Episode #559: The Creativity Process When Leading In Japan

The era of the boss who had done all the tasks in the section and was the main expert on the business has well and truly passed. Today, it is more of a team effort and there are a lot more specialisations required than in the past. Collaboration is the key to creativity by grouping all the brain power in one place and unleashing it to solve the problem. To my surprise, very few firms have any clear methodology on how to unleash the creative ideas of the team. So far, I have done over 200 interviews with CEOs here in Japan for my podcast “Japan’s Top Business Interviews”. I ask them all about their house methodology to harvest the ideas of their teams, and I am struggling to recall anyone who could answer that question well.
Here are some things to think about to create your own house brand on idea development and creativity.
Step One: Begin with the end in mind.

What is it you want to achieve with this exercise? We are going to tie up the valuable time of a lot of key people, so the end must justify the means. What would success look like from doing this exercise?

Step Two: Gather what we already know.
We rarely start with zero knowledge of the issue. We have all built up experience and insights into this problem. We also have data we can access to provide some deeper perspectives on the issue. We need to create a common understanding amongst the team about the issue and it ramifications.

Step Three: Clarify the question we are asking.
Japan has a great insight about problem solving. Unlike in the West, in Japan, the answer to the question is secondary. Here deciding what is the right question to ask comes first, before worrying about any potential answers. That is quite smart isn’t it. There can be so many layers to the issue as well and we need to spend some quality time at the beginning to really clarify what is the main issue we should be aiming to solve while being washed around in a sea of competing issues.

Step Four: Harvest the ideas.
We start generating ideas with a strong proviso. There is no such thing as a dumb idea or crazy idea. Yes, of course, some ideas will be better, more practical than others, but we want to bring forth as many choices as possible before we start allocating priorities about which answers we will pursue. My crazy idea won’t go forward, but it may stimulate a better idea in your mind. This idea would never have come to light without the stimulation of you saying to yourself, “well that is a dumb idea but if we tweaked it like this, then we could….”. This is how idea generation works. We bounce our ideas around and fire each up to come forward with a better alternative.

Step Five: Select the best ideas to take forward.
Many ideas will emerge and at a point in time we have to make some selections. This is the most difficult part, because this is where we need a decision-making system which works well. Usually in Japan, the better ideas are harmonised and moved to the top of the tree. A good methodology is to find common themes and then isolate these themes out and rank ideas within those themes. Now we may have a disagreement about the order of the ideas generated, but if we take the top five ideas in the most commonly grouped themes we are in the right spot.

Step Six: Find the money, time and authority to move forward.
Ideas are great, but only become really great when applied. That takes investment. It might be dough or people’s time or the freedom to run the idea without interference or the means to overcome the idea killer - the NIHS – “Not Invented Here Syndrome”.
We have to promote the ideas generated to the big bosses and convince them to get behind what we have come up with. There is absolutely nothing more soul destroying and spine decalcifying than to have your hard won ideas spurned by the machine and those who command it at the top. You feel you have wasted your life for nothing and are very reluctant to take part in any future creativity sessions.

Step Seven: Start.
We don’t need to be perfect, because we won’t know everything we need to know at the very start, but we can adjust as we move forward. This is a hard step for Japanese teams because they like to make sure everything is perfect and there is zero chance of failure. They would prefer to never harvest the future benefits, if there was a possibility of failure occurring on their watch. We have to make sure we give them permission to fail and make sure there is no blow back on anyone if it doesn’t work, otherwise it will never start.

Step Eight: Tweak the ideas.
Once we are underway, we learn so much more and we need to be flexible to analyse the results and to draw the right conclusions. Often we have insufficient data to really know what we are looking at, so we need patience to give the innovation time to work. As we better understand the situation, we can make adjustments to improve the results or the performance.

Step Nine: Determine Benefits
We said we would start with the end in mind and did we achieve that or did we go off on a tangent that yielded something even more valuable? Did we gain from the exercise or not? Did the results of the organisation improve as a result of the implementation of the ideas we came up with? We need to draw a line in the sand and make that judgement.

Step Ten: Recognise the team
Whether we hit it out of the park or whether we made no gains, we still need to recognise the efforts made and the input provided from those involved. We never lose because we always learn. A wrap up party is always a good idea and if there can be awards attached to that, all the better. Some people may have been drawn off to other work and not be there at the end, but they should be brought back too. Recognition is the key.
These ten steps are a good template to use when setting up your house brand of idea generation.