"Hire misfits and goad them to fight"
Further to Scamp's poll about stroppy creatives yesterday, here's Stanford professor Robert Sutton on the key ingredients of a creative company:
"In order to foster creativity we should hire misfits, goad them to fight and pay them to defy convention and undermine the prevailing culture."
Sutton advocates 11 1/2 organisational traits that will help to engender creativity.
(1) Hire smart people who will avoid doing things the same way your company has always done things.
(1 1/2) Diversify your talent and knowledge base, especially with people who get under your skin.
(2) Hire people with skills you don't need yet, and put them in untraditional assignments.
(3) Use job interviews as a source of new ideas more than as a way to hire.
(4) Give room for people to focus on what interests them, and to develop their ideas in their own way.
(5) Help people learn how to be tougher in testing ideas, while being considerate of the people involved.
(6) Focus attention on new and smarter attempts whether they succeed or not.
(7) Use the power of self-confidence to encourage unconventional trials.
(8) Use "bad" ideas to help reveal good ones.
(9) Keep a balance between having too much and too little outside contact in your creative activities.
(10) Have people with little experience and new perspectives tackle key issues.
(11) Escape from the mental shackles of your organization's past successes.
That last one is critical.
I couldn't agree more. Viva Rule breakers.
Posted by: Charles Frith | October 28, 2007 at 11:52 AM
Unfortunately companies do "hire misfits, goad them to fight" ... but they generally miss the last two points about defying convention and undermining the prevailing culture. Rather than "innovation" one ends up with a fragmented and frustrating work environment that causes high staff turnover. Creativity + stress. Sound familiar?
Posted by: Gavin Heaton | October 31, 2007 at 09:53 PM