By Rhylan Jozelle

You wouldn’t immediately associate creativity with project management. When professional project managers have been leading projects for many years, the desire to be creative around many aspects of project management, is either a well-honed skill or it can be weak. In this article you will see how a creative approach will engage teams and make a notable difference in outcomes.

Opportunities for creativity

There are multiple opportunities in which creativity finds a way into a successful project manager’s portfolio –– from innovation when handling budgets, to organizing schedules, to effectively steering a team.

Encouraging creative suggestions and ideas from your team members is always an advantageous approach. When we assess unsuccessful projects, the lack of success more often than not comes down to ineffective communication, poor support, and unclear instruction –– all of which can be improved by infusing a degree of creativity.

With this in mind, let’s take a look at how to bring more creativity into project management.

Bringing Out the Creativity in Others

Often on many projects, you will find team members who are considered to be creative. For project managers who are more analytical and task driven in nature, it could be challenging to manage creative types who are always full of ideas. Creative people are in fact valuable members of any project! When a creative person’s ideas and suggestions are stifled or unheard, you are likely to experience dysfunction within the group. Indeed, as is explained in “Herding Tigers” by Todd Henry, much of the negative behavior we see in workplaces can be traced back to inattentive leadership. However, allowing your team to express their creativity, encouraging them to bring forward their ideas, and acknowledging their input as valuable, will provide a better result overall.

Inspiring Emotional Involvement

It’s paramount to the success of any project to invite collaboration. What is also important, is to allow team members to participate individually. Encouraging them to share personal thoughts and ideas will foster emotional connections to the project. As mentioned in “Engage” by Linda Holbeche & Geoffrey Matthews, to encourage positive engagement, all staff must be treated like human beings rather than units of production. When you treat team members as such, they are more likely to engage and produce their best work within the team structure.

Visualizing Processes & Success

In addition to energizing and valuing creatives on the team, it’s also wise to embody some creative traits as a leader. Visualizing the journey and end result of a project, is a skill often associated with creativity. This is an extremely useful tool for keeping a program on track. This is an aspect of creativity popularized by Marc Silber’s book “Create” in which mastering visualization is discussed as part of the process of unleashing creativity. In short, training the mind to envision outcomes or strategic steps can help you to work out how you want to organize processes and inspire progress. It’s the same trick many creatives use to bring, say, an original story or painting into being.

Generating Ideas

Innovation is essential to the success of any project. The formation of ideas through innovative thinking is not just useful for molding the finished product, but for overcoming obstacles along the way as well. To deliver the product or when facing several risks, a project manager will have to generate various ideas to solve problems, which in turn requires creativity. As discussed in our article on “4 Types Of Task Boards To Make You More Productive”, task boards can be effective for both team member contributions and the general development of new ideas and suggestions. Whatever tool you employ though, a creative approach to innovative ideas is essential.

Improving Day-to-Day Conditions

Alongside all preceding aspects, exercising creativity about working conditions is also an important aspect of project management. When leading teams, consider how to creatively improve working conditions as part of motivating team members. This can mean any number of things, but solutions as simple as off-site lunch breaks or fidget toys for people to use during brainstorming sessions, can go a long way. These kinds of thoughtful gestures will put team members at ease, inspire bonding, and generally keep people happy. This leads to better work contributing to the project goals.

Ultimately, project management is a complex and demanding process often referred to as an art and a science. The points above illustrate, how to demonstrate and foster creativity like:

• encouraging team members to be more creative,
• inspiring them to be emotionally involved,
• visualizing the roadmap and end goal
• and improving daily working conditions

By injecting creativity into different aspects of project management, you will help to engage and motivate teams to work toward successful project outcomes.