Donna FitzgeraldAs part of the “new normal” everyone is redefining how things get done in order to reduce the number of people it takes to do the work. Normally I’d say that’s a good thing because I’ve always believe Robert Heinlein had it right:
“Progress doesn’t come from early risers — progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.”
If you didn’t grow up reading science fiction the quote might lose something in translation because Heinlein wasn’t advocating either sloth or hedonism. He just felt that there was so much to do in life that anything that could be simplified should be.
Now on to my point; I’m not seeing the increase in creativity or innovation I would be expecting as part of our changing economy and I’m not sure why. I’ve got a gut instinct that says we’ve cut too far and adopted too much of an attitude that if we have enough process than any trained monkey can do the work. The problem is that trained monkeys don’t innovate.
Part of my concern comes from a recent personal trip I took. Almost everyone I spoke with in my travels was angry, over worked and stressed almost to the point of breaking. Stress kills creativity. It also kills productivity over the long haul (though not unfortunately in the short run).
So here’s what interests me. How do we as managers and leaders identify when we’ve crossed the line? I’m sure most of you reading this will be saying – “I’m on the receiving end of this – it’s the folks in the c- suite who make decisions” and my answer would be that we don’t help them make decisions if we can’t show them facts or if we don’t have facts at least a cogent model that makes a case that we have to do something different.
I really don’t have a definitive answer to this problem especially since I think the surface, easy answers you’ll hear advocated on television aren’t right (and here I’m including pundits on both side of the political equation). I’d love to know what the rest of you are thinking and more specifically what you as a manager think YOU can do to help turn the corner on this issue.
If I were still managing I know I’d be doing everything I could to get the stress level down and I’d probably be doing that by talking to my people and seeing what work we could eliminate… And maybe, just maybe if we eliminated some work we’d find we made some progress…
Comments? Agree? Disagree?
Category: New Normal Organizational Development Tags: Leadership, Productivity, Stress Management
4 responses so far ↓
1 Eric Slack September 6, 2010 at 10:54 am
I agree Donna, that creativity is suffering, but think it’s due as much to distraction as stress (unless you call stress a distraction). We’ve all read articles on ‘multi-tasking’ and how we’re never really disconnected from anyone or anything. As a writer you’re no doubt aware of the need for the human mind to work ‘off line’ and organize data that we’re taken in. It’s also the time that we make connections between thoughts and these data – the creative process.
As managers we need to encourage more time away from this barrage so our people’s minds can make these connections. And yes, eliminating some work to enable that would certainly help.
Speaking of innovation, we just visited VMWorld and saw a number of companies that may already be doing this.
http://bit.ly/9PAjwn
2 David Dickson September 8, 2010 at 9:03 pm
Interesting and thought provoking, but fundamentally wrong, By your logic, a stress free, leisurely environment is more likely to foster innovation than a stressful and challenging one. Certainly it feels like we are all too busy to take a breath or go to the bathroom, much less think about a better way to do things. But that does not turn off their minds, and it only increases their motivation to find the “lazier” way. They are thinking about what they are doing, and those who are creatively inclined will continue to think up new and better ways to do those jobs.
Implementation may be more challenging because there are not freely available resources, such as time, to try out different processes, but it does not clearly follow that such stress results in less innovation and improvement. People change when the current situation is unpleasant and overly challenging, not the opposite.
There is a reason why the crazy, unhappy, artistic genius is such a cliche, and it is not because being unhappy and uncomfortable kills creativity.
3 Donna Fitzgerald September 8, 2010 at 10:38 pm
David,
I hear you and normally I would agree completely BUT my point was there is a line where stress strives innovation in the carzy situation (read one’s current job) on the one side of the line, while on the other side the only choice is to leave and then innovate or hunker down and try to survive on the other (which I would contend is an inherently none creative option).
Obviously this is intuitive opinion, which is why it’s in my blog and not an official position, but I’ve worked in environments where 80s a week were the norm and we were amazingly creative vs what I’m seeing now which I’d almost contend in soul stealing.
The fundamental issue I’ve found has to do with respect. The toxic environments I’ve seen reinforce a message that creativity isn’t possible because the employee is nothing more than a plug compatible resource of little or no intrinsic value. The crazy, stressful environments I’ve seen that still fostered creativity and innovation also constantly reinforced the idea that the employee was valuable and capable and expected to be brilliant and creative (even if we were working 80s a week).
Again, I’m not sure I have any true answer or even if I’m right. It just feels unlike anything I’ve seen in the past and the change isn’t positive.
4 Donna Fitzgerald September 8, 2010 at 10:51 pm
Eric,
I think you may be onto a contributing factor. Constant interruptions with no time at all to think are both exhausting and destructive to creativity. I always tell the story about my outstandingly wonderful team at my last company and how shocked I was to realize one day that all the ball juggling we were doing was costing both us and our clients time, effort and money. I hadn’t recognized it right away because my team was so good that we weren’t obviously dropping any balls BUT when I had a chance to do some reflection on what we could have done better on a couple of projects, the task switiching was the issue I found staring me in the face.
I’m curious as to what fixes others have found for moving their organization away from task switching?