The “2010 Global IBM CEO Study” was recently published, it’s one of the largest one-on-one CEO interview studies, surveying 1,541 CEOs, general managers and senior public sector leaders from 60 countries and across 33 industries. The four primary findings of this year’s survey are as follows:

• Today’s complexity is only expected to rise and more than half of CEOs doubt their ability to manage it. Seventy-nine percent of CEOs anticipate even greater complexity ahead. However, one set of organisations we call them ‘Standouts’ has turned increased complexity into financial advantage over the past five years.
• Creativity is the most important leadership quality, according to CEOs. Standouts practice and encourage experimentation and innovation throughout their organisations. Creative leaders expect to make deeper business model changes to realise their strategies. To succeed, they take more calculated risks, find new ideas and keep innovating in how they lead and communicate.
• The most successful organisations co-create products and services with customers, and integrate customers into core processes. They are adopting new channels to engage and stay in tune with customers. By drawing more insight from the available data, successful CEOs make customer intimacy their number one priority.
• Better performers manage complexity on behalf of their organisations, customers and partners. They do so by simplifying operations and products, and increasing dexterity to change the way they work, access resources and enter markets around the world. Compared to other CEOs, dexterous leaders expect 20 percent more future revenue to come from new sources.

After reviewing the findings it becomes clear the extent to which the economic downturn has affected customers, business and society. We will not simply go back to “business as usual” once we recover from this economic downturn. The world has undergone a significant paradigm shift and we will never be the same.

As we move towards a recovery in the world economy, global leaders are experiencing high levels of complexity and uncertainty, “eight in ten CEOs expect their environment to grow significantly more complex and fewer than half believe they know how to deal with it successfully.” This environment creates an urgent need for leadership. Given this, the survey explored what CEOs consider  the most important leadership qualities required over the next five years, the results are illustrated below.

CEOs cited creativity as the most important leadership quality over the next five years…

Creativity is essential when uncertainty is high and where the future is expected to be a significant departure from what we’ve known in the past. When uncertainty is high you cannot just repeat the successful practices of the past and expect similar results. You will need to find new ways of thinking, new ways of operating and new ways of behaving. The IBM survey puts it this way…

“Creativity is often defined as the ability to bring into existence something new or different, but CEOs elaborated. Creativity is the basis for ‘disruptive innovation and continuous re-invention,’ a Professional Services CEO in the United States told us. In addition this requires bold, breakthrough thinking. Leaders, they said, must be ready to upset the status quo even if it is successful. They must be comfortable with and committed to ongoing experimentation… It’s not that CEOs are just now becoming aware of the importance of creativity they have long been aware of the need to innovate their products, their processes and their customers’ experiences. Even in 2004, CEOs were telling us that ‘CEOs the world over were refocused on growth and they viewed innovation as the way to get there.’ But today, creativity itself has been elevated to a leadership style. Traditional approaches to managing organisations need fresh ideas, ideas that are intended to disrupt the status quo.”

It seems that we are entering a period in our history that places a premium on effective leadership. It’s not often that we have the opportunity to re-invent how we choose to approach our life and work. These are exciting times indeed…!

• What are you doing in response to this increased demand for leadership?
• Are you re-examining your existing leadership practices?
• Are you experimenting with new approaches, new paradigms, new ways of working? If not, why?

Related posts:

1. 11 Qualities of Leaders
2. Time: The Number 1 Barrier to Organisational Creativity
3. Research Finds that Future-focused Leadership brings Innovation

@N02/5523800294/" target="_blank">Photo by lorraine santana

The post “Why Are Creative Leaders So Rare?” by Navi Radjou who reflects on Dr Kalam’s (former President of India) lecture titled “Creative Leadership in the Global Knowledge Economy” in which he articulates the following eight key tenets of creative leadership.

