15 Foundations for Facilitating Creativity at Work - Michelle James

For the past several years, I've offered an annual Creative IStock_000005391301Medium Facilitation Program based on universal principles of creativity; education, research and application of creative process; and, most significantly, lessons learned and insights gleaned from the trial and error of facilitating creative process with hundreds of individuals and organizations over the past 12 years. (An ongoing exploration, with each iteration I refine the program). It requires a different focus, skill set, way of being and "container creation" than facilitating analytical processes. Below are some of the many principles and practices I've learned or discovered. Take what resonates and leave the rest :-)

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How 3M got its creative juices flowing again - Marc Gunther , CNN

3M is everywhere. That's the point George Buckley, the chairman and CEO of 3M, is trying to make as he talks about his favorite subject, inventing things. Last year, he says, "even in the worst economic times in memory, we released over 1,000 new products." As if on cue, Buckley's new iPhone rings, showing a photo of his daughter. "Daddy's in a meeting," he says, and hangs up. "I'm told there's some 3M inside that phone," I say. Buckley replies, "There's lots of 3M inside." He can't say exactly what 3M (MMM, Fortune 500) gadget is in the iPhone; Apple's (AAPL, Fortune 500) skittish about such things. But point well made: 3M is everywhere. Apple and many others couldn't do what they do without 3M

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The Contemporary Story of Creative Leadership

This story on contemporary creative leadership has been created using Storify, an aggregator and mash up platform using social media. The story has not be editorialised, rather it has been created and developed using collage as the construct and key words "creative leadership". The feeds come from Twitter, Facebook, You Tube, Flickr and Google.

Emotional Commitment at Work - Bury My Heart in Conference Room B | Change This

From the latest Change This, a nice short presentation by Stan Slap of "slap" entitled Bury My Heart in Conference Room B - Emotional Commitment at Work

The Abstract

“A manager’s emotional commitment is the ultimate trigger for their discretionary effort, worth more than financial, intellectual and physical commitment combined. It’s the kind of commitment that solves unsolvable problems, creates energy when all energy has been expended, and ignites emotional commitment in others, like employees, teams and customers. Emotional commitment means unchecked, unvarnished devotion to the company and its success; any legendary organizational performance is the result of emotionally committed managers.”

The drivers of the leadership brain - to acquire, to defend, to bond, to comprehend - HBR

"Humans have evolved a leadership brain," says HBS professor emeritus Paul R. Lawrence. "Good leaders are people with a conscience who respect and reward all the four drives of other stakeholders [the drive to acquire, to defend, to bond, and to comprehend], even as they respect and reward their own drives." Inspired by the writings and insights of Charles Darwin, specifically his 1871 masterwork The Descent of Man, Lawrence's new book, Driven to Lead: Good, Bad, and Misguided Leadership, offers managers an integrated understanding of the complex decision process at the heart of good and wise leadership. In the following excerpt, Lawrence describes how various forms of globalization—classic trading, international sales, and transnational outsourcing—reveal examples of good, bad, and misguided leadership behavior through the lens of humans' four drives.

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