Managing a Creative Culture: Do “Creatives” Fit into the Traditional Management System?
The ability to reach the creative individual cannot be achieved through the traditional management organization. Creative people don't fit in very well in a hierarchical organization with traditional management techniques. To manage creatives, a new model must be developed. Organizations must take heed to the needs of creatives or be subject to losing these valuable resources.
Summary
Resources, freedom and challenge are the management keys necessary to develop and maintain a creative environment. These keys, along with encouraging and supporting “creatives,” will foster the growth and development of an organization’s employees, management and ultimately it’s culture. Many organizations have tremendous success in recognizing and cultivating the creative talent of its employees. Whether this talent is already in effect or brought out, managers must take the best approach to ensure a positive, creative impact on the organization.
Organizations that do not change with the times will soon find themselves behind or more seriously—non-existent. Different things motivate them and money is no longer the top motivator for creatives. Looking at creatives from another view, this group, also referred to as the creative class, represents a powerful economic force. Not economic force in terms of ownership of property or the means of production but their creative capacity which is an intangible because it is literally in their heads.
So what will draw the creative to a particular organization? Creative expression and the chance to present new ideas and deliver results in different ways is the top motivation, but does traditional management provide this opportunity? This paper will present a correlation between organizational management, culture, creative types and how understanding and fostering their integration produces successful organizations.
Introduction
Managing creatives is counter-intuitive. It goes against almost everything we are taught about managing a business. That's why managers rarely do a good job at managing these kinds of workers. Managing creative people is counter-intuitive for two reasons--the nature of the work is different and the nature of the worker is different.
Creative people don't fit in very well in a hierarchical organization with traditional man...
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...ir work to inspire them. They want to feel good about who they are through the work they do. When that happens, creativity flourishes. An organization must look within its employees and understand what they are passionate about. It is then that they will build systems to successfully nurture creatives.
References
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There have been countless books, lectures, and and trainings, and retreats constructed around the idea of cultivating leadership in an individual. However, cultivating individuals’ ability to follow great leadership has received far less attention. Who are these people leading if each person within an organization is being trained to be a leader? The word follower has negative connotations, evoking the images of a weak, uncreative, milquetoast personality. However, Jimmy Collins, in his book, “Creative Followership: In the Shadow of Greatness”, suggests that the ability to be led brings as much creativity, consciousness, and indeed leadership to an organization or team as the leader himself. Great followership is a reflection of great leadership. In this, the follower is just as important as the leader in the relationship. Many great leaders have asserted that a leader with even a modicum of understanding of what drives their subordinates can take their organization to previously undreamt-of heights in creativity and productivity. Collins does not disabuse us of this notion, he does however add that the follower is indispensable agent in this interplay between leader and follower.
As Kerr is an educator and a professor in universities and not an economist, he examines his idea or creativity in the organization by making inquires starting from top management to the bottom in the organization and also to people who knew what the buyer or customer should be; then he would run it through his network in and outside GE to cross examination and double check or assessment (Davenport et al). Kerr’s successes effectively with the standing of ideas and creativity mainly rely on his continuing exploratory research with great creative thinking skills, expertise and motivation, and they also depend on his outstanding leadership and exceptional organizational culture of innovation in GE (Davenport et al, 2003).
Because Gene is dishonest he imagines that everyone else is as well. Gene imagines that Finny’s character is exactly the same as his, which of course it isn’t. Gene builds up hate, anger and fear of the character that he has given to Finny. Since this is his own character and not Finny’s at all, the emotions that Gene feels towards this character are really what he feels towards his own character.
In the early pages of the novel, Finny confesses that Gene is his best friend. This is considered a courageous act as the students at Devon rarely show any emotion. And rather than coming back with similar affection, Gene holds back and says nothing. Gene simply cannot handle the fact that Finny is so compassionate, so athletic, so ingenuitive, so perfect. As he put it, "Phineas could get away with anything." (p. 18) In order to protect himself from accepting Finny's compassion and risking emotional suffering, Gene creates a silent rivalry with Finny, and convinced himself that Finny is deliberately attempting to ruin his schoolwork. Gene decides he and Finny are jealous of each other, and reduces their friendship to cold trickery and hostility. Gene becomes disgusted with himself after weeks of the silent rivalry. He finally discovers the truth, that Finny only wants the best for Gene, and had no hidden evil intentions. This creates a conflict for Gene as he is not able to deal with Finny's purity and his own dark emotions. On this very day Finny wants to jump off of the tree branch into the Devon river at the same time as Gene, a "double jump" (p. 51), he says, as a way of bonding. It was this decision, caused by Finny's affection for Gene and outgoing ways that resulted in drastic change for the rest of his life.
