CEOs Can't Buy Creativity. They Need to Build It

You can't pay people into being creative. And you definitely can't scare them into it.

- Gautam Mukunda

From return-to-office sabre-rattling to hectoring memos declaring the end of rewarding employee loyalty, it's clear that CEOs are feeling their oats.

A slowing economy is shifting power back to the corner office after years of tight labour markets gave workers extraordinary pull. And leaders aren't hesitating to put that juice to use. They're swearing off warm and fuzzy cultures and instead channelling one of Don Draper's most memorable Mad Men lines: "That's what the money is for."

Wanting to reassert this kind of top-down control over their organisations may be a natural instinct, but it's also a profoundly counterproductive one. Management that relies primarily on fear as stick — and financial incentives as carrot — stifles creativity and innovation.

The examples of chief executives cracking down in ways that would have been inconceivable a year or two ago are legion. Consider Cognition, the artificial intelligence (AI) start-up whose leader followed up an acquisition by telling his new employees they are now expected to work 80-plus-hour weeks and that many of his people "literally live where we work".

Then there's the recent memo from AT&T CEO John Stankey, in which he doubled down on the company's return-to-office mandate and declared that he will no longer reward loyalty. Employees, it implies, are expected to show total commitment to AT&T, but it will offer none to them in return.