By Kristi Wooten
Organizational changes in the workplace – especially those yielding the creation of a more innovative and creative environment – are almost always sparked by the ideas of one person.
Whether that “idea person” is a director at the top or an intern at the bottom doesn’t matter. What matters is the organization’s readiness and ability to take one person’s great idea and transform an overly bureaucratic or hyper-structured company into a fluid coalition of innovative thinkers.
If such a transformation seems nearly impossible for your organization (“Why would a ‘fluid coalition’ be better than my organization’s current structure?” you may ask), take a moment to consider the theories of Dr. Kristina Jaskyte, a University of Georgia professor who believes that any organization has the potential to be a breeding ground for innovation and creative problem solving.
According to Dr. Jaskyte, organizations require a certain level of creativity simply to survive, but implementing innovative and creative practices into daily tasks can make a business thrive.
Creating an “organizational culture of innovation” is especially important for nonprofits, Dr. Jaskyte says, “ because they function under much more difficult circumstances than other organizations, and employees and volunteers are often their most valuable resources.
Funding cuts, increasing competition, funders’ requirements for innovative ideas make the topic of creativity more important now than ever. Employee creativity within nonprofits is related to overall job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and citizenship behavior, which are also important reasons to be interested in the topic of creativity.”
Nonprofits need creativity and innovation skills in order to
• Create an attractive workplace
• Keep ahead of competition
• Find new ways to tackle issues
• Avoid stagnating
• Improve the “brand”
• Build supporter and donor confidence
• Keep funds flowing in
• Create a “can do” culture
• Attract and retain good staff and board members
Attracting “good” staff and board members might not be so difficult. But is every good member also a creative one?
At her presentation during the 2005 Georgia Nonprofit Summit, Dr. Jaskyte presented a graph segmenting employees into five categories. The categories were created based on the employee’s level of initiative to put forth new ideas and the amount of time it took them to “get on board” once new ideas or innovations were been introduced into their work structure.
Almost every employee, according to Jaskyte’s research, fell into one of the following categories:
Innovators (2.5%)
Early adopters (13.5%)
Early majority (34%)
Late majority (34%)
Laggards (16%)
Of course, not every employee can be first with the latest new way to make meetings more idea-friendly, save the organization money, or improve employee relations. But every member of an organization can make the effort to contribute in a more creative way, not only for the benefit of his coworkers and his company, but also for himself.
As one might assume, attitude plays an important role in creating an environment that fosters individual creativity and innovation within an organization.
Dr. Jaskyte suggests “putting on” your attitude before coming to work. It may sound like kinderplay, but simple changes such as
• Acknowledging employee accomplishments
• Encouraging sharing of ideas, new approaches
• Cultivating innovation through education (i.e., books, workshops, guest speakers, etc.)
• Adding more color to the environment to make it more interesting
and
• Scheduling “Innovative Ideas” into staff meetings
can make quite an impact on your organization’s culture.
Dr. Jaskyte approaches her research from the world of academia, but she’s not alone in her pursuit of ways to transform the workplace. Best-selling business authors such as Marcus Buckingham are also challenging the traditional business model, in terms of the way leaders and managers affect change within their organizations.
Buckingham, author of First, Break All the Rules, Now Discover Your Strengths, and The One Thing You Need to Know about Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success, who spent nearly two decades with the Gallup organization compiling research about change within the traditional business model, says that people should find out what they don’t like doing, and stop doing it. He also believes that great managers should tailor employees’ responsibilities to match their strengths.
Dr. Jaskyte agrees in part with Buckingham’s approach, but feels it’s not the right message for all business organizations, including some nonprofits:
“While the idea of having to recognize the certain traits or qualities in their employees that enable them to be more creative, innovative and effective on the job sounds great, realistically, the executive directors are too overwhelmed with daily tasks and will not have time to devote to each individual employee,” she says.
“I think that delegating more responsibilities to employees, giving them freedom to accomplish their tasks the way they see fit, allowing employees to take risks and accepting mistakes as part of the search process would be a great starting point for unleashing employee creativity. Why not let the employees discover their strengths for themselves?”
So, how do nonprofits begin the work of creating an environment in which employees discover their strengths, but also contribute to an organizational culture of innovation?
Dr. Jaskyte suggests several first steps, including reading motivational literature such as Fish!: A remarkable way to boost morale and improve results, by Lundin, Paul, and Christensen or Breakthrough thinking for nonprofit organizations: Creative strategies for nonprofit organizations by Ross and Segal.
“I know that after attending one of my creativity workshops, several executive directors decided to use the Fish! book in their organizations and implemented some positive changes as a result,” Dr. Jaskyte says.
She also says, when it comes to finding simple ideas to help foster a creative environment in your nonprofit organization, the Internet is a great place to look.
For sites to test your organization’s innovativeness, visit the following sites:
http://www.creax.com/cis/
• a free assessment of the innovation capability of your organization measured across 13 different metrics
http://www.thinksmart.com/mission/audit.html
• Innovation audit
For useful links and articles relating to creative thinking and innovation on the job, try:
http://www.thinksmart.com/
http://www.brainstorming.co.uk/tutorials/tutorialcontents.html
• Free brainstorming training
http://www.thinksmart.com/mission/dna/index.html
• Innovation DNA poster
http://www.pfdf.org/innovation/index.html
• Peter F. Drucker Award for Nonprofit Innovation
Or visit Dr. Jaskyte’s innovation links Web site at
http://www.arches.uga.edu/~kjaskyte/innovationlinks.htm
for dozens of additional resources.
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