In a recent budget update, the Victorian Government announced a number of austerity measures to reduce spending and create a “more sustainable public service.” This makes 100% sense to all of us, but exactly what does “sustainability” mean in this instance?

Various definitions tell us it is: a capacity to endure; an ability to be supported or upheld; or being maintained at a steady level without depleting resources or causing damage. Mostly the word is used in an environmental sense but the definition transfers well into a Government context given ongoing need, limited resources and a duty of care for the community.

No one doubts the need to be more efficient and do more with less – this is now a given. Simply applying the notions of enduring, upholding and maintaining however tend to spawn management practices focused on viewing the world with rear-view vision.

A standard management practice is to do the same things we did yesterday but only cheaper and faster. In a time of resource scarcity and rapid change however there is an urgent need to keep moving forward, keeping an eye on the road ahead through the windscreen. The rear-view is an aid to navigation that helps ensure efficiency, compliance and safety. It is not the sole way to navigate forward.

Some extant management mindsets don’t often see new thinking, new design and new approaches as the way forward and with a failure to design forward, short-term views prevail with respect to sustainability. When this happens spending cuts and efficiency gains are focused on at the expense of new thinking and new action. Classic examples of this default thinking include reducing the resourcing of functions such as Learning & Development, Organisational Development and other developmental areas.  These are areas that no one can deny are important for the long term survival (sustainability) of an organisation.

Sustainability is a function of both leadership and management. Where the manager will seek to control and reduce, the leader needs to counter this by taking a longer term view and ensuring those functions that are necessary for long-term (sustained) survival remain resourced and fully functional. They also need to be equipped and engaged to assist everyone else to generate new and improved ways of doing things to ensure both short and long-term sustainability.

There is an absolute need for both approaches using the windscreen and the rear-view, but but we tend to default to the rear-view all too often.

In an environment starved of resources simple reduction can be self-defeating. We can’t just stop, cut, reduce, save and speed things up. We need to be able to commit to designing entirely new means of developing more sustainable practices that include addressing our issues and creating new opportunities going forward.

When your Managers are faced with developing more sustainable practices, will their primary focus be the windscreen or the rear-view