How to Kill Creativity Essay Example

How to Kill Creativity Essay How_to_Kill_Creativity_www. hbrreprints. org How to Kill Creativity by Teresa M. Amabile Included with this full-text Harvard Business Review article: 1 Article Summary The Idea in Brief—the core idea The Idea in Practice—putting the idea to work 2 How to Kill Creativity 12 Further Reading A list of related materials, with annotations to guide further exploration of the article’s ideas and applications Product 98501 How to Kill Creativity The Idea in Brief If the mantra for the current business climate is Innovate or die, why do so many companies seem to be choosing the latter option? Creativity gets killed much more often than it gets supported. The problem is not that managers smother creativity intentionally— the business need for coordination and control can inadvertently undermine employees’ ability to put existing ideas together in new and useful ways. To foster an innovative workplace, you need to pay attention to employees’ expertise, creative-thinking skills, and motivation. Of these three, employees’ motivation—specifically, their intrinsic motivation, or passion for a certain kind of challenge—is the most potent lever a manager can use to boost creativity and his company’s future success. The Idea in Practice In business, it isn’t enough for an idea to be original—the idea must also be useful, appropriate, and actionable. It must somehow influence the way business gets done—for example, by significantly improving a product or service. Within every individual, creativity exists as a function of three components: 1. expertise (technical, procedural, and intellectual knowledge). The broader the expertise, the larger the intellectual space a person has to explore and solve problems. 2. creative-thinking skills. We will write a custom essay sample on How to Kill Creativity specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on How to Kill Creativity specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on How to Kill Creativity specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer These aptitudes, shaped by an individual’s personality, determine how flexibly and imaginatively someone approaches problems. 3. motivation. Expertise and creativethinking skills provide an individual’s natural resources for creativity; motivation determines what a person will actually do. Extrinsic motivation comes from outside the individual—whether it’s the offer of a bonus or the threat of firing. Extrinsic motivation doesn’t prevent people from being creative, but in many situations it doesn’t boost their creativity either. On its own, it can’t prompt people to be passionate about their work; in fact, it can lead them to feel bribed or controlled. Intrinsic motivation, by contrast, comes from inside the individual. It’s a person’s abiding interest in certain activities or deep love of particular challenges. Employees are most creative when they are intrinsically motivated—in other words, when the work itself is motivating. It can be time consuming to try to influence an employee’s expertise or creative-thinking skills. It’s easier to affect someone’s intrinsic motivation—and the results are more immediate. Activities that enhance intrinsic motivation fall into a few general categories: challenge, freedom, resources, work-group features, supage 1 pervisory encouragement, and organizational support. Some specific recommendations: †¢ Match the right people with the right assignments, so employees are stretched but not stretched too thin. Work teams that have diverse perspectives will generate more creativity than homogenous groups. †¢ Give people freedom within the company’s goals. Tell them which mountain to climb, but let them decide how to climb it. Keep the objectives stable for a meaningful period of time—it’s hard to reach the top of a moving mountain. †¢ Allocate appropriate amounts of time and project resources. Organizations routinely kill creativity with fake deadlines— which cause distrust—and impossibly tight ones—which cause burnout. †¢ Let employees know that what they do matters. This will help them sustain their passion for the work. COPYRIGHT  © 2000 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Keep doing what you’re doing. Or, if you want to spark innovation, rethink how you motivate, reward, and assign work to people. How to Kill Creativity by Teresa M. Amabile COPYRIGHT  © 1998 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. When I consider all the organizations I have studied and worked with over the past 22 years, there can be no doubt: creativity gets killed much more often than it gets supported. For the most part, this isn’t because managers have a vendetta against creativity. On the contrary, most believe in the value of new and useful ideas. However, creativity is undermined unintentionally every day in work environments that were established—for entirely good reasons—to maximize business imperatives such as coordination, productivity, and control. Managers cannot be expected to ignore business imperatives, of course. But in working toward these imperatives, they may be inadvertently designing organizations that systematically crush creativity. My research shows that it is possible to develop the best of both worlds: organizations in which business imperatives are attended to and creativity ? urishes. Building such organizations, however, requires us to understand precisely what kinds of managerial practices foster creativity—and which kill it. What Is Business Creativity? We tend to associate creativity with the arts and to think of it as the expression of highly original ideas. Think of how Pablo Picasso reinvented the conventions of painting or how William Faulkner rede? ned ? ction. In business, originality isn’t enough. To be creative, an idea must also be appropriate—useful and actionable. It must somehow in? ence the way business gets done—by improving a product, for instance, or by opening up a new way to approach a process. The associations made between creativity and artistic originality often lead to confusion about the appropriate place of creativity in business organizations. In seminars, I’ve asked managers if there is any place they don’t want creativity in their companies. About 80% of the time, they answer, â€Å"Accounting. † Creativity, they seem to believe, belongs just in marketing and RD. But creativity can bene? t every function of an organization. Think of activity-based accounting. It was an invention—an accounting invention—and its impact on business harvard business review †¢ september–october 1998 page 2 How to Kill Creativity Teresa M. Amabile is the M. B. A. Class of 1954 Professor of Business Administration and senior associate dean for research at the Harvard Business School in Boston, Massachusetts. has been positive and profound. Along with fearing creativity in the accounting department—or really, in any unit that involves systematic processes or legal regulations— many managers also hold a rather narrow view of the creative process. To them, creativity refers to the way people think—how inventively they approach problems, for instance. Indeed, thinking imaginatively is one part of creativity, but two others are also essential: expertise and motivation. Expertise encompasses everything that a person knows and can do in the broad domain of his or her work. Take, for example, a scientist at a pharmaceutical company who is charged with developing a blood-clotting drug for hemophiliacs. Her expertise includes her basic talent for thinking scienti? ally as well as all the knowledge and technical abilities that she has in the ? elds of medicine, chemistry, biology, and biochemistry. It doesn’t matter how she acquired this expertise, whether through formal education, practical experience, or interaction with other professionals. Regardless, her expertise constitutes what the Nobel laureate, economist, and psychologist Herb Simon calls her â€Å"network of possible wanderings,† the intellectual space that she uses to explore and solve problems. The larger this space, the better. Creative thinking, as noted above, refers to how people approach problems and solutions— their capacity to put existing ideas together in new combinations. The skill itself depends quite a bit on personality as well as on how a person thinks and works. The pharmaceutical scientist, for example, will be more creative if her personality is such that she feels comfortable disagreeing with others—that is, if she naturally tries out solutions that depart from the status quo. Her creativity will be enhanced further if she habitually turns problems upside down and combines knowledge from seemingly disparate ? lds. For example, she might look to botany to help ? nd solutions to the hemophilia problem, using lessons from the vascular systems of plants to spark insights about bleeding in humans. As