More Dreaming, Less Deadlines

Fostering an environment that encourages creativity will automatically lead to increased productivity in an organisation.

- Mark Simmonds, Genius You

The modern-day workplace is not cut out for creativity. We need to do something about it.

Recently, GENIUS YOU published a creativity study. In between 2015 and 2020, over 2000 surveys had been completed by individuals from 17 major international organisations across 10 different sectors. The survey helped people understand their creative strengths.

It also contained one open-ended question, which asked respondents to comment on the state of creativity and innovation in their own company. A number of key themes emerged that represented obstacles to a creative workplace. ‘Time poverty’ and the ‘burden of process overload’ accounted for 23 per cent of all responses. One response sums up things nicely: “Our biggest downfall within the business is not giving enough time to creative thinking. We need to put importance on thinking as much as doing. The teams are constantly executing projects but spending little time crafting new ideas.” In the same study, two factors accounted for just over 40 per cent of the responses when it came to barriers to creativity. Firstly, a lack of internal sharing and cross pollination, and secondly, an insufficient amount of time spent brainstorming in workshops. Somewhat ironically, the one resource that most companies have in abundance—people—was being under-utilised when it came to the process of creativity.

So, in summary, the workplace gives you no time and space for creative thinking and does not encourage you to get inspiration from others around you.