Agile PLM - The CIO's Guide to Oracle Products and Solutions - page 34

Six Steps for Increasing Creativity and Productivity

Harvard Essentials (2003) lists six steps for increasing creativity:

1. Make sure your company's goals are consistent with your value sys-
tem : This is an interesting perspective in an era of few good jobs and
trends toward outsourcing and offshoring. A number of studies have
found that:

• Job insecurity is a big issue.

• More and more permanent jobs are being replaced by temporary

jobs.

• Employees are experiencing unrealistic expectations, increased

workloads, and lack of support staff.

Very few people can imagine their situation improving substan-
tially. In fact, many believe that things will only get worse. They see
the gap between rich and poor growing, and they feel that they don't
know where all this change will end up.

Managers need to realize that many, if not most, employees will
harbor some or all of these feelings. Given the dire job market, they
might opt to stay put rather than, as the Harvard text suggests, find-
ing a company whose goals match their values. Therefore, it is up to
the manager to somehow ameliorate the level of anxiety that accom-
panies these feelings such that creativity is not stifled.

2. Pursue some self-initiated activity by choosing projects where your
motivation is high : Few employees get to choose their own task
assignments. However, savvy managers need to be aware that cre-
ativity is greatly enhanced when employees are motivated to do their
jobs.

The better companies try to fit the employee to the task by cre-
ating a skills database. These permit managers to rapidly locate an
employee who has the skills—and the motivation—to fulfill a par-
ticular work requirement. However, there will always be those times
when the task the employee is expected to complete is simply not one
he or she is especially interested in. At this point, the good CEO will
use a variety of motivating techniques. Based on a study at Wichita
State University, the top five motivating techniques are: