The U.S. needs more creativity and creativeness today than it has ever in its history. Financial, physical, social, political, governmental, educational, business, industrial, professional problems abound throughout the country. True many people and organizations are experiencing success and making progress yet the greatest majority are experiencing setbacks and challenges daily

Logic, rational thinking and reliable systems are not enough. We need to "break the rules". Shift our paradigms. Break Our Crayons and Draw Outside the Lines. If It Ain't Broke, BREAK IT! At least so say many different authors today.

We need to tap and develop the greatest resource the U.S. has.

We need to tap and develop the creativity and creativeness of allmour citizens. Some schools and organizations are trying. Some of them are succeeding. Southwest Airlines, Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Xerox, Motorola to name a few.

One of the keys behind advancing the creativity, creativeness and creative output of people is to provide them an environment that supports, induces and generates creative thinking and action.

When asked directly how to describe an environment for creativeness people respond in many ways.

carpeting
color
comfortable furniture
creative challenges
cyber contact
encouragement
high tech equipment
music
mutual workplaces
natural lighting
nature
private workplaces
resources
textures

are only a sample of the specifics people ask for.

These break down into general categories and purposes:

• physical,
• intellectual,
• emotional,
• social, even
• spiritual.

The physical range from aesthetic to tactile to practical.

Interviewing various people labeled as "creative" over the past twenty years I have continually found these types of contrasts from the flexible to the highly pragmatic and highly opinionated.

One category tends to be consistent with the greatest percentage of people no matter what the occupation or profession. Psychological factors are the most significant.

People seek workplaces/environments that are:

fun
honest
caring
sincere
flexible
supportive
encouraging
challenging
growth-oriented
free of politics
learning focused
open to non-success
free of manipulation
free of "backstabbing"
rewarding (various types of rewards)

Most people appear to be willing to put up with many physical limitations and detriments if their employers and managers/leaders will provide psychologically creative environmental factors. These tend to overlap with emotional needs, whereas emotional needs tend to be more person-specific.

Social factors vary depending upon where the individuals and groups fall on a continuum from introvert to extrovert. Often social needs are also situation or timing dependent. Some people prefer to work alone during specific times and want access to people at other times.

What I have described seems like an impossible situation. Yet it truly is not. Managers/Leaders can learn to provide the psychological needs of employees or team members. The easiest way is to ask them to rate the workplace, the members and the management on the psychological factors previously listed. Then choose which three are of the highest priority and begin working on them asking for input from all the people.

Another method I have discovered is to take time to get to know each other in and out of the workplace: hobbies, interests,aspirations, dreams, families, forms of entertainment, most recent favorite books, movies, etc. We spend 65 to 75% of our waking hours at work. The least we can do is to get to know each other, accept each other, learn to respect and appreciate each other as people not simply as fellow employees or team members.

Adding fun to the workplace greatly helps the creativeness. Consultants, researchers and writers have been discovering and recording examples to prove this for several years: Joel Goodman, The Humor Project; Matt Weinstein, Playfair, Inc.; Malcolm Kushner in his book THE LIGHT TOUCH; C. W. Metcalf and Roma Felible in LIGHTEN UP and Bob Basso and Judi Klosek in THIS JOB SHOULD BE FUN!

Most organizations no longer have the profits or budgets to tackle aesthetic or physical needs for everyone. They will simply be stuck with those government issue gray desks and old stackable metal chairs. But are they? Are We?

Paint, wallpaper, adhesive backed materials, posters, photographs, tackboards all can add greatly to producing an environment for creativity and creativeness. I have seen many times the difference paint and color and soap and water can make in old buildings and factories.

Work on the psychological. Then the social. Then the emotional. The physical will follow as the others begin to truly work.

Use a simple acronym as your guide, P.R.I.D.E.

P     Purpose

Decide to have everyone's purpose to be and become more and more creative each day

R     Respect

Focus on learning to respect each person and EVERY idea and turn as many of them as possible into SOLUTIONS, never killing or throwing away ANY idea ever again.

I     Involvement

Involve everyone in as many decisions as possible. Let them discover how to create "their creativity producing environment".

D     Determine

Determine to grow and expand the creativeness of everyone individually and the entire group wholly.

E     Enthusiasm

Continually add enthusiasm to as much of your work as you can. Have fun. Find Passion.

It's your main environment. You live most of your life in it.

Make it a creative one.

Passion.

It's your main environment. You live most of your life in it.

Make it a creative one.