Disney's Approach to Inspiring Creativity

Introduction

• Defining creativity as part of an organization's success
• Uncovering your organization's potential to be creative
• Differentiating the four key components that make up the Disney model for inspiring creativity
• Emphasizing the leader's capabilities to drive creativity
• Separating ideas from identity

Fostering a Collaborative Culture

Keys to a collaborative culture

• Promoting a "passion for the purpose" in employees
• Emphasizing shared values
• Recognizing the importance of communication
• Developing mutual trust to ensure collaboration

Methods for encouraging collaboration

• Valuing diverse perspectives to ensure a fresh source of ideas
• Brainstorming to gain maximum expression from everyone
• Expressing ideas honestly and without fear
• Creating a trusting environment
• Turning a negative culture into a positive environment

Navigating with Organizational Identity

Establishing organizational identity

• Analyzing creative ideas using your "box"
• Thinking "inside" the box: customer, vision, mission, essence
• Including employee voices when envisioning your identity
• Effectively communicating your identity

Expanding organizational identity through strategic risk taking and decision making

• The Disney tradition of innovation and risk taking
• Analyzing ideas that may lead to an expansion of the organizational identity
• Calculating risks and analyzing "successful failures"
• Aligning new products, the brand, the market, and share of currency with organizational identity
• Identifying misalignments using a matrix tool
• Evaluating ideas "whose time has not yet come"

Achieving Measurable Results through Structural Systems

Managing creativity within day-to-day operations

• Establishing parameters to set clear goals, allocate resources and prepare for contingencies
• Recognizing and supporting "right-fit talent" to fully develop an idea
• Assigning accountability to deliver results
• Applying processes to move ideas from generation to implementation

Adopting a continuous improvement process

• Identifying opportunities for system improvements
• Making internal systems more efficient and effective
• Listen and learn
• Measure
• Act
• Remeasure
• Recognize and celebrate
• Share

Analyzing your own situation

• Determining improvements you can make among the four key components of structural systems
• Taking action to implement those improvements

Implementing new ideas generated in the creative process

• Identifying areas for greatest improvement
• Taking steps to nurture a collaborative culture
• Focusing employee creativity toward organizational goals

The Leader's Role in Inspiring Creativity

Storyboarding and storytelling: the bridge from dreaming to doing

• Storyboarding to get your teams involved
• Encouraging storyboarding techniques to assist in developing new ideas
• Employing storytelling techniques to sell your ideas

Leading a creative culture

• Taking responsibility, demonstrating commitment and providing inspiration
• Identifying your role as a leader
• Inspiring commitment to creativity and innovation among staff
• Linking leaders to all components of organizational creativity
• Recognizing that leaders' behaviors affect the performance of others
• Creating competitive advantage