This is how I would call the spirit of my company.
First let me say some words about the things, that inspire me on writing this and gave an example of such things worked out.
It is an article from Harvard Business Review, September 2008, “How PIXAR fosters Collective Creativity”; and the book by Klaus Kobjol “MotiveAction”.
Below I will structure my mind and yours understanding of the topic I am going to write about.
1. I believe.
2. Creativity?
- What is it
- Benefits
- How to improve and keep alive bootstrapping?
1. I believe.
- Talented people are the Driving force of your company.
It’s not surprising you, but still… People are more valuable than the ideas! At least because, their lives, their power and effect on the environment and world’s development, are PERMANENT, UNPREDICTABLE, USEFUL (sometimes – just FUN), and made for the other PEOPLE!
Resume of my opinion: Invest in people! Not in ideas!
Troubles, connected with talented people:
- Not easy to find;
- Hard to get such people to work effectively with one another;
Thing, that I am convinced in (agree with [1]), and you MUST understand while working with creative people (sometimes it is about showing them, that they are smarter, just to improve their will to improve and be creative) :
- It is OK to hire people, who are smarter than you are.
2. Creativity?
- What is it?
At first. It is an attitude.
To the life.
To the way of solving the problems.
To doing things and making your thoughts/goals/dreams/demands REAL.
Other words – being creative during the process – the way to the creative result.
When it comes to work. Creativity – is the view “Outside the box”.
· I am talking about useful creativity in business world.
- Benefits
Inspiration for the team, as well as personal inspiration
Motivation and effective work
Results (product\service with either good quality and originality)
Happy people and strong demand to work
Competitive advantage (human resources)
Such atmosphere takes Innovations easily (or finds them)
And some others, I will discuss below.
- How to improve and keep alive bootstrapping?
I will try to define the main principles of stimulating and keeping the spirit of creativity inside:
- Make the work on ideas be passion about the topic, not personal!
- Show work in an incomplete state to all the crew! Although the leader makes decisions, everyone is encouraged to comment!
I like this idea (from [1]) very much, because :
- members are not just showing work “still in progress” (they can stop and see the result, analyze and be more creative about the future part of work)
- managers can communicate important points to the entire crew at the same time
- people learn from, inspire each othe
- Enjoy what you are doing!
- Learn together!
I am sure, that learning together is a good team-building and relaxing thing about managing creativity.
- Interact with new people.
It would be great to organize, for ex., “creative Thursdays on the 9th floor”, where from 3pm (before the end of the working day) would start the meeting for the students and all the people, that know about it. (the ads – are in Universities)
The meeting should be related to the 2 topics –
1) the News, that someone liked or not, but it makes him think. (Goal – is chatting, relaxing, eating, getting familiar with the comers and etc.)
2) any of the aspects of company’s project (if there any cases, that can be issued with outsider’s idea), sharing experience and getting fresh view from young audience.
- Analyze! And post the results inside the company!
Because, when you look at pluses and minuses, you define a balance, and can easily make the decision on what to improve and what to keep.
This is about financial results from one side, and about the employees relations and feedback from the other side. The first can be reached by the corporate (inside) site, and the second – by anonymous blogs of the employees (I really like this idea with blogs! :) ).
It stimulates the discussion, and discussion generates creative ideas!
These are some rules, I would use in my company.
I did not discuss the disadvantages of hyper-creativity, because this topic is too huge and different.
[1] Harvard Business Review, September 2008, “How PIXAR fosters Collective Creativity”
[2] Klaus Kobjol “MotiveAction”
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Friday, September 12, 2008
What a Star- What a Jerk. by Sarah Cliffe.
Sometimes an employee can be nasty, bullying, or
simply hard-hearted. What should you do, though, when
that person also happens to be a top performer?
simply hard-hearted. What should you do, though, when
that person also happens to be a top performer?
1. Let me criticize a bit the behavior of Jane.
Seems like she is a bit dispersed.
On the one side – she is saying, that she would like to concentrate on solving more strategically important questions, like focusing on numbers, products, customers and etc.
And on the other side – she wants to build the ‘right’ team and help them in every way.
In such way, none of the processes will run effective.
What concerns the team work.
I am strongly convinced, that personal conflicts should be solved inside the group, but not with the interference of the boss.
That’s good if manager can see what is wrong (better from communication, than from the bad results of teamwork) and can influence independently.
But it goes like this, when someone is complaining about colleague, and he\she sees the result of this compliant. It gives him an instrument on pushing the boss, and others – disrespect or offence to the boss and negative attitude to the colleague.