1. The leader must have a vision for the organization
2. The leader must have the passion to transform that vision into action
3. The leader must be able to travel into an unexplored path
4. The leader must know how to manage both success and failure
5. The leader must have the courage to make decisions
6. The leader should have nobility in management
7. Every action of the leader should be transparent
8. The leader must work with integrity and succeed with integrity

Leaders drive change and lead people in the pursuit of a vision. This means leaders are often faced with the challenge of venturing into the unknown and the unfamiliar. On any journey into unfamiliar places requires that the leader adjust and respond to unexpected situations. The ability of the leader to navigate in these times requires the traits of a creative leader as described above.

Related posts:

1. Tips for Becoming a Highly Creative Person
2. The critical importance of trust in times of adversity
3. The Best Times to Be Creative

Mark McGuinness has collected a bunch of his best posts into one free ebook and has some additional time management  resources here. I found the book filled with valuable time management insights. Given the pressures leaders have on their time, Mark’s time management practices are extremely useful. I case you don’t want to read the entire book here is a summary of the 7 common practices….

1. Why you need to be organised to be creative

Choreographer Twyla Tharp, author of the book “The Creative Habit: Learn it and Use it for Life“, which I’ve previously reviewed here, directed the opera and dance scenes for the film Amadeus, has this to say about the film’s portrait of Mozart and the importance of being organised and disciplined….

“The film Amadeus dramatizes and romanticizes the divine origins of creative genius. Antonio Salieri, representing the talented hack, is cursed to live in the time of Mozart, the gifted and undisciplined genius who writes as though touched by the hand of God… Of course this is hogwash. There are no ‘natural’ geniuses… No-one worked harder than Mozart. By the time he was twenty-eight years old, his hands were deformed because of all the hours he had spent practicing, performing, and gripping a quill pen to compose… As Mozart himself wrote to a friend, “People err who think my art comes easily to me. I assure you, dear friend, nobody has devoted so much time and thought to composition as I. There is not a famous master whose music I have not industriously studied through many times.”

Twyla goes on in her book to argue that “routine is as much a part of the creative process as the lightning bolt of inspiration, maybe more“.

Have you structured you day to be productive?

2. Prioritise work that is ‘important but not urgent’

This practice comes from Stephen Covey’s popular book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” where he classifies work tasks
according to whether they are important or urgent…

Covey points out that many of us spend too much time on tasks that are urgent and important  – in other words, staving off emergencies by rushing around to solve problems or responding to others’ demands at short notice. Sometimes this is unavoidable – ‘deadline magic’ can spur us on to feats of creative production we wouldn’t otherwise attempt. This can be an exciting and productive experience – but it’s up to you whether you want to work like this most of the time. ….. Covey’s solution is to prioritise work that is important but not urgent… Though this is hard to do on any given day, it is the only way to ensure you are making progress towards your own goals and dreams, instead of merely reacting to what other people throw at you. And over time, the more you are dealing with important things before they become urgent, the fewer ‘urgent and important’ tasks you will have to deal with.

What percentage of you day is focus in urgent thing vs. the important things? Are you focused enough on completing the important things first?

3. Ring-fence your most creative time

Pick your most creative time of day….. then ring fence it for your most creative work. Mark provide this example of how Tim Ferriss author of The Four Hour Work Week writes blog posts, in two phases and at different times of day:

“Separate brainstorming (idea generation) from synthesis (putting it all into a flowing post). I generally note down 10-15 potential points for a post between 10-10:30am with a double espresso, select 4-5 I like and put them in a tentative order from 10:30-10:45am, then I’ll let them marinate until 12am-4am, when I’ll drink yerba mate tea, craft a few examples to match the points, then start composing. It’s important to identify your ideal circadian schedule and pre-writing warm-up for consistent and reliable results.” – The Four Hour Work Week Blog

Do you know when you’re most creative? How are you using this time?

4. Avoid the ‘Sisyphus effect’ of endless to-do lists

Mark points out how endless to do lists and interruptions overwhelm us and sap our time and energy….

