A proper business strategy is for business managers to make creativity an expectation of every job role and to encourage and help employees build their innovation skills. In order to prosper in business with the current trends, management studies need to focus on team and organization creativity at work place in order to bring out the best out of their employees in terms of creativity and innovation. Business and organization managers must take full responsibility to ensure promotion of creativity and innovation behaviors among their employees. Individual creativity at work is an important aspect as it brings the best out of each employee, leads to development of new product and enables the company to penetrate into new markets. This paper seeks to identify and explore the main issues to be considered by business managers in their quest to foster and develop creativity in the work place at the same time ensuring organizational sustainability.
Most companies currently don’t just rely on creativity to perform but also sell creativity in different ways that are remarkable; it embodies a creative idea in a few images and words, for example the message can be displayed in a corporate logo, for everybody including the employees to view them each and every time they look at the logo. This creates into their mind a perception to be creative and understand that they need to try as hard as possible to be innovative as one of the ways of being part and parcel of the company. For instance, Miller Brewing Co. was a small enterprise from Milwankee. Marketing research, courage, risk-taking and a remarkable creative idea transformed the company by celebrating the virtues of the people working in America. ‘Miller Time’, a simple powerful creative image transformed this small enterprise into a company making billions every year. Many years later, Miller abandoned the marketing idea and Budweiser took over the concept and displayed it in a different way, that is, ‘This Bud’s for You’, producing many more billions of dollars to the company (Georgescu, 2005). These advertising lines are used to create a close relationship between a company and its customers to elevate the importance of the brands into a customer’s life.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
The management has the mandate to create an environment where employees can be ready for and working towards the idea that can make the company successful. They have to make their employees figure out how to make their product different from the rest in an already surplus economy. It comes down to the ability to be able to differentiate a company’s products and services in a beneficial way, which will improve the company’s margins and profits, which cannot happen without differentiation. It should encourage their staff to get excited about what they are doing at work and to add more creativity and passion to their daily activities at work, that there is nothing that can compare to their work. If they don’t care about being creative, nobody will care and their job will end (Georgescu, 2005). The work environment should be one that is precisely a breeding ground for the prepared mind, the one that seeks and finds solutions for any problems and work development strategies.
Another way the management can foster creativity to their employees is by making them understand the business line they are in. Before someone thinks of something new, he needs to understand first the business, products and services as they exist and an understanding of how the organization operates. Understanding how an organization works makes an employee focused and creative which in turn lifts the organization to the next level in terms of performance and selling. The managers need to make employees understand how the company got to where it is at the present, to give them knowledge of what is in in order to get to what might be. Furthermore, the management needs to awaken and fuel the creative power of each individual, to bring them to line with the organization’s purpose and goals, a creativity that is targeted to the customers’ heart and mind. Creativity should be learned, taught, adapted every day as it isn’t an easy process.
Another crucial element of developing creativity among employees is by making them understand the organization’s core problem or need and opportunity. This is crucial because employees get to understand what the company needs or explore the opportunities available then they apply creativity to bring a productive differentiation. It enables employees to identify a meaningful gap in the company and try hard to fill it through creativity and innovation. For example, a soap manufacturing company might only be producing bar soaps yet customers also need powder soap of the same brand. It will take a creative employee to identify this gap raise the issue to management for considerations.
Being open and human with the employees is another way of making them showcase their creative abilities. Management needs to share their personal stories with the staff, to show them that they are also human who face normal life challenges and they might have come from a humble background yet they are managers at big and successful companies. For example, the manager of Medtronic had a wife underwent breast cancer treatment successfully; he wrote e-mail to all employees giving them the good news and appreciating them for their support during that difficult moment. Most of the employees wrote back thanking him for being open and even sharing their own stories of personal trauma. This personal relationship makes employees proud to work for any company and always fell like the company’s values are consistent with their own personal values (Kremer, Villamor & Aguinis 2019). Additionally, this creates an organization where employees not only become better and creative workers but also become better human beings. When people feel they are at home while working, they naturally begin to generate unique creative solutions for clients making clients feel comfortable purchasing from that organization.
In the contemporary business environment, only enlightened leadership will transform the way business is done. This kind of leadership will cultivate and nurture a work environment where ready brains are working towards the innovative breakthroughs that are always required in a competitive business (Georgescu, 2005). The normal and old sort of dictator leadership will be substituted with a highly intelligent, supple, and responsive type of a leader. Enlightened leaders develop cultural values, business goals and objectives. They are also committed to pursued and convince employees to think critically and become creative in order to move the organization forward.
Fostering and developing individual, group and organizational creativity is key to the development and growth of a successful firm as the contemporary business environment requires new ideas and methods of carrying out its operations. Increasingly, organizations are using group approach to highlight problems in job procedures and identifying solutions to the problems. There is need for managers to understand the significance of creativity and innovation, and the process to be taken to foster and develop creativity among employees. They should apply the tools for developing creativity and improving the performance of the organization as well as pin point the barriers to successful development of creativity and innovation.
References
Georgescu, P. (2005). The source of success: Five enduring principles at the heart of real leadership (Vol. 294). John Wiley & Sons.
Kremer, H., Villamor, I., & Aguinis, H. (2019). Innovation leadership: Best-practice recommendations for promoting employee creativity, voice, and knowledge sharing. Business Horizons , 62 (1), 65-74.
