“Creativity breaks through brick walls.”
--Scott Jeffrey

“Life is non-linear."
--Tom Peters

In business, as in life, we are only limited by our own imaginations, the capacities of our creative minds. What that means is, there are no limits. Our minds know no bounds nor does our collective creativity. A price cannot be put on that.

Business cycles are dynamic. Fads like Crocs appear and soon disappear like they never were. We are all reliant on the Federal Reserve to some degree. All businesses deal in scarce resources every day. While we are all beholden to business trends and economic cycles, our abilities & goals are only limited by our own personal and collective creativity.

How creative is your organization? How much creative thinking are you doing each day? How about each week? Have you found a way to transform cost centers into revenue producers? Have you found a way to automate continuously manual tasks? Are you still using Excel for silly things like keeping track of time and projects?

An organization's collective capacity for creative thinking is now one of the few differentiating factors between it and its competitors. It used to be, "What are they doing that I'm not?" That's not good enough any more. Now, you've got to be 9 steps ahead of the competition - and your creativity can take you there. You've gotta turn 'em upside-down! And you've gotta push your thoughts and ideas as far as you can!

Creative ideas don't start at the top - far from it. At most organizations, the ones who possess the most organizational power are usually the least creative people. The most creative people are the ones with none of the organizational power. Interestingly, these players in the trenches know how their creative ideas and capacities can solve organizational problems. Sadly, their innovative ideas are ignored and never make it past the line manager.

There seems to be an inverse relationship between creativity and power within many firms. Usually, the larger the organization, the more likely this is the case with the stark exception of true World Class organizations.

That being said, how much does your organization foster and encourage creativity? What are your line managers and middle managers doing to promote innovation each day? What books are they reading? What are they most focued on? How free are their direct reports to innovate and apply their personal creativity to organization problems? What concerns the people working in the trenches and their managers day-to-day? Do they have the same concers you think they should have? Is everybody on the same page? Do you know?