CREATIVITY SEMINAR - Ways to increase creativity and effectiveness within your company

I thought of some creative approaches that may increase efficiency in a business. A manager is encouraged to try out as many of them as possible, but at the same time try to monitor the cost of the investment and the benefit it brought back in order to see what strategies fit best for his/her particular enterprise.

DIVERSIFY YOUR JOB

The company should encourage employees not to focus only on their respective jobs in which they specialized, but also to try as much as possible to study a bit of every function that exists in the company. Many ideas may come observing or working in other jobs. Also this will enable easy tasks to be switched among employees, thus embellishing the every day working dull pattern and making the work more interesting and fun for everybody.

FLATTEN YOUR BUSINESS

Eliminate unnecessary management levels. This will save you money, time and increase efficiency. Try your best to make your business flatter by eliminating middle or higher management if they do not represent a vital segment for the company. But be careful not to loose control of your activities!
Also, now that the company is flatter, everybody should adopt equal positions towards one another (at least when it comes to sharing ideas and opinions). Always try to follow this rule: when no vital decision taking is involved, everybody is equal in the company and every idea or suggestion has equal weight, without regard of who said it.
Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty! No manager, CEO or any person that has an upper function should hide behind his/her big desk and give orders. They should try instead to place themselves in the shoes of as many employees as possible and see how improvements could be made in that area in order to increase the local efficiency and creativity level.

REDUCE BUREAUCRACY

Reduce bureaucracy wherever it is possible. This will facilitate the flow of information throughout the company and eliminate bottlenecks or loss of information that may appear if the information is passed through different layers of management. Having a very stratified structure will make it almost impossible for workers to be heard. Let’s take an example here: if a blue-collar worker, who is basically the heart of any labor oriented business, has a complaint or an idea to share with the CEO within a stratified company, then the chances of the report to pass from the worker to the supervisor, then to the leading supervisor, then to lower, middle and upper management all the way to the secretary and then the CEO will probably be unlikely to happen or just take too much time to actually mater when it finally reaches the desired person.
Also don’t use special forms or formal reports for sending information within the company. Better have a face to face discussion. Rely better on the speed and easiness of the employees to communicate their thoughts in an informal way. Remember to listen to their thoughts, ideas and suggestions and learn as much as you can from them.

TAKE CARE OF YOUR PEOPLE

First of all, hire wisely. I would like to partially agree with Sutton R., who wrote in his article “The Weird Rules of Creativity” (HBR, September 2001), about hiring a couple of people that have nothing to do with their work related activity. Indeed, these persons that have not yet been academically indoctrinated and haven’t yet settled in will pose a lot of nonconformist questions and come up with various thinking approaches that would have been instantly excluded from the mind of an experienced employee who already has a solid thinking pattern formed along years of work.
I do not agree though with the author’s point of view in regard to hiring people that make others feel uncomfortable. In my opinion, these persons will create a lot of problems later on, even if they are brilliant in what they do. Cliff S. writes about such a character in his article “What a Star – What a Jerk” (Harvard Business Review, September 2001) showing that these individuals negatively disrupt the entire cycle of the company (with or without their rude personal remarks), bringing discomfort within the business and making a lot of employees diverge their attention towards him instead of on the company’s tasks.
Most of the people that I would suggest hiring instead would be independent individuals, knowledgeable in their field, but communicative, flexible in thinking and eager to discover.
As a good entrepreneur, try to discover from the interview as many traits as possible. Aim for the independent risk takers. Under the right control- free environment they can achieve a lot. Do not offer them big salaries in the hope that they will perform better, because this may inhibit their willingness to take risks. It is wiser to go with bonuses, which should be awarded for every innovation they come up with, even then ones that do not bring any significant financial revenues to the company.
When it comes to improving the level of creativity and effectiveness of this team, it is crucial to provide the proper working environment in which they can evolve. Build a business that revolves around ethics, values and integrity. Employees need to be content with the environment they work in, with their jobs and with their contribution to the society. This may lead to a more dedicated team that is willing to work and follow you in better and worse.
Another tip would be to invest as much as possible in quality. People get frustrated if things break over and over again. Even if the purchases cost you more in the beginning, you will be better off in the long run, by avoiding the maintenance bills and the unnecessary waste of time. It is enough for one of your employees’ computer to crash in unexpected times and for him/her to lose all the unsaved info to ruin his/her entire day. Always have the critical equipment like the Xerox machine, computers or the fax machines in top shape.

ENCOURAGE COMMUNICATION

Organize events in which your employees get to know one another, exchange ideas, hobbies, family info, etc. Celebrate birthdays and organize various trips together. Try to become more than just a boss – be a friend. Meet with the team of Fridays afternoon at the local pub and buy them some beverages for their hard work and dedication. Try to keep the team involved in common activities, so that they feel comfortable working together.
Have anonymous feedback boxes and encourage people to use them so that you are up to date to the complaints or announcements your employees want to tell you and the rest about. Always have a constant flow of information from them. One of my University professors always said that “No news is bad news”, meaning that if nobody reports anything then something is definitely bad. We are all humans and we always make mistakes. It is in our nature. So a company that we, as imperfect individuals, build can never be perfect either.
Also try to have as many open spaces as possible. When it comes to brainstorming and coming with new ideas and innovations, a big working room in which people have the opportunity to talk to one another and exchange ideas fast is far better than individual office spaces. Try to keep people to work in close contact.

BOOST THE OVERALL CONFIDENCE AND ENCOURAGE INNOVATION

The leader of the company should always have clear visions and objectives. Try to look as confident as possible. Have a strong stomach and don’t let confusion or fear show when situations get difficult. Your employees will have the tendency to be more assertive if they take you as their work role-model, if they know that a true leader is guiding them.
Invest in training as much as possible in order for your employees to feel confident in their respective fields of work. Try as well to provide the right equipment to everybody. This boost will give them courage to further explore and welcome the unknown. Encourage all new attempts they make, even if they do not work from the first time. Try to give useful tips if possible.
Allow them to work on their own, but always set deadlines when doing so. Let them be flexible with their assigned task, but also responsible when it comes to handing in the work. Do not interfere and don’t be persistent in monitoring their every-minute activities. Give them freedom to allocate their own time, but have feedback on their progress during brief meetings while having lunch or set general, informal meetings at the end of the day. Don't be afraid to criticize, but do it in private, and always praise somebody in public.

VERTICAL INTEGRATION

Make customers work for you: multilevel marketing is always welcomed because it offers customers the opportunity to become part of the business themselves. Offer them the opportunity of becoming distributors since they may turn into a powerful marketing tool. The best, cheapest and most effective advertising technique today is the word of mouth. By empowering your customers with the task of selling your products, they become more responsible, have the incentive to vend and will try their best for the moral and/or financial satisfaction which they will get in return (which may be in the form of a commission or product bonuses) but also, and most importantly, infiltrate your product among their friends (and later on unknown customers) and push the sale. Don’t put any pressure on them by imposing sale quotas or deadlines. Have them work for you because the want to. This way your team will sell with pleasure and be really dedicated to the task.
In my country AVON used this technique and quickly penetrated the market (especially the young segment of teenagers and college students) by collaborating with students that wanted to earn some additional income.
Encourage these persons to be creative and reward them for the sales they make. Offer them some basic selling guidelines, but don’t impose too many limitations. Let them be creative when selling, let them find their own way to make the sale. They will realize on their own the most effective and efficient way to make the transaction. Also ask for feedback. Maybe some innovative replies may turn into future selling techniques.