Origins and occasion for creating Organizational Creativity

 

A Releasing Your Unlimited Creativity discussion topic

Copyright 2005 by K. Ferlic,   All Rights Reserved

 
RYUC Home   Why free?    Contact     Links     Programs/services      Contributions
 

Origins and occasion for creating Organizational Creativity
Occasion to create Organizational Creativity
Origins for organizational creativity

Organizational Creativity is presented as an application of the Releasing Your Unlimited Creativity understanding. However, the Releasing Your Unlimited Creativity understanding arose as a direct response to the creative needs of the organization. The organization issues centered on bridging the gap of ensuring safety and quality and yet having cost effective production. The organization issue which gave rise to the need for organizational creativity is discussed under that topics “The Unfoldment of the Calling,” the Conscious (Elective) Journey Into Creativity” and “The Essential Finding Within the Calling.”

In seeking to get to the root cause of the issues the author saw impacting safety in the workplace he was lead to explore creativity well beyond what most would see as necessary for organizational creativity. Yet this deeper level was required to understand the source of these issue rather than discarding them as “management,” “personnel,” or other nebulously defined issues. That is, many things discarded in the past were not being seen for what they truly represented. This was especially true in the types and kinds of organizational issues the author experienced surfacing around the Laboratory Integrated Prioritization System project.

To address the normally perceived needs of an organization and the deeper issues discovered as a result of the exploration into creativity, Organizational Creativity addresses two levels of understanding and creativity. Each of these levels have a separate but integrally linked origin.

One level addresses facing the world as we perceive it. This level of understanding is captured in the concept and organizational approach entitled “Orchestrating the Organization.” This level of organizational creativity is about creating an organization that is responsive to the steady state needs yet can quickly adapt to emergency type conditions or organizational upsets and change. The approach focuses on creating an organization that is able to quickly respond to unforseen and changing circumstances. In many ways the concept of “Orchestrating the Organization best captures how to achieve this end. The approach reflects both an awareness of the organizational needs and the uniqueness of the needs of the individual creative spirit. It encapsulates the lessons learned of years working in health and safety, emergency preparedness, operations and human development and training.

The second level of Organizational Creativity focused on a deeper understanding of the nature of Creation and our individual roles in creating the collective experience of the organization. It is a level of understanding that is not readily obvious and difficult form many to believe and was an unexpected finding by the author. Quite simply what the author found was not in any of the management texts, organizational philosophies or other management and organizational views. It was what the author saw in the workplace that could not be met by these normal organization and management approaches that eventually lead the author to exploring this level of understanding and creativity.

This second level best reflects the lessons learned gain in the exploration of creativity and the creative spirit and how they apply to the work place. Orchestrating the Organization, although created prior to the completion of the deeper exploration in the nature of the creative spirit, is nevertheless a very effective way that effectively addresses the issues without the need for any specific understanding of the creative spirit and/or work with the individual creative spirit. It provides a way to meet organizational needs and yet allows for the creative spirit to grow and unfold true to itself.

Occasion to create Organizational Creativity (Top)

The occasion to create Organizational Creativity occurred in two phases. The first phase was the creation of Orchestrating the Organization and consciously applying the concept. The occasion come in September 1996 - after the arrival of the awareness of our unlimited creativity and the need for each creative spirit to be protect and given the space to unfold to freely express it self. The occasion for the first phase to create Organizational Creativity was the arrival of the awareness of our unlimited creativity.

For years the author was trying to resolve a disconnect he observed between what he was taught as a manager and how he was expected to manage and what he knew about integrating the individual to the workplace and the organization. This disconnect was first observed in his college experience as the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps Band Company Commander and remained in the author’s awareness over twenty five years of management..

When the author become aware of the existence of the creative spirit in the workplace as a result of the Ultimate Accident, he suddenly realized the basis of the disconnect he was experiencing. He realized the concept of orchestrating and orchestra described the process which could provide the necessary integration what the current management approaches and philosophies were missing and resolve that disconnect.

What is interesting about Orchestrating the Organization was that it reflect the conscious expression and communication of what the author was trying to do throughout his management career to resolve the disconnect he saw. In the way the author talks about a conscious journey into creativity and an unconscious journey and a professional path and a mystical path to his life, the concept of Orchestrating the Organization brought to conscious realization an intuitive management style and married it with his conscious management experience. Prior to observing the creative spirit in the workplace he did not have a way to express what he intuitively knew. The author spent his last remaining organizational years consciously applying this concept before retiring to pursue a deeper exploration of creativity and the nature of the creative spirit.

The second phase of the occasion to create Organizational Creativity was to review what was learned about the creative spirit at the end of the deeper journey into exploring creativity and overlay the lessons learned with the organizational understanding. What was found was there was a great wisdom and depth to the concept of Orchestrating the Organization that already incorporated the understand and needs of the creative spirit. Little change was necessary. Rather, the foundation for the Orchestrating the Organization approach was strengthened, deepened and refined.

Origins for organizational creativity (Top)

As stated above in the discussion of the occasion for creating Organizational Creativity, for years the author was trying to resolve a disconnect he observed between what he was taught as a manager and how he was expected to manage and what he knew about integrating the individual to the workplace and the organization. The disconnect was first observed in his college experience as the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps Band Company Commander.

