The Power of Organisation in Creativity: Implication to competitive advantage

In any form of human endeavour the more things are arranged in a particular form or order. It helps us to make sense of diverse situations in time and place because the things in our environment are set in particular form or pattern. The human brain according to Edward de Bono in his book "Tactics: The art and science of success", the human brain delights to arrange things in particular pattern whci helps us to make sense of them. Any change in our experience results in a change in our percepts - the way we see things.

Organisation of any form is key for us to weave through live amid the different experiences we face as we try to make sense of our world. Imagine going to a library without any form of organisation by the way information is catalogued. Or cooking a particular ingredients not comming together to create your desired menu. In the first instance, concerning the library, you'll find it difficult to sift the information you so desire from the pile. In the case of the meal the sensory appeal will be lacking coupled with the possibility of the different ingredients not coming together to give you the taste you want from the different volatiles in the food coming together to create the flavour.

Why have I bothered to give the above examples to try to understand the importance of organisation? Well. I think they'll give you better understanding on the importance off organisation in life generally.

The aim of this article is to share some insight on the role organisation could play in any creative experience and how it can increase your competitive advantage in the market place.

Experience has structure - so is organisation

Any time you want to create anything you're giving yourself permission to go in a journey - a transition from an intangible idea to a tangible reality. In embanking such a journey you have to be sure the purpose of the journey - the goal you want to bring to birth or rather the direction to your journey; what you want to achieve

Moreover you have to be clear in your mind the vision. What is your perception of your overarching dream in the eye of your senses? What do you see, hear, feel, taste or smell using your five senses as a way to live your dream before you actually experience your real new situation. These are mainly the elements of your senses that you bring into play to help you to actualise your dream project.

There is also the question of the skill set - knowledge and experience that you bring to the situation; as well as the resources - money, time and effort.

In his book, "Making Ideas Happen", Scot Belsky said the following concerning the competitive advantage of organisation:

• Organisation is all about applying order to the many elements of a creative project. Concerning creative projects he reasoned that there are concepts you hope to retain, resources you want to utilise, and the components of the project itself or stuff that needs to get done and other stuff that need to be referred back to.
• There are also external elements like deadlines, budgets, clients and other constraints. All these elements combine (or collide) as seek to create, develop and execute ideas
• The above elements exists in any creative project but we rarely acknowledge them. Being aware of the way they impact on our creative endeavour and being able to manage them is key to the realisation of our dream.

Structure - key to organisation element in creativity

Imagine that you created an organisational masterpiece without structure to it. How will the different elements come together? Structure is the most neglected organisation element. Structure give form and function and therefore element of performance to your design. Most of the time we look at structure as a way of protecting the free flowing nature of ideas. But without structure our idea fail to builds upon one another.

Structure enables us to capture our ideas and arrange them in a way that helps us (and others) relate to them.

" Structure and organiosation are worthy of seriousd discussion because they provide a competitive advantage"

- Scot Belsky

It's only through organisation that we seize the benefit from burst of creativity. When we develop the capacity to organise ourselves and those around us we can beat the odds. This requires intelligence. According to Earl Prevette; "Intelligence is the ability and capacity to size ourselves and or environment and organise them to a form to enable us to reap the abundance all around us. It also requires that we increase our ability to think which is an operational skill whereby we allow intelligence to act on experience.

If we look at the equation below from Scot Belsky;s book:

Creativity x Organisation = Impact

Assuming that our creativity is 1 and our organisation is 1; therefore our impact is 1

If we increased our organisation by 2 and keep the creativity constant; we have our impact doubled.

From the foregoing if we want to increase the level of our impact in a marketplace and therefore increase our competitive advantage; we need to increase our level of organisation.

What is the area of your business or live you want to change? What are you plan and guidelines to impact your creativity?