What about excitement, adventure and creativity in organisations? How does an organisation keep the energy of staff at an optimum level?
I have observed throughout my working life that many organisations, rather than fostering and encouraging creativity, actually put many processes in place that, inadvertently, suppress it.
Now this is a bit of an energy downer.
Suppressing creativity and a sense of adventure will always drain energy, whereas allowing them will increase it.
Some organisations do wonderful, creative work with children and young people in the Focus Group but their policies and procedures are predicated more on fear of getting it wrong, (i.e. no-risk) rather than trust that if it goes wrong we will learn from it.
This fear is not only concerned with protecting vulnerable children from staff that are untrained or not vetted properly, (where caution is understandable and proper), but also quite mundane, day-to-day matters. I believe that too much caution in the day-to-day running of any organisation reduces the level of passion and inhibits progress. I liken it to a sea-anchor dragging back a boat.
In the private sector, being too cautious leads to failure and therefore poor return on investment, or low or no profits. Organisations in the private sector know that risks must be taken because they are viewing their products from the point of view of the consumer – not themselves.
In the public sector some people may take risks if they are creative and want to make a difference. But, as I said when I was describing the Pillars, generally the public service is risk-averse. I believe that people who chose to work in the community/voluntary sector are looking for excitement – and they should not be disappointed.
Fostering a sense of adventure optimises the inclusion of highly motivated staff who actually want to work in the field and – just as importantly – will remain interested. In addition, the creativity (mentioned as being essential above) will be enabled, or facilitated, as the work proceeds in the long term.
One thinks once again of the old cliché, an amateur wants to get it right, a professional is afraid of getting it wrong which, has, of course, implications for risk taking and beyond that, excitement.
Sometimes our ethos and atmosphere may lean, in a general sense, towards blame rather than responsibility (or compassion).
There is no better way of ensuring that everything becomes boring, dead and dull than fostering a culture of blame.
Naturally, if I feel that I am going to be blamed when something goes wrong I won’t be inclined to take a risk. And anyway, a blame culture does not mirror the ethos that we want to prevail among the families and children/young people.
Blame can lead to (sometimes unconsciously), families experiencing incongruence (because we are not doing what we claim we do), rather than the far more desirable, from the therapeutic point of view, congruence.