“The bottom line is that interruptions destroy your concentration. And loss of concentration = loss of creative work. If you’re not careful, you can end up in permanent ‘reactive mode’ – spending your time responding to others’ demands and all the things you have to do instead of the one thing you really wanted to do today…… In short, you need to install a buffer between others’ demands and your response. Otherwise you’ll end up in permanently anxious and unproductive ‘reaction mode’.”

I think we often under estimate the cost of interruptions, previously I posted on a study by Study by Time Magazine…

Researchers studying a random sample of office workers and found they got an average of just 11 minutes clear time to a project before being distracted by an e-mail, phone call or verbal interruption from a manager or colleague.

It also found interruptions now took up an average of 2.1 hours of every working day, or 28 per cent of the average person’s nine-to-five schedule, including the time to recover your train of thought following an interruption.

It took an average of 25 minutes to return to a task after being disturbed, according to the magazine.

How often do you get interrupted a day? How much productive time does this sap from your day? Are you diligently protecting your most productive from unnecessary interruptions?

5. Get things done by putting them off till tomorrow

This practice is about slowing down our response and so that we can response by being smart and not by working harder….

“In his excellent book Do It Tomorrow, Mark Forster….. suggests we create a buffer between incoming demands and our response – by making ‘do it tomorrow’ our default response to all requests. Not ‘tomorrow’ as in ‘tomorrow never comes’, but ‘tomorrow’ as in ‘tomorrow’. Not today or the day after tomorrow, but tomorrow.”

6. Get things off your mind

The practice is about having a trusted system that you can rely on to remind you of the important things that need to get done, rather than wasting your mental and emotional energy keeping track of your commitments. This allows you to commit 100% to the task at hand…..!

“What if you could dedicate fully 100 percent of your attention to whatever was at hand, at  your own choosing, with no distraction?…. No, it’s not an ancient Zen text – these words are lifted from David Allen’s best-selling book on productivity, Getting Things Done. When I read this section of the book, I grasped the true value of having a system for managing your workload – not merely to be more productive but to reclaim your own mind by clearing out unnecessary mental clutter caused by trying to keep track of all your work commitments.”

Set up ‘buckets’ to capture your commitments, to do lists arranged by your work context so that you do consume valuable mental and emotional energy trying to remember the things you have to get done….

7. Review your commitments

Reviewing your commitments help to keep things off your mind so you can focus……. Mark suggests that you need to review your commitments…

1. First, and most obviously, to make sure you actually do the tasks on your to-do lists!
2. If you don’t review the lists regularly, you’ll soon stop trusting them and won’t be able to use them to get things off your mind.
3. To think about how you’re going to approach your work. It’s tempting to ‘get going’ first thing in the morning, so you feel like you’re getting things done – but whenever I do this, my day is always less productive and more stressful than on days where I take 10 minutes to review my commitments and decide how I’m going to tackle them.
4. It helps you step back and see the ‘big picture’ of your work, weigh up priorities and make decisions about your next steps.

Overall I thought this is a great list of time management practices….. So which two of these practices are you going to implement over the next 21 days?

Related posts:

1. Leaders spend time with their people
2. The Creative Processes
3. Time: The Number 1 Barrier to Organisational Creativity

Robert Fritz in his book “Path of Least Resistance” discusses the idea that creating is not problem solving and that understanding the distinction between these two concepts makes all the difference to the results we get as leaders. What is the difference between problem solving and creating?

“The fundamental difference between creating and problem solving is simple. In problem solving we seek to make something we do not like go away. In creating, we seek to make what we truly care about exist.” – Peter M. Senge, Creating Desired Futures in a Global Economy, Reflections The SoL Journal, 2003.