for work style, the scientist will be more likely to achieve creative success if she perseveres through a dif? cult problem. Indeed, plodding through long dry spells of tedious experim entation increases the probability of truly creative breakthroughs. So, too, does a work style that uses â€Å"incubation,† the ability to set aside dif? ult problems temporarily, work on something else, and then return later with a fresh perspective. Expertise and creative thinking are an individual’s raw materials—his or her natural resources, if you will. But a third factor— motivation—determines what people will actually do. The scientist can have outstanding educational credentials and a great facility in generating new perspectives to old problems. But if she lacks the motivation to do a particular job, she simply won’t do it; her expertise and creative thinking will either go untapped or be applied to something else. My research has repeatedly demonstrated, however, that all forms of motivation do not have the same impact on creativity. In fact, it shows that there are two types of motivation— extrinsic and intrinsic, the latter being far more essential for creativity. But let’s explore extrinsic ? rst, because it is often at the root of creativity problems in business. Extrinsic motivation comes from outside a person—whether the motivation is a carrot or a stick. If the scientist’s boss promises to reward her ? nancially should the blood-clotting project succeed, or if he threatens to ? e her should it fail, she will certainly be motivated to ? nd a solution. But this sort of motivation â€Å"makes† the scientist do her job in order to get something desirable or avoid something painful. Obviously, the most common extrinsic motivator managers use is money, which doesn’t necessarily stop people from being creative. But in many situations, it doesn’t help either, especially when it leads people to feel that they are being bribed or controlled. More important, money by itself doesn’t make employees passionate about their jobs. A cash reward can’t magically prompt people to ? d their work interesting if in their hearts they feel it is dull. But passion and interest—a person’s internal desire to do something—are what intrinsic motivation is all about. For instance, the scientist in our example would be intrinsically motivated if her work on the blood-clotting drug was sparked by an intense interest in hemophilia, a personal sense of challenge, or a drive to crack a problem that no one else has been able to solve. When people are intrinsically motivated, they engage in their work for the challenge and enjoyment of it. The work itself is motivating. In fact, in our creativity research, my students, colleagues, and I have found so harvard business review †¢ september–october 1998 page 3 How to Kill Creativity much evidence in favor of intrinsic motivation that we have articulated what we call the Intrinsic Motivation Principle of Creativity: people will be most creative when they feel motivated primarily by the interest, satisfaction, and challenge of the work itself—and not by external pressures. (For more on the differences between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, see the insert â€Å"The Creativity Maze. †) Managing Creativity Managers can in? ence all three components of creativity: expertise, creative-thinking skills, and motivation. But the fact is that the ? rst two are more dif? cult and time consuming to in? uence than motivation. Yes, regular scienti? c seminars and professional conferences will undoubtedly add to the scientist’s expertise in hemophilia and related ? elds. And trainin g in brainstorming, problem solving, and so-called lateral thinking might give her some new tools to use in tackling the job. But the time and money involved in broadening her knowledge and expanding her creative-thinking skills would be great. By contrast, our research has shown that intrinsic motivation can be increased considerably by even subtle changes in an organization’s environment. That is not to say that managers should give up on improving expertise and creative-thinking skills. But when it comes to pulling levers, they should know that those that affect intrinsic motivation will yield more immediate results. More speci? cally, then, what managerial practices affect creativity? They fall into six general categories: challenge, freedom, resources, work-group features, supervisory encouragement, and organizational support. These categories have emerged from more than two decades of research focused primarily on one question: What are the links between work environment and creativity? We have used three methodologies: experiments, interviews, and surveys. While controlled experiments allowed us to identify causal links, the interviews and surveys gave us insight into the richness and complexity of creativity within business organizations. We have studied dozens of companies and, within those, hundreds of individuals and teams. In each research initiative, our goal has been to identify which managerial practices are de? itively linked to positive creative outcomes and which are not. For instance, in one project, we interviewed dozens of employees from a wide variety of companies and industries and asked them to describe in detail the most and least creative events in their careers. We then closely studied the transcripts of those interviews, noting the managerial practices—or other patterns that appeared repeatedly in the successful creativity stories and, conversely, in those that were unsuccessful. Our research has also been bolstered by a quantitative survey instrument The Creativity Maze To understand the differences between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, imagine a business problem as a maze. One person might be motivated to make it through the maze as quickly and safely as possible in order to get a tangible reward, such as money—the same way a mouse would rush through for a piece of cheese. This person would look for the simplest, most straightforward path and then take it. In fact, if he is in a real rush to get that reward, he might just take the most beaten path and solve the problem exactly as it has been solved before. That approach, based on xtrinsic motivation, will indeed get him out of the maze. But the solution that arises from the process is likely to be unimaginative. It won’t provide new insights about the nature of the problem or reveal new ways of looking at it. The rote solution probably won’t move the business forward. Another person might have a different approach to the maze. She might actually ? nd the process of wander ing around the different paths—the challenge and exploration itself—fun and intriguing. No doubt, this journey will take longer and include mistakes, because any maze— any truly complex problem—has many more dead ends than exits. But when the intrinsically motivated person ? nally does ? nd a way out of the maze—a solution—it very likely will be more interesting than the rote algorithm. It will be more creative. There is abundant evidence of strong intrinsic motivation in the stories of widely recognized creative people. When asked what makes the difference between creative scientists and those who are less creative, the Nobel prize–winning physicist Arthur Schawlow said, â€Å"The labor-oflove aspect is important. The most successful scientists often are not the most talented, but the ones who are just impelled by curiosity. They’ve got to know what the answer is. † Albert Einstein talked about intrinsic motivation as â€Å"the enjoyment of seeing and searching. † The novelist John Irving, in discussing the very long hours he put into his writing, said, â€Å"The unspoken factor is love. The reason I can work so hard at my writing is that it’s not work for me. † And Michael Jordan, perhaps the most creative basketball player ever, had a â€Å"love of the game† clause inserted into his contract; he insisted that he be free to play pick-up basketball games any time he wished. Creative people are rarely superstars like Michael Jordan. Indeed, most of the creative work done in the business world today gets done by people whose names will never be recorded in history books. They are people with expertise, good creative-thinking skills, and high levels of intrinsic motivation. And just as important, they work in organizations where managers consciously build environments that support these characteristics instead of destroying them. harvard business review †¢ september–october 1998 page 4 How to Kill Creativity Deciding how much time and money to give to a team or project is a judgment call that can either support or kill creativity. called KEYS. Taken by employees at any level of an organization, KEYS consists of 78 questions used to assess various work-place conditions, such as the level of support for creativity from top-level managers or the