Thoughts on Creativity and Innovation in Teams
This saying applies especially to the process of successful team based creativity and innovation. The process of creating and innovating pre, during or post project for a corporate team can be done well or poorly depending upon the balance of team role types in a group and the understanding that different members may contribute and participate in a creative process in different ways and at different stages of the process. There is more to a simple brainstorm that meets the eye, especially if due consideration is given to who’s doing the brainstorming and where they potentially best contribute to that process to avoid poor outcomes or overt clashes.
The natural predisposition for creativity lies most strongly with the Team Role types of “Plant” and “Resource Investigator” with complimentary aspects of creativity coming from others also, but with a risk of clashing and descent into premature detail if the team role balance is not considered. Brainstorming without a Plant or Resource Investigator is potentially going to limit the first phase of the process. An understanding of different styles can create tolerance and appreciation of different contributions as well as ensuring that they are made at the right time.
So can the amount of natural creativity that resides within a team actually be measured and quantified? Yes. The Belbin Team Role model identifies the clusters of behaviour and team role strengths that should make the best contribution at various stages of the creative process and subsequent life cycle of a project. Pure creativity at the “wide end of the funnel” that generates a wealth of possible ideas will appeal in great measure to some team role types and not necessarily to others. Subsequent consolidation, review and carrying into execution of those ideas down to the narrow end of that funnel may actually appeal little to those who generated them and sit better within the team role strengths of others. In a nutshell, different team role strengths can dovetail with one another to ensure that the creative process is most effective in its entirety from conception to execution as well as at the initial “wide end” of the creative funnel.
This allows people to build and develop upon each others ideas and to better understand how people will best input into that creative process (as De Bono says “there is rarely such a thing as a totally new idea, but rather new combinations of existing ideas”). Sabre utilises both the Belbin Team Role Model and the CREED model in conjunction with targeted experiential re-enforcement to explore team based creativity in a fun and effective way that can be transferred instantly into better innovation and execution in the workplace.
In a nutshell, everyone can play a significant role in the overall creative process, the trick is knowing which role to play best and when to project it into the team’s process.
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