Are You Creative At Work?

As the workplace gets revolutionized and the traditional ideas about work dissolve around us, the yearning to align life purpose with work to make it more meaningful is pushing professionals and companies to be creative and explore fresh ways of doing things...

Work can no longer be separated from imagination and creativity. Constant reinvention is the name of the game - with examples like Microsoft that epitomize this core creativity creation in action.

Imagination involves giving your intuitions form through creativity, which is simply the act of making something new. Creativity nourishes us, replenishes us. When one creates from love, there is room to make mistakes. At our workplace, we need to see creativity as not only a tool for doing things in a new way but finding ways of optimizing results.

Only those managers who give themselves the opportunities to daydream allow themselves the ability to explore unlimited thinking. It is this unlimited thinking that sparks the imagination, helps enhance creativity and expands possibilities of tackling problems and reaching new solutions and growing in one's overall role in the workplace.

When individuals and organizations are able to effectively exercise creative possibilities, it is possible to link a person's goals with greater vision and unlimited potential for and organization.

Let us look at some easy steps for facilitating creativity at workplaces.

Share with others

A workplace that encourages sharing of thoughts and flow of information can help nurture creativity.

Use Brain-Storming Techniques

Teams that work together in problem-solving sessions always find diverse approaches for tackling a single issue. The combined energy often breaks through an individual's blocks.

Be Conscious in Your Approach

Being conscious in your focus and attempting to look at the situation in a different way is what is needed to ensure fresh ideas are explored and novel ways are implemented. Managers need to travel to different places and have exposure to different cultures and find out how someone in another country might deal with the same challenge in ones career openings [http://www.naukri.com/].

Surround yourself with Creative Images/Activities

Those professionals who place notes or cartoons around their working space are able to not only lighten up themselves but also allow their peers to look at bright side of things. Decorating a workstation with color or creative images can also help one enhance creativity. Wearing bright colors, using colored markers, pens or pencils when brain-storming and even listening to inspiring music can help one in producing creative results. Taking a walk to loosen up one's body and mind, preferably outdoors can help too. Many professionals like to take short creativity breaks.

Using Resources

Use the internet to find answers, contact details not available through other methods, use a dictionary or thesaurus at random, to find new words you may use to find solutions.

Know Your Co-Workers

Don't work in a vacuum. Being in touch with yourself and others around you can help in the search for fresh approaches of doing the work. Being creative requires diverse stimuli and connections with other people. Make sure you know what your company's other departments are up to, and how their work might connect to your creative idea.

Align with Company Goals and Directions

If your company just started developing a new product, try finding out new ways of improving the product. This would work better than offering your ideas on a new product.

Attend Seminars Related to Your Work

Professionals who participate in seminars and conferences that revolve around their area of expertise are able to draw diverse stimuli for improving their work.

Constructive Feedback

While it is good to listen to negative comments about your work, what is essential is to try and remember the constructive feedback on your work. During a brainstorming session, one must also resist any kind of comment or criticism of ideas until the end of the session. The aim is to get as many suggestions 'out' as possible before trying to refine them.

Quantity Breeds Quality

Encourage individuals to say whatever comes into their mind no matter how absurd they may think the idea is - the aim is to get as many ideas as possible.

Creativity Training

Training individuals or groups with the skills required for successful creative performance can prove to be effective in enhancing productivity.

Sleep on the Problem

When the stress levels are too high and there seems to be no solution in sight, one can even try going to bed with the request that your unconscious mind develop a solution and give it to you when you wake up. Allow your physical body to rest while your unconscious goes away to create answers. Keep a pencil and paper next to your bed and write down you thoughts when you wake up (or in the middle of the night when your dreams reveal something important).

Stay Healthy

Over-work and hostile environments deplete an individual's physical and mental resources. Eating a healthy, balanced diet and getting plenty of rest keeps you healthy and provides reserves of energy when needed.

As companies strive to gain a competitive advantage, the focus is growing on enhancing employees' creativity, and not merely developing their technical competencies and skills. This can help the marketing of the organization by being seen to be 'cutting edge'. And it can improve efficiency by solving current problems or business obstacles