I had a job interview once where the interviewer told me, “I don’t think this is what you’re looking for. You can’t be creative here.”
I was perplexed by his response to my enthusiasm for thinking outside the box and challenging the norm. I wanted to explain that he misunderstood what I meant when I said I thrived in a creative work environment but ultimately bit my tongue and didn’t pursue the opportunity further.
This experience crosses my mind regularly.
How do we define creativity? Is it artistic ability? Is it storytelling? What does creativity look like in the workplace?
Google defines creativity as, “The use of the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work.”
Creativity at work isn’t confined to making a colorful slideshow presentation, pulling off a multi-million-dollar ad campaign or designing a new product. Creativity encompasses thinking and problem solving. Sometimes it’s more about an attitude than it is a specific action.
According to Edward de Bono, “Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.”
How do we break out of established patterns? I’ve found that asking questions is a great place to start. Instead of pestering coworkers or managers with incessant questions, asking smart questions about process or expectations can help gauge how much wiggle room we’re afforded when it comes to completing a project or solving a problem.
I’ve also found collaboration to be a creativity catalyst. Teams in and of themselves provide an easy way for us to interact with new ideas. Given that our individual experiences are unique, our perspectives on how to solve a problem will differ from others’ solutions. This difference creates a playground for our minds to play on as we collaborate with one another on projects. Working as a team to brainstorm ideas from something as simple as a client-facing email to an expansive marketing proposal can produce results we perhaps wouldn’t have drummed up on our own.
Steve Jobs, during his time as CEO of Pixar, purposely designed its headquarters with the bathrooms in a central atrium so that employees of every discipline would be compelled to see one another and interact throughout the day as they walked from office to common area and back again. By simply being together we are cultivating creativity.
Contrary to what that hiring manager told me, there is always a place for creativity at work. It’s how innovation (whether large or small) begins and businesses thrive. Creative teams are able to do more than simply produce better results. They also experience decreased stress, increased productivity, motivation, and engagement and can find more success in failure.
The principles of creativity are universal – we can inject them in any circumstance, no matter the industry.