Creativity is an essential business survival skill in our fast-changing world. Organisations that thrive in today’s tumultuous economy share a common thread of investing in the creativity of the people who make them what they are.

Here, PermissionToPlay’s Kevin Mann brings us a few ways that creativity can revitalise your business and ensure that it will thrive for years to come.

ABOUT KEVIN

Encouraging creativity in your organisation is the first step to revolutionising the way you think, collaborate, and grow, both as individuals and as a business. It is well known that the key to long-term success is the willingness to change. Quality leadership requires tough decisions, reliable principles, and strength of character. Yet if this is all one considers, the burden of corporate survival rests upon the shoulders of very few individuals, distancing them from the fertile soil that is the human imagination present in every employee. Creativity is the best way to maximise problem-solving effectiveness and adapt to inevitable changes, societal and economic, that are impossible to predict with any certainty.

The untapped potential of the creative mind

Creativity bolsters neuroplasticity in the brain, allowing it to make new connections and adapt to changing circumstances. Having a well-connected brain allows you to approach situations from new perspectives, which is a skill that is more important than simply having a high IQ score. Although individuals may be more analytical or more inventive by nature, all possess the potential to become both artists and mathematicians.

Because processing language is based not only in logical processes, but in the intuitive connections between symbols, concepts, and physical objects, developing creativity can result in improved communication skills and better articulation of ideas.

Many employees are provided with a streamlined job description that outlines a limited set of skills that they will then repeat ad infinitum. While rigid instructions for a new post are beneficial as a foundation, job training should not end there. When employees are regularly engaged with new tasks that require them to try new things, they become more invested in their work and its outcomes.  They become more inclined to collaborate with others and benefit from perspectives they may not have considered.

Smudge the line between work and play

Many of us experience life based around a five-day work week, with a short interval of rest on the weekend. We separate work time from the time that we might call “play”, when we try to engage with family and the hobbies we are passionate about. Often, this leads to failure to “play”: a life so caught up in the burdens of work that the weekend becomes occupied with mind-numbing alternatives, for all our energy has been spent. This is detrimental to our health, our minds, and ultimately to our businesses too.

Consider why you care about the work you do. Do you love going to work in the morning? If not, then you are not engaging properly with your work. We are not meant to be lumped into categories and sent into motion like cogs in a machine. When an organisation cultivates creative thinking among its workers, it increases the sense of value that employees feel. Encourage your team to exercise their own judgment around how they focus their energy, and foster a work environment that is more about creating progress out of their natural inclination to play. No discovery was ever made without someone thinking about the world in a new way.

Daily creativity prepares businesses for crisis

There are clear links between creativity and confidence. Children who are raised to express themselves in school creatively are more inclined to ask for clarification, to think about problems from different perspectives and to act without hesitation to implement their ideas. This carries over into adulthood, and determines how you will behave as a marketing director, a data analyst, a financial consultant, etc.

When your business marches into the future and hits a wall, what happens to it? If you do not create an environment that encourages innovation, it will simply stop dead in its tracks. Creativity means that, although the whole system may encounter something seemingly impassable, or experience a malfunction or a loss of resources, the adaptable components that make it up can collaborate and restructure its mode of operation to continue moving forward. The next challenge you face will be met, not with despair or frustration, but with flexibility and new creation, which translates into postcrisis prosperity.

Final thoughts

Creativity is the root of progress, the unseen solution in the face of crisis and stagnation. You don’t have to be a master painter, a cellist, a nobel-prize winning writer to consider yourself creative. It exists within all of us, and—with the tiniest bit of care—will come back to life. Innovation and adaptation in the face of difficulty creates success, and this can originate in the mind of any worker given the chance to contribute to a solution. A business is not a machine, inflexible and uncompromising. It is a living organism, and treating it as such requires valuing its components, and recognizing that every individual has the creative potential to make it better. Invest in the natural human propensity for innovation and creativity, and allow your organisation to grow more caring, adaptive, and sustainable.

PermissionToPlay delivers creative thinking training that helps teams gain the skills, mindsets and confidence to solve problems differently, generate original ideas more quickly, and build a culture where innovation can flourish.

If you would like to find out more about how our creative training packages can benefit your business, contact us today or call us on 0330 311 0034.