Apparently the world of business has finally cottoned on to what we’ve all known for years: managers are crap. And before all my friends with ‘manager’ in their title get upset, don’t worry, I’m one of you…
A study in New Zealand suggests abandoning rules and letting children take risks might be better for everyone in the long run. What lessons can we learn if we hold this example as a mirror to the adult world?
If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times: successful businesses are all about creating ‘cultures of creativity’. Noble though this cliché is, it’s not exactly explanatory of what organisations should really do to achieve it.
In HR circles, second to the phrase ‘people are our greatest asset’; perhaps one of the most over-used work clichés is that organisations – whether they employ fruit-pickers or silicon-valley computer geeks – all claim to want to foster a ‘culture of creativity.’ What does it mean and how can you do it?
Can you imagine going in to work tomorrow and being told you don’t have a manager anymore? Now imagine how that would impact your own role, and whether that is for better or worse. Welcome to a working environment where roles overlap instead of being stacked on top of each other.
You’re a creative. You live at the edges, in the grey areas, beyond the well defined and clearly structured. You are an insurgent and the establishment doesn’t like you.