时间压力扼杀企业创造力

    假设你是一个创意团队的领导，手下有一群市场专家、设计师、广告文案、图片编辑、平面设计师，或是其他一些能给你的公司带来新鲜、有冲击力的创意或画面的人才，或许你会注意到，在过去一两年里，他们的工作成果已经不像过去那么令人兴奋了。不过据一项研究显示，这种现象是可以改变的，前提是你得愿意让这些创造性人才远离文山会海的折磨。

    华盖创意图片库（Getty Images）旗下的在线照片和视频服务iStock最近对400名“创造性人才”进行了调查，结果发现其中60%的人去年都曾有过“优秀的创意”。70%的人表示他们需要更多的“创造性时间”，63%的人表示他们忙于日常的琐碎杂务，没有时间去“创造性地冥想和寻找灵感”。将近四分之一的人（23%）表示，他们每天大概只有两个小时的时间进行创造性工作。

    因此，大概半数的受访者（48%）认为，他们供职的企业的创造性已经停滞不前，甚至是不进反退。iStock的总经理爱伦•戴斯迈拉斯指出：“随着工作量越来越大，预算越来越紧张，企业的创造性水平日益降低。”

    当然，现在差不多人人都要被迫“吃更少的草，挤更多的奶”，但是有充分证据表明，从事创造性工作的人受到的冲击尤其严重。比如哈佛商学院（Harvard Business School）教授、创新专家特拉莎•阿玛贝尔曾进行过一项研究，题目是“枪口下的创意”。研究人员检查了9,000多个“从事需要高度创意的项目”的人的日记，并衡量了他们在各种时间压力水平下的创新能力。结果表明，这些人在需要争分夺秒地完成工作任务时表现出的创意最差。在极端的时间压力下工作时，他们的新鲜点子变得少了很多，不仅是在任务截止的那天是这样，在之后的两天也是如此。

    阿玛贝尔在《哈佛商业评论》（Harvard Business Review）中撰文道：“很多企业经常通过设置虚拟的、或者很紧张的时间限制来扼杀创新。前者会造成不信任感，后者会导致员工精疲力竭。”她还表示，有些突破性的点子经常需要专门的时间用来天马行空地构思，但是许多企业把时间卡得很紧，因此不知不觉间扼杀了员工的创意。“拓展新理念，把各种独特的方案凑在一起，在迷宫里探索，可能是个很缓慢的过程。”

    那么作为一个经理应该怎样做呢？或许你可以多雇几个人来缓解某些日常的工作量。如果预算不允许的话又该怎么办呢？iStock的调查报告《释放创意》也给出了几条培养创意的建议。首先，企业可以仔细考虑一下每个会议、每一项报告或者其他让人分心的事务，它们是否真的必要？是否应该给创意人才留出更多的时间，让他们单纯地用来思考呢？

    其次，不要太关注面子上的工作。iStock的创意规划总监瑞贝卡•斯威夫特说：“没有哪个好点子是靠整天坐在办公桌上想出来的。创意人才需要去体验这个世界，才能催生出与这个世界相关的优秀创意。”这话显然很有道理。当iStock的调查者问道，他们最出色的点子都是在哪里想出来的时候，大多数创新人才都表示，这些点子是他们在洗澡、运动、和亲朋好友在一起、旅行、听音乐或看电视的时候想出来的。（财富中文网）

    译者：朴成奎 

    Let's say you lead a team of creative types -- marketing mavens, designers, copywriters, photo editors, graphic artists, or anyone else your company counts on to come up with fresh, compelling ideas and images. Maybe you've noticed over the past year or two that their output just doesn't sparkle the way it used to. That's fixable, says a new study, but only if you're willing to let creative pros step off the daily treadmill of emails, meetings, and memos.

    iStock by Getty Images, an online photo and video service, recently polled 400 "creatives" and found that 60% of them had "great ideas" in the past year, but didn't have time to follow through with them. Nearly three-quarters (70%) said they need more "creative time," and 63% said they're so busy doing mundane tasks that there is no time left over for "creative reflection and inspiration." Almost one in four (23%) said they spend only about two hours a day on creative work.

    As a result, almost half (48%) believe creativity where they work has stalled or dropped off. Notes Ellen Desmarais, general manager at iStock, "Rising pressure from increasing workloads, ever-tighter budgets, and constrained budgets are wearing creatives down."

    Of course, these days almost everyone is under pressure to do more with less, but there's ample evidence that people whose job is to generate new ideas respond particularly badly to being rushed. Consider, for instance, an exhaustive study called "Creativity Under the Gun" led by Harvard Business School professor and innovation expert Teresa Amabile. Researchers examined daily diary entries from more than 9,000 people "working on projects that required high levels of creativity," the study says, and measured their ability to innovate under different levels of time pressure. It turned out that these folks were least productive when they were constantly required to fight the clock. When laboring under extreme time pressure, they came up with fewer fresh ideas, not just on the day of the deadline but for two days afterward.

    "Organizations routinely kill creativity with fake deadlines or impossibly tight ones," Amabile wrote in the Harvard Business Review. "The former create distrust, and the latter cause burnout." Moreover, she added, companies often unwittingly crush creativity by giving innovators no slack in their schedules for the kind of dedicated daydreaming that leads to breakthrough ideas: "It can be slow going to explore new concepts, put together unique solutions, and wander through the maze" of untested possibilities.

    So what's a manager to do? Hiring more people to ease some of the routine workload would probably help, but if that isn't in the budget, the iStock report -- tellingly entitled "Free the Creative" -- suggests a couple of other ways to foster creativity. First, take a hard look at every meeting, status report, and other distraction currently cluttering creatives' calendars. Is it all really necessary? Or would far more of their time be better spent just thinking?

    And second, forget about face time. "No great ideas are generated by sitting at a desk all day," says Rebecca Swift, head of creative planning at iStock. "Creatives need to experience the world to be able to produce ideas that the world can relate to." Evidently so. Asked by iStock's pollsters where they were when they developed their brightest ideas, most innovators said they were in the shower, working out, commuting, hanging out with friends or family, traveling, listening to music, or watching TV.