Three Must-Haves for Team Creativity

What can a manager do to optimize team creativity? And what do they do commonly that squelches it? I spoke with Harvard’s Teresa Amabile for my Leadership: A Master Class video series about innovation in the workplace. Here’s what she recommends managers do to support creativity in organizations.

1. Autonomy
“One of the most important things managers can do is set clear goals for a project. Letting people know where it is they're going, and why it matters in the grand scheme of things. At the same time, managers need to give people some autonomy in what they're doing. You know about the famous 15% rule at 3M. Google, I think, has a 20% time rule. This is essentially protecting time for people to pursue projects that are really interesting to them. This is autonomy. This is feeling that you have a real sense of control over your own work and ideas. Some of the most creative ideas come out of that time where people feel that they have autonomy as long as they have a clear sense of what they're trying to accomplish.

2. Resources
People need sufficient resources to get the work done. A lot of managers mistakenly think that people become more creative if they starve resources a little bit. What I found is that people will be more creative in finding resources but not necessarily in solving the actual problems. It’s important to make sure that people have the necessary information, funding and materials to do their work. Those resources can't be overlooked.

3. Time
Time is one of the most interesting factors that we've studied. It should go without saying that people must have sufficient time to do creative work. We've learned that many managers believe that they can stimulate creativity by putting people under very tight deadlines. That's a myth. In fact, across the board in general, people are more creative when they have a little bit of time to explore a problem, reflect on what they're doing, gather new information, and to talk to people who might have different perspectives, which can be enormously useful.”