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What holds up creativity at the workplace?

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Posted by Your Guide on October 5, 2005 10:04 AM

Creativity is a lesson in inertia. Laws of inertia state that objects (in this case, one’s creative mind) resist change. In other words, creativity is hard to start, but once you get going, it’s easy to keep going. The biggest obstacle, then, is often one of these first obstacles:


  • Selfishness: If you ask for suggestions, but go with your own idea, you are crippling the creativity around you. Consistently proclaiming your thoughts and ideas as the team’s best, or putting limitations on the team’s creativity, is a creativity killer.
  • Assumptions: Reasoning such as, “That’s the way we’ve always done it” represents non-creative assumptions. While you should consider your past use of resources and your assumptions regarding goals and strategy, that should not be the deciding factor.
  • Past failures: Perhaps you had a hugely successful creative meeting but then the project flopped. Rather than banish creativity from your office, go back to the drawing board. Research what went wrong (perhaps you didn’t follow through on your last creative idea with appropriate research) and then come up with a new idea. A key principle of creativity is giving ideas the benefit of the doubt, so don’t let past failures make you rule out future ideas.
  • Premature criticism: Most people have a fear of social disapproval, and this fear inhibits your employees from offering their creative ideas. Put into practice a “there are no bad ideas” philosophy during creative meetings. You can critique ideas later, but one premature critical word can easily silence what could have later been a source of great creativity.

If you want to think creativity, start by looking around. Be focused but don’t be so one-track minded that you fail to notice changes in your corporate environment. What are the ideas circulating around your company? What are the ideas shaping your customers? What are the assumptions that dominate your goals? Then move on to the first question of creativity, “What if we did that differently?”



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