organization’s approach to evaluation. Taking the six categories that have emerged from our research in turn, let’s explore what managers can do to enhance creativity—and what often happens instead. Again, it is important to note that creativity-killing practices are seldom the work of lone managers. Such practices usually are systemic—so widespread that they are rarely questioned. Challenge. Of all the things managers can do to stimulate creativity, perhaps the most ef? cacious is the deceptively simple task of matching people with the right assignments. Managers can match people with jobs that play to their expertise and their skills in creative thinking, and ignite intrinsic motivation. Perfect matches stretch employees’ abilities. The amount of stretch, however, is crucial: not so little that they feel bored but not so much that they feel overwhelmed and threatened by a loss of control. Making a good match requires that managers possess rich and detailed information about their employees and the available assignments. Such information is often dif? cult and time consuming to gather. Perhaps that’s why good matches are so rarely made. In fact, one of the most common ways managers kill creativity is by not trying to obtain the information necessary to make good connections between people and jobs. Instead, something of a shotgun wedding occurs. The most eligible employee is wed to the most eligible—that is, the most urgent and open—assignment. Often, the results are predictably unsatisfactory for all involved. Freedom. When it comes to granting freedom, the key to creativity is giving people autonomy concerning the means—that is, concerning process—but not necessarily the ends. People will be more creative, in other words, if you give them freedom to decide how to climb a particular mountain. You needn’t let them choose which mountain to climb. In fact, clearly speci? ed strategic goals often enhance people’s creativity. I’m not making the case that managers should leave their subordinates entirely out of goal- or agenda-setting discussions. But they should understand that inclusion in those dis- cussions will not necessarily enhance creative output and certainly will not be suf? cient to do so. It is far more important that whoever sets the goals also makes them clear to the organization and that these goals remain stable for a meaningful period of time. It is dif? ult, if not impossible, to work creatively toward a target if it keeps moving. Autonomy around process fosters creativity because giving people freedom in how they approach their work heightens their intrinsic motivation and sense of ownership. Freedom about process also allows people to approach problems in ways that make the most of their expertise and their creative-thinking skills. The task may end up being a stretch for them, but they can use their strengths to meet the challenge. How do executives mismanage freedom? There are two common ways. First, managers tend to change goals frequently or fail to de? ne them clearly. Employees may have freedom around process, but if they don’t know where they are headed, such freedom is pointless. And second, some managers fall short on this dimension by granting autonomy in name only. They claim that employees are â€Å"empowered† to explore the maze as they search for solutions but, in fact, the process is proscribed. Employees diverge at their own risk. Resources. The two main resources that affect creativity are time and money. Managers need to allot these resources carefully. Like matching people with the right assignments, deciding how much time and money to give to a team or project is a sophisticated judgment call that can either support or kill creativity. Consider time. Under some circumstances, time pressure can heighten creativity. Say, for instance, that a competitor is about to launch a great product at a lower price than your offering or that society faces a serious problem and desperately needs a solution—such as an AIDS vaccine. In such situations, both the time crunch and the importance of the work legitimately make people feel that they must rush. Indeed, cases like these would be apt to increase intrinsic motivation by increasing the sense of challenge. Organizations routinely kill creativity with fake deadlines or impossibly tight ones. The former create distrust and the latter cause burnout. In either case, people feel overcontrolled and unful? lled—which invariably damages motivation. Moreover, creativity often harvard business review †¢ september–october 1998 page 5 How to Kill Creativity In many companies, new ideas are met not with open minds but with time-consuming layers of evaluation. takes time. It can be slow going to explore new concepts, put together unique solutions, and wander through the maze. Managers who do not allow time for exploration or do not schedule in incubation periods are unwittingly standing in the way of the creative process. When it comes to project resources, again managers must make a ? t. They must determine the funding, people, and other resources that a team legitimately needs to complete an assignment—and they must know how much the organization can legitimately afford to allocate to the assignment. Then they must strike a compromise. Interestingly, adding more resources above a â€Å"threshold of suf? ciency† does not boost creativity. Below that threshold, however, a restriction of resources can dampen creativity. Unfortunately, many managers don’t realize this and therefore often make another mistake. They keep resources tight, which pushes people to channel their creativity into ? nding additional resources, not in actually developing new products or services. Another resource that is misunderstood when it comes to creativity is physical space. It is almost conventional wisdom that creative teams need open, comfortable of? es. Such an atmosphere won’t hurt creativity, and it may even help, but it is not nearly as important as other managerial initiatives that in? uence creativity. Indeed, a problem we have seen time and time again is managers paying attention to creating the â€Å"right† physical space at the expense of more high-impact actions, such as matching people to the right assignments and granting freedom around work processes. Work-Group Features. If you want to build teams that come up with creative ideas, you must pay careful attention to the design of such teams. That is, you must create mutually supportive groups with a diversity of perspectives and backgrounds. Why? Because when teams comprise people with various intellectual foundations and approaches to work— that is, different expertise and creative thinking styles—ideas often combine and combust in exciting and useful ways. Diversity, however, is only a starting point. Managers must also make sure that the teams they put together have three other features. First, the members must share excitement over the team’s goal. Second, members must display a willingness to help their teammates through dif? ult periods and setbacks. And third, every member must recognize the unique knowledge and perspective that other members bring to the table. These factors enhance not only intrinsic motivation but also expertise and creative-thinking skills. Again, creating such teams requires managers to have a deep understanding of their people. They must be able to assess them not just f or their knowledge but for their attitudes about potential fellow team members and the collaborative process, for their problem-solving styles, and for their motivational hot buttons. Putting together a team with just the right chemistry—just the right level of diversity and supportiveness—can be dif? cult, but our research shows how powerful it can be. It follows, then, that one common way managers kill creativity is by assembling homogeneous teams. The lure to do so is great. Homogeneous teams often reach â€Å"solutions† more quickly and with less friction along the way. These teams often report high morale, too. But homogeneous teams do little to enhance expertise and creative thinking. Everyone comes to the table with a similar mind-set. They leave with the same. Supervisory Encouragement. Most managers are extremely busy. They are under pressure for results. It is therefore easy for them to let praise for creative efforts—not just creative successes but unsuccessful efforts, too—fall by the wayside. One very simple step managers can take to foster creativity is to not let that happen. The connection to intrinsic motivation here is clear. Certainly, people can ? nd their work interesting or exciting without a cheering section—for some period of time. But to sustain such passion, most people need to feel as if their work matters to the organization or to some important group of people. Otherwise, they might as well do their work at home and for their own personal gain. Managers in successful, creative