Andy Nurumov

Author: Andrew Nurumov

Many organizations try to build creative and entrepreneurial culture. This post is about what CEO has to do for organizing it.

1. Start with personal example. In case of mature company it is OK to have CEO just as decision-maker, but lack of CEO’s creativity for actively expanding company only significantly decreases the pace of company. How could CEO maintain it for himself/herself? Reading and external corporate events. In terms of reading it is important to construct reading list wisely. It comes with practice – if you read 10+ business / psychology / biography books per year. For corporate events – before their participation, your creativity has to have the direction. It means, you should know in what streams of your organization you try to find innovative execution actions and what actions could work.

2. Right hiring. 99% of company performance is determined by its employees. Hire entrepreneurial and experienced people. Even inside corporations. They are typically proactive, open-minded. Most skills could be learned decently with 20 hours of focused effort. But not all employees want or can organize themselves to do this. Therefore, for example, Amazon focuses on behavioural interviews during hiring. You also has to understand this during interviews. Hiring mistakes are possible, but try to minimize them.

3. Give regular creative time to your employees. Best way to be creative for your team is to give them time on these activities on regular basis. I typically say my employees that they can spend 2-3 hours during work every week on business-related reading. Not business news, but good literature. For employees – point 1 from above is also relevant. And CEO proactively could advise good and relevant literature for an employee. Ask your supervisor about relevant books for you.

4. Create environment in which employees apply their creativity. Any growth company has spheres in which creativity could be applied. It is essential to create mechanism of supporting ideas, their evaluation and execution. Previously, I wrote about Change Management organization – you could apply similar method here. 

5. In execution words do not matter. Right actions and performance matter. Sometimes after reading, people think that usage of right terminology means that they advise and execute right actions. Terminology could use more 50% of people in industry, but less than 5% make right actions to create unicorn company. Remember this.

To summarize, don’t neglect creativity. Company performance is a lagging measure of creativity of your employees for growth organization.