The courage to be creative

Travelling home on the Tube last night, I grabbed one of the morning newspapers left on the seats. It was The Times Career supplement. Bored, I scanned the paper anyway and found an article titled "New Ideas Pay Dividends", which declared "employees freed to think imaginatively are more likely to produce better work". Intrigued, I read on.

"Creativity was once regarded as subversive and imagination was seen as a seed of insurrection. Companies wanted compliant workers, not ones who had ideas. Today, some companies still regard creativity with a touch of suspicion, even though create means nothing more than to bring into existence." Dr Marilyn Freyer of the Creativity Centre says "creativity is about producing the best you can". Creativity is a motivator so how can it be maximised? "Try pushing the boundaries" she says, "People assume that they can't do things". Without the freedom to be creative, many of the less independent people "will not do their best and the organisation will not grow".

Creativity requires imagination, expertise, flexible and lateral thinking, and motivation. Scrum's self-organizing team gives individual members an empowered status with the freedom to be creative, the authority to decide the right thing to do and how to do it, and the facilities to learn and adapt to attain improvement. In return, each team member must have the courage to participate proactively in the scrum team, and to be openly expressive and creative. If they don't they will not be doing their best and the team will not advance. To convert creativity into productivity, each team member must also be diligent, persistent and committed. "Imagination without implementation is like a car without wheels".

Further reading on self-organizing teams:
1. Mishkin Berteig on Agile Work Uses Lean Thinking - Team Self-Organization.
2. Ken Schwaber on Self Organization [pdf]
3. Diana Larson on Team Agility: Exploring Self-Organizing Software Development Teams [pdf]
4. Esther Derby on Self Organization


Tags: agile, scrum

posted by Simon Baker @ permalink
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