organizations rarely offer speci? c extrinsic rewards for particular outcomes. However, they freely and generously recognize creative work by individuals and teams—often before the ultimate commercial impact of those efforts is known. By contrast, managers who kill creativity do so either by failing to acknowledge innovative efforts or by greeting them with skepticism. In many companies, for instance, new ideas are met not with open minds but with timeconsuming layers of evaluation—or even with arvard business review †¢ september–october 1998 page 6 How to Kill Creativity harsh criticism. When someone suggests a new product or process, senior managers take weeks to respond. Or they put that person through an excruciating critique. Not every new idea is worthy of consideration, of course, but in many organizations, managers habitually demonstr ate a reaction that damages creativity. They look for reasons to not use a new idea instead of searching for reasons to explore it further. An interesting psychological dynamic underlies this phenomenon. Our research shows that people believe that they will appear smarter to their bosses if they are more critical—and it often works. In many organizations, it is professionally rewarding to react critically to new ideas. Unfortunately, this sort of negativity bias can have severe consequences for the creativity of those being evaluated. How? First, a culture of evaluation leads people to focus on the external rewards and punishments associated with their output, thus increasing the presence of extrinsic motivation and its potentially negative effects on intrinsic motivation. Second, such a culture creates a climate of fear, which again undermines intrinsic motivation. Finally, negativity also shows up in how managers treat people whose ideas don’t pan out: often, they are terminated or otherwise warehoused within the organization. Of course, ultimately, ideas do need to work; remember that creative ideas in business must be new and useful. The dilemma is that you can’t possibly know beforehand which ideas will pan out. Furthermore, dead ends can sometimes be very enlightening. In many business situations, nowing what doesn’t work can be as useful as knowing what does. But if people do not perceive any â€Å"failure value† for projects that ultimately do not achieve commercial success, they’ll become less and less likely to experiment, explore, and connect with their work on a personal level. Their intrinsic motivation will evaporate. Supervisory encouragement comes in other forms besides rewards and punishment. Another way managers can support creativity is to serve as role models, persevering through tough problems as well as encouraging collaboration and communication within the team. Such behavior enhances all three components of the creative process, and it has the added virtue of being a high-impact practice that a single manager can take on his or her own. It is better still when all managers in an organization serve as role models for the attitudes and behaviors that encourage and nurture creativity. Organizational Support. Encouragement from supervisors certainly fosters creativity, but creativity is truly enhanced when the entire organization supports it. Such support is the job of an organization’s leaders, who must put in place appropriate systems or procedures and emphasize values that make it clear that creative efforts are a top priority. For example, creativity-supporting organizations consistently reward creativity, but they avoid using money to â€Å"bribe† people to come up with innovative ideas. Because monetary rewards make people feel as if they are being controlled, such a tactic probably won’t work. At the same time, not providing suf? cient recognition and rewards for creativity can spawn negative feelings within an organization. People can feel used, or at the least under-appreciated, for their creative efforts. And it is rare to ? nd the energy and passion of intrinsic motivation coupled with resentment. Most important, an organization’s leaders can support creativity by mandating information sharing and collaboration and by ensuring that political problems do not fester. Information sharing and collaboration support all three components of creativity. Take expertise. The more often people exchange ideas and data by working together, the more knowledge they will have. The same dynamic can be said for creative thinking. In fact, one way to enhance the creative thinking of employees is to expose them to various approaches to problem solving. With the exception of hardened misanthropes, information sharing and collaboration heighten peoples’ enjoyment of work and thus their intrinsic motivation. Whether or not you are seeking to enhance creativity, it is probably never a good idea to let political problems fester in an organizational setting. In? ghting, politicking, and gossip are particularly damaging to creativity because they take peoples’ attention away from work. That sense of mutual purpose and excitement so central to intrinsic motivation invariably lessens when people are cliquish or at war with one another. Indeed, our research suggests that intrinsic motivation increases when people are aware that those around them are excited by their jobs. When political problems abound, people feel that their work is threatened by harvard business review †¢ september–october 1998 page 7 How to Kill Creativity others’ agendas. Finally, politicking also undermines expertise. The reason? Politics get in the way of open communication, obstructing the ? ow of information from point A to point B. Knowledge stays put and expertise suffers. From the Individual to the Organization Can executives build entire organizations that support creativity? The answer is yes. Consider the results of an intensive research project we recently completed called the Team Events Study. Over the course of two years, we studied more than two dozen teams in seven companies across three industries: high tech, consumer products, and chemicals. By following each team every day through the entire course of a creative project, we had a window into the details of what happened as the project progressed—or failed to progress, as the case may be. We did this through daily con? dential e-mail reports from every person on each of the teams. At the end of each project, and at several points along the way, we used con? dential reports from company experts and from team members to assess the level of creativity used in problem solving as well as the overall success of the project. As might be expected, the teams and the companies varied widely in how successful they were at producing creative work. One organization, which I will call Chemical Central Research, seemed to be a veritable hotbed of creativity. Chemical Central supplied its parent organization with new formulations for a wide variety of industrial and consumer products. In many respects, however, members of Chemical Central’s development teams were unremarkable. They were well educated, but no more so than people in many other companies we had studied. The company was doing well ? nancially, but not enormously THE THREE COMPONENTS OF CREATIVITY Expertise is, in a word, knowledge—technical, procedural, and intellectual. Expertise Creativity Creativethinking skills Motivation harvard business review †¢ september–october 1998 page 8 How to Kill Creativity Some creative ideas soar; others sink. To enhance creativity, there should always be a safety net below the people who make suggestions. better than most other companies. What seemed to distinguish this organization was the quality of leadership at both the topmanagement level and the team level. The way managers formed teams, communicated with them, and supported their work enabled them to establish an organization in which creativity was continually stimulated. We saw managers making excellent matches between people and assignments again and again at Chemical Central. On occasion, team members were initially unsure of whether they were up to the challenge they were given. Almost invariably, though, they found their passion and interest growing through a deep involvement in the work. Their managers knew to match them with jobs that had them working at the top of their competency levels, pushing the frontiers of their skills, and developing new competencies. But managers were careful not to allow too big a gap between employees’ assignments and their abilities. Moreover, managers at Chemical Central collaborated with the teams from the outset of a project to clarify goals. The ? al goals, however, were set by the managers. Then, at the day-to-day operational level, the teams were given a great deal of autonomy to make their own decisions about product development. Throughout the project, the teams’ leaders and top-level managers periodically checked to see that work was directed