Copyright 2013 Leigh Thompson
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Thompson, Leigh L.
Creative conspiracy : the new rules of breakthrough collaboration / Leigh Thompson.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-4221-7334-3
1. Teams in the workplace. 2. Creative ability in business. 3. Organizational behavior. I. Title.
HD66.T477 2013
658.4’022–dc23
2012032811
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
What Is a Creative Conspiracy?
CHAPTER 1
Debunking Myths About Creativity
CHAPTER 2
Breaking Down the Barriers to Creative Collaboration
CHAPTER 3
Picking the Right People for the Creative Team
CHAPTER 4
Leading the Creative Team
CHAPTER 5
Motivating the Creative Team
CHAPTER 6
Transforming Conflict into Creativity
CHAPTER 7
Setting the Stage for a Creative Conspiracy
CHAPTER 8
Your Action Plan for Instigating a Creative Conspiracy
NOTES
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is lovingly dedicated to all the students who have graced my classes and courses at the Kellogg School of Management. Without those men and women and the organizations that encouraged and supported them on their journeys of self-development, I would not have a place in this world. The questions my students have raised and the personal stories of triumph—and sometimes disappointment—they have shared with me have shaped me as a scholar and profoundly affected decades of my research. Because of their insights, stories, and questions and their desire to improve their leadership and team effectiveness, I have a guiding purpose. And, with that purpose, I have joy in my life.
I solemnly caution my young PhD students—in training to be professors—that my litmus test for a new research project is: “Would I want to bring whatever results we might find into the management classroom?” This book is a compilation of the social science research I want to bring to the management classroom. Accordingly, this book contains highlights not only from my own research studies, but from those of my collaborators, colleagues, and the fields of management science, social psychology, organizational behavior, cognitive psychology, and developmental psychology.
The team who pulled this book together is the heartbeat of the Kellogg Team and Group Research Center (KTAG): Larissa Tripp, Joel Erickson, Marissa Greco, and Ellen Hampton. Their energy, dedication, and spirit embody the creative conspiracy this book is all about.
INTRODUCTION
What Is a Creative Conspiracy?
Think about the most important project or task that is facing you at your job today. Ask yourself whether you are able to achieve your goal by working completely independently. If the answer is no, then list every single person you are depending on in some way—even if you have subordinates, you should list them and indicate how you depend on them. When I posed this question to several hundred people, no one said that they were completely independent. In fact, most people named at least three and sometimes one hundred people they rely on to achieve nearly anything.
Any time you cannot achieve your goals without the cooperation of others, you are collaborating. Collaborative teams realize that they are dependent on each other to achieve an important goal. Collaboration is the art and science of combining people’s talents, skills, and knowledge to achieve a common goal. Creative collaboration is the ability of teams and their leaders to organize, motivate, and combine talent to generate new and useful ideas. Teams that conspire to commit creative and innovative acts are engaged in a creative conspiracy. When collaboration is conscious, planned, and shared with others, excitement builds and a conspiracy develops. The teams that can meet the creative challenges posed to them are the hallmark of the most successful organizations and the subject of this book, which contains state-of-the art research on collaboration and innovation.
In my research investigation of over one thousand team leaders spanning over fifteen years, 41 percent indicate that leading the creative team is of paramount importance. And the trend appears to be rising. As recently as ten years ago, only 39 percent mentioned creativity as a key leadership challenge; this rose to 47 percent since 2010. Yet although the result of some collaboration is greater than the sum of the parts, at other times, it falls far short. Of the different types of work that teams do, the creative aspect is the least understood, the most elusive, the most costly, and the one that managers and leaders most often unknowingly sabotage. Thus, understanding how to optimally structure the creative team for success is essential.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of unfounded beliefs about creativity. When businesses and teams operate using faulty myths about creativity and teams, they hold their teams back in their effectiveness. This book introduces an approach and easy-to-implement best practices for optimizing team creativity and collaboration. These practical strategies enable collaborative teams and their leaders to avoid the pitfalls that well-meaning teams often fall into and instead, capitalize on what actually works with regard to creative collaboration.
The Group Versus Individual Paradox
First, I need to warn you—there is a paradox that undergirds this book: although creative team collaboration is essential for companies and businesses, decades of research evidence clearly reveals that groups are inferior to individuals when it comes to creativity! Is there a solution to this paradox? I believe there is.
To illustrate this conundrum, I often challenge my clients and students with vexing teamwork simulations that require creative collaboration to succeed. However, the path to success is anything but obvious. Team members who are passive or overly controlling will certainly lead their teams to failure. Recently, I worked with a large group of executives and managers on collaboration skills. I divided them into four groups of about twenty-five people each. Each group was challenged to complete a twenty-five-minute task in which they needed to solve a “whodunit” puzzle. I gave each member a written clue on a small sheet of paper. If they assembled all the clues and eliminated the wrong choices, they could