توسعه رهبران برای تلاش های خلاقانه: رویکرد مبتنی بر دامنه برای توسعه رهبری

As we move into the 21st century, innovation, sustained innovation, has become a critical determinant of organizational success and survival. Although we know much about potential influences on innovation, little is known about the actions that should be taken to develop the people who must lead these efforts. In the present paper, we present a model of the capacities and capabilities people need to lead creative efforts. A selection, optimization, and compensation model is used to specify the kind of interventions that might provide a basis for developing these capacities and capabilities. The implications of these observations are discussed with respect to both the relevance of available leadership development techniques and the unique needs of people asked to lead creative efforts.

Creativity, the generation of new ideas, and innovation, the translation of these ideas into new products or services (Mumford & Gustafson, 1988), has become a critical concern in most organizations (Dess & Pickens, 2000). The new emphasis being placed on creativity and innovation by organizations can be traced to the challenges they must address in the emerging economy of the 21st century. As Florida (2002) has pointed out, globalization, changes in production technology, new consumer expectations, and the increased rate of technological change, have created conditions where value, and value added, often depends primarily on creativity and innovation. If organizations do not change, create, and field innovative new products and services the organization will not, in a highly competitive economic context, last for long (Tushman & O'Reilly, 1997). Recognition of this point has led a number of scholars to ask the question “How does one lead for innovation?” (e.g. Amabile et al., 2004, Dunham and Freeman, 2000, Howell and Boies, 2004, Hunt et al., 2004 and Mumford et al., 2002). As a result of this work, we have begun to see real progress in our understanding of both a) the variables that influence the success of projects where creativity and innovation take place (e.g. Keegan and Turner, 2002 and McGourty et al., 1996), and b) the actions that must be taken by leaders to insure the success of these projects (e.g. Dougherty and Hardy, 1996 and Mouly and Sankaran, 1999). For example, we know that climate, specifically a supportive intellectually challenging climate (Amabile et al., 1996, Bain et al., 2001, Hunter et al., in press-a and Hunter et al., in press-b), influences project success. This climate, however, appears to emerge in part as a function of leader role modeling (Jaussi & Dionne, 2003) and the standards leaders apply in idea evaluation (Mumford, Connelly, & Gaddis, 2003). We now know that due to their uncertainty organizations are often loath to pursue creative efforts (Simon, 1993). Leaders, as a result, must champion, or “sell”, projects (Markham & Aiman-Smith, 2001). Creative efforts by virtue of their uncertainty, moreover, are crisis prone. Leaders, accordingly, must manage these crises in such a way that sensemaking, and thus an adaptive response to crisis demands, becomes possible (Drazin, Glynn, & Kazanjian, 1999). The foregoing examples suffice to make our basic point. Leadership makes a difference in the ultimate success of creative and innovative projects. In fact, leadership not only makes a difference, it appears to make a big difference (Kidder, 1981). This point is nicely illustrated in a recent study by West et al. (2003). They obtained measures of leader creativity within healthcare teams developing a series of process innovations, and found that leader creativity was positively related, strongly positively related, to the success of the process innovations under consideration. In another study along these lines, Tierney, Farmer, and Graen (1999) obtained measures of the quality of leader–member exchange among 191 chemists working in research and development. They found that the quality of leader–member exchange produced correlations in the .30 range not only with indices of follower creativity and innovation, but also with indices of intrinsic motivation and use of requisite creative problem-solving strategies. The apparent impact of effective leadership on creativity and innovation brings to fore a new question. What can organizations do to insure effective leadership of these projects? One way organizations might seek to improve the performance of the people asked to lead creative projects is to try to develop the capabilities individuals need to guide these effects. The need for systematic developmental interventions becomes more pronounced when it is recognized that the many complex, and often seemingly contradictory, demands placed on the leaders of these projects make effective leadership an unusually daunting task (Mumford, Scott et al., 2002). The problem that arises in this regard, however, is that we simply do not know a great deal about how we should go about developing people to lead creative efforts. The reason we do not know much about leader development for innovation is that organizations have not, at least traditionally, seen anything unique about the requirements imposed on the leaders of creative efforts. With this point in mind, we will begin this article by examining the demands placed on the leaders of projects calling for creativity and innovation to identify requisite capacities and capabilities. We will then consider how organizations might facilitate the development of requisite capacities and capabilities using a selection, optimization, and compensation model. Based on this model, we will then propose some strategies that might be used to develop the kind of leadership cadre organizations now need if they wish to encourage sustained innovation.