It happens sometimes, that employees complain to you. I think the best way – is to hear the problem. Show your understanding, importance of a person. And ask to solve the conflict by themselves (like to play the role of psychoanalyst or advisor). Here can be wrong thing, if employee will think, that boss does not want to help him, he does not care and etc.
But this works. Either the team becomes stronger or the wrong person, ‘rara avis’, is defined.
2. Solution.
Anyway. The world is not ideal. And management skills should be improved all the time in today’s world.
I agree with the Chuck McKenzie statement "In the real world, managers need to carve out
places for unpleasant, highly productive people - places, that keep them from poisoning everyone else's working environment.'
So if this happened two times (demonstrating such a behavior) , it will happen all the time.
The solution depends on the company’s specifics:
1) either profit is about a team work,
or
2) profit is about teams and people as well.
If it is 2, then definitely Andy should have a separate direction or project or whatever he would like to perform and improve his strong skills (closing eyes on his weaknesses).
If it is 1, then we need to teach him work with people.
Seems like she is a bit dispersed.
On the one side – she is saying, that she would like to concentrate on solving more strategically important questions, like focusing on numbers, products, customers and etc.
And on the other side – she wants to build the ‘right’ team and help them in every way.
In such way, none of the processes will run effective.
What concerns the team work.
I am strongly convinced, that personal conflicts should be solved inside the group, but not with the interference of the boss.
That’s good if manager can see what is wrong (better from communication, than from the bad results of teamwork) and can influence independently.
But it goes like this, when someone is complaining about colleague, and he\she sees the result of this compliant. It gives him an instrument on pushing the boss, and others – disrespect or offence to the boss and negative attitude to the colleague.
It happens sometimes, that employees complain to you. I think the best way – is to hear the problem. Show your understanding, importance of a person. And ask to solve the conflict by themselves (like to play the role of psychoanalyst or advisor). Here can be wrong thing, if employee will think, that boss does not want to help him, he does not care and etc.
But this works. Either the team becomes stronger or the wrong person, ‘rara avis’, is defined.
2. Solution.
Anyway. The world is not ideal. And management skills should be improved all the time in today’s world.
I agree with the Chuck McKenzie statement "In the real world, managers need to carve out
places for unpleasant, highly productive people - places, that keep them from poisoning everyone else's working environment.'
So if this happened two times (demonstrating such a behavior) , it will happen all the time.
The solution depends on the company’s specifics:
1) either profit is about a team work,
or
2) profit is about teams and people as well.
If it is 2, then definitely Andy should have a separate direction or project or whatever he would like to perform and improve his strong skills (closing eyes on his weaknesses).
If it is 1, then we need to teach him work with people.
I would recommend to do with Andy, just to find the same type of person (may be in the other department or somewhere), and let him get into such situation. He will be the member of the team, and there will be another ‘star’, pushing everyone.
Psychologically, this can work for him and the team.
In general – it is better, when such people work by themselves mostly, because if we push them, we will get neither a professional performer, nor a good team-worker.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Thoughts concerning the "Firm Resources and sustained competitive advantage" by Jay Barney (1991)
In general, the “Firm resources...” by Jay Barney had called in my mind some kind of confrontation.
On my opinion, the cases and explanations on classifications (such as explaining the importance of resource homogeneity and etc.) are too idealized. Todays world is very much sensitive to the competitors and environmental changes. And you can hardly find the field, that has the field with firms possessing the homogeneic resources. Competition runs really fast, and there are no completely identical companies. I mean, that strategic goals may be the same, even tactics, but human resources and organizational part cannot develop in exactly the same way, there always be a leader.
I think, that the existence of at least two companies with the same resources is impossible. But in every field the most important and most effective resources to develop and invest in are human and organizational resources. The other valuable site of organization to have a sustainable competitive advantage – is its corporate aspiration for leading position, staff motivation and the use of innovation technologies and ideas.
The other things, those articles made me think about – is the importance of strategical planning and its implementation.
Except performing the marketing analysis and competitors monitoring, company should:
On my opinion, the cases and explanations on classifications (such as explaining the importance of resource homogeneity and etc.) are too idealized. Todays world is very much sensitive to the competitors and environmental changes. And you can hardly find the field, that has the field with firms possessing the homogeneic resources. Competition runs really fast, and there are no completely identical companies. I mean, that strategic goals may be the same, even tactics, but human resources and organizational part cannot develop in exactly the same way, there always be a leader.
