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This is the last post in the creative leadership series.

A lot of leaders are always looking out for the next big thing in their industry. They check out what the competition is successfully doing and copy it shamelessly. This copy-cat syndrome is prevalent in the business world.

There is nothing wrong with studying what your successful peers are doing and there is nothing wrong with benchmarking your organisation against successful peers. The problem arises when you copy everything extensively. The idea of adopting everything that works in one organisation and replicating them exactly in your organisation can be dangerous. Leaders who adopt extensively realise that they don’t always get exactly the same successful results enjoyed by the benchmarked organisation. This is because there are a lot of intangible variables that are unique to that organisation which do not exist in their own organisations. Leaders should, therefore, always seek to take the context into play when they copy the good ideas or approaches of other successful companies.

I mentioned in my last post that leaders need to acquire fresh eyes to see the creative opportunities and solutions that surround them. Creativity is not always about running with the first solution or idea that occurs to you, rather, it’s searching for a better one. This is because most of the time, the first idea or solution is not usually the best one. It is hard work to dig deeper for more ideas because the natural default is to settle for the first ones. Creativity demands perseverance. Thomas Edison, the famous inventor of the light bulb and who is widely regarded as a creative genius, said that “genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration”. This also applies to creativity. Creative leaders may make it look easy but there is a lot of sweat and toil involved.

Joyce Wycoff defined creativity as the act of “seeing things that everyone around us sees while making connections that no one else has made.” This involves seeing the problem or challenge from different perspectives. Goethe said that “the hardest thing to do is to see what is right in front of your eyes.” This is the reason why creative leaders have primed minds and open eyes. They find ways of staying mindful of the problems or challenges that confront them while staying open to the unexpected.

I would like to conduct two thought experiments to illustrate the power of creativity for leaders in an increasingly complex world.

Scenario A, imagine I present you with a jigsaw puzzle as a gift. I mean one with lots of small pieces. The type that comes in a box with an image on it which the small pieces are meant  to look like once fitted together. Do you think you will be able to put them together with relative ease?

In scenario B, I simply present you with lots of small jigsaw pieces without the box and the image on it. Now do you think you will be able to put them together with relative ease without the picture on the box to guide you?

Image source: @boetter

I said last week that how leaders perceive the challenges of complexity determines how they will act, because perception determines action. Schoemaker and Day, in an MIT Sloan Management Review article, stated that once managers or leaders lock in on a certain picture or idea for their organisation, they will often reshape reality to fit into that familiar frame. Humans tend to judge too quickly when presented with ambiguous data because we have to work extra hard to consider less familiar scenarios. Whenever crucial information is missing, our minds naturally shape the facts to fit our preconceptions.

IBM recently released the results of a global study called Capitalizing on Complexity, in which they interviewed over 1500 CEOs across 60 countries representing 33 industries. One of the key survey questions was on what these CEOs considered to be the most important leadership qualities over the next five years. 60% of the CEOs regarded creativity as the number one leadership quality, with integrity a close second at 52%. I have attached a full list of all the leadership qualities to this post.

A friend sent me a video link by Derek Sivers in response to my last blog post -T.E.A.M. This short TED conference presentation (3:10 mins) is on how leaders start movements. I found it very interesting so I decided to share the video with my blog’s readers along with an overview of the key points I gained from it. Sivers communicates powerful leadership principles using video scenes from an outdoor music concert.

Most of the literature on leadership focuses on identifying the types and traits that make successful leaders. There is limited focus on followership. Yet without followership, there is no leadership.

One of John Maxwell’s favourite leadership quotes is, “He who thinks he leads, but has no followers, is only taking a walk.” Robert Neuschel said that “The sine qua non of leadership is to recognize that accomplishments can be made only through your people.” This is because people are the primary work materials at a leader’s disposal. A leader’s followers are his team and as part of the team; it is his or her responsibility to make the team greater through his/her leadership presence. A leader who makes his/her leadership all about ‘me’ instead of the ‘team’ destroys the unity of the team.

Everyone has leadership potential but few are willing to develop it. Why do so many people waste their leadership potential? I addressed the burden of responsibility as an obstacle in a previous blog post. I believe that another reason is the price that such personal development demands. It is hard work to develop your leadership potential. Think of it as a muscle. Now consider the price involved to develop a muscular framework. The amount of time you have to spend in the gym and constantly watching what you eat are just two key costs of having a toned body. You have to endure some pain in order to build your muscles. The ‘perfect’ body requires a disciplined lifestyle; likewise you can’t develop your leadership potential without the discipline of hard work.

Image (c) Kandjstudio

In the movie Matrix, Laurence Fishburne’s character, Morpheus, said to Neo (Keanu Reeves) – “There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.” This quote can be linked to the change process. We have all experienced the difficulty of walking the path. There is a big difference between knowing what to change in a personal or organizational context and successfully implementing that change.