Creativity requires us to collaborate with others. This course is designed to make you a better creative collaborator. Creativity can require us to bring together knowledge from different areas, often known by different people. We need to foster effective collaboration rather than have those differences lead to misunderstandings and conflict. The ideas that we generate, individually or collectively, will be evaluated by others, such as bosses, funders, and customers. These audiences will likely have different concerns when they hear about your ideas and are likely to evaluate ideas differently than you do. We need to pitch our ideas in ways that get others excited about them, rather than bored or confused, so that we can expand the group of collaborators in our creative efforts.
4-5.1 The Strong Culture Debate
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From the course by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Creativity Toolkit II: Creative Collaboration
46 оценки
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
46 оценки
Course 4 of 7 in the Specialization Innovation: From Creativity to Entrepreneurship
From the lesson
Module 4: Breaking the Barriers to Team Creativity
Meet the Instructors
Jeffrey LoewensteinAssociate Professor of Organizational Behavior
Department of Business Administration
Jack GoncaloProfessor
Department of Business Administration
Individualism, dissent, competition, this is anarchy.
Yeah, my ideal team.
What a mess.
Yeah, right. But there actually is to be fair, there is a debate around,
do we need an anarchy for creativity or is there
an alternative way in which you can have a really strong culture?
So, strong culture, weak culture. Right.
So, do we want it weak or strong?
Do we want an anarchy in which people feel free to say and do whatever it is they want?
And then, you get the free, you know,
the wide variance and perspectives.
Or do you need a strong culture of individualism, dissent, and competition?
Right.
So, that's actually enforced in their norms around those things.
Right. So, which side is right?
We're going to talk about the debate.
And we'll let you weigh in on and at least in your mind know this, anyway.
But we'll let you think about which side you endorse
and then we'll tell you our take on it and it's a bit complicated but we'll get there.
So, we talked about the debate between people
who believe that you can have a strong culture of
creativity versus those who believe that you should really not have norms at all.
You should allow people to do whatever they want.
So, which side do you think has it right,
the anarchists or the cult leaders?
Well, it depends. The critical factor turns out to be the composition of the group.
There's a reason we started off there.
Let's say that you've pinpointed a norm that really works for creativity.
Since we talked extensively about individualism,
we'll use that one as an example.
Now the question is,
do we make that norm strong or do we let people
deviate from the norm in whatever direction do they choose?
Do we give them sort of wide latitude to deviate from that expectation?
It depends on whether your group is composed of
creative personalities. So, let me explain.
Creative people by virtue of their personalities will
naturally behave in ways that are appropriate for the situation.
They're the kinds of people who are just sort of naturally rebellious,
they question things, they're competitive,
they try to stand out,
they sort of naturally do,
they're inclined to do all of the things that we really need them to do to be creative.
That's why they're highly creative people.
So if you put a group together composed of highly creative people,
there's no need to make the norm strong.
People will just sort of naturally behave as
they're expected and as they're likely to do.
They'll be individualists anyway so you just leave them alone.
In fact, if you force them to be a certain way by imposing these strong norms,
they will react against that expectation and do
the exact opposite or nothing at all just to prove that you can't control them.
So, creative personalities are,
all of the research has shown,
pretty difficult to manage.
But if you managed to get a group of them together, you just leave them alone.
But if you're dealing with a group of less creative personalities,
these are the people who will tend to shy away from
the kinds of behaviors you need to see in a creative team.
They're reluctant to stand out,
they're reluctant to question things,
they're not rebellious, they're more cooperative,
and docile, and obedient.
But it turns out that you can actually leverage strong norms to
encourage less creative people toward more appropriate behavior.
If you specify that the expectation is individualism and
you create social sanctions to punish people who don't comply,
it turns out that these less creative personalities will fall into
line and they'll actually do the things that you would expect them to do,
to make the team creative.
So, there are a couple of really important implications of this that I want to highlight.
One is, if you went through the time and effort and
expense to recruit and retain highly creative people,
you don't want to overkill it by imposing a strong culture on them.
They will just sort of naturally do what they're inclined to do which is be creative.
The other really important implication here is that,
if you don't have the time or the resources to
seek out and attract and retain creative people,
you can actually achieve a lot of creative outcomes with relatively ordinary people.
So, these less creative personalities may not, you know,
naturally arrive at the kinds of behaviors you need to
see in a creative team but you can use
social control in culture as a tool and
leverage that tool to realize more creative outcomes.
And you can get creativity from relatively uncreative people.
So, we started with the puzzle of who's on
your team and we've come right back to it, right?
We need to know who is on my team.
Exactly, because the answer really depends once you know who's on your team.
What kind of approach you want to use?
Do you want to go with the anarchy approach?
Do you have a bunch of creative personalities
that are just going to naturally do what they need to do?
Let them go loose.
Yeah, you just let them go, right?
Yeah.
If you have less creative types,
chances are you're going to do a little more work.
You got to push them.
Yeah, poke and prod them in the right direction.
And so, really composition is key.
And there's this kind of a contingent approach to managing creativity.
Yeah, based on who you have.
Right.
Strong culture, weak culture.
Right.
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