How to Stifle Creativity and What to Do About It

Teresa Amabile writes in the Harvard Business Review that "creativity is a function of three components: expertise, creative thinking skills, and motivation." I think she's right. Expertise is all about knowledge however it is acquired. Creative thinking skills has so much to do with ability to wonder, ask questions and consider the "other" possibility. Motivation drills down to desire.

I am a creative person. In fact, owning a creative agency was my first business venture. I thoroughly enjoyed starting my day with a blank sheet of paper. Dreaming of possibilities and asking "Why not?" brought me more business than I knew what to do with for a young guy with no official art training.

It is true that creativity can be shut down by managers or people who do not understand the creative process. All you have to do is develop a "No" mindset and you can kill creativity faster than the first 3 minutes of an NCIS show can kill it's next victim. Consider these creativity murderers:

• No challenge
• No freedom
• No resources
• No work-group features
• No supervisory encouragement
• No organizational support

Creativity: D.O.A.

To foster creativity in your company you only need to turn the Nos into Yeses. 

But in the small business environment it is often the business owner who has to be creative. Resources are frequently not available to employ someone who can dedicate themselves to being creative . . . and if they are available, creativity is strictly defined to technical tasks: design an ad, get the website up, come up with a slogan, write a brochure.

The creativity that a business owner requires is the creativity of vision and leadership. This is the kind of possibility thinking that walks out in front of the organization and takes it to new frontiers. 

This is the creativity that all too often suffers in the small business because of one key factor. 

Time.

If the business owner can learn time management, priority management and get out of the technical trenches of the day-to-day duties, then the owner can leverage the power of creativity to lead the business to new heights of success.