Six honest

Creativity and team building

In what seems like a past life I would occassionaly be involved in “team building activities”. I did not enjoy these events.

“now remember, there’s no I in team”.

“I” know there isn’t, and yet, I surely there is. Do the ego and id, and super ego of individuals who work as part of a team really cease to exist, simply because the nature of their work means that there is some form of co-dependency? I think not.

My argument was then and is now, that teams and team work matter inside the fabric of the business where the co-dependency actually takes place not in a completely false environment that just has to be gotten through.

Building teams and the culture where they can survive and flourish is serious management business.  It’s difficult, and it’s an in-house 24/7 responsibility. It can’t be abdicated to a group of ex military types who can show you how to abseil. If only it was that simple.

Creativity, or more specifically “creative problem solving” strikes me as a similar challenge to businesses. It’s difficult to deny the importance of creativity and innovation to businesses. Particularly those that are looking to grow or adapt into the future. However, pinning these things down, and embedding them is a much more difficult challenge. You can get a group of people together and encourage and support them in some kind of creative activity. Chocolate making for example. But does this actually do anything to boost the creativity of the fundamentally non creative? Doesn’t it simply become a gentle form of abseiling, taxing the brain instead of the body?

I used to manage a team and would do everything that I could think of to make them solve problems if not creatively, then at least deeply. “No more sticking plasters, let’s get to the root of the problem. Let’s do it together this time, so that next time you can be more autonomous”. And yet next time, all eyes were still on the manager.

Can and do these development activities and approaches make us more appreciative of difference and diversity? At best, I would hope so. Do they make individuals into team players, or non creative people creative? On balance I think not. The issues are much deeper and more challenging to change, if change is possible at all. I can think of one accountant who is the least creative human that I have met to date. There is black, there is white. There is nothing else. His offspring may have the potential for creativity, but his mind is simply not wired to allow it in him. I know another accountant who is open to all kinds of thinking, possibly to the detriment of the accuracy of the accounts.

There are no easy answers simply challenges that are worth the effort if businesses are to flourish.