I think, that the existence of at least two companies with the same resources is impossible. But in every field the most important and most effective resources to develop and invest in are human and organizational resources. The other valuable site of organization to have a sustainable competitive advantage – is its corporate aspiration for leading position, staff motivation and the use of innovation technologies and ideas.
The other things, those articles made me think about – is the importance of strategical planning and its implementation.
Except performing the marketing analysis and competitors monitoring, company should:
- Permanently analyze and scan all the resources we have and relationship between them
- Understand, what are the sources of sustainable competitive advantages or temporary competitive advantages
- Work on strategic planning, dynamically react on the performed results of previously planned stages
Friday, September 5, 2008
Check this out! Challanges, that have been done!
I found this really amazing!
During thinking over the topic "How would I improve the creativity of a workgroup" I got to the page of Entrepreneurship Week at Stanford
(http://eweek.stanford.edu/2008/).
The main aim of the project is
- To create the value from some object from our everyday life.
That's definetely a great idea, and the most important thing, that it works!!
And we can see the results of things DONE.
It's a great example of "Thinking Outside the Box".
2007. Eweek at Stanford.
Challenge: to create as much value as possible using Post it!
Here is a really interesting film about all the process: http://www.iloop.tv/imagineit/
I really loved the idea, expressed in video "1.03 Teach it?". (I strongly recommend to watch it, at least, because we are all future/present parents :) )
The guys just gave the kids opportunity to think and improve their creativity, sharing ideas
and team playing skills!
There are also videos about Pressure, Connectivity ("Express who you are, and make the community"), and many-many great ideas! just watch it..
So, I would really use this method to increase its creativity and effectiveness of my New company team.
Post your idea.
I think this can work even for every company!
Imagine, if you will give to every member of your team - post-its and make him feel free
to express his ideas, I bet the freedom in sharing ideas and unlimited inspiration will join
your team.
I will do such practice one day! (maybe not everytime, but once a month..)
2008. Stanford Innovation Challenge.
"Your challenge is to create as much value as possible using rubber bands. Value can be measured on any scale you choose."
Videos are here : http://www.youtube.com/groups_videos?name=eweek
So, my opinion.
Creativity should be trained inside every company.
Why dont we use ?:
1. "Post your thoughts/ideas/feedback !" - 1 day monthly .
2. Trainings between daily coffee breaks: Brainstorming
on the topic of "Creating value of regular thing".
Then - awarding a winner-group.
I think, this will train all three points from Creativity model (by Guilford):
- fluency
- flexibility
- originality.
p.s. to JIBS: Do we have such conferences or activities for training entrepreneurs?
During thinking over the topic "How would I improve the creativity of a workgroup" I got to the page of Entrepreneurship Week at Stanford
(http://eweek.stanford.edu/2008/).
The main aim of the project is
- To create the value from some object from our everyday life.
That's definetely a great idea, and the most important thing, that it works!!
And we can see the results of things DONE.
It's a great example of "Thinking Outside the Box".
2007. Eweek at Stanford.
Challenge: to create as much value as possible using Post it!
Here is a really interesting film about all the process: http://www.iloop.tv/imagineit/
I really loved the idea, expressed in video "1.03 Teach it?". (I strongly recommend to watch it, at least, because we are all future/present parents :) )
The guys just gave the kids opportunity to think and improve their creativity, sharing ideas
and team playing skills!
There are also videos about Pressure, Connectivity ("Express who you are, and make the community"), and many-many great ideas! just watch it..
So, I would really use this method to increase its creativity and effectiveness of my New company team.
Post your idea.
I think this can work even for every company!
Imagine, if you will give to every member of your team - post-its and make him feel free
to express his ideas, I bet the freedom in sharing ideas and unlimited inspiration will join
your team.
I will do such practice one day! (maybe not everytime, but once a month..)
2008. Stanford Innovation Challenge.
"Your challenge is to create as much value as possible using rubber bands. Value can be measured on any scale you choose."
Videos are here : http://www.youtube.com/groups_videos?name=eweek
So, my opinion.
Creativity should be trained inside every company.
Why dont we use ?:
1. "Post your thoughts/ideas/feedback !" - 1 day monthly .
2. Trainings between daily coffee breaks: Brainstorming
on the topic of "Creating value of regular thing".
Then - awarding a winner-group.
I think, this will train all three points from Creativity model (by Guilford):
- fluency
- flexibility
- originality.
p.s. to JIBS: Do we have such conferences or activities for training entrepreneurs?
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