Paper Example on Promoting Individual Creativity

Executive Summary

Bank Muscat is the largest is the largest provider of financial services in Oman. The company shows a strong presence in different areas like corporate banking, treasury, investment, and retail banking, as well as management of assets. As an employee of the company, I encourage different companies to promote individual creativity and innovation, which would create a supportive work environment. Creativity will change the way in which individuals within the companies do things. By promoting individual creativity, entrepreneurship will be enhanced at different levels of the organization thereby boosting company profits through early product innovation. One of the recommendations for the company is that its employees should ensure effective communication in the innovation process. Employees in Bank Muscat and other enterprises can also build a diverse team that has a variety of skills and strengths.

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Introduction

This paper aims at evaluating the aspect of individual creativity as an employee of Bank Muscat. It will involve the identification of the individual blocks, which inhibit the process and identify the alternative approaches that can be incorporated to promote individual creativity and innovation. In evaluation and synthesis, contemporary theories will be used for proper understanding of creativity and innovation in the company's context. Ideally, creativity and innovation go hand in hand. By encouraging employees to explore new areas to get innovative ideas, an organization will acquire cost-effective solutions to its business processes (Dawson & Adriopoulos 2014). Stimulating creativity also leads to an increase in organizational productivity. Creative ideas bring fresh perspectives to the management of the organization. However, creative thinking may be difficult for most people due to lack of direction, clear goals and objectives. Fear of making mistakes may also deter creative thinking.

Analysis

Importantly, theorists have incorporated different models that individuals can use to promote creative thinking. According to Gilson and Gitchfield (2017), Graham Wallas came up with a model that contains five stages involved in creative thinking. The first stage is the preparation that focuses on the problem while exploring the dimensions of the problem. However, the problem would be mulled in the incubation stage (Caniels & Rietzschel, 2015). The third stage is an intimation that involves inkling that a solution is on the way to help deal with the problem. Discovery and verification of the solution as an effective one would also be crucial. The theory uses a structured approach to enhance creative thinking and solve problems creatively.

Individual Perspectives on Creativity in Management

As an employee of Bank Muscat, I would encourage building a diverse team to promote individual creativity and innovation of the employees within the company. The team will have adequate skills and strengths, as well as encourage healthy debate between the management team and other employees. Through the team, diverse views and opinions will be encouraged (Anderson et al. 2014). In most cases, when leaders fail to promote experimentation and do not support failure, creativity, and innovation of the team tends to weaken. As such, leaders need to inspire the aspirations of teams within the company. By having the right mindset, individual employees will find it easy to explore new ideas that promote innovation. For employees to develop, they should be allowed to bring their best to accomplish the set organizational goals (Fay et al. 2015). Conversely, whether an organization requires radical or incremental innovation, the dynamism of creativity at the individual level is vital for the innovation process. When individual employees are creative, they will find it easy to search for new knowledge as they learn and experiment with a range of concepts. However, such individuals need to uphold the best practices that promote creativity.

The Theoretical Concept Underpinning Individual Blocks to Creative Thinking

Even though employees may work hard with the aim of promoting creativity and innovation, some individual blocks and barriers exist that interfere with the process of creative thinking. These blocks include a lack of motivation and trust. In the development of partnerships across diverse groups of employees, motivation is an essential aspect. Lack of motivation leads to teamwork failure hence making it difficult to come up with new ideas for innovation. When the employees do not trust one another, they cannot share their ideas and opinions with colleagues to create the most suitable innovative ideas (Roth, Schneckenberg & Tsai 2015). Another obstacle is lack of acceptance and inability to tolerate criticism in situations of conflict. Usually, criticizing individual employees affects them adversely. As such, they will be confined to specific ideas and are not capable of developing new ones due to fear of criticism. In essence, a team would not participate actively in the company processes aimed at promoting creative thinking.

Hon and Lui (2016) assert that Authoritarian management may also affect the aspect of creative thinking of individual employees negatively. When the managers oppose any change that the employees want to bring forth, the personnel will feel left out in the organizational processes. Individuals may also lack appropriate channels through which they can express and input new ideas. These people would want to share the ideas with others but are not able to find the proper avenues to do so. Therefore, the employees may feel that there is no reason to involve them in the innovation process.

How Structured Techniques, or Alternative Approaches, Might Be Used to Enhance Creativity and Creative Thinking

For organizations, individual employees can liberate creativity and creative thinking by incorporating efficient techniques to prevent the obstacles. One of the approaches to promote creative thinking is through collaboration and teamwork. These will enhance diversity that consequently leads to creativity. Amabile and Pratt (2016) affirm that collaboration encourages the search for new information and perspectives, which lead to proper decision-making, as well as problem-solving. As such, an individual employee should show their co-workers the value of their efforts as they work together and create new ideas. Another approach is by ensuring accountability (Ng & Lucianetti 2016). An individual who is accountable understands that other people will know when they do the right thing or not thereby fostering creativity by working to achieve the best. The co-workers will show some sense of respect as one takes ownership of the projects within a company. Additionally, promoting effective communication is vital for improving creative thinking. Communication enhances the relationship between different employees. Therefore, they will be free to share their ideas and find positive ways to help each other.

Conclusion

Creativity and innovation are essential skills for achieving success in organizations. Dealing with problems in the business platform requires creative insights and new ideas that provide suitable solutions. When individual creativity is stimulated, employees explore unique ideas that increase the overall productivity of an organization. The new areas that employees identify can be used for innovation within the organizational platform (Sarooghi et al. 2015). Ideally, managing innovation and creativity requires a proper understanding between managers and individual employees. Through this, the employees will be able to integrate innovative ideas for the success of an enterprise.

Moreover, innovation and creativity make it easy to understand the knowledge gaps that may exist and provide amicable solutions to such gaps. When an employee does not trust the co-workers, there may be constraints to creative thinking due to the inability to share ideas and express unique perspectives freely. At circumstances, people may fear failure and criticisms hence they would not let others know what they think even if their ideas are innovative. Improved relationships and interaction among individuals facilitate teamwork. Through teamwork, employees can correct their colleagues in areas that they may not understand correctly. Teamwork also influences the decision-making process, which determines the effectiveness of solutions to a particular problem.

Recommendations

Creativity and innovation are inevitable in organizations since the workplace environment has become so competitive that business enterprises have to develop processes, which promote innovation. However, to ensure that this is achieved, there should be effective communication that facilitates sharing of information across all the organizational levels. Concisely, effective communication is key to good relationships within the workplace. The relationships enable employees to inquire from their colleagues hence enabling them to come up with informed decisions, as well as understand how to deal with conflict (Schippers, West, & Dawson 2015). Communication would also improve employee engagement in different ways such as allowing employees to understand better whatever motivates them. They will also be able to cultivate talents for enhancing individual creativity and innovation.

Another recommendation is building a diverse team in the organization. A diverse team may comprise of individuals with different needs, ideas, opinions, skills and areas of strength (Roth et al. 2015). Through the team, employees will come up with creative ways to improve the workplace. They would also foster imagination and solve problems amicably. The organization should also build connections and nurture creative organizational culture. In this way, various individuals will be involved in the creation of feedback loops, as well as engage in experimentation process to promote creativity and innovation.

Reference List

Amabile, T.M. and Pratt, M.G., 2016. The dynamic componential model of creativity and innovation in organizations: Making progress, making meaning. Research in Organizational Behavior, 36, pp.157-183.

Anderson, N., Potocnik, K. and Zhou, J., 2014. Innovation and creativity in organizations: A state-of-the-science review, prospective commentary, and guiding framework. Journal of management, 40(5), pp.1297-1333.

Caniels, M.C. and Rietzschel, E.F., 2015. Organizing creativity: Creativity and innovation under constraints. Creativity and Innovation Management, 24(2), pp.184-196.

Dawson, P. and Andriopoulos, C., 2014. Managing change, creativity and innovation. Sage.

Dong, Y., Bartol, K.M., Zhang, Z.X. and Li, C., 2017. Enhancing employee creativity via individual skill development and team knowledge sharing: Influences of dualfocused transformational leadership. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 38(3), pp.439-458.

Fay, D., Shipton, H., West, M.A. and Patterson, M., 2015. Teamwork and organizational innovation: The moderating role of the HRM context. Creativity and Innovation Management, 24(2), pp.261-277.

Gilson, L.L. and Litchfield, R...