Five ways to encourage creativity

Passion: Fuel it! Create a team that’s passionate about what it does and no mountain will ever seem too high to scale. Give each member a sense of purpose, encourage teamwork and, most importantly, ensure that they have fun. All work and no play makes very dull ‘creatives’.

Ideas: Celebrate them! Don’t pay lip service to innovation and then punish, rather reward risk-takers and free thinkers. Creativity thrives in a free environment and dies the minute you spell out limits. In a creative culture, rewards come in many forms: money, yes, but great businesses also celebrate creativity through praise, career opportunities and perks. Celebrate the ideas of your team members. 

Courage: Live it! Urge your people to speak their minds. Be bold and encourage boldness. Risk taking is imperative if one has to build a creative company. Of course, the challenge lies in how smart you can make those risks. But before attempting anything, help your people to banish fear of failure, the single biggest obstacle in any creative process.

Autonomy: Foster it! Have the confidence to allow others to take decisions. Teams that can call their own shots are better equipped to produce valuable creative output and feel more ownership and pride in what they create. Chasing approvals at every step kills the spontaneity of the creative process. Moreover, granting of autonomy is an indication of extended trust. 

Fail forward: Believe it! Rather than immediately characterising something that doesn’t work as a ‘failure’, position it as an experiment. These experiments can be called ‘failing forward’, because each one leads you a step closer to the solution. The key is to fail quickly and bounce back fast. Flush out ideas that fail, learn from your mistakes, march ahead and help take the company to new creative heights.