From 20 Questions for Leaders:
How do you encourage creative thinking within your organization?
I believe the best way to encourage creative thinking is to ask tough questions and to set ambitious goals or challenges.
Problems which are small, or unchallenging, can often be solved easily and do not require anything too creative to resolve them
Big challenges which cannot be resolved by just doing more of the same, by working harder, or by conventional solutions require us to think outside of the box.
This is what leads us to be creative.
Also, we should remember that creativity can come from anywhere. Too often I have seen assumptions that creativity is limited to a single group, or just to senior managers.
I like to set the challenges and then leave the teams to come up with creative solutions, this empowerment encourages them to be creative.
We should also be non-critical of proposed solutions, no matter how bad, we can just reject them politely. Nothing kills creativity quicker than constant criticism.
What’s your view. How would you foster creativity?
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