Putting your Company's Brain to Work

The Harvard Business Review case article of July-August 1997: Putting Your Company's Whole Brain to Work suggests in this twenty-first century that in order for businesses and corporations to succeed they must be visionaries for innovation. Today's organizations are victims of comfortable clone syndrome where everyone/co-workers tends to think alike within the comfort zone and are hesitant to think outside the box. The concept of creative abrasion provides an explanation of being able to manage a variety of diverse processes from multiple types of brainstorming within/around unique "thinking cap" mentalities. In order for employers to measure their employees creativity, there are several assesment tools from which two are commonly used frequently and known as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and/or Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI). The ideologies managers should take into consideration for an efficient organizational work team are first and foremost for the manager to understand theirself and their leadership styles. Next, managers should preach bypassing/forgetting "the golden rule" of treating people the way you want to be treated and learn to become more adventurous. Third, managers should attempt to create "whole-brained" work teams (rather than just right-brain or left-brain) which will create a harmonious collective group environment. Fourth, referring to the saying, "try not to judge a book by its cover," managers should always seek out the "ugly duckling" within a team who might have the solution to the problem. For example, an individual with raggedy clothing might just be able to solve the puzzle. Fifth, managers must emphasize an atmosphere of creative process by dissolving to be authoritative and promoting a kind of free-enterprise environment with a "don't ask, don't tell" philosophy. Finally, last but not least, managers need to learn to depersonalize conflict between members of a team. Managers need to focus and make sure that when conflict does arise within groups, they should emprovise that the ascending conflict is not personal or on relational basis/terms. Instead an "agree to disagree" atmosphere should reign when conflicts do occur. In summary, the case study article emphasizes that there might be two individuals with differing arguments, however, eventually the outcome or conclusion will lead to the common goal.