Creating is about bringing something into existence. Problem solving is about removing what we don’t want. As leaders we are constantly being called upon to solve a constant barrage of problems, to such an extent that we forget what we’re trying to achieve. Missing the purpose of it all, why we’re doing what we’re doing? Society is too problem focused, we are more concerned about fixing problems, removing what we don’t want, than we are with creating what we do want. In all this action, we rarely take action based upon the vision of what we do want to create.

“What determines your orientation is where you spend most of your time. For many people, much of their life is organized around the circumstances in their lives. For others, much of their lives are organized around creating what they want to create…. Their is a dramatic difference between the two orientations. In the first, you are always subject to the whims of circumstances. In the other, you are the predominant creative force in your own life, and circumstances are one of the forces you use in the creative process.” – Robert Fritz, Path of Least Resistance

It may seem like a subtle difference, but creating is very different from problem solving. When problem solving we’re seeking a solution that makes something go away. When we are creating we’re attempting to bring something new into existence. Reflecting on these two ways of thinking, it’s seems to me, that we spend more time problem solving, reacting to circumstances, than we do creating what we desire. We become so caught up in the frenzy of solving problem, that we forget what we originally set out to create. So what exactly are the differences between problem solving and creating?

The table above draws upon the work of Bruce Elkin from his book “Simplicity and Success“, who was strongly influenced by Robert Fritz.

When leading from a problem orientation, what drives the action is the intensity of the problem, remove the intensity of the problem and the resulting action slows and soon stops. We need to be leading from a strong vision of what we are striving to create, this inspires and motivates us to continually act, creating our vision…

“What are we trying to create? Without a compelling answer to this question, it is hard to know why all the problem solving actually matters. Problem solving becomes the busywork of organizations in which people have forgotten their purpose and vision. Reconnecting with that purpose always starts with asking questions like: Why are we here? What are we trying to create that will make the world a better place? And, who would miss us if we were gone?” – Peter M. Senge, Creating Desired Futures in a Global Economy, Reflections The SoL Journal, 2003.

Ultimately leaders need to solve problems whilst they focus to create their vision of the future, they need to be good at doing both, however as Peter Senge points our our primary focus is on the big picture and on what we are creating.
Ultimately leaders need to solve problems and create the future, they need to be good at doing both, however as Peter Senge points our our primary focus is on the big picture and on what we are creating.

Organizations must do both – resolve day-to-day problems and generate new results. But if your primary role is to fix problems, individually or collectively, rather than create something new and meaningful, it’s hard to maintain a sense of purpose.” – Peter M. Senge, Creating Desired Futures in a Global Economy, Reflections The SoL Journal, 2003.

The vital question for leaders is not “What problem are we trying to solve?”, but “What do I want to create?” Are you leading from a vision of what you want to create? When you find yourself solving problems, do you approach solving them within the context of the vision you’re striving to create?

Technorati Tags: Leaders, Leadership, Management, Books, Business, Book, Principles, Creating

Related posts:

1. Tom Hirshfield’s Rules of Thumb for Problem Solving
2. Leadership is about creating new realities…
3. 11 Qualities of Leaders

What do we mean, when we describe leadership as an art? How does the idea of leader as artist affect the way we think about, and practice leadership? When pondering on the idea of leader as artist and considering the parallel between an artist and the practice of leadership, provides some useful insights on leadership.

