Do Managers Need Creativity?

If you read the LinkedIn posts of CEOs and CXOs, if you go through the MBA curriculum or if you attend management conferences, you feel that creativity seems like a neglected child in the world of management and leadership. Everybody seems to be focused on leadership, business goals, process orientation and intrapreneurship at the most. What about creativity? My purpose is to write a thought provoking blog on whether we are giving creativity the place and respect it deserves in the management domain. 

In marketing and advertising domain, creativity has been talked about and given its due share of attention. But what about HR, Finance, Operations and other management domains, don't they need creativity?

Will Creativity become the most prized management skill?

Creativity is certainly going to become one of the most prized management skills in the days to come, if not the most. 

Social media has democratised creativity at a social level. Everyone is trying to be creative on Facebook, if nothing else. While digital and social media have given a platform for creative expression, they have also led to new management domains such as social media marketing, digital marketing, employer branding which heavily rely on creativity as a fuel. 

In our virtual world, there is an abundance of digital tools for creative production (ranging from Storify to Adobe Spark) and digital platforms for sharing your creative work (From medium.com to yourquote.in).

Creativity is a component of Digital Transformation

More and more organisations are opting for digital transformation of organisation cultures and creating digital mindsets among individuals. Let us look at creativity from individual and organisational perspectives:-

Individual level- In fact in the days of artificial intelligence, robotics and automation, creativity is going to be a prized skill in general and one of the most prized management skills for leaders /employees. 

Organisational level- As more and more organisations opt for digital transformation, they need to realise that one of the critical pillars of digital and digital transformation is "Creativity". Organisations need to train employees on how to boost creativity as part of the new digital mindset. 

Do managers and leaders need creativity? How do organisations create a supportive environment for creative thinking? What is your take?

Self-Esteem and Creativity

Since past few months, I have been keen to do workshops on new topics viz. "Meditation and Creativity" and "Creativity as a Healing tool". Yet life has its own plans and I was actually invited to interact with management students on "Self-esteem and Creativity" at Gitarattan International Business School, New Delhi.

Does higher self esteem lead to higher creativity and openness to making mistakes?, the topic of the session made me wonder. On the other hand, the concept note which I received from the institute pointed out the other perspective. It noted that expression of creativity leads to higher self esteem in the individual. I realised that this is other side of the coin we often ignore.

It was a 3 hours session and I enjoyed it myself. We played several games /exercises such as playing with proverbs (and creating our own versions). We also had a brief discussion on creativity as a tool for healing and how meditation and contemplative practices boost creativity.

I asked the students about the difference between creativity and innovation and got intelligent answers and varied perspectives such as Creativity leads to innovation, creativity is a process which leads to innovation as an output, creativity is a broad concept while innovation is an application of creative thinking and so on.

Is Creativity a Neglected Child?

Isn't Creativity an important element of Problem Solving? Is our society in general and corporate world in particular so ridden with complex problems because we do not promote creative thinking? I am pondering on these questions nowadays. 

Dear Zindagi, keep throwing new surprises. Once again, I am waiting with open arms.

Related Posts

How I regained my lost creativity?

Creativity makes us great