity-conducive environment for your team. If shifting around a schedule is what it takes to come up with something truly groundbreaking, it’s definitely a risk worth taking. Great ideas don’t come with a set schedule – so don’t be afraid to open things up when you’re exploring with your team.
Foster A Culture Of Empathy
Empathy is one of the most crucial soft skills for any office to have. It is also a characteristic that underpins lateral thinking. Empathy allows people to step outside of their own heads and get into the minds of others—be they co-workers, consumers, or otherwise. A key aspect of creativity is perspective and empathy is a prime way to find additional perspectives.
Promote Collaboration And Team-Building
Very rarely is a good idea the result of just one person’s creativity and hard work. Collaboration and team-building are both important for business strategy on a number of levels, and integrating creativity is one of them.
Promote cooperation within the workplace by giving teams frequent opportunities to engage with one another and soundboard different ideas and perspectives to generate ingenuity. Countless studies have shown the benefits of teams spending time together – can you find a way to make that happen more often?
Experiment With Different Ideation Techniques
When it comes to developing a new business strategy or campaign, it can be useful to experiment with different thought processes. These are sometimes referred to as ideation techniques—methodologies you can use to ignite new thoughts and potentialities.
There are many ideation techniques worth trying. Some of the most popular ones include mind mapping, reverse thinking, Brutethink, and rapid ideation.
When you’re stuck in a rut, rotate between different techniques to help spark creativity.
Reward Creative Efforts
When a team or individual harnesses the power of creative thinking and applies it to a real-life problem, reward their efforts. This will not only help motivate and inspire others to do the same but also contribute to an overarching culture of creativity within the workplace.
That includes going so far as finding ways to reward bad ideas – or at least ideas that might not sound great at first glance. The essence of successful brainstorming is building on good and bad ideas. Developing truly innovative strategies will require trying a lot of things – and you want to make sure you’re rewarding the ones that might feel crazy along with the ones that are straightforward.
Hire A Diverse Team Of Individuals
The more diversity there is in your ranks, the more likely your team is to thrive in creativity and innovation. A mixed bag of perspectives, backgrounds, opinions, and voices helps teams become more laterally minded and open to different ways of thinking.
This is crucial for integrating creativity with business strategy. A truly great strategy needs the mettle and agility that multiple perspectives provide.
Without a healthy, varied chorus of experiences and points of view to draw from, coming up with strategies and plans that can handle the unpredictability of the real world becomes unnecessarily challenging—and not the kind of challenge you need in order to grow.
Break The Cycle Of Monotony
Comfort is the enemy of growth. Don’t allow your teams or strategic processes to become complacent by locking them into the same old routine every day.
Breaking the cycle of monotony by introducing dynamic new experiences is healthy and imperative to the cultivation of creative thought. Host invigorating meetings, take the teams out of the office for a bit of fresh air. Do something different.
Of course, some structure and routine are necessary for a productive business. But the takeaway here is to leave some breathing room for fresh ideas to be liberated.
Prioritize Employee Well-Being
Happy, healthy employees will always be more prone to creativity than burnt-out ones. If you want your team to apply more creativity to business strategy and development, one of the first things to assess is their overall mental and physical well-being.
Tend to those basic needs first in order to lay a solid foundation for creative productivity. Creativity (and productivity) happens when people feel safe, comfortable and energized.
Embrace Clear But Passive Leadership
Strong leadership is vital for every work environment. But sometimes, it’s helpful to step down from the ladder of hierarchy and simply be one of the team. This can help employees lower their defenses and embrace a more inventive state of mind.
Empower your team, set clear expectations, but then get out of the way.
Make Your Work Environment Vibrant
The visual and physical components of a work environment can significantly affect people’s state of mind and mental well-being.
Spruce up your space by incorporating vibrant plants, comfortable furniture, tasteful wall paint colors, and other simple but inspiring decor that can help spur more creative ways of thinking. Studies show that a good-looking workspace also helps with productivity and job satisfaction.
Allow room for a lack of success
Not succeeding is a part of life and, certainly, part of work.
Without the knowledge that failure is acceptable on some level, teams will struggle to open themselves up to truly innovative ways of thinking. In order to integrate creativity into business strategy, there must be some tolerance for ideas that don’t always work out.
Aiming for success should always be the priority, but understanding the value of failure is equally important. As Henry Ford once said, “I haven’t failed. I’ve just found 10000 ways that won’t work.”
Final Thoughts
An artist who sells their work on social media or a photographer who markets themselves using an online portfolio are great examples of combining creativity with business strategy. However, not every business is creative, and not every creative is good at business. However, regardless of the industry, creativity is the driving force behind innovation. Without its presence in your work environment, business strategy can only go so far.
With these tips for integrating creativity with business strategy, you can support your team in the process of discovering new ideas, cooperating more successfully, and breaking outside of industry norms to put your brand on the map.
Jill Goodwin – Content Master & Writer of Amazing Ideas
Shawn Kinkade Kansas City Business Coach