When IBM Global Services asked more than 1000 Chief Executive Officers from 60 countries what key skills and characteristics employees will most need in the coming five years, guess what was #1?
Creativity and the ability to be innovative at work.
My research examines connections between creativity and organizational performance. Key to this is the idea that creativity is everywhere and ignores borders, whether organizational or geographic. I've seen it from Vietnam to Botswana, Denmark to South Korea. I've seen it in a jail, in an American football program, and in the management of a Shakespearean theater company. And that brings me to The Gang.
Think "gang" and you imagine the worst...but not with this gang. Common goals, yes. Common language, sometimes. Tats and weapons, nothing that they admit to, but maybe that's because a sheriff is a member! The Gang includes seven organizations that are acknowledged as high performers and highly creative in their fields, but most important, they come from wildly different fields — from sports to dance, law enforcement to software.
Boise State University's top 10 ranked American university football program
U.S. State Department's Cultural Ambassador Trey McIntyre dance group
Idaho Shakespeare Festival theater, profiled in a Yale Drama School case
One of the world's top health information providers, Healthwise
A software firm called WhiteCloud Analytics whose CEO sold his previous firm to Microsoft
A regional marketing firm called Drake Cooper that consistently beats out bigger firms to win more than the normal share of creative awards
The Ada County Sheriff's Office, which includes the county jail and is a model for much bigger jails nationwide.
By now you may be saying, huh? What does a sheriff talk to a dancer or a coach about? How could actors perform better by talking to programmers? Believe it or not, they've learned a lot from each other over the last six years and claim that the lessons have boosted performance.
In this blog, I'll talk about the Gang and lessons that members have learned and used over the years. We'll start with Rule #1, the most basic — reaching OUT of your field or beyond your borders for new ideas.
Here's an example of what how the jail learned from business.
In traditional jails, families visit their inmates at prescribed times, sit in front of a thick window and talk on a phone. Not friendly and NOT good for kids, who may start to think it's "normal" to visit mom in jail and don't see it as a "bad place" to avoid.
When the sheriff noticed people using Skype at work and at home, he thought, why not adapt that for the jail?
The Ada County jail was the first in the U.S. to use what now seems obvious: buying $300 netbook computers and developing software similar to Skype. The result: families and inmates have more time to talk all times of the day, children do not become "desentitized" to jails, and the county saves about $400,000 annually.
All because a sheriff looked beyond his own organizational borders for ideas.
