 Jeffrey
Pfeffer (The
Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First, 1998, Harvard Business
Press) also talks about toxic companies. He has said he cannot understand why firms think
they can buy a competitive advantage in the open market. It is, after all, accessible to
every other company. Another can just as easily buy a product bought by one. On the
contrary, the only way to differentiate oneself from the competition is to become unique
through cultivating the know-how, moral commitment and the creative capabilities of one's
workforce.
The human being is, by nature,
creative. It is clear that firms that encourage the fulfilment of this creative tendency
obtain not only an advantage over the competition, but also breed loyalty. Numerous books,
which have appeared in the U.S. and elsewhere, attribute huge extra productivity to the
loyalty factor (between 30% and 40% from one company to another, according to Pfeffer). A
recent longitudinal study by the IPD (Institute of Personnel and Development) in the U.K.
calculates that investments in Human Resources give a return on capital invested of up to
18% (whereas returns on investment in Information Technology rarely give more than a 1%
return on capital invested and R&D gives about 7% or 8%).
It would therefore seem that, if
the firm wants to be more profitable and happier than its competitors, the attempt to
foster loyalty by giving rein to human creativity is worthwhile.
The Kirton Adaption-Innovation
Theory and Measure
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Consulting (Systèmes & Ressources) does not gainsay the usefulness of divine
inspiration in the creation of new products or services. Nevertheless, its consultants
also believe in the usefulness of more structured methods. The firm can call upon concepts
and techniques to provoke creative responses, which will aid it, in much the same way as
3M, L'Oréal and numerous Japanese companies, to become more profitable.
Systèmes
& Ressources consultants can explain the different stages and roles of the
creative process, the obstacles which can discourage the inventor, the tenacity necessary
to be an innovator, the key role of the entrepreneur, and how important it is to reward
the champions of new ideas in the firm. They can explain also that creativity does not
necessarily surge from everything that's one hundred percent new: it can also come from
the conscientious actions of engineers and workers who, by making one small improvement
after another, can make something new from something old, without that capability often
being given its full due.
What
are the theories of creativity management? One is associationism, which was made famous by
Archimedes. Another is bisociation, espoused by Koestler. A third is Edward de Bono's
lateral thinking.
How
does one overcome individual and company wide perceptual barriers? What importance should
be given to the role of intuition in running a company? In its training and consulting
activities Systèmes & Ressources gives answers to these questions (while
realising that its task is to make the company thirsty, not to slake its thirst). Systèmes
& Ressources consultants can point to factors in the environment and settings
which favour creativity (space, time to think, innovation centres, creative workshops).
They can teach the techniques necessary to define the objective, how to situate the
objective (or problem), how to avoid the temptation to go after the objective before it
has been defined or even decided that it is the correct one, how to generate tactics and
solutions for problems, how to measure the potential impact of these solutions, how
finally to select the right solution and implement it. The ideas of Peter Drucker, James
Brian Quinn, Henry Mintzberg and Gareth Morgan have all fed into the methodologies of
Systèmes & Ressources.
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When Abraham Maslow, who had trained as a psychologist, was asked why
he had undertaken the study of organisations, he replied that he had realised it was in
organisations and not in individual therapy sessions that he could help the greatest
number of people. The firm at that time was fairly toxic and Maslow's ideas have since
begun to have some success. The best way to kill creativity in an
organization is to hire a "leader" who talks the talk of
creativity and innovation but who walks the walk of killing creativity by
reducing the humans who work in the company to the role of rubber
stamps. 