Creativity at work (When was the last time you had fun at work?)

Creativity at Work

Organizational Freelancer

Post #5

By Tracey Batacan 

When was the last time you were creative at work? Did you solve a task? Or maybe your idea sparked a process improvement that saved your organization money. Whatever it is, creativity is critical to ensuring your work meets and even exceeds requirements as a freelancer. It will also help your organization continue to focus on achieving annual goals.

Edwin Land, co-founder of Polaroid once said "An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail." Organizations will always have the ability to find people with certain technical skill sets to hire. However, creativity includes being innovative and fearless. An organizational freelancer will take a look at a task that has been done the same way for years and identify steps to improve and implement new ways processes to benefit the organization. 

One of the ways to use creativity at work is to share your original ideas with team members with a tangible plan to execute your ideas. The idea is your creative skill, the plan says you know how to initiate and manage the new process. 

All too often, some people have great ideas at work, but keep them to themselves because several reasons. Workers may not share their concepts because:

• Fear of rejection
• Lack of leadership support
• Fear of failure
• Concern about carrying the project to fruition without any help
• Fear of success

Fear of rejection. If a person makes suggestions regularly and always hears "no", they may no longer feel the need to speak up and offer suggestions. Try a new brainstorming sessions and individual meetings to gain stakeholder support in your efforts. Also, you may want to suggest new ways to generate ideas by taking the team to a neutral location for brainstorming sessions. Get out of the office with your team to share your ideas about projects. 

Lack of leadership support. It is challenging to kick start a new idea when leadership does not support your efforts. I've experienced this issue both in public and private sector roles and realized that sometimes a one-on-one approach to leadership support is crucial. For example, if several leaders express their lack of support in a group setting, it may be helpful to schedule individual meetings with them to obtain more insight into their concerns about the project. Once you identify the leadership concerns, research ways to overcome them. Then meet with those "on the fence" about your suggestions and manage their expectations about the issues. 

Fear of Failure. Show of hands, how many of you have failed at work before? Failure and mistakes are not the terrible things that you want to hide from the world. They may serve as learning opportunities for you to move forward by identifying your limits and additional training you may need to manage new projects. Failure is often thought of as negative thing. However, we may want to consider where the failure occurred in the process and implement corrective measures. 

Concern about carrying the project to fruition without any help. Great ideas require a person who can serve as a catalyst for positive change. As a change agent, you may also need to show initiative to keep the project moving forward even when everyone else is either busy or moved out of the organization. Sometimes the organizational freelancer will have moments of solitude at work as team mates will be pulled in multiple directions especially at critical project moments. Your goal is to keep moving forward, even if you are the only one driving the project bus.

Fear of success. It may happen more often than not: you are on a winning streak and you are asked to take on more work. Then the little voice in your head might say "how can I do this again and create a win for my organization?" The fear of "repeat success" may stop even the most advantageous agent of change in their tracks. 

One last thing to remember about creativity is to have fun. Fun at work reminds you of why you work in your chosen industry. Sometimes we select our careers based on how much we enjoy the work and it is not about the money, access to resources or successful people. Sometimes, it is just about the having a good time starting and managing a new project.

Online resource: Creativity at Work web site.

Disclaimer: Online resources identified in this blog are for informational purposes and are not a promotion or endorsement of online entities.