A recent report by IBM cited creative leadership as the single most important leadership competency required to succeed in an environment of complexity.
What is creative leadership, exactly?
Last week at a keynote to the West Des Moines Leadership Academy, Mike Wagner and I unpacked a sense making model designed to help answer this question.
To better understand creative leadership, we first identified its opposite. This was the easy part — for most of us, we need only to see our reflection in the mirror. Our comfort zones include processes, best practices, and expert analysis to drive what we think to be the appropriate response to any given problem.
But these well-known approaches only work in an ordered and predictable world that doesn’t change. The word, “logical” comes to mind. Do I have any Spock fans out there? You know who you are!
The creative leader is a think-on-his-feet kind of guy (or gal)… like Captain Kirk. When complexity hits, he pulls his team together to probe for possible solutions. Sure, there are experts on the ship, like Scotty, the “beam-me-up” engineer, and Sulu, the guy who sends the ship into warp speed. They know their stuff, but they don’t have time to test the options and provide data to prove which one will work. Instead, they are willing to think creatively and take risks.
Why do you suppose they are so willing to take those risks? Because Captain Kirk creates a safe-fail environment. It’s safe to fail because Kirk encourages input and he’s willing to try ideas that might not work. He’s okay with that. In fact, he LOVES it.
That’s what Mike Wagner and I call creative leadership. Probing and taking action in a world of complexity, chaos, and unknowns with no clear path between cause and effect. Check out our SlideShare presentation that shares these concepts in a visual way:
The next time your team is about to be sucked into a black hole or your shields are losing power against enemy fire, will you choose a Spock, or Kirk-like leadership? I know what I will say:
“Let the log note… Kirk out.”
Related Links on Leadership:
Viz Your Tribes — How Will You Go Give? by Jocelyn Wallace
Leadership as Coherence by Dave Snowden
Employee Engagement – Good Intentions are Not Enough by Mark Schenk
Related Links on Creativity:
A Whole New Mind – Dan Pink – Visual Notes by Jocelyn Wallace
Is Creativity the Number 1 Skill in the 21st Century? by Mark Batey, Ph.D.
The Positive Power of Failure by Vijay Govindarajan, Harvard Business Review