• Artists know themselves. Artists have a keen awareness of their strengths, weaknesses, when and where they do their best work. They have spent time thinking about who they are, what they want to create, what style they’ll be using to express themselves and how they will use their raw materials. As leaders it would serve us well to do similar thinking around who we are, Warren Bennis in On Becoming A Leader talks about the importance of using who we are, as the foundation of our leadership, “What is true for leaders is, for better or worse true for each of us: we are our own raw material. Only when we know what we’re made of and what we want to make of it can we begin our lives – and we must do it despite an unwitting conspiracy of people and events against us.” An understanding who we are is the foundation of all great leadership. How well do you know yourself?
• Great art is an act of self-expression. The primary drive of an artist is to express him or herself fully. The expression of one’s ideas and vision is and important step in creating great art. “…anyone who wants to express himself fully and truly must have a point of view. Leadership without perspective and point of view isn’t leadership – and of course it must be your own perspective, your own point of view….. It must be authentic, and if it is, it will be original, because you are an original.” – Warren Bennis, On Becoming A Leader. Artists and leaders strive to express their vision and purpose. It’s their driving passion and source of inspiration. Leadership is an act of creation, an expression of vision and purpose. The ability of leaders to clearly communicate, who they are, what they stand for and where they’re going, is a critical requirement, for building trust and creating an environment that supports aligned action.
• Great art is unique and valuable. Great art is original and unique, this makes it valuable. Nobody who can afford and original piece of art would settle for a copy. Likewise, leaders are originals, they are not imitators of others, they may learn from others, but they remain true to themselves. “To become a leader, then, you must become yourself, become the maker of your own life.“- Warren Bennis, On Becoming A Leader.
• Art is a skill that is attained by study, practice, and observation. One definition states that art is a “skill that is attained by study, practice, or observation“. Great artists don’t start out great. They’re born with potential and their skills are honed and developed over time. Art takes hours of practice, personal discipline, persistence and a strong guiding passion. It’s in this daily discipline and routine that great art is created. “Leadership like art can be demonstrated” – Warren Bennis, On Becoming A Leader. Like art, leadership, is a skill we can learn by leveraging the “passion-practice-performance” cycle. If art can be taught through practice, than so can leadership, and like art the daily practice of leadership is crucial. A leader who doesn’t practice is like a performing artist who doesn’t rehearse, in the end they both lose their audience. Leadership is not a right or entitlement, it must be consistently demonstrated, refined, and earned.
• Art can only be effectively taught by artists. You cannot give what you do not have. It takes an artist to teach art. Sure, you can learn art techniques from anyone, but the crucial attitudes and mindsets that separates a good artist from a great artist, is more caught than taught. Just as it takes an artist to teach art, it requires a leader to teach and coach others to become leaders. Leadership requires that we learn the practice from someone who has mastered the craft. It takes a leader to develop leaders! Are you learning your craft of leadership from another leader?
• Great art tells a story. Great art tells an authentic story that inspires and evokes emotion in the audience. Great leadership also tells a story. Great leadership tells an authentic story, gets people involved and involves them as part of the story.

As leaders we need to tell our leadership story. Annette Simmons says that there are at least six types of stories that leaders should telling to engage and influence others:

1. Who I Am Stories
2. Why I Am Here Stories
3. My Vision Story
4. Teaching Stories
5. Values in Action Stories
6. “I Know what you are Thinking” Stories
• Art is messy. The act of creating is a messy process. Great artists embrace the messiness involved in creating their master piece. Part of the messiness of art is the duality, paradox and tensions inherent in the creative process. Successful artists learn to work with contradiction and uncertainty by spending time in reflection and contemplation, considering how they might apply their skills. Thinking about what they want to create, and how they will need to work with their materials. Leadership is similar, although we would like to believe leadership is a neatly controlled process, it turns out that much of a leaders work is messy. They too need to contemplate how they’re going to work with their strengths, to influence, inspire and guide their people. If leaders want to effectively deal with this messiness, they too need to more spend time in reflection and contemplation and less time directing and controlling.
• Artists carefully frame their work. Artists select a frame that enhances their work, carefully considering their style, audience and social environment. Framing is about focusing people’s attention within a field of meaning. Framing theory suggests that how something is presented (the “frame”) influences the choices people make. Frames help to organize or structure social meanings and since much of art and leadership is socially constructed, framing is a crucial consideration. Effective leaders consciously frame their messages, their behaviour and their vision, to create meaning and inspire action.

Looking at leadership from the perspective of leader as artist, provides a useful and insightful way for us to understand more deeply the practice of leadership.

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