Sparking Creativity in the Workplace

Can every employee be creative?

The paper shatters the myths surrounding creativity; for example, that it depends on personality, intelligence, character, age or experience, or that it belongs to people who live dangerously. The truth is that very often, the best ideas come from conservative people. Studies have shown that unusually intelligent people with a high IQ are no more creative than those with an average IQ.

How, then, can companies foster creative talent?

Creativity results from having the right aptitudes and attitudes: the ability and the will. Employees need freedom to work, since the best ideas often come when people are having fun, laughing and enjoying their work. Here are ideas for sparking creativity in ourselves and in our subordinates.

Improving Our Own Creative Talent

A creative attitude is a permanent willingness to approach problems and situations in new ways. It is based on three basic attitudes: tenacity, confidence and enthusiasm. Besides the attitude or will, we also need the aptitude or ability. In business, originality is not enough. Ideas must be useful and practical. To enhance our ability to produce new ideas we should learn to make better use of the "old elements."

Fostering Subordinates' Creative Talent

A creative attitude is an inner willingness, and so, will depend essentially on our subordinates' motivation. The first measure is to reward initiative and encourage experimentation. Second, align the right person with the right task.

There are basically four ways to encourage subordinates' creative aptitude: foster diversity; invite subordinates to explore and use sources of innovation; ask them SCAMPER questions (substitute, combine, adapt, modify, put for other purposes, eliminate, rearrange or reverse); and encourage them to use team creativity techniques.

As employees search for innovation opportunities, they should draw on the seven sources of innovation identified by management leader Peter. F. Drucker: surprises, incongruities, bottlenecks, changes in the industry, changes in perception, demographic changes and changes in knowledge.

To promote lateral thinking, teams should turn to creativity techniques such as provocation, broken logic, brainstorming or the six thinking hats, in which each team member must look at a subject or situation from a different "color" or angle.

Thus, to establish a creative culture, companies should concentrate on inspiring people with clear missions and goals, and they should promote information exchange and collaboration.

Cambodia's coming energy bonanza

If the United Nations, World Bank and Harvard University are to be believed, Cambodia is poised to become a major new global energy exporter, with a fossil-fuel windfall that promises to double the country's current GDP and potentially lift millions of Cambodians out of poverty.

The World Bank has said that Cambodia's total energy reserves may be as high as 2 billion barrels of oil and 10 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Depending on future world prices, fuel exports could generate annual revenues upwards of US$2 billion, or several times the current combined amount that Cambodia generates in domestic revenues and receives in foreign aid. Meanwhile, Cambodian energy officials indicated this week that they hope to ramp up production as early as 2009, three to seven years earlier than the World Bank projected as feasible.

An energy-rich Cambodia would appreciably enhance the war-torn country's geostrategic significance, particularly as the United States and China aggressively joust for access to new fuel sources around the globe.

Yet there's also a potential Cold War twist to China's bid. Any future oil-and-gas-production agreements with the CPP-led government will likely need to pass through Sokimex, Cambodia's leading conglomerate, which through a joint venture with Tela Petroleum Group controls 80% of the country's domestic oil and gas distribution. Energy analysts note that Cambodia's newfound reserves coincide with the expectation that Vietnam's own diminishing fuel supplies will run out over the next decade. So far Hanoi has no plans on how it might fill this future energy gap.

What is more likely is that senior CPP officials have designs on building up Sokimex and perhaps also Tela Petroleum through lucrative state energy concessions, which, once converted into foreign-currency earnings, may be tapped to support its patronage-based political machine and further consolidate the party's dominance over Cambodian politics - akin to how Malaysia's ruling United Malays National Organization has relied on state oil giant Petronas for its own political purposes.

Western donors have already sounded warnings about the potential pitfalls of Cambodia's supposed newfound energy wealth. Hun Sen's government has come under intense donor pressure to tackle endemic corruption among his ranks.

10 Ways to Catch a Liar

By Heather Hatfield
Tip No. 1: Inconsistencies
"When you want to know if someone is lying, look for inconsistencies in what they are saying," says Newberry, who was a federal agent for 30 years and a police officer for five.
Tip No. 2: Ask the Unexpected
"Watch them carefully," says Newberry. "And then when they don't expect it, ask them one question that they are not prepared to answer to trip them up."
Tip No. 3: Gauge Against a Baseline
One of the most important indicators of dishonesty is changes in behavior. You want to pay attention to someone who is generally anxious, but now looks calm. Or, someone who is generally calm but now looks anxious.
Tip No. 4: Look for Insincere Emotions
"Most people can't fake smile," says O'Sullivan. "The timing will be wrong, it will be held too long, or it will be blended with other things. Maybe it will be a combination of an angry face with a smile; you can tell because their lips are smaller and less full than in a sincere smile."
Tip No. 5: Pay Attention to Gut Reactions
While an average person might not know what it is he's seeing when he thinks someone isn't being honest and attribute his suspicion to instinct, a scientist would be able to pinpoint it exactly.
Tip No. 6: Watch for Microexpressions
"A microexpression is a very brief expression, usually about a 25th of a second, that is always a concealed emotion," says Ekman, PhD, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California Medical School in San Francisco.
Tip No. 7: Look for Contradictions
"The general rule is anything that a person does with their voice or their gesture that doesn't fit the words they are saying can indicate a lie," says Ekman.
Tip No. 8: A Sense of Unease
"When someone isn't making eye contact and that's against how they normally act, it can mean they're not being honest," says Jenn Berman, PhD, a psychologist in private practice.
Tip No. 9: Too Much Detail
Too much detail could mean they've put a lot of thought into how they're going to get out of a situation and they've crafted a complicated lie as a solution.
Tip No. 10: Don't Ignore the Truth
"It's more important to recognize when someone is telling the truth than telling a lie because people can look like they're lying but be telling truth," says Newberry http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/10-ways-catch-liar?page=3