What Are You Doing For The Rest Of Your Life? I do recommend that you find a way to get your staff to not only solve a problem, but also define the problem. If, at the end of a project, your staff can't tell you something you don't already know, you're probably not getting the most out of your team. Use All of Your Soldiers It's imperative to uncover creative talents in every employee. As I've said previously, this involves little more than creating a safe environment in which ideas can flourish. It also means that you'll need to loosen the reins a little: Independence is a necessary ingredient for creativity and required for self-management. This doesn't mean you need to turn each person on your s taff into an Einstein. Rather, the anecdotal evidence points to very small teams as being the most effective collaboration environment. Could you imagine a committee saying, "OK, now let's be creative"? It's a contradiction in terms. Back Up the Troops With Logistics Provide your staff members wi th the equipment they need to be creative: · Resources. Give people the tools they need to succeed. Ask them what they need. If you don't have a lab segment on the network, create one. Populate it with a minimum of your own equipment and a maximum of what you can obtain on evaluation. Keep it in flux--this is a lab, not a test environment for offline production equipment. Work as a team with vendor evaluation equipment. Your involvement will add credence to the process as vendors consider requests for evaluation equipment. · Education. Stop fighting fires when it comes to training. Get education into the annual budget already. Figure on a bare-bones minimum of $3,000 per perso n. Do you think your team has all the skills it will ever need? Make it someone's responsibility to track training needs and fulfillment. And, finally, get ahead of the curve, even if it's just by a little. Consider establishing formal mentor pairings. Saying something like, "Learn this system. It just went into production and it's the most important project in our department," is not my idea--or anyone else's, for that matter--of a safe environment in which to develop and grow new ideas. · Variety. Try to attract people from a variety of backgrounds. If everyone looks alike, acts alike and comes from the same educational background, chances are that they'll all reach similar conclusions. Diversity helps at every level. It may even be as simple as mixing Unix and NT people. A combination of ideas will result in original solutions. Competition is variety's companion, so encourage healthy competition among people and among architectures. Balance the need for standards with the need for a vari ety of solutions. · Reinforcements. Seek out new voices and outside perspectives. Direct your recruiting process to include individuals with a fresh perspective. Sustainable Innovation The truth about creativity or research is that it is often difficult to draw a direct line to payoffs in products. But through encouragement, guidance and constructive advice, you can ensure that everyone's inherent intelligence and creativity are channeled to practical purposes. For more on how Intel has approached the creativity process, see "The Thinking Race," in the December 1996 issue of Oregon Business (www.oregon business.com). For more on how different IS organizations approach creativity, check out the Web site of the Center for Research on Creativity and Innovation of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (www.uccs.edu/~creative). Brian Walsh is senior consultant with Cap Gemini America in Portland, Ore. He can be reached at bwalsh@nwc.com.

On The Edge by Art WIttmann FreeWire by Bill Frezza In The Middle by Bruce Robertson On The Wire by Bill Alderson and J. Scott Haugdahl Updated May 23, 1997