toward the overall goals. But people were given real free dom around the implementation of the goals. As for work-group design, every Chemical Central team, though relatively small (between four and nine members), included members of diverse professional and ethnic backgrounds. Occasionally, that diversity led to communication dif? ulties. But more often, it sparked new insights and allowed the teams to come up with a wider variety of ways to accomplish their goals. One team, for example, was responsible for devising a new way to make a major ingredient for one of the company’s most important products. Because managers at Chemical Central had worked consciously to create a diverse team, it happened that one member had both a legal and a technical background. This person realized that the team might well be able to patent its core idea, giving the company a clear advantage in a new market. Because team members were mutually supportive, that ember was willing and eager to work closely with the inventor. Together, these individuals hel ped the team navigate its way through the patent application process. The team was successful and had fun along the way. Supervisory encouragement and organizational support were also widespread at Chemical Central. For instance, a member of one team received a company award as an outstanding scientist even though, along the way, he had experienced many failures as well as successes. At one point, after spending a great deal of time on one experiment, he told us, â€Å"All I came up with was a pot of junk. Still, the company did not punish or warehouse him because of a creative effort that had failed. Instead, he was publicly lauded for his consistently creative work. Finally, Chemical Central’s leaders did much to encourage teams to seek support from all units within their divisions and to encourage collaboration across all quarters. The general manager of the research unit himself set an example, offering both strategic and technical ideas whenever teams approached him for help. Indeed, he explicitly made cross-team support a priority among top scientists in the organization. As a result, such support was expected and recognized. For example, one team was about to test a new formulation for one of the company’s major products. Because the team was small, it had to rely on a materials-analysis group within the organization to help conduct the tests. The analysis group not only helped out but also set aside generous blocks of time during the week before testing to help the team understand the nature and limits of the information the group would provide, when they would have it, and what they would need from the team to support them effectively. Members of the team were con? dent that they could rely on the materials-analysis group throughout the process, and the trials went well—despite the usual technical dif? culties encountered in such testing. By contrast, consider what we observed at another company in our study, a consumer products company we’ll call National Houseware Products. For years, National had been well known for its innovation. But recently, the company had been restructured to accommodate a major growth spurt, and many senior managers had been ? red or harvard business review †¢ september–october 1998 age 9 How to Kill Creativity transferred. National’s work environment had undergone drastic changes. At the same time, new product successes and new business ideas seemed to be slowing to a trickle. Interestingly, the daily reports of the Team Events Study revealed that virtually all creativity killers were present. Managers undermined autonomy by continually changing goals and interfering with processes. At one quarterly review meeting, for example, four priorities that had been de? ned by management at the previous quarterly review meeting were not even mentioned. In another instance, a product that had been identi? ed as the team’s number one project was suddenly dropped without explanation. Resources were similarly mismanaged. For instance, management perennially put teams under severe and seemingly arbitrary time and resource constraints. At ? rst, many team members were energized by the ? re-? ghting atmosphere. They threw themselves into their work and rallied. But after a few months, their verve had diminished, especially because the pressures had proved meaningless. But perhaps National’s managers damaged creativity most with their approach to evaluation. They were routinely critical of new suggestions. One employee told us that he was afraid to tell his managers about some radical ideas that he had developed to grow his area of the business. The employee was wildly enthusiastic about the potential for his ideas but ultimately didn’t mention them to any of his bosses. He wondered why he should bother talking about new ideas when each one was studied for all its ? aws instead of its potential. Suggested Readings Teresa M. Amabile, Creativity in Context: Update to the Social Psychology of Creativity (Boulder, Colo. : Westview Press, 1996). Teresa M. Amabile, Robert Burnside, and Stanley S. Gryskiewicz, User’s Manual for KEYS: Assessing the Climate for Creativity (Greensboro, N. C. : Center for Creative Leadership, 1998). Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Frontiers of Management (Boston, Mass. : Harvard Business School Press, 1997). Through its actions, management had too often sent the message that any big ideas about how to change the status quo would be carefully scrutinized. Those individuals brave enough to suggest new ideas had to endure long—often nasty—meetings, replete with suspicious questions. In another example, when a team took a new competitive pricing program to the boss, it was told that a discussion of the idea would have to wait another month. One exasperated team member noted, â€Å"We analyze so long, we’ve lost the business before we’ve taken any action at all! † Yet another National team had put in particularly long hours over a period of several weeks to create a radically improved version of a major product. The team succeeded in bringing out the product on time and in budget, and it garnered promising market response. But management acted as if everything were business as usual, providing no recognition or reward to the team. A couple of months later, when we visited the team to report the results of our study, we learned that the team leader had just accepted a job from a smaller competitor. He con? ded that although he felt that the opportunities for advancement and ultimate visibility may have been greater at National, he believed his work and his ideas would be valued more highly somewhere else. And ? nally, the managers at National allowed political problems to fester. Consider the time a National team came up with a great idea to save money in manufacturing a new product—which was especially urgent because a competitor had just come out with a similar product at a lower price. The plan was nixed. As a matter of â€Å"policy†Ã¢â‚¬â€a code word for long-held allegiances and rivalries within the company—the manufacturing division wouldn’t allow it. One team member commented, â€Å"If facts and ? gures instead of politics reigned supreme, this would be a no-brainer. There are no de? able cost savings from running the products where they do, and there is no counterproposal on how to save the money another way. It’s just ‘No! ’ because this is the way they want it. † Great Rewards and Risks The important lesson of the National and Chemical Central stories is that fostering creativity is in the hands of managers as they harv ard business review †¢ september–october 1998 page 10 How to Kill Creativity Fostering creativity often requires that managers radically change how they build and interact with work groups. think about, design, and establish the work environment. Creativity often requires that managers radically change the ways in which they build and interact with work groups. In many respects, it calls for a conscious culture change. But it can be done, and the rewards can be great. The risks of not doing so may be even greater. When creativity is killed, an organization loses a potent competitive weapon: new ideas. It can also lose the energy and commitment of its people. Indeed, in all my years of research into creativity, perhaps the most dif? cult part has been hearing people complain that they feel sti? d, frustrated, and shut down by their organizations. As one team member at National told us, â€Å"By the time I get home every day, I feel physically, emotionally, and intellectually drained. Help! † Even if organizations seemed trapped in organizational ecosystems that kill creativity—as in the case of National Houseware Products— it is still possible to effect widespread change. Consider a recent transformation a t Procter Gamble. Once a hotbed of creativity, PG had in recent years seen the number