Why does a decision maker need to be creative in which steps of the decision making process is creativity likely to be most important?

The rational decision maker needs creativity: the ability to produce novel and useful ideas. The ideas are different from what’s been done before but are also appropriate to the problem or opportunity presented. Why is creativity important to decision making? It allows the decision maker to appraise and understand the problem more fully including seeing problems others can’t see. However, creativity’s most obvious value is in helping the decision maker identify all viable alternatives.

Table of Contents Show

What is creativity?
Creativity and decision making
Convergent thinking
Divergent thinking
In conclusion

What is creative potential?

Most people have creative potential that they can use when confronted with a decision making problem. But to unleash that potential, they have to get out of the psychological ruts most of us get into and learn to think bout a problem in divergent ways.

We can start with the obvious. People differ in their inherent creativity. Einstein, Edison, Dali, and Mozart were individuals of exceptional creativity. Not surprisingly exceptional creativity is scarce. A study of lifetime creativity of 461 men and women found that fewer than 1 percent were exceptionally creative. But 10 percent were highly creative and about 60 percent were somewhat creative. These findings suggest that most of us have creative potential if we can learn to unleash it.

Uncertainty: A condition in which managers do not have full knowledge of the problem they face and cannot determine even a reasonable probability of alternative outcomes

Creativity: The ability to produce novel and useful ideas.

Given that most people have the capacity to be at least moderately creative, what can individuals and organizations do to stimulate employee creativity? The best answer to this question lies in the three component model of creativity based on an extensive body of research. This model proposes that individual creativity essentially requires expertise creative thinking skills, and intrinsic task motivation. Studies confirm that the higher the level of the each of these three components the higher the creativity.

Expertise is the foundation of all creative work. Dali’s understanding of art and Einstein’ knowledge of physics were necessary conditions for them to be able to make creative contributions to their fields. And you wouldn’t expect someone with a minimal knowledge of programming to be highly creatures a software engineer. The potential for creativity is enhanced when individuals have abilities, knowledge, proficiencies and similar expertise in their fields of endeavor.

The second component is creative thinking skills. It encompasses personality characteristics associated with creativity, the ability to use analogies, as well as the talent to see the familiar in a different light. For instance, the following individual traits have been found to be associated with the development of creative ideas: intelligence, independence, self confidence, risk taking, internal locus of control, tolerance for ambiguity and perseverance in the face of frustration. The effective use of analogies allows decision makers to apply and resulted in a creative breakthrough was Alexander Graham’s Bell’s observation that it might be possible to take concepts that operate in the ear and apply then to his talking box. He noticed that bone in the ear is operated by a delicate thin membrane. He wondered why, then, a thicker and stronger piece of membrane shouldn’t be able to move a piece of steel. Out of that analogy the telephone was conceived. Of course, some people have developed their skill at being able to see problems in a new way. They’re able to see problem in a new way. They’re able to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange. For instance most of us think of hens laying eggs. But now many of us considered that a hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg?

The final component in our model is intrinsic task motivation – the desire to work on something because it’s interesting, involving exciting satisfying or personally challenging. This motivational component is what turns creative potential into actual creative ideas. It determines the extent to which individuals fully engage their expertise and creative skill. So creative people often love their work to the point of seeming obsessed. Importantly, an individual’s work environment and the organization’s culture can have a significant effect on intrinsic motivation. Specifically five organizational factors have been found that can impede your creativity: (1) expected evaluation – focusing on how your work is going to be evaluated; (2) surveillance – being watched while you’re working; (3) external; motivators emphasizing external, tangible rewards; (4) competition – facing – win – lose situations with your peers; and (5) constrained choices – being given limits on how you can do your work.
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If you’re part of a business that likes covering all its bases, you’ve probably already heard about creative decision making. A lot of us who don’t work for businesses have heard of creative decision making as well, and we’re going to let you know just why creativity is so important for helping people make proper decisions.

Usually, the average person does not necessarily associate creativity with decision making. Creativity is associated with people throwing paint on easels, writing books, building stuff and making sculptures. What the average person also doesn't realize is how many decisions are involved in the creative process, and why creative people can be such fantastic decision makers.

What is creativity?

To be creative means to be skilled at creating something. In an artistic sense, this could mean creating new paintings or pictures. In a musical sense, writing new songs. In a business sense, this would mean the creation of new ideas or business practices and services.

In the words of Max H. Bazerman, creativity can be called the ““cognitive process of developing an idea, concept, commodity, or discovery that is viewed as novel by its creator or a target audience.” That about sums it up.

Creativity can come in many different forms. Stress and anxiety kill the production of creativity and the best ideas come when the mind is free of anxiousness and nerves.

Creativity and decision making

So how would creativity be useful in making decisions? There are a few reasons that an individual’s creativity could help influence them to make different and, in some senses, better decisions than those who lack the creative flair.

First off, creativity improves the quality of the decisions that people make. That means that when making a decision, a person explores more possibilities and has a wider range of options available for them to choose from when making the final decision. This makes creative people ideal for solving issues that won’t just have an obvious single solution, such as problems that are acute and won’t need to be repeated.

Creativity also helps the flow of ideas come forth. Creative people are already used to exploring many ideas at the same time, and they will be able to intuit the best approach to a situation while considering the alternatives in the same stroke.

There are a few ‘guidelines’ that outline the creative decision-making process.

A creative person assumes and understands that there is always a better way to do something, no matter the situation. Even if things are working great and aren’t in need of a change, a creative person will recognize that there is still a possibility to do things more efficiently.
In this sense, a creative person won’t always rely on habits or methods developed in the past. They will draw on these for information, but they will also recognize that innovation is the key to success.
A creative person recognizes that problems don’t have single solutions, but also that the alternatives can’t just be quickly dismissed. They will address as many sides of an issue as possible, in full detail, asking questions and getting answers before making a decision.
A creative person won’t take things for granted and will evaluate all things with a proper assessment. They will make sure that all people involved are aware of all aspects of a problem, and will raise points against commonly established facts to see if they can be challenged.
They aren't’ afraid of failure. This can be a bit frightening to a manager or someone who is passing decision making powers to a creative person because they might worry that their company will fall through if the wrong decision is made. Fear not - while failure may be a part of the process, a creative person recognizes that the path to true success is built on top of past failures.

A creative person relies on two types of thinking: convergent and divergent. These types of thinking relate directly to problem solving skills.

Convergent thinking

In the convergent thought process, people solving a problem will work to solve them using the established methods. This is the most linear type of thinking because it assumes that the problem already has a viable solution and encourages all people involved to work towards that solution.

Divergent thinking

Divergent thinking is very different, in the sense that it analyses the problem and tries to break it into parts that can be addressed individually. Instead of attempting to approach the problem in a rational, predefined way, divergent thinking allows you to address different aspects of the issue so you can see the problem as a whole.

In conclusion

Creative people are fantastic decision makers because they are already familiar with the processes involved in making serious decisions. While deciding where to lay the next brush stroke on a painting may not seem like too much of a problem to you, for the artist, they can feel as if their lives are hinging on that stroke.

In this sense, artists and other creative people become very familiar with the creative processes involved in decision making and can be a great asset to any company that needs to have important decisions made.