Creative Thought – How Organizations Can Facilitate This

Creative thought is a cause and effect cycle of change in every organization and will always begin or end somewhere by someone or something. Whereas the strength or lack of it will determine some form of positive or negative transformation.

The use of creative thought is dependent on the individual or organization demonstrating it. Significantly, if an organization allows change, the creative thought process follows through to facilitate it. However, if an organization fears change, evidently the thought process fails to begin. For example, the upper echelon of an organization must be able to provide and receive the opportunity for the lower level echelon to express creative thought, thus accepting that some form of transformation will cause an effect. But this doesn’t always occur. In various executive levels amongst organizations, subordinates are not given the opportunity to express their opinions and/or thoughts; or, the lower level does not produce enough creative thought for the upper level to accept or imagine it.

There are many characteristics that fall under the category of creative thought. In opinion, the ideal characteristics are imagination and strength. If an organization possesses both imagination and strength simultaneously, there wouldn’t be a need to facilitate creative thought. The organizational character itself justifies it. At times, a name or a catchphrase is the determination of an organization’s creative thought. Lets take two very different organizations for example.

The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) and the Walt Disney Corporation. When I look at the FBI, the name/organization itself is fairly straightforward. The first idea that comes into mind is that the name represents a government organization that investigates criminal activity. Would I assume that this organization respects the thought of creativity? No. I assume that the thought process occurs in the executive level, whereas the subordinate levels follow the orders of which they are given. Basically, “do your job and do it right.”

Now, when I take a look at Walt Disney, the corporation, the name/organization itself portrays the characteristic of imaginative thought throughout its executive and subordinate levels. Although this form of characteristic does not occur amid every organization, how can organizations that do not portray this characteristic, facilitate creative thought? Simple, the organization must accept the reality of change by means of imagination, strength and opportunity. By accepting change, the organizational cause of strength encourages opportunity for creative thought to occur and thus, the effect of creative thought will facilitate itself.