How to Kill Good Ideas

By Morgan La Femina

How to Kill a good idea: Sample plan

Step 1: Design organizational structures that systematically crush creativity Step 2: If it is broken dont fix it Step 3: If it is broken keep doing what your doing Step 4: Repeat as necessary

Good Ideas Grow

They grow out of the creative process Three components of creativity:
1: Expertise 2: Creative thinking skills 3: Motivation

Creativity should not be compartmentalized but span various departments

Definitions
Expertise: Knowledge (technical in nature) Creative - thinking skills: imagination, capacity to take older ideas and use them in new ways Motivation: Desire to accomplish, passion, goal orientation Expertise and creative thinking are inherent resources + motivation = accomplishments

Types of Motivation
Intrinsic: Motivation that comes from the inside, internal drive toward a goal Extrinsic: Motivation which is external, comes from outside the person

Extrinsic example: Money, job termination Intrinsic example: Interest, satisfaction in goal completion, the challenge of work

What Management Process Effect Creativity?

Challenge Freedom Work-group features Supervisory encouragement Organizational Support

Work group features could be the personalities of team members, skill sorts, backgrounds

KEYS
Authors used KEYS questionnaire for various workplace conditions
End Result: Most effective method of increasing creativity and motivation in an employee was employee skill to job task Right worker to right assignment

NOT first employee to most critical job

Ways to Manage
Assign job and give freedom to employee to finish it Make creativity a top priority Channel energies from infighting and gossip to excitement of task Assemble diverse teams Support work flow patterns that increase cross-team exchanges of ideas and information

Ways to Mismanage
Open door policies that are not open door Unpowered empowered employees (in name only) Unrealistic time pressures Lack of resources Micro Management Changing goals, frequently, setting unclear goals

How I Differ with the Author

I believe the physical space of a company and employees personal space in the company is very important (See Pixar article) I do not believe monetary rewards make people feel as though they are being controlled, maybe an incentive to be lax or bend rules however

Do:
Praise employees, offer constructive criticism Dont say no to a project just to satisfy politics Dont modify a project to the point that it returns to the same old standard model to meet comfort zones Assign a failure value, discuss what can be learned from a project failure Have frequent team meetings and allow all opinions to be voiced

Questions

The end