The findings have far-reaching consequences for individuals and business when it comes to creating environments that foster creativity or crush it completely. Hands up who likes to be micro-managed? We don’t perform our best creative or innovative work when we feel constrained by excessive guidelines or rules. The study illustrated this very clearly.

It’s a very tricky thing to manage in business, however. Some tasks require set protocol and guidelines, and there are times when this is the most effective way to run your business. But when we need to be innovative at work, nothing crushes our creativity more than micro-management, and excessive restrictions and guidelines.

There are many reasons why creative freedom and autonomy are beneficial to business, not the least is that it helps grow your business, retain staff and boost profits.

Daniel Pink reports “researchers at Cornell University studied 320 small businesses, half of which granted workers autonomy, the other half relying on top-down direction. The businesses that offered autonomy grew at four times the rate of the control oriented firms, and had one-third the turn over rate.” So allowing workers in an organisation freedom and autonomy to get their work done in the way they prefer to do so, not only grows your business, it also ensures staff are likely to stay in their jobs for longer.

Google Gets The Kickbacks From Creativity

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One global, multi-billion dollar business most of us are familiar with, Google, considers freedom and autonomy so vital to the successful running of their business, they give their engineers something called 20% time. That is, the employees they rely on to be innovative and creative are given one a day a week to work freely on whatever project they like. Typically, more than half of Google’s innovations come from this 20% time, including Gmail and Google News.

How Does This Work In Your Business & What Steps Do You Take?

When I was writing my book, I outlined certain things to help get your creative buzz happening. These same principles apply here.

You need to schedule time-out for yourself or any key employees who are involved in coming up with creative concepts for building your business or solving problems. This gives creative ideas and innovative problem solving techniques a chance to be conceived, examined and explored. Our creativity can be drowned out by the constant barrage of everyday business concerns.

This time-out can be for a certain allocation every day, or it could be something you do weekly. Either way, by scheduling it in as part of your work, and treating it as just as important as any other aspect of business is the first step.

How Much Time Do You Schedule For Time-Out?

This is something that needs to be worked out on an individual basis. By taking twenty minutes or half an hour a day, you might be able to access the insights needed to solve some problems or create new business opportunities. But beware of skimping on this too much, as it can cost you in the long run.

Google allows its key creatives one whole day a week of time-out to work on whatever they please. Most of us might freak at the idea of giving ourselves or staff a whole day to play around with something outside of the pressing tasks at hand.

If it’s too much of a psychological hurdle, then start small and see how it works.

What Do You Do With This Time-Out?

Again, this is best decided on an individual basis. Two global companies, Atlassian and Google give their key creatives 20% time to work on something they’d like to fix or improve upon in the business. Alternatively, they can work on a new project of their own choice that is related to their area of expertise and the business.

Another option I wrote in my book is going for a walk for 20 minutes to half an hour. The simple act of taking oneself away from the workspace and walking can be very helpful, and is often greatly underestimated. Besides being laden with physical and psychological health benefits, it allows for a moving meditation in which you can clear your mind of other concerns and contemplate the thing you are working on in peace.

Lastly, I’m a huge advocate of just playing around and seeing what happens.

You may have noticed I’ve spoken about play holding the keys to creativity previously (you could say it’s my regular rant). If you just allow yourself freedom to play in whatever way you are most likely to enjoy yourself and at the same time stay on track with the overall business in mind, you can’t go wrong.

Richard Feynman, one of the most influential scientists of our century, winner of a Nobel Prize for quantum electrodynamics, allowed himself “play time” in his laboratory.

What Results Can You Expect?

When it comes to creativity and innovation, it’s best to expect the unexpected! Seriously though, by giving yourself and the key creatives in your business more autonomy and this resource of “time-out”, you improve your business in a multitude of ways.

It has been tested in real business environments and shown not only business growth, but also it improves the overall functioning of the business with greater employee satisfaction and loyalty, and ultimately leads to making more money instead of losing it, huzzah!

I would love to hear of any stories people have that either support or challenge what I have spoken about in this article in relation to restrictions crushing creativity or taking time out to kick-start innovation.

Thanks again for reading, and here’s to your creative success!

Neroli Makim

P.S. An afterthought… the three key elements of lasting motivation are autonomy, mastery and purpose. If you want to stay motivated in your work, and you want your employees to do so as well, these three things are the keys to accomplishing that. Autonomy is not really an optional thing if you’re in it for the long haul.

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