Have you ever faced the challenge of balancing wild creativity with meticulous analysis in your business strategy?
Creativity AND analysis
Strategy needs both💡creativity AND 🔍 analysis.
It takes creativity to imagine a future which is different from the past. To imagine new products, services and business models. To innovate.
But it takes analysis to ensure that such imaginings have some grounding in reality.
After all, it's easy to imagine a future where we all commute in flying cars IF we don't need to worry about practicalities like gravity, energy efficiency, market size and affordability.
Analysis enhances Creativity
How do we strike the right balance between creativity and analysis?
Interestingly, evidence suggests that constraints, such as those created by analysis, enhance creativity rather than stifle it.
Consider, for example, Japanese Haiku. The strict constraint of three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables has not stifled creativity. Rather, it has pushed poets to express profound ideas more simply and poetically.
Catrinel Haught-Tromp tested, confirmed and named this the "Green Eggs and Ham" hypothesis, or "constraints facilitate creativity".
Getting the most out of both
Here are some tips for getting the most out of creativity AND analysis in strategy:
- Design processes that alternate between the two modes. Be explicit about when you're asking people to be creative and when you're asking them to be analytical. Don't simply allow the two modes to mix unconsciously.
- Recognise that some people may be biased one way or another. Play to their strengths. Provide them with extra support when asking them to play a role which may be out of their comfort zone.
- Generate a creative tension between the two. Mix analytical and creative individuals in groups and demand a minimum level of consensus. Or set an analytical group up in competition with a creative group. Healthy competition can bring the best out of both. But make it explicit and fun to avoid tensions building up.
- Recognise when you're emphasising one more than the other, and take steps to rebalance.
- Work out where your own biases lie and surround yourself with others to compensate or deliberately train yourself to get better at the other.
Conclusion
It isn't a question of when you stop analysing and start creating, but more of how you combine the two most effectively.