Productivity and creativity can come via different styles of work and relaxation

Quiet times can enhance creativity

Have you ever spent the day at work wondering how a fellow employee gets away with what looks like goofing off?  It can be aggravating and cause discontent among employees when one of them does not carry their equal share of the workload.  The complaints to management take time to resolve and finding ways to encourage the employee to do a proper amount of work during the day will eat up your energy and time.  Documenting the poor effort and managing the employee becomes a task that makes you feel like giving up as a manager.  There is no great answer to motivating those poor performers.  Each person will require a different set of tools to make them either a good employee or an employee that no longer works there.  Improvement in their performance helps the company and it helps you develop as a true leader.  Many times the solutions you use to assist an unproductive employee and help them improve come from your creativity in solving a problem. 

Your company may face many problems beyond the employees; manufacturing problems, new product inventions, customer satisfaction, and cash flow.   Creativity is needed to address many of the more severe problems because simple solutions just will not work.  Sometimes, employees spending time on different tasks or giving them time to reflect and think helps the creative process.   When people are quiet and not actively thinking a problem, their creativity comes to the forefront.  Likewise, having employees work on tasks widely different from the norm helps them see solutions to problems without the encumbrance of knowing something will not work.  Some companies provide free time to employees to work on special projects of the employees choosing.  In these cases, the company benefits by new inventions from motivated employees allowed to enhance their creativity.  The time commitment may be 1 hr per day, but the benefits can be huge. If done correctly, the results are creative solutions to problems or new products for the market place.

You may have experienced an ability to solve a problem while exercising, taking a trip, or dining out.  Your novel solution came after your review of all the background information and extensive attempts to solve a major problem.  Creative solutions often arise during those quiet times away from the problem; it is like having a novel idea just pop in your head. The answers come from the initial processing by your brain followed by the creative side of your brain showing you a new path.

Finding ways to share problems with those in the company having limited exposure to the problem can help achieve a creative solution.  People can become limited by seeing what appears to be an insolvable problem.  Someone from a different discipline can bring fresh ideas to solving the issues.  Creative solutions can come from use of experiences from a very different field when applied to your issues.    

Encouraging the creativity is important in any business.  Your company is likely to experience many problems. The ability to overcome them and continue to move forward makes a big difference between success and failure.  Creating new products and converting them to marketed products requires creativity. Converting an idea to something a consumer wants requires creativity.  Creativity must be encouraged and enhanced in all your employees.  Your success will depend on it.

Taffy Williams is on Twitter by @twilli2861.  Email questions to twilli2861@aol.com. More is available via his company website ,  photo website, or “LIKE” ColonialTDC on Facebook.  You can also find him in the group Startup Group on Linkedin. Other articles are in the Charlotte, NC- small business section of Examiner.com.