Managing change

In order for any city or regional authority to openly embrace the concepts described herein and subsequently enthusiastically implement them, it will most likely require an enormous amount of change of internal culture. There are many issues that will simply not respond to compromise and half committed initiatives. In fact, it is better to do nothing than to try to do some of these things by ‘halves’. The world is full of compromised creative government initiatives that were well meaning when stared but were forced to stray from their initial ideals. Organisational culture can be changed to be more conducive to achieving the goal of building and sustaining a creative economy.

Creativity is a risk based activity. Managing the processes that stimulate that activity is also risk based and requires considerable expertise and commitment. Here are some recommended methods for changing an organisation to develop and nurture a creative, innovation based culture;

  1. Establish a strategic direction. Communicate this direction to all levels of the organisation and establish a vision of the future that can be easily understood.
  2. Ensure the right individuals are appointed to implement the strategies and make sure the necessary resources are established and made available from the outset otherwise a large part of the effort of the managers will be dissipated by trying to obtain further funding.
  3. Encourage a risk taking system. Expect disagreement and passionately expressed opinions. Ensure that mistakes, if made, are not repeated but equally neither punished nor hidden. In a creative environment making a mistake is accepted, not trying to break the rules is unforgivable.
  4. Early successful results of the new initiatives should be celebrated and well publicised within the organisation. Change is a long process and involves many people. Invite employees from the organisation to get involved in creative activity, attend workshops and submit ideas of their own.

If change is to be effected, it should be obvious that things will be done in ways they haven’t been done before. Any system that insists things are done in established ways will not succeed in establishing a creative environment. New rules have to be written and old, no longer relevant methods, have to be discarded. This is not a recipe for anarchy, simply a response to the contemporary world.

The organisations that recognise their need to change and effectively implement those changes will create economies that flourish in the world’s global markets.

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