The ability to think originally is a highly regarded leadership attribute, but how many leaders are truly original? Here are six secrets to help.
1. Have lots of ideas, not just a few big ones
You have to generate a lot of variety to be original. If you just come up with a few ideas, your first few are usually the most obvious. You have to rule out the familiar in order to get to the novel. Most people never do that. They fall in love with their first idea, or they end up questioning whether they have the ability to come up with more ideas. So one of the things leaders need to be doing more often is encouraging people to generate lots and lots of ideas, knowing that you are going to spew out a lot of garbage in order to get greatness.
2. Judge ideas in a creative mind-set
Most leaders are overconfident in their own ideas because they created them, and it’s very easy to sell yourself on the pros of an idea and lose sight of the cons. They then go to managers for their views but the data suggests managers are not great judges, either, as they take new ideas and compare them to existing prototypes.
So, whom do you turn to if you cannot trust yourself and cannot rely on your managers who tend to be a little bit risk averse—your peers; fellow creators.
3. Do not assume it is a young person’s game
It is often said that you need to come up with all your great, creative ideas early in your career because, at some point, you are either going to run out of novel thoughts or are going to get too stuck in conventional wisdom. However, if you look at founders of
start-ups, the average venture-backed founder is 38 and some are much older.
4. Avoid groupthink (in a real way)
Groupthink is probably the biggest barrier to innovation. It leads to all kinds of bad decisions and gets in the way of change. Find somebody who genuinely holds a different opinion and invite them into the conversation. Imagine how different the world of organisations would be if in your performance reviews you were rated on how frequently and how effectively you were willing to challenge the majority or fight against the status quo.
5. Learn how to procrastinate wisely
Research data suggests that those who procrastinate somewhat are more original and creative than people who never do it, and more creative than those who always do it. Of course, if you wait until the deadline, then you are just going to have to rush to finish the simplest idea. However, there is a sweet spot where procrastination helps with divergent thinking, with incubation, and with nonlinear connections. Da Vinci spent 16 years working, on and off, on the Mona Lisa, and many years on The Last Supper!
6. Follow the evidence
The number of leaders who make decisions, especially about people, based solely on intuition is surprisingly high. They defend this by claiming that they have learned from experience. Whilst this might well be true, ignoring the evidence and data available, especially when it contradicts your gut feeling, could result in a poor decision. A better approach would be to use the data to challenge your intuition and find a better third way.
