Creativity for Strategy’s Sake

I haven’t written very much about Creativity here yet, but it’s an equal partner in my Strategy-Creativity-Leadership triad, so it deserves equal time in the blog. Creativity has also been very much on my mind recently as I’ve just kicked off a series of posts about the power of Category for tech companies. I hope you will check that out over on the INSTEP site.

In brief, we’ve worked with several clients to develop a Category strategy – how they can use the concept of Category to position themselves more advantageously in their markets. This is truly a creative effort – at the beginning of the process, there is only a blank piece of paper and the potential for something new. At the end, there is a powerful resource for the organization in accelerating toward its Mission.

Admittedly, some Category strategies are more forceful than others, based on particular circumstances and perhaps the quality of thinking. Nevertheless, the creative effort results in new value for the organization. This is particularly striking in contrast to the way many companies treat Category – “That’s something the industry analyst firms do, and we have frustratingly little influence over it.” That sort of passivity ignores the potential for creating leverage through clarity and completeness of strategy. (There’s a topic for future consideration: what makes a strategy complete?)

In a similar way to this Category strategy work, my experience in scenario planning has deepened my appreciation for Creativity and its leverage for organizations. I recently had the opportunity to create scenarios for global trade in the year 2035 – it was an amazing creative challenge!

• Step 1: Factoring in the relevant trends, thinking through the range of plausible outcomes and interactive effects;
• Step 2: Creating the framework that determines how the scenarios will differ from each other;
• Step 3: Writing the scenarios and really pushing the boundaries of how different the world might be to challenge management assumptions, while remaining both realistic and neutral to any favored or assumed outcome;
• Step 4: Recommending seed investments (also called taking options) for the firm to make to mitigate risks and capitalize on opportunities in each scenario.

These are just two examples of the importance and value of Creativity in Strategy, and subsequently in Leadership in organizations. Fundamentally, we are imagining a future state for the organization and a way to achieve that state; then creating shared vision and organizational will to move forward. What more powerful force could be available to us?

So in addition to appreciating Creativity that is already happening in organizations, it’s just as important from a strategic and leadership perspective to wonder where and how else it might unlock value.