Before turning to the broader conclusions flowing from our observations with regard to leader development for creative, and innovative, projects, certain limitations should be noted. To begin, we have framed our observations with regard to leadership development using a general, cross-field, perspective. Of course, significant differences exist across professional fields with respect to requirements for innovation (Csikszentmihalyi, 1999), the nature of the people doing the work (Feist, 1999), and the kind of innovations sought by the organization (Damanapour, 1991). It seems likely that these cross-field differences in the nature creative work will give rise to shifts in the appropriateness, and the effectiveness, of some of the leadership development interventions described earlier. Along related lines, it should be recognized that in formulating recommendations for development we have focused or the capacities and capabilities that must be possessed by individual leaders. This focus on the individual leader is, of course, not uncommon in studies of leader development (Howard & Bray, 1988). By the same token, however, it should be recognized that creativity and innovation are inherently multi-level phenomenon (Ford, 1997 and Mumford and Hunter, in press). As a result, it is possible, indeed likely, that certain cross-level influences might act to moderate the general conclusions drawn herein. One example of this point may be found in organizational strategy since strategic differences (e.g., prospector versus defender strategies) might effect both the type and amount of information sought in problem definition (Mumford & Hunter, in press). Finally, it should be recognized that we applied a particular model of adult development in identifying the kind of actions that might be taken to enhance the performance of the people asked to lead creative efforts. More specifically, to identify viable interventions we applied a selection, optimization, and compensation (SOC) model (Baltes, 1997 and Mumford et al., 1990). Although SOC models provide a reasonably general framework for understanding adult development, and have been shown to be applicable to leadership development (Mumford & Manley, 2003), it is also true that other models might be applied. More centrally, these alternative developmental models might lead to somewhat different conclusions concerning the exact nature of the interventions likely to contribute to leader development on projects calling for innovation. Even bearing these caveats in mind, we nonetheless believe that our foregoing observations have some important implications for understanding the developmental needs of those who will be asked to lead creative efforts. To begin, the effective leadership of creative work appears to depend on a complex set of capacities and capabilities. In fact, prior research has made it possible to say with some certainty exactly what capacities make it possible for someone to lead projects calling for creativity and innovation. With regard to capacities it seems clear that effective leader performance requires technical expertise, creative thinking skills, and organizational knowledge (Mumford, Scott et al., 2002). With regard to capabilities, it seems clear that effective leadership requires that leaders must be able to define problems and missions that are worth pursuing, create a work context that will facilitate idea generation, and direct the development and fielding of these ideas (Mumford, Eubanks et al., in press). These capacities and capabilities provide the attributes we should seek to develop if we wish to ensure effective leadership of creative efforts. The question that arises at this juncture, however, pertains to the strategies to be applied in ensuring that leaders, in fact, possess these capacities and capabilities. Perhaps the most unambiguous conclusion that can be drawn from the present effort is that there is no single, short-term, magic bullet intervention that will provide leaders with all of the capacities and capabilities they must acquire if they are to lead for creativity. Instead, leader development appears to require an integrated sequence of interventions. Frequently, far too frequently, we forget that developmental interventions of any sort are likely to work only if they are given to the right people — people who possess the capacities needed to profit from experience (Howard & Bray, 1988). Our observations with regard to the importance of selection, especially in ensuring that leaders possess basic capacities such as technical expertise and creative thinking skills, reiterate this point. However, in a developmental framework it is not sufficient that leaders possess these capacities, they must also be willing to apply these capacities in the leadership of creative efforts. This point is of some importance because it suggests that leadership development, at least for leaders of creative efforts, must provide people with exposure to leadership roles and the opportunity to explore these roles in a supportive environment. The nature of creative people vis-à-vis the requirements imposed on the leaders of creative efforts indicate that number of gaps, or deficiencies, will be evident, even in high potential leaders with regard to some capacities, specifically organizational knowledge, and, at least initially, many of the capabilities required for effective leadership. Organizations, as a result, will have to make a long-term, sustained, investment in the development of these capacities and capabilities. With regard to optimization of these capacities and capabilities, six general kinds of interventions are likely to prove value which we have subsumed under the rubrics of 1) systems analysis, 2) mission articulation, 3) relationship formation, 4) evaluative skills, 5) climate assessment, and 6) project planning. Although each of these optimization interventions has some potential value, it should be recognized that all of these interventions represent multi-faceted developmental inventions involving multiple steps. For example, it is not enough to assess climate, leaders also need coaching with regard to the actions that might be taken to change climate. To complicate matters further it appears that different interventions may be required at different points as leaders progress through their careers. Thus relationship formation interventions can begin as creative people first begin to move into leadership roles. Development of systems analysis skills through techniques such as action learning may need to wait until later in leaders' careers. These observations, of course, point to a need for research seeking to establish the timing and sequencing of requisite optimization interventions. Even if viable packages of optimization interventions can be designed, however, they may not necessarily prove beneficial due to the many demands placed on the leaders of creative efforts (Mumford, Scott et al., 2002). As a result, optimization interventions must be coupled with compensatory interventions. In the case of creative efforts, compensatory efforts focusing on colleague recruitment, compartmentalization, and work timing appear especially valuable. Moreover, it may, in fact, prove necessary to develop these compensatory strategies as part and parcel of various optimization interventions to provide the leaders of creative efforts with extra capacity needed to profit from various optimization interventions (Yukl, 2001). Of course, the kind of compensatory interventions likely to prove of value to creative people as they begin to move into leadership roles on projects calling for innovation may not have much value for leaders working in other domains. Similarly, it is not at all clear that self-selection or climate assessment are as important for leaders working in other domains due to the professional orientation of creative people (Hage, 1999) and the marked impact of climate on the performance of creative people (Oldham & Cummings, 1996). These observations are of some importance because they suggest that there may be value in applying a domain specific approach to leadership development. Hopefully, the present effort, by examining one application of this domain specific approach, its application in developing the capacities and capabilities needed to lead for creativity and innovation, has provided an illustration of the potential value of further efforts along these lines.