Readings 29 November

Happiness and the Art of Innovation

• It is to answer ways to help increase employee innovation but a difficult one to answer in a way that leads to meaningful change.
• Personal Happiness is the one thing that leads to innovative behavior
• Sax Solo: Ask the question "How can I help each person in my organization achieve a state of happiness on a daily basis." If you help happiness bloom, innovative behavior will follow.
• Understand what makes your heart sing and intrinsically motivates you
• Intrinsic motivation often takes you to a mental place wherein times flies. It may be difficult to complete during the process, but we are happy after we do them and they are an integral part of our life
• Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's "Concept of Flow:" flow occurs when the complexity of the thing you're doing just outstrips your ability to get it done. It is challenging, but not overwhelmingly so.
• Innovation strives to get individuals to experience the state of flow
• The perfect work assignment for someone who needs to be innovative is one that balances clear, achievable goals with just enough task challenge to ignite fires of creativity. This also enables a state of serious play.
• Honda recognizes that people who are led towards a state of flow don't really need to be "managed," but rather you are setting them up to live in a place where intrinsic motivation is the norm.
• As a corporation, your goal should be to enable other people to be happy.
  
• Check in frequently to ensure that the initial assessment of challenge vs. ability was on target. However, if temporary setbacks and moments of personal crisis aren't encountered along the way, you've aimed too low.

This article articulated something that I have been trying to articulate for a long time. I have always felt that I was a very 'artsy' person. I can relate to the author's saxophone metaphor because I still play the trumpet every day. The trumpet challenges me in a completely different way than traditional school work. It is so frustrating at times when I'm at a plateau (as I currently am), but I know that once I overcome that plateau, the results will amaze all. I feel that organizations should support people's quirks and passions, because those are the things that make people happy. Perhaps those things make people happier than Google bouncy balls. I wish that work could be more like college: challenging yet exciting. I miss the organizations to which I use to belong. I want a corporate orchestra. It is a different way to meet people who aren't in your silo, learn from them, and leave the organization refreshed and passionate. A passionate person feels that they can change the world. This article also spoke to my own motivation. I have been bored and overstimulated; each really is crippling. I realized that I need a reasonable challenge. I love a good challenge! However, I can't feel quite overwhelmed. I need to have some sort of progress marks. Each person is different, but it is like playing the trumpet, sometimes it is really frustrating but in hindsight, it was so much fun!

How to Kill Creativity

• Creativity is unintentionally squashed daily to maximize business imperatives such as coordination, productivity, and control
• To be creative, an idea must also be useful and actionable and influence the way business gets done
• Many managers do not want accounting to be creative, but the creative process cannot be held in a narrow view. Many innovations have stemmed from accounting.
• Creativity involves creative thinking skills, expertise, and motivation
• Expertise encompasses everything that a person knows and can do in the broad domain in his or her work.
• Herb Simon's "Network of possible wanderings:" the intellectual space that a person uses to explore and solve problems. The larger the space, the better.
• Creative thinking refers to how people approach problems and solutions. It depends on personality as well as on how a person thinks and works
• For some people, creative thinking stems from disagreeing with others, turning a problem, and by incubation.
• Expertise and creative thinking are an individual's natural resources, but motivation determines what people actually do.
• Two types of motivation: extrinsic (carrot or stick) and intrinsic (passion and interest)
  
• Monetary rewards neither stifle nor encourage creativity. It doesn't increase employees passion for their jobs.
• "Intrinsic Motivation Principle of Creativity:" people will be most creative when they feel motivated primarily by interest, satisfaction, and challenge of the work itself.
• Intrinsic motivation can be increased by making subtle changes in organizational environment.
• Managerial Practices that affect creativity:
• Challenge - Stimulate creativity by matching people with jobs that play to their skills in creative thinking and ignite intrinsic motivation. Make sure that they have balance and aren't overwhelmed or bored.
  
• Freedom - Let people determine how they are going to conquer a designated challenge. Make sure the challenge is designated as specified strategic goals enhance people's creativity. It enables people to approach problems in a way that makes the most of their expertise and creative-thinking skills.
  
• Resources - Managers need to determine how much time and money to give to a project. This determination either supports or kills creativity. Creativity takes time (not distrust or burnout). Adding more resources above a "threshold of sufficiency" does not boost creativity; however, resources below the threshold will. Also, it is not the size of the space but rather the "right" type of space that enables creativity.
  
