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‘Fixed ideas about our identity and role can mean that we lose the flexibility to do new, different and interesting work.’ Photograph: Monkey Business/Rex features
‘Fixed ideas about our identity and role can mean that we lose the flexibility to do new, different and interesting work.’ Photograph: Monkey Business/Rex features

Senior leaders suffocate creativity by trying to control it

This article is more than 8 years old
Chris Baréz-Brown

Instead of believing they have all the answers, leaders need to be comfortable with uncertainty and making mistakes to unleash creativity

Too many senior leaders want to be the hero, believing they are responsible for all creative output. This is unfair and exhausting. By trying to control it, they kill it. The only way to guarantee great output is to create the conditions for those around you to bring their genius to the fore; whether that’s your people, customers, agencies or suppliers. When we create the conditions and step back unattached from the output, brilliance inevitably comes knocking. To avoid suffocating creativity, here’s what we need to be wary of:

Having all the answers

The most dangerous thing senior leaders do is to start to believe they should have all the answers. This is obviously impossible and encourages people to panic and make anything up in order to appear in control. Instead we should try to be more honest. Visibly mess up and everyone breathes more deeply as they realise they can stop pretending and be themselves. Our work is stronger when we work through the ambiguity together.

This means not relying upon research, numbers, data and facts but valuing the things that cannot be counted. There was supposedly a sign outside Albert Einstein’s door that said: “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that is counted, counts.”

Being too clever

We now know that most great ideas come from subconscious processing, rarely from thinking hard and logically about a problem. Rationality can only get you so far and therefore the best creative leaders are happy to go with their gut and follow their intuition. Leaders who spend all their time using models, research decks, customer segmentations and pretty graphics will never provide the breakthroughs of those who are happy to be playful and get lost. Cambridge University is planning to hire a professor of Lego to research the introduction of play in education, development and learning. Play is recognised as a valuable tool for stimulating creative and innovative thinking.

I am the head of marketing and this is my desk

Fixed ideas about our identity and role can mean we lose the flexibility to do new, different and interesting work. The best leaders see themselves as facilitators and are constantly changing the way they work and where they work. What they are brilliant at answering is “What is needed here?” and as this is constantly changing, so do they.

This is important!

Business is just a game. When we start to believe our role is instrumental to the planet’s success, we forget to have fun. When you’re not having fun, creative thinking becomes limited and we stop attracting the best talent to us. We spend 99,117 hours of our lifetime at work yet only 6 minutes a day laughing. Every day should be a ball. If you’re not enjoying your work; you are wasting life and indeed the life of others around you.

Creativity comes from the most surprising places. Process, tools and techniques do not deliver it; it comes from special moments. The special moments are when people feel confident to experiment, share their opinions and be themselves.

As Steve Hilton quotes in his new book More Human: ‘A world programmed to perfection is no longer a human world: without problems to solve and imperfection to inspire us, we would become complacent. We would lose our ability to innovate and be creative, but worse, our world would become sterile.’

Business is no longer about efficiency and control of resources. To win now we have to embrace flexibility and make magic happen.

Chris Baréz-Brown is an author, speaker and founder of Upping Your Elvis.

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