The educational system you were brought up in started early with art and music and other creative arts when you were in Kindergarten. As you got older, your studies quickly shifted away from creative activities to math, science, social studies, computers. Mom or dad encouraged you to be a doctor, banker, programmer. But guitar player, dancer, painter—you can’t make any serious money at those. By the time you graduated college, nearly all of your learning focused on facts and concrete answers, with little attention to the creative arts.
Then you began your career. According to the LA Business Journal, less than 15% of all jobs are creative in nature. Now, in your likely-non-creative job, you face a challenge. Your supervisor lays out a situation and asks you to be a part of a team and come up with a creative solution. Except… you haven’t studied anything creative since you were fresh out of diapers. In Exodus 35:31-32, as the Israelites prepared to build the tabernacle, Scripture reminds us that God had prepared a man named Bezalel and “filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze”. There are indeed creatively talented individuals within your organization, and to this you can add creatively skilled people.
Encouraging creativity. In every leadership role, you will at some point require creative skills that you did not engage in during the majority of your educational years. By taking time to seize on creative activity now, and encouraging it in your team, you will be ready for the creative answer when it arises. Read novels, take an art class, have your team engage in a creative activity like decorating the office or having a photo contest. Give creative people already on your team the opportunity to create. Bring in creative professionals to talk about where they find ideas and inspiration. By investing consistently in creativity, you will be ready to innovate and invent new pathways and answers when you really need them.
The educational system you were brought up in started early with art and music and other creative arts when you were in Kindergarten. As you got older, your studies quickly shifted away from creative activities to math, science, social studies, computers.