Association of Research Libraries (ARL®)

Stan Gryskiewicz
Vice President of Global Initiatives
Center for Creative Leadership

Organizational creativity doesn’t need to be left to chance.

Through Positive Turbulence -- the process of establishing structures that enhance creativity -- leaders can develop and maintain the innovation necessary for their organizations to be successful and competitive, according to Stan Gryskiewicz.

Gryskiewicz is vice president and Senior Fellow in Creativity and Innovation at the Center for Creative Leadership and author of the book Positive Turbulence: Developing Climates for Creativity, Innovation, and Renewal (Jossey-Bass Publishers, July 1999)

The idea behind Positive Turbulence is to expand the stimuli that offer employees a natural source of novel and useful ideas that might otherwise be untapped. The end use of this information is organizational renewal and the organization’s long-term viability.

Some structures for creating Positive Turbulence in an organization include:

• Encouraging employees to read outside their field of expertise.
  One proven source of novelty is reading credible fringe periodicals within an industry. Remember, the mainstream journals of today were once on the fringe of respectability.

• Providing resources for employees to attend conferences which only tangentially relate to their field of study.
  The concept of reading "on the fringe" applies to attending conferences or professional meetings outside one’s expertise. We are all experts in our fields, but we need new ideas which can be applied to that field.

• Creating ad hoc task forces and cross-functional teams to resolve problems and stimulate new ideas.
  Working cross functionally is a natural source of novelty which can improve company performance.

• Bringing in experts from the outside to present on a subject which is exciting to staff.
  Experts from the outside bring with them a perspective which is not often heard within the organization. By definition, these external experts are not shaped in their thinking by the climate or culture or school of thought of the internal organization.

• Establishing alliances, joint ventures or networks with other organizations.
  Become members of industry study groups, listen to"best of practice" presentations by other companies and look to the investment of others as a source for learning.

Positive Turbulence is characterized by an energizing climate, one that upsets the status quo and impels organizations toward renewal. An organization that takes advantage of Positive Turbulence welcomes novelty, change and variation outside the norm.

Find the Fringe

Positive Turbulence is a paradoxical process: you invite an energizing, disparate, invigorating, unpredictable force into your organization so that you can use its chaotic energy and direct it toward continuous renewal. You create an environment that upsets the status quo and impels people toward change.

Underlying the concept of Positive Turbulence is the belief that creativity is stimulated by new information, fresh concepts and broad perspective. By looking beyond the status quo, the obvious data and the current constraints, organizations and individuals "see" things differently and often discover new ides or new applications.

"Residing out on the periphery of the organization today are the ideas which will revolutionize the organization tomorrow, " suggests Dee Hock, founder and CEO Emeritus of Visa, speaking to Vice President Al Gore’s Reinventing the Government Task Force in April 1998.

Hock and others assert that outside the mainstream, on the fringes of an industry or field, are the small introductory changes that will grow and represent meaningful change over the next three to five years. These changes signal the future direction of the industry and help the visionaries plan for the future. Organizations that do not pay attention to the periphery can be slow to act and are overcome by the demands of change.

The concept of looking to the periphery is often encouraged by a board of directors or managers who tell their staff to "think outside of the box. " Taking the notion one step further, Positive Turbulence posits that "out of the box" thinking need not be left to chance: it can actually be developed in individuals and organizations.

This idea is certainly not new. David Kennard, a BBC producer, tells of a 17th century abbott who traveled around Europe holding dinner parties to which he invited some of the best scientific minds of the day. By gathering together the idea explorers who were living the scientific revolution taking place across Europe, his table provided a venue for the exchange of ideas -- which, in turn, stimulated new, novel and useful ideas. In this way, the Abbott Nolle was indirectly responsible for the invention of the vacuum pump, the barometer and the steam engine.

Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith once asked what David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus and Adam Smith had in common -- besides contributing innovative theory to the field of economics. They were all colleagues on the faculty of the management training college of the East India Tea Company, where they were stimulated by contact with ship captains and company managers. They were engaged by the people who had seen beyond the horizons of the classroom, who brought the unfamiliar world to them. Thus, the stage was set for Positive Turbulence.

Contemporary research supports the power of Positive Turbulence in managing corporate R&D laboratories. Conrad Kasperson, a professor of business administration at Franklin & Marshall College, studied information-receiving behaviors, comparing the information flow around creative and noncreative scientists. His work showed that the most creative R & D laboratories are those that encourage scientists to learn outside their field of expertise -- they are encouraged to read publications outside their area of knowledge and attend conferences that only tangentially relate to their field. These professional scientists and engineers need the Positive Turbulence provided by rubbing shoulders with experts in other disciplines.

This is a tack IBM has taken in recently. Journalist Steve Lohr reported that "IBM opens the doors of its research labs to surprising results" (New York Times, July 1998). IBM researchers now spend about 25 percent of their time with customers and increase collaborative work with leading universities. In addition, more outsiders have been recruited both to work full time and on specific projects.

Weaving the fibers of creativity

The leaders of an association set on constant renewal know that its future is currently hidden in the fibers of creativity woven into the fabric of the organization. Instituting structures for Positive Turbulence can be done on the individual level and on the organizational level and can involve either internal our external resources.

Internal sources for Positive Turbulence at the individual level include foreign assignments, membership on ad hoc cross-functional task forces, and the dubious luck of being present when a crisis occurs.

At the organizational level, Positive Turbulence can be generated by developing cross-functional teams or inviting external experts, whose expertise does not exist inside the organization, to present on a subject that is exciting to them. Organizations that have engaged in and value this type of intellectual risk-taking include Sweden’s $7 billion insurance giant Skandia and Hallmark as well as Bell Labs.

Skandia has created a strategic planning unit which is staffed with people representing three distinct generations who range in age from their mid-twenties to their mid-sixties. Skandia refers to this as the "3G" (generation) planning team. These generation differences spark dialogue within the group, which includes discussions on medical realities such as dying, the slowing of the aging process, the end of disease and the impact of all this upon the younger generation. All these trends have implications for actuarial decisions, future selling strategies, products, market-niche decisions and even qualification procedures for future customers.

Hallmark brings into its corporate headquarters in Kansas City each year 50 or more speakers who have novel ideas to communicate -- among them Lyn Heward, Vice President of Creation, Cirque du Soleil; Guy Kawasaki, Apple Fellow; David Whyte, story teller and poet. The sole purpose is to provide stimulation to the world’s largest creative staff -- more than 740 artists, designers, writers, editors and photographers who generate more than 15,000 original designs for cards and related products yearly.

Again, the value of Positive Turbulence -- creating a novel stimulus for people in order to make connections to problems or issues they are trying to resolve in other settings.

Sources for Positive Turbulence external to the organization provide opportunities for both individual and organizational innovation. External structures that provide the individual with Positive Turbulence include conferences, training experiences, travel, visiting museums and galleries, and reading fringe business periodicals such as Fast Company, Red Herring, Ray Gun, Upside and WIRED, and newsletters such as Leadership in Action and Speedbumps. All of these sources offer a glimpse into what will become mainstream and provide the Positive Turbulence to get people and their organizations ready for change.

At the organizational level, joint ventures, alliances and networks create Positive Turbulence and provide alternative methods of competing today. Whether undertaken for strategic advantage or financial gain, these events offer opportunities for cross-fertilization of ideas and perspective. What is important is that the organizations coming together bring to the party something unique in their expertise that will serve as Positive Turbulence for their new partners.

It is the responsibility of a creative leader to provide his or her organization with opportunities for Positive Turbulence--so that the organization can remain viable, able to both read and respond to change and chart the course for renewal. What indicators of change have been uncovered by the Positive Turbulence found in your organization?