• Work-group features - Design mutually supportive groups with a diversity of perspectives and backgrounds. These groups need three other features:
• Shared excitement over the team goal
• Willingness to help teammates through difficult periods and setbacks
• Recognize unique knowledge and perspective that other members bring to the table
• Supervisory encouragement - Managers need to make sure they praise both successful and unsuccessful creative efforts. While not every new idea is worthy of consideration, managers need to not look for reasons to not use an idea instead of exploring it further. The culture of evaluation leads people to focus on external rewards and punishment associated with output. Culture also creates a climate of fear. Negativity also shows up in how managers treat people whose ideas don't pan out.
• Organizational support - The whole organization must support creativity. Support creativity by mandating information sharing and collaboration and ensure that political problems do not fester.
• An organization called Chemical Central Research distinguished its creative status by the quality of leadership at both the top-management level and the team level. They made appropriate matches between people and assignments. They let diverse teams determine the path to reach pre-set goals.
• National Houseware Products, conversely, possess all of the necessary creativity killers
• Creativity often requires that managers radically change the ways in which they build and interact with work groups
• It might cause a short-run monetary risk, but the risk of losing creativity can kill a competitive edge

I find it interesting that this article specifies that extrinsic motivation does not enhance creativity. While I do believe that intrinsic motivation is the key to creativity because it sparks an individual's passion and makes them happy (all components to creativity), I do not necessarily agree with the article's point of Supervisory Encouragement, particularly in regard to praise. As a child, my parents never extrinsically motivated me for good grades. They told me that my reward was in doing a job well done. While I am never satisfied unless I get good grades, I always resented that I was not being extrinsically motivated. Extrinsic motivation, such as a performance bonus, can contribute to happiness and the creativity process. A person may be more inspired to create the account-winning add if that his prize is a bonus. The bonus cannot be dependent on winning the account, but merely an add-on, in order for this argument to work. I think that extrinsic motivation can complement intrinsic motivation to enhance creativity. I do not think that intrinsic motivation is enough.

Creative Tension

• Lina Echeverra, director of glass and glass ceramics at Corning Inc., started her career trampling through the jungles of South America studying ancient lava. As a director, scientist, and corporate manager, her purple hair surprises people.
• Corning Inc.'s glass and glass ceramics division works to understand existing glass, invent new kinds of gas, and improve the performance of pulled glass.
• At Corning, managers often stunt the creative process. Adam Ellison, senior research scientist, worked on a spool of antimony-silicate optical fiber that excited the company, but was initially turned down. "We need cowboys."
• Echeverra is a manager that can't really manage. Scientist perform best when driven by inspiration. She needs to get scientists "in the zone"
• As a group, Echeverra needs to ensure that Corning is happy since it is upon performance and results that her team is evaluated.
• With a highly competitive and fast changing market, R&D managers have to have spot-on scientific judgment, as well as the nerves of a craps player and the psychological insight of a therapist.
• Corning invests a way of producing an invention and then Corning reinvents itself.
• Once an idea shows promise, a formal five-step innovation process ensures that good ideas get the necessary attention and resources. It also enables people to find failure.
• Corning links creativity and the scientist's sense of well-being, such as his ability to get equipment and lab space
• Echeverra adapts herself to each individual personality, "customizing" the managerial experience.
• Each scientist is intrinsically motivated by something different
• LCD glass was invented in the mid-1960s and sat purposeless for two decades.
  
• Corning's R&D process works by identifying an element missing from the consumer experience and trying to create something that meets that need.
• One of the secrets to managing creativity is that it is all about the people. The challenge is to corral all egos to make sure that they don't stomp all over each other.
• Echeverra assigns assignments based on talent to ensure that scientists are attacking Corning's priorities. Scientists are driven to deliver results, sometimes they just require direction.
• A "hands-on manager" is different from a "micromanager." A hand-on manager provides guidance, coaching, and judgment about priorities.

Scientists are such interesting creatures. I found it very interesting how the best manager of interesting and interesting creatures work to channel personalities and point scientists towards the path and to say "go." However, it is odd that Corning still evaluates divisions based upon results, even though certain innovations, like the LCD screen, do not find a home for 20 years. Evaluation can extinguish creativity, so I do not always understand why Corning uses that measure. While results are important, there should be more qualitative measures such as revolutionary, impact on sales, potential uses, percent of effort. One would hope a revolutionary product would have a great impact on sales, but it does not always. However, evaluating somebody on these measures may help fuel their creativity and result in one result that dwarfs previous failures.