Thinking and doing: creativity, innovation, leadership and back again

This blog is written by Helen Britton, a Visiting Fellow in the Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership. Helen is an educational practitioner, researcher and entrepreneur. After starting her professional life in the chemical industry, she re-trained to teach mathematics and to develop her entrepreneurial interests in construction and property restoration. She has lectured in mathematics and Access to Science and Technology. Helen has almost three decades of experience of designing and delivering innovative and inclusive courses and capital projects as part of multi-stakeholder initiatives within the United Kingdom.

Recently, I was talking with friends and one asked me how I would define leadership.  I took one of those hopefully unnoticeable extra intakes of breath, exhaled and then launched forward with my explanation.  For me, ‘leadership’ is the art of motivating a person or group of people to act towards a common goal. I know that may have sounded a little staid, and somewhat uninspiring, so let me expand my thinking.

I believe that we can all be leaders: within our family, neighbourhood, community and place of worship.  I thought for a moment of how this resonated with the title of a book by Mark Sanborn: ‘You don’t need a title to be a leader’ (2006). He runs an ideas studio that works with a diversity of businesses. I had picked his book up whilst staying with a Finnish friend, who at the time worked for the airline SAS. Her boss had been over to visit the Finnish American Chamber of Commerce a few years earlier and Mark Sanborn had been one of the speakers.

I like the idea of ‘idea studios’; having visited one in San Francisco and more recently one in Cape Town, South Africa. I had been invited to have a ‘chat’ about skills-building initiatives over coffee and koeksisters (in Afrikaans: a cake sister or South African donut – a very sociable sharing activity). Anyway, I digress. My meeting was located within a very creatively-converted, dockside storage building; now a multi-purpose enterprise hub. Small, affordable but beautifully presented units, meeting spaces, creative spaces, wellness spaces presented a welcoming environment; all conceptualised by the people who use them.

There was the aroma of coffee and baked goods; mixed with enthusiasm, energy and activity.  Comfortable seating areas, subtly different from each other, flowed through the space.  You could relax on a sofa or around a table on those high stools with the small circular tables on tall columns. Each area had a different colour; a different theme. A relaxing, creative, thought-provoking, collegiate, inspiring place to talk, plan, discuss and make things happen.

These spaces were variously populated with individuals, pairs or small groups of people of different ages, ethnities, dress styles, purpose. I heard different languages being spoken; sometimes two or three around the same table at the same time. Some people had paper pads; some had computer pads. All represented local enterprise: public, private and not-for profit. The initiatives being discussed encompassed, not only Cape Town, but across the country and beyond borders; a testament to the aspirations and the ‘reach’ of its members. I stayed most of that day.

Experiences like these make me think about how we interact and make things happen. It makes me question what can we do to avert inertia and procrastination – the ‘art’ of not doing and reasons for not doing. How can we be innovative about how we do things? I’ve always thought of innovation as applied creativity; a way of using new ideas that may lead to more effective ways of working. It is important for all types of organisations to consider creative and innovative ways of operating and presenting themselves; to be able to mentally and physically flex.

Think of some of the synonyms of creativity: innovation, vision, inventiveness, progressiveness, originality, imagination, individuality, ingenuity, enterprise and resourcefulness. The role of creativity in leadership is vital to any organisation’s survival; perhaps even more so in the complex environments we exist in today. It is the ability to create, to re-create and to realise innovative solutions that can facilitate change; often in the face of complex, ever-changing situations.

I believe that creativity is a critical leadership quality but I think we need to understand the key element of the creative process in order to see how it fits with the notion of leadership. Creative leadership has different layers: exploring ideas, identifying unlikely perspectives; highlighting different ways of looking at problems; growing your organisational ‘reach’ through mentoring and coaching individuals and teams. The list goes on.

Creativity is not restricted to a few people and anyone associated with an organisation may have that ‘gem’ that identifies an issue, a problem, a solution and draws others into the rich web of thinking. You need to give time, space and environment to nurture creativity. That means enabling a culture that values and rewards ideas; allows for the ‘messiness’ and seeming disorder that can be our thinking as we grapple to create visions of ideas, turn them into words and into meaningful actions.

Those ‘rewards’ can be monetary or through incentive schemes. We should welcome novelty. Be appreciative. How often do people say, ‘I don’t feel valued; it’s expected. Who is listening anyway?’ Let us all be better listeners; turn our thinking inside out and see if our approach is stifling spontaneity or focused on a narrow point on the ‘horizon’. Does it have more of a ‘combative, competitive’ feel about it and less of a ‘collaborative, supportive’ approach? If so, ask the question: how is that working for you, your organisation? Do you value all ideas? 

The irony is that every not-for-profit was created out of inspiring others; of making something happen from an idea – a vision - and then communicating that into action. We need to remember that. I like the idea of thinking that small things each of us can do each day can make a cumulative difference. Imagine harnessing that in a bottle.  For me, in a nutshell, leadership is about unlocking people’s creative potential to become better by challenging our thinking and our actions. Remember, you never know which of those disregarded, brushed over ideas could hold the key to something spectacular.

26th September 2019