of its product innovations decline signi? cantly. In response, the company established Corporate New Ventures (CNV), a small cross-functional team that embodies many of the creativity-enhancing practices described in this article. In terms of challenge, for instance, members of the CNV team were allowed to elect themselves. How better to make sure someone is intrinsically motivated for an assignment than to ask for volunteers? Building a team from volunteers, it should be noted, was a major departure from standard PG procedures. Members of the CNV team also were given a clear, challenging strategic goal: to invent radical new roducts that would build the company’s future. Again departing from typical PG practices, the team was given enormous latitude around how, when, and where they approached their work. The list of how CNV broke with PG’s creativity-killing practices is a long one. On nearly every creativity-support dimension in the KEYS work-environment survey, CNV scored higher than national norms and higher than t he pre-CNV environment at PG. But more important than the particulars is the question: Has the changed environment resulted in more creative work? Undeniably so, and the evidence is convincing. In the three years since its inception, CNV has handed off 11 projects to the business sectors for execution. And as of early 1998, those products were beginning to ? ow out of the pipeline. The ?rst product, designed to provide portable heat for several hours’ relief of minor pain, was already in test marketing. And six other products were slated to go to test market within a year. Not surprisingly, given CNV’s success, PG is beginning to expand both the size and the scope of its CNV venture. Even if you believe that your organization fosters creativity, take a hard look for creativity killers. Some of them may be ? urishing in a dark corner—or even in the light. But rooting out creativity-killing behaviors isn’t enough. You have to make a conscious effort to support creativity. The result can be a truly innovative company where creativity doesn’t just survive but actually thrives. Reprint 98501 To order, see the next page or call 800-988-0886 or 6 17-783-7500 or go to www. hbrreprints. org harvard business review †¢ september–october 1998 page 11 How to Kill Creativity Further Reading ARTICLES One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees? by Frederick Herzberg Harvard Business Review September–October 1987 Product no. 88X Originally published in the January–February 1968 issue of HBR, this classic article offers enduring insights into the psychology of motivation, providing further explanation for why intrinsic motivation is more powerful than extrinsic. In common-sense, often humorous terms, Herzberg explores myths of motivation, outlines steps for job enrichment, and discusses the merits of various forms of the KITA (â€Å"kick in the ass†). This article includes an update by the author. Job Sculpting: The Art of Retaining Your Best People by Timothy Butler and James Waldroop Harvard Business Review September–October 1999 Product no. 282 Butler and Waldroop demonstrate how intrinsic m otivation can help companies address one of the thorniest problems in today’s economy: retaining top talent. Many managers are dangerously unfamiliar with the psychology of work satisfaction, which holds that employees are the most engaged when their responsibilities coincide with their â€Å"deeply embedded life interests. † These interests—the authors identify eight—don’t determine what people are good at; they drive the activities that make people happy. Once an employee’s life interests are known, manager and employee can customize work responsibilities through job sculpting—matching the employee to a job that allows her deeply embedded life interests to be expressed. BOOK Harvard Business Review on Breakthrough Thinking Harvard Business School Press 1999 Product no. 181X Amabile’s â€Å"How to Kill Creativity† is one of the eight articles in this collection. Other topics explored include identifying customer needs that customers themselves have not yet recognized, promoting new understanding of the competitive environment, and fostering innovation. Another article, â€Å"A Film Director’s Approach to Managing Creativity,† is an account of the filming of Night Moves. It describes how director Arthur Penn successfully managed stress, conflict, motivation, and other elements familiar to businesses. To Order For Harvard Business Review reprints and subscriptions, call 800-988-0886 or 617-783-7500. Go to www. hbrreprints. org For customized and quantity orders of Harvard Business Review article reprints, call 617-783-7626, or e-mai [emailprotected] harvard. edu page 12

All About Si, the French Adverb or Conjunction

All About Si, the French Adverb or Conjunction The French word si can be an adverb or a conjunction. Either way, si has several meanings and is used in numerous French constructions. Practicing the use of this word is important for grasping its nuances. Si If Si is the French word for if: Je ne sais pas si je veux y aller. (I dont know if I want to go.)Dis-moi si à §a te conviendra. (Tell me if that will work for you.)Et si je ne suis pas fatiguà ©? (And if Im not tired?)Si jà ©tais riche, jachà ¨terais une maison. (If I were rich, I would buy a house.) Si So Si can be used as an intensifier: Je suis si fatiguà ©. (Im so tired.)Jai si faim. (Im so hungry.)Je ne savais pas quil à ©tait si mignon. (I didnt know he was so cute.) Si As, So Si can make a comparison: Il nest pas si intelligent quil pense. (Hes not as smart as he thinks.)Ce nest pas si facile. (Its not as easy as that, Its not that easy.) Si While, Whereas Si can put two clauses in opposition: Sil est beau, sa femme est laide. (Whereas he is handsome, his wife is ugly.)Si tu es gentil, ton frà ¨re est mà ©chant. (Youre kind, while your brother is mean.) Si However, No Matter How Si can be followed by a subjunctive clause to express a concession: Si beau quil fasse, je ne peux pas sortir (No matter how nice the weather is, I cant go out)Si gentil que tu sois, je ne taime pas (However kind you are, I dont love you) Si Yes Si means yes in response to a negative question or statement: Tu ne vas pas venir? Si, je vais venir. (Youre not going to come? Yes, I am going to come.)Nas-tu pas dargent? Si, jen ai. (Dont you have any money? Yes, I do.)Jeanne nest pas prà ªte. Si, si! (Jeanne isnt ready. Yes, yes!) Si Did I Hear Correctly, Is This What Youre Asking? If someone asks a question and youre not sure (or cant believe) you heard correctly, you can request confirmation or clarification by repeating what you did hear with the word si:Si jai faim?(Are you asking) if Im hungry?(You couldnt really hear the question)Si je veux quoi?Youre asking if I want what?(Youre not sure you heard correctly; you heard Do you want a free TV?)Si jai combien denfants?Youre asking if I have how many kids?(You didnt hear how many, or you heard Do you have 7 kids?) Et Si What if, How About In informal French, et si is often tacked on the beginning of a suggestion (with the verb in the imperfect): Et si on allait au cinà ©? (How about going to the movies?)Et si tu amenais ton frà ¨re? (Why dont you bring your brother?)Et si on parlait damour? (What if we talked about love?)

Database Design Proposal Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Database Design Proposal - Article Example The proposed research is intended for a health facility. Like other organizations, the health facility comprises several departments. The departments are further divided into sub divisions dealing with an array of activities. There are divisions that deal with personnel management. A range of working staff is available for accurate running of the hospital. Each category deals with different equipment and duties. There are patients, who are the core business of a health facility. There are inpatients and outpatients suffering from different ailments. The system needs to keep track of their ages, dates of admission and discharge, health progress, treatments they undergo, whether or not they succumbed to their illnesses among others. From this scenario, it is obvious that the database needed to safeguard information of the health center must be efficient. This is massive information, and there are several challenges associated with such immense data. †¢ Problems of redundancy could arise in data storage. This means that the same data could be stored severally in different platforms of the organization’s database. This leads to wastage of time and storage space. Lack of coherence between the different data stored in relational tables could lead to broken database. This makes it hard for the data users to access all the relevant data on a particular subject. Due to the above problems, normalization of data is a mandatory process to avoid redundancy and data incoherence.

