Fostering creativity without losing control

For many years since its founding, Google championed an 80/20 rule. Every Googler was allowed to spend 20% of their time on a project of their choice, without needing approval from their supervisor. Gmail, Google AdSense, and Google Talk are some of the products that resulted from such bottom up innovation. Now that Google is a colossal giant, the policy has evolved towards a more leadership directed innovation model. Yet the lessons from Google's 80/20 rule are universal. Despite the fact that every CEO and every manager says that they value creativity, it'd be hard to find many organizations that would deserve better than a C grade in how creative they actually are. This is true across the board in both public and private sectors. Why the mismatch between intentions and outcomes? Most managers fear that letting go would result in a loss of control, thereby leading to chaos and inefficiencies. The fear is reasonable. Yet, if properly designed, every organization can foster massive amounts of creativity without risking chaos. The trick to letting go without losing control is to set up well-defined sandboxes where people can experiment as a wildly as they choose. Look at Google's 8020 rule. In terms of allocation of time, there is a well-defined 20% sandbox. The fact that people are required to devote 80% of their time to assigned tasks ensures that the proverbial trains keep running on time. Efficiency in the core business is crucial to keeping the company's financial situation healthy. A healthy core business also provides resources to invest in experimentation and innovation. The sandbox does not need to be a certain percent of people's time, it could be a subunit of your company. Say you're running a hotel chain with 500 properties. What if the general managers of 50 properties took one wing of a floor, accounting for a few rooms, and used it as the sandbox to test out their own fresh ideas. In one go, you suddenly have 50 innovation labs within just a single company. Some of the ideas may well be mediocre, but a few may emerge that are truly game changers, all without risking chaos or the overall financial health of the company. Besides well-defined sandboxes, leaders can also use other ways to spur creativity without losing control. They can lay down stretch goals that challenge and inspire their employees. If the market is growing at 3%, asking people to think about how to help the company grow at 4% can only result in incrementalism or answers such as let's try harder. But asking people to think about how to grow at 20% will foster out of the box thinking. Another approach is to go deeper in understanding customers. Don't just ask customers what they want or need, observe how they live and operate. What makes them happy or unhappy? What are their pain points? A deeper understanding of customers can uncover their underlying needs before they realize it. Last, engage routinely and actively with young startups, including those housed in incubators or accelerators. Since they have no existing package to defend, they are far more likely to be fresh thinkers as compared with incumbent organizations. You may learn something or a lot from them, you may want to partner with, invest in or even acquire some of them. Google's, YouTube and Android businesses started out as acquisitions. The same is true for Meta's, WhatsApp and Instagram businesses. There is no shame in learning from others, only in having one's head buried in sand.