Yet the seeds for the disconnect were planted about a year earlier. The origins of Organizational Creativity lie in a single statement made the author’s undergraduate Physics Department Chairman, Dr. Beiduk. During the course of a discussion with the Department Chairman, Dr. Beiduk said, “It is in your postulates you find your problems.” Although the discussion was about explaining physics anomalies, the author expanded its application to any situation that failed to unfold as he expected. The author began to look at what organizations, situations, people and the like did not response as expected and why. The author began to look at the assumptions he or others were making about the situation. What he found surprised him

The author’s first management application of this principle was experienced within a year as the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps Band Company Commander described elsewhere. The overwhelming success of this experience caused the author to look at any management situation as orchestrating a orchestra. Exactly what this means is described under the topic, “Orchestrating the Organization.” At the time, he didn’t know why it worked but it caused him to be reasonable successful as a manager. That approach helped him to advance to oversee three of the Departments of Energy’s then premier laboratories as the Acting Director of the Office of Research, Development and Testing Facilities, Defense Programs.

The author started a conscious journey into organizational creativity as a result of about six years of trying to fix the issues identified in a 1987 Report by the National Academy of Sciences review of the Department of Energy’s nuclear facilities and operations. For years the author followed the Department’s and prescribed organizational and management lead as to how to approach the issues with marginal success. Success much less that he felt was appropriate. He knew something was missing. He began to question his assumptions and those of the organization.

In essence he was asked to address the issues in the way the organization and the management gurus thought they needed to be fixed. There was little or no creative exploration to see if what the organization thought they needed to do would really fix what was needed. Yet, nothing the organization was doing allowed and provided for the effectiveness desired. The solution they wanted would not fix the problem they faced. The organization was trying to use the same mind that created the problem to fix the problem. That cannot be done. The author found the organization lacked sufficient organizational creativity to truly think creatively and to think “out of the box” to fix the problems. Most individuals were captured by the organizational mind set and/or tunnel vision of one sort or another.

What this actually meant in practical terms was the organization lacked the ability to give the individuals the space to find truly creative solutions. It was too encumbered by the way it thought it had to address problems and solutions. More often than not, what was perceived as constraint such as laws regulations, funding levels and the like as the limitation on what could be done where not the constraints. The constraints were the limitations the individual’s own minds were creating about the situations they faced. Quite simply, the organization could not become sufficiently creative. So the question became “How does one create the organizational creativity that would allow the organization to find the solutions it needed?” So the author begin to take a serious look at what assumptions were being made about how an organization should be.

To explain the “why” the author initiated a review of prevalent management approaches and philosophies. To explore the creative needs, he began to look at the human development option through training and qualification of technical personal.

The review of prevalent management approaches and philosophies was to look for the common attributes. The idea was to educate the staff on the core attributes that were common to the various management approaches and integrate that training with the technical training. That in turn, would hopefully help make change in management philosophy easier to implement at all levels. A discussion of that adventure and surprise finding is provided in the topic, “A Search for Common Attributes.”

Since training and qualification was identified as one of the most significant issues the organization face which required a fix, that is where the author began to explore organizational creativity. The author began an exploration of accelerated learning techniques in the hope finding more creative and effective was of dealing with the identified training issues. At the time the author began to explore accelerated learning, it was already clear from the Laboratory Integration Prioritization System project that managers did not necessarily want to see the facts and/or the truth of a situation. The issue was perceive by most to only be a training and qualification issue. Yet why managers developed a blindness and a particular type of tunnel vison relative to the facts and facing the situation at hand as it existed, had yet to be revealed.

When the author stumbled into the Ultimate Accident and become aware of the creative spirit his whole reason for originally taking employment at the Department of Energy took new meaning. In digesting the “Essential Finding Within the Calling,” the author realizes exactly what was missing in the management approach taken by the Department of Energy and prevalent management and organizational thinking relative to the health and safety issues raised by the National Academy of Sciences and which he experienced throughout his management career. In addition, he saw the reason for the disconnect in management theory and philosophy and what he experienced in the workplace since his college experience.

As stated above in the discussion of the occasion for creating Organizational Creativity these observation gave rise to documenting his management lessons learned to that date in the Orchestrating the Organization approach. The issue centered on properly and effectively integrating and aligning the individual with the organization which paralleled the prevalent view of management and organizational theories. However, subsequent investigation into the concept of the creative spirit revealed that there is a “business to our life” that we need to attend and that there is an intention for our life that gives rise to our creative passion. It was discovered that is these are not addressed in some way by the life we live, including our work life, we will not find an inner happiness in life and may even cause some form of accident, illness disease or other misfortune to occur in our life. It was found to address the business of our life and/or the intention for our life, we needed to develop and intimate relationship with our creative spirit and nurture it needs.

Normally these concerns our are not considered something which involved the workplace. That is until we decide to have our accident at work or create a work related illness because our occupation is going so far opposite the business of our life. The author had spend many years look at accident scenarios, emergencies, disasters and the like in a variety of professional capacities as a investigator, inspector, emergency preparedness coordinator, trainer, safety officer and as a manager. It was these realizations and their impact on workplace safety that prompted the author to retire and investigate this creative spirit in greater detail for it was something missing in all of the organization systems at which he looked.

Incorporating the lesson learned from this journey to explore creativity and the creative spirt is captured in the Organizational Creativity and related applications web sites.

Related topics
Understanding from where a creation ultimately comes
Pieces of the puzzle

The Password Protected Area provides access to all currently posted (click for current loading) Releasing Your Unlimited Creativity related discussion files and applications.

Top

RYUC Home   Why free?    Contact     Links     Programs/services      Contributions