For the majority of the novel, she lives with Obasan and takes after her by not speaking much. Rough Lock Bill comments on her shy silence and praises her for it, saying that, “Smart people don’t talk too much” (Kogawa 174). He even scolds himself for talking too much on an occasion, thinking that too much talk equals not much thought behind the words. This contrast is also illustrated by Naomi’s observations of her two aunts: “one lives in sound, the other in stone” (Kogawa 39), meaning she sees Aunt Emily’s vocal tendencies as simplistic and plain, while Obasan is set in stoic silence and indirect responses. Magnussen observes: “Naomi seems to honour Obasan’s silences above Emily’s words…. Naomi’s imagery articulates her confidence that Obasan’s stony silence shields a more authentic language” (Magnussen 6). Naomi sees Obasan’s silences harder to decipher and therefore more meaningful than Aunt Emily’s straight speaking. However, toward the end of the novel Naomi finds herself wanting to break free from the chains of silence keeping her. She states that “[she wants] to break loose from the heavy identity…. unable to shout or sing or dance, unable to scream or swear, unable to laugh, unable to breathe out loud” (Kogawa 218). Though Naomi is full of grief, she does not know how to deal with it and the silence of Obasan and the obligations of politeness feel
Gene starts struggling battling jealousy after seeing finny being so successful with his athletic accomplishments and how well he could please people. Gene is jealous of Finny that he can go have fun and still be good at whatever he does without practicing. Gene says talking about Finny “It seemed that he had made some kind of parallel between studies and his sports. He probably thought anything you were good at camae without effort. He didn’t know yet the he was unique.”(58) Gene wished he could be like him, so the only way his jealousy would win was if he pushed Finny out of the tree. After Finny falls out of the tree, Gene has to deal with the guilt of knowing what he did to Finny. The other conflict he has is when he has to deal with the reality of the truth of what he did, which makes him feel very upset. After Finnys death Gene has to deal with knowing he already killed his best friend. He has to deal with his own demons of guilt and knowing what he did. At the end of the book Gene states “I was an active duty all my time at school; I killed my enemy there”(182) Referring to what he did to Finny and how it'll always mentally affect him. This causes Gene to realize he has to live with the guilt of knowing what he did to his best friend
As the technology and business environment are constantly changing, organizations cannot avoid constant change and they have to learn how to cope with and take the advantage of creativity. Blomberg (2014), in her article described creativity in an organizational context as collaborative “psychosocial process that takes place in an organization and is affected by various contextual and organization factors”. Most of the research defined creativity in terms of outcomes. If we take the idea of organizational creativity connected with outcomes, it excludes failure criteria which has been explained in details in Blomberg article (2014). Nevertheless, the focus of this study is purely on legitimacy and storytelling in the context of startups and how one could achieve legitimacy through creative
Gardner describes the creative individual as follows: “The creative individual is a person who regularly solves problems, fashions products, or defines new questions in a domain in a way that is initially considered novel but that ultimately becomes accepted in a particular cultural setting” (Gardner, 1993, p. 35). As I understand this, a creative individual is one who seeks out problems and states or solves them in a way that no one else has previously. Such inno...
Often, creativity phase plays critical role in providing good opportunity to familiarize the client with the team work. Moreover, they share potential ideas and proposals to reduce cost; without affecting quality or functionality negatively. Accordingly, there will be a base of ranked and classified ideas and views.
McShane, Steven, and Mary Ann Von Glinow. Chapter 8: Decision Making and Creativity. PRIMIS MNO 6202: Managing Organizations. 2004. The 'Secondary' of the 'Secondary' of the 'Secondary' of the 'Secondary' of the 'Secondary' Reprint of the book.
There is a magnitude of research put behind trying to find the link between creativity and...
Simply speaking, a company’s structure and design can be viewed as its body, and its culture as its soul. Because industries and situations vary significantly, it would be difficult and risky to propose there is a “one size fits all” culture template that meets the needs of all organizations” (Nov 30, 2012). Those organizations who have shared beliefs and values and have organized methods on chain of command going to have positive outcomes. This will help shaping their employees views and performances. The growth and profit of the business relays on their employees and their performances. Culture is the core which will help and encourage all different level workers. If the core itself is weak, it will weaken the atmosphere of the business. Many companies announce that they have great culture but fail to implement to the lower level of workers. The basic issue is when organization has one set of culture and thinks one culture will meet the needs of all the workers. Each business is different and each individual is unique and have different beliefs and behaviors. The culture that is right for one individual might not work the same for the others. The ideal approach in this case would be, looking at the bigger picture of diverse working environment and give importance and respect to what are the ranges of business firms to achieve the perfect culture for organization. Sometimes one size fits all will not going to fit anybody, so the organization have to keep their ideas open and value everyone’s presence respecting all of their culture for the betterment and
Caves, R. E. (2000). Creative industries : contracts between art and commerce / Richard E. Caves. Cambridge, Mass. ; London: Harvard University Press.
Innovation has become a critical element for a business to be successful. More emphasis is placed on creativity as it is the core that drives innovation within a company. Businesses must provide a conducive work environment to produce and grow a creativity amongst its employees. We will discuss the five critical component to a creative work environment which include challenging work, organization encouragement, supervisor encouragement, work group encouragement, lack of organization impediments and freedom.
Creative and innovative will boost how the employees itself give their thought and ideas to improve the service, systems and products effectively. Thankfully we had a good employer where there is always a room for a communication, where we had a discussion with the management on employees’ development program and they agreed to support you in term of moral, working hours and to the extent release the employees to attend any course without deducting your leaves. We believe that as employer they have roles to play in order to develop their employees. The company will benefit when the employees are well equip with the excellent oral communication, critical thinking, strong work ethic, teamwork, competence and setting the goal which requires a lot of thinking process. Through self development program employees will gain carrier growth, become competence, multi tasking, high confidence level, self esteem, good teamwork, had a vision, motivation and appetite in the journey for self