Media - A Fine Line Between Reporting the News and Creating the News Research Paper

Media - A Fine Line Between Reporting the News and Creating the News - Research Paper Example In actual sense, the journalists are the one that create the news by making them happen newsworthy. Most news organizations deliver news to the people, but they cannot always be where the news. This has led them to use the techniques of creating that could have happened. Through journalistic beats, we find the creation and reporting of news having a clear line to fill the pressures with news demand (Kenneth 45). To support this view, journalist beats being places where news events are usually expected to happen hence providing them with a steady stream of news. The crime report is usually created but not reported, example is the one that was on Toronto Star page A8 (Richard A8). This story is an example of news collected from provincial police officers and reported making it as though the journalist was at the courthouse. This excerpt from Toronto stars exhibits the way news is created and made to be reported. The w audience cannot question the news worthiness hence a fine line betwe en creating the news and reporting the news (Schudson

Play and How it Effects Children

Play and How it Effects Children The book Einstein Never Used Flashcards: How Our Children Really Learn- and Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less is a book that emphasizes one goal, the fact that it is a better for children to play instead of spending so many hours memorizing. After years of research, child development experts have come to a clear conclusion. This conclusion is that play is the best way for our children to learn. This book takes on the challenge of explaining why children do learn better by playing andsome ways to play and learn at the same time. Throughout this book we see facts like children who are prematurely pushed into regimented academic instruction display less creativity and enthusiasm for learning in later years. Some more good facts are that children who memorize isolated facts early in life show no better long-term retention than their peers and the fact that children who learn through play also develop social and emotional skills, which are critical for long-term success. Somewhere along the line, our culture has moved away from the normal way of life by stressing academic products and programs to our preschoolers. Dr. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Dr. Roberta Michnick Golinkoff came to a conclusion in this book and it is based on overwhelming scientific evidence from their own studies and the collective research results of child development experts. Einstein Never Used Flash Cards goes beyond killing the myths spread by the accelerated-learning industry. Within this book is a practical guide to introducing complex conce pts through smart, simple, and loving play. For every key area of a childs development, which included speech, reading, math, social skills, self-awareness, and intelligence, there is an understanding of how a childs mind actually learns. The book then goes into a long sequence of some ways to Schoenster 3 play and keep your child ready for the future. The most interesting parts of the book dealt with the steps of child development. The incremental breakthroughs needed to recognize letters or count is described as the little victories they are. The authors even provide techniques to determine a childs progress. For example, they detail the different ways a child can count and what this reveals about their understanding of quantity and numbers. From the book Einstein Never Used Flashcards: How Our Children Really Learn- and Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less, comes the topic of play and the role of it within the education of children. The idea that play is beneficial to children is seen throughout this book and many others. Play does not only help when children are trying to learn, but it also is helpful in a therapeutic sense. Play is a way for children to express themselves however they wish but in a comfortable environment with their peers and that can be translated into an environment with their therapists (Campbell and Knoetze, 2010). There are three theoretical models that demonstrate the ideas that play is a useful tool in a therapeutic way. These models include the child-centered play therapy model from Gary Landreth, the psychoanalytic play model and Jungian play model. The child-centered play therapy model is based on the idea that the child is being, not doing. The therapeutic key within this model is the idea that children self-actualize and will drive to do so (Axline, 1982). Children have a sense of self which comes from the child as a person and how they perceive the world around them. If the child is placed in a negative therapeutic environment their idea of self will change and they will not be comfortable. When play is introduced to this environment between the therapist and child, the child can feel more comfortable and will release more details that Schoenster 4 they otherwise would not be comfortable with revealing. The therapist may use a technique called repetitive symbolic play. This is when a type of play is introduced over a period of time in which the child begins to associate it with harmful experiences that now are being revealed in the present. This technique is very good at getting children to cope with their fears and understand problem solving. This model is used to help children with behavioral and emotional problems and has showed a very positive outcome to those it has been used to help. (Campbell and Knoetze, 2010) Sigmund Freud is known as the person who created the idea of psychoanalytic therapy. He first started to use his psychoanalytic treatment on children in 1909. The goal of his work with children was to help them try to understand their feelings which would help them to understand their behavioral problems and why the act the way they do. Anna Freud, Sigmunds wife, took over the idea of play with the psychoanalytic theory. Annas idea was to try to incorporate play as a way of treatment and to try to enhance the communication with the children. When play is introduced the therapist must interpret much of what is going on with the child. Play is used only until the child gets comfortable with the therapist and then more traditional talking takes place (Esman, 1983). Play is only used to get the child to interpret their feelings in an easier way and help them to feel at ease with the new therapist they have met. (McCalla, 1994) The next theory discussed will be Carl Jungs Jungian model. Carl Jung is also a psychoanalytical therapist who worked under Freud but left him to pursue his own ideas (McCalla, 1994). His major idea was about the personality, which Jung said had three parts. These three parts were the ego, the personal conscious and the collective Schoenster 5 unconscious. The collective unconscious was known as the self portion of the personality. The ego is what is used for thinking. When this theory is applied to children the self, at first, is the only part the child knows. Then from that sense of self comes the ego, this connection is known as the ego-self axis (Allan, 1980). This axis is crucial to the bond between the conscious and unconscious minds. If this bond is severed then the child can gain a sense of disattachment from the sense of self (Allan, 1980). Some form of symbolic attachment is thought to be needed help this axis to grow and thrive and this is the point when the idea of play is established. (McCalla, 1994) When play is introduced into this type of therapy it is different from the others. The therapist is not leading the play now but observing what the child is naturally doing in their play. The therapist accepts whatever form of play the child likes. The therapist does interpret most of the information that the play is leading them to but does not tell the child what he or she is thinking; instead they are used to help move the child forward into a more mature ego within the child. It is not the actual interpretation from the therapist that helps the child to gain knowledge about the situation but the actual creativity the child uses to show the therapist what they are feeling. The child is in full command of the session bringing them the freedom to move around and do what they want to express themselves the in a way that helps both the therapist and child understand. Playing with the therapist helps to give the child an opportunity to show the emotions they feel and to understand them which give them a sense of relief and help with their problems. (McCalla, 1994) Schoenster 6 Through these three methods the children who are given the ability to use these types of play therapy are often better of then when they began. They get the opportunity to learn from their own creativity, sense of self and maturing mind. In all three models they gain an understanding of themselves and their emotions not only from the therapist and their interpretation but their own mind, thoughts and expressions. These helpful ways of play therapy get these children with behavioral and emotional problems onto a better path that helps them understand their problems and move forward with a new outlook and understanding about what is wrong and how to control it. Schoenster 7

History of British Empire Notes Essay

