To quote George Lois, an American art director who designed 92 magazine covers for Esquire magazine from 1962 to 1972:
“Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.”
In order to continue with our creative journey, we will need to define the significance of the generation of ideas, a categorization of what activities will be presented throughout these series of articles, as well as a delivery method for those who wish to engage in them.
Environments that are fluid in nature often create situations that change by the minute. For this, one needs to be an adaptable problem solver who is quick to think on his feet whenever the situation calls for it. Creating a system that is not flexible and follows a strict regimen will not be an effective solution and bound to create numerous problems that previously were not there. A system that is flexible, on the other hand, always has a repertoire of multiple solutions catered to unique situations and as a result, are naturally more equipped to deal with whatever unusual circumstances may arise. They will give us a framework that can open up new possibilities that would not be possible with a rigid system.
When an organization’s way of doing things becomes stale or increasingly ineffective, what is typically recommended by management theorists is to “redesign the organization”, by conducting tests that are meant to poke holes in any assumptions, as to expose what could potentially be false positives in terms of thinking, where the organization’s leaders assume that something is effective because of a certain way things are done, but is in essence just an illusion of what things are really like, because what they think and what really goes on could be two different things. This is often the case when it comes to the relationship between employees, middle managers and senior executives. The middle managers will often attempt to conceal what the employees know to the senior executives, and the employees will then assume that the middle managers are in cahoots with the senior executives. The middle managers will manipulate the opinion of the senior executives towards their employees, and any behavior done by the employees to break this myth will often be seen as an affirmation of what the middle managers have been saying all along. Breaking old habits and creating new ones is a good exercise and can open up new opportunities for developing the company, especially a company at the threat of stagnation in an ever advancing economy full of competitive innovation driving the survival of individuals and organizations alike.
Creativity is just one mode of approachment when it comes to problems and solving them.