It is widely accepted that strategy needs creativity. Today's business landscape faces great challenges. This is largely due to increased risks from new entrants. For this reason, organizations must innovate to gain competitive advantages. The importance of creative strategy isn't new, with scholars like Edward de Bono and NYU professor Adam Bradenburger extensively discussing it.
In fact, Adam has shared insights in his Harvard Business Review article titled "Strategy Needs Creativity" which I highly encourage you to read.
Rather than focusing on theory, I'm here to discuss practical exercises and techniques leaders can take to foster innovative thinking within their organizations. But first, let's get some basics out of the way.
Creativity and Strategy
The world's most innovative companies thrive on creative ideas, excelling in both ideation and execution to provide inventive solutions to consumer challenges. In today's market, innovation and creativity are not only desirable but also essential, fueling a rising demand for novel strategies and business approaches. Extensive literature supports this notion, providing insights into how innovation and creativity can be nurtured and cultivated.
There are two main elements that can enable any organization to achieve the development of innovative strategies, creative leadership and lateral thinking.
1. Creative Leadership
Creative leadership involves fostering an environment where innovative thinking and problem-solving thrive. Creative leaders inspire and empower their teams to generate new ideas, challenge the status quo, and explore unconventional solutions to complex problems. They prioritize experimentation, encourage risk-taking, and embrace failure as a stepping stone to success.
2. Lateral Thinking
Lateral thinking is a means to arrive at innovative solutions. It's the enabler within the creative strategy process as it encourages individuals to break free from established patterns and explore new possibilities using techniques such as brainstorming, metaphorical thinking, and provocation to generate innovative ideas and overcome obstacles.
Lateral thinking encourages individuals to explore multiple perspectives, question conventional wisdom, and push the boundaries of what is possible. By embracing lateral thinking, organizations can foster a culture of innovation, drive continuous improvement, and stay ahead of the curve in today's fast-paced and ever-changing business environment.
How to make Strategy Creative
To kickstart the process of developing creative strategies, consider exploring our Lean Strategy Innovator Course—an extensive self-paced program designed to equip you with the essential tools and processes required to become a creative leader within your organization. Discover how our course can empower you here.
Within our course, you'll delve into various techniques, including leveraging Creative Questions as a foundational element for crafting innovative strategies. Drawing from principles adopted by design thinking, a methodology focused on generating inventive and impactful solutions to product design challenges, we harness these techniques to facilitate engaging discussions and ultimately arrive at innovative solutions to address business performance gaps.
To make your strategy creative, there are three steps that need to occur:
To make your strategy creative, there are three steps that need to occur:
Step 1: Generate a Creative Question
1. Start with "How might we":
Step 2: Adding Context to Your Creative Question
A common mistake leaders make in strategy formulation is failing to ask the right questions. Effectively articulating the problem by using a creative question is the initial step in generating innovative solutions. Creative questions reframe traditional inquiries, offering a fresh perspective on the problem.
1. Start with "How might we":
Begin your question with "How might we" to set the stage for an open-ended exploration of the problem. This phrasing encourages innovative thinking and collaboration.
2. Choose an Action Verb:
Select an action verb that aligns with the objective you want to achieve. Examples include increase, reduce, eliminate, expand, etc. This helps clarify the desired outcome and directs the focus of your creative question.
3. Identify Your User or Target Market:
Clearly define who you are solving the problem for. This ensures that the solution is tailored to the specific needs and preferences of your intended audience.
4. Describe the Need:
Articulate the specific problem or challenge you are addressing for your target market. This step clarifies the focus of your question and helps ensure that solutions are relevant and impactful.
5. Add Context:
Provide any relevant background information or insights gained from previous analysis. This context helps ground your creative question in reality and can guide more effective and practical solutions.
Step 2: Adding Context to Your Creative Question
Adding context to your creative question is crucial. Creative questions should be posed only after the organization has established strategic objectives that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). Additionally, a thorough internal and external analysis should be conducted to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT).
When adding context to your creative question, include any key insights from the analysis phase. This could encompass information about your target market, macro-environmental trends, organizational bottlenecks, and potential opportunities.
Incorporating this context ensures a more focused and productive discussion. While the creative question should be broad enough to encourage innovative thinking, it should also guide the conversation towards achieving specific objectives. Including relevant information ensures alignment between the question's intent and the desired outcomes.
For example, consider the following two sample questions and ask which would be the better question to ask your team:
How can we strategically introduce a new snack product to the senior citizen target market to expand our market presence?
Or
Or
How can we enhance our market presence in the senior snack industry by consistently offering appealing products that provide a familiar eating experience, while also meeting the diverse needs of our customers, including individuals without teeth and those managing diabetes?
Step 3: Brainstorm Solutions Using Structured Exercises
Brainstorming can yield great results, but it can also derail the creative thinking process if not managed effectively. Without employing the right structure and techniques, a brainstorming session can quickly devolve from a productive exercise into an unfocused discussion. While there are numerous dynamic exercises to consider (we have a handbook with several dozen creative tools), one of our favorites is "Break the Rules."
Break the rules (one creative tool amongst many that you can lean in our program)
Break the rule is a highly effective creative brainstorming technique that stimulates lateral thinking. The objective of this exercise is to question and challenge the rules that govern the creative question, these rules can come in the form of current practices, norms, systems, and policies.
Begin by listing the rules associated with the creative question and allow your team to think of ways to break those rules with win-win alternatives. These ideas are not meant to be perfect, in this part of the process we want to focus on quantity over quality. Keep in mind that the answers might not always be brand new concepts in your industry, they may just be new to you and that is the first right step into exercising creativity.
Example:
Rule: Engineering and Quality departments are usually responsible for ensuring in-process quality
Step 3: Discuss
Once your team selects a rule they want to challenge, guide them through an open discussion. Encourage them to challenge assumptions and defy conventional norms. Initially, ideas may appear outrageous, which is good at this stage of the exercise. Throughout the exercise, your team will become better at generating practical ideas. After generating a substantial pool of ideas, collaborate with your team to identify the most promising ones.
Example:
Breaking the rule: Let’s implement an incentive program to empower employees to take ownership of the quality of their processes.
Conclusion
In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, creativity in strategy is not just beneficial—it's essential. Organizations must innovate to gain competitive advantages. To foster innovative thinking, practical techniques such as creative questions are crucial. Embracing creative leadership and lateral thinking will enable organizations to thrive amidst increasing challenges.
To further support your journey in developing innovative strategies, we have launched a fully self-paced Lean Strategy Innovator course. This course covers essential topics and teaches you how to leverage innovative principles to develop disruptive strategies, helping organizations of any size or industry achieve sustainable competitive advantages.
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