History of the British Empire leading to the establishment of the commonwealth This work contains information about the British Empire compared to the Roman Empire than compared to the Spartans. This shows who done b=worse things and was it worth going through all of that if their Empire is not the best? My work also contains certain opinions(mine and my dad) and tan some extra information about the commonwealth, what they do and who’s involved in it. I say that that British Empire changed the world the most because their economic system and schooling system means they had technology and money to build army and navies in Rome could only dream of. However the British got their political and law system from the Romans and Rome in the day had great economic power. ‘The sun never sets on the British Empire’ Is a well-known saying about the British Empire because there was a lot of colonies around the world which meant it was daytime somewhere in the Empire. The British Empire covered the largest land area ever ruled over by one nation, this involved over 166 countries. The British Empire began around the 1700, even though there is no longer considered an empire it still has a vast commonwealth network (this means that there are still some colonies that still believe in the British Empire) However, the Roman Empire lasted over 1,000 years and stretched from Britain to the Middle East. Much of the building technology of the Romans were adopted by the western world and are still used today. 2,000 years later. The Romans had much less of advanced tools to work with and the longer length of the time they was an empire. There are many good and bad points about the Roman Empire but what shocked me the most was that they took over neighbouring countries in their plan to take over the world; they tried to do this through violence and destruction. They would use black slaves and animals as entertainment; this would involve blood and violence. This would be held in the Colluseam. They also had massive amounts of slaves and killed hundred thousand during their conquest. The Empire wasn’t all that bad, considering the Empire was so big there had to be harsh and inhumane things to keep control of it. But things like the gladiatorial games weren’t necessary as without the slave the Roman Empire wouldn’t have been as successful and prosperous as they were. I think that the slaves deserve a lot of credit in making the Empire a success, even though what the Romans done to them were harsh and despicable. If I was to compare the Roman Empire to the Spartans, really the Roman Empire would be k nown as what they done would have been common at the time as the Spartans put a whole race into slavery and never let one of them rise above being classed as a slave. The Romans was quite cruel as they would torture slaves, child molestation, rape, poison and incest slaughter, this was just some of the things they would to the slaves compared the British Empire which invaded countries, changed most of their original cultures, once used privateers(pirates that were authorized by the government) would be used to plunder enemy ships during war and encouraged the colonies even in America to do the same. So I have compared the British Empire to the Roman Empire who was then compared to the Spartans and to conclude my research i believe that we should be proud the British Empire as we was much more civilised and didn’t go over the top in attempting to take over the world unlike the Roman Empire who would put people/slaves through the worst things to try to succeed in taking over the world. Just to make things clear the Spartans was far worst as they put a whole race into slavery and that’s all they would be. I asked my dad if he is proud o f the British Empire and he said: ‘At the time they brought allot of civilisation to many places that lacked in it, in different countries they helped build rail roads, postal services, and religion.’ Than I asked him if he was proud of it now, he replied: ‘Yes because nowadays we have strong, economical and commercial ties with the common wealth countries’ I don’t think my dad was too sure about the bad points but apart from that it was clear that he is proud of the British Empire because of how much it has helped the world today. The coalition government has set out a vision to strengthen the commonwealth as a focus for promoting democratic values and development. There are 54 independent sovereign states in the commonwealth. The commonwealth are a group of countries working in the same direction to promote the common interest of their people and promotion of international understanding. Membership of the commonwealth is voluntary , it is 63 years old, it has 54 member states which together comprise over 2 billion citizens. Her majesty the queen is head of the commonwealth, membership of the commonwealth does not bring with it contractual obligations rather members commit to a series of statements of believes esta blished by heads of government. The priorities and programmes of the commonwealth: 1.Good offices for peace- strengthen democratic processes and institutions 2.Rule of law- promoting the rule of law is seen enhancing democracy, good governments and development across the membership 3.Human rights- aims to assist members in the adoption and implementation of international human rights 4.Economic development-to assist developing countries to improve their understanding of international trade rules and regulations and to help them strengthen their negotiations within the world trade organisation. 5.Environmentally sustainable development- the commonwealth brings together industrialised countries with significant greenhouse gas emissions. 6.Large emerging economies- notable energy production and some of the poorest and the most vulnerable economies. 7.Human development- the commonwealth works towards the millennium development goals and is partially active in education, gender and health.

Phoenix Advertising Essay

Our success in the past has been largely due to out of the box creativity and qualitative team work which has resulted in high standards of performance. It is now time to put in a dose of brainstorming and lateral thinking to recognize the internal hassles that are affecting the general scheme of work. When things are not moving smoothly it’s essential to revisit the existing system and find out the root cause. The careful strategy planning that we use to create winning campaigns for our clients has to be brought in to solve the present impasse. Before an outsider tells us that we have a problem, we need to put our house in order. To find the solution we need to agree on two things. First, we have to accept the fact that there are problems which are affecting the performance of the employees. And second, work up a mutually beneficial solution that will have long term benefits. We can start with the question, WHAT? What is the cause of the trouble? We always focus on client satisfaction as the crucial aspect of agency survival. What we often tend to forget or disregard is the question of employee satisfaction. Effort recognition and sincere appreciation goes a long way in creating a positive environment that is conducive to excellent performances. The disagreement between the servicing teams and the creative teams is as old as advertising itself. Every firm will have its own strategy on how best this can be dealt with. The need of the hour is communication. The management has to sit down and talk it out with the team on a more frequent basis. This will foster a more personal relationship which will result in better levels of understanding that is lacking at present. The next question is HOW? The answer is simple. The accounts crew which serve as contact points between the company and the client usually get the laurels for a successful campaign. This leaves the rest of the team in disappointment which translates as frustration with the next job. Perfect servicing is nothing without innovative ideas and vice versa. Similarly, a sound idea may fizzle away with bad design execution and unimaginative copy. The question is not whether a copywriter is more important than the art director. We believe that every individual has a share in creating good work. This recognition of the importance of everyone in the team is crucial to boosting the team spirit. A sense of give and take is essential between the accounts and creative teams. If the servicing people stubbornly insist that the client is king and expect the copywriters and designers to make constant changes according to the whims of the client, there is bound to be trouble. Working with yesterday’s deadlines and unnerving pressure can bring the creative team to a quick burnout. To avoid this, a daily schedule is absolutely essential. What happens in most cases is that the workload is not evenly distributed. A daily preview of who is expected to do what will give everyone a clear idea of how much work is on the anvil and how best to meet the deadlines. A weekly review of work which will involve every person in the company is the first step. The meeting can be held at the end of every week, at a given time which should be convenient for everyone. The agenda will be an update of the work that has been done during the week, an overview of new jobs, client feedback, possible pitches and a personal comments session where everyone can speak about what they feel is important for the success of the company. Such an open platform will not only bring a sense of transparency to the agency but also create a sense of confidence in the minds of the employees because they will understand that their opinions also count. A feeling of belonging is integral to the very idea of team work. To make this happen, we have to foresee the obstacles we will certainly have to face. Initially there will be some wrangling about the need for such meetings and any given time will be inconvenient for every other person. The word â€Å"compulsory† works magic when it comes to finding time for something. But setting a time and place and sticking to it against all odds is equally important. The next question is WHY? Though everyone in the company is working hard enough, the joint effort is not very visible. To create a sense of unity and to pep up the team’s spirits, an interactive workshop must be conducted every three months which will again involve everyone in the company. In the advertising industry, changes take place on an overnight basis. There is always something new to learn. Keeping up with the flow is possible only when there is a frequent discussion of every issue. Be it new soft wares, award winning ads, fresh perspectives from the creative angle, what the competition is up to etc. Like Burnett once said, creative ideas flourish only in places which have a sense of fun. Workshops are very effective in both cases. Inspiring speeches and group activities will help remove the sense of separateness that the employees now feel. Of course, we don’t need another Ogilvy to tell us that job hopping is part and parcel of every advertising firm. But we should get a revitalizing shot right away to ensure optimal performance. It is only when an employee puts in his/her resignation letter that the management begins to ask whether there was a problem. Instead, there should be a system in which the management is closely aware of every individual’s level of satisfaction within the company. This will help forestall problems and help retain the work force. This leads us to the question WHEN? There’s no time like now to start anew. Every department can review their internal issues and learn to take responsibility for success and failures instead of playing Passing the Buck. Change need not come from the grassroots. It can start at the top. The management can lead by example, and rest assured that everyone will follow. A clear agenda need to be drawn up immediately. To surmise, we need Daily meetings with accounts and creative teams. Weekly round up of work with the entire agency. At least three workshops a year. To encourage people to voice their views. Deal with disproportionate recognition of efforts. Hold the team together at all cost. And above all, we need to do this right away. I sincerely hope that we can make a difference to how things are run, enhance our professionalism and strive towards a better tomorrow for ourselves and the company. Thanking you, Place Date (This is just for your perusal) References    Ogilvy David Confessions of an Advertising Man Garba Kabir Alabi, The Trouble With The Advertising Industry, The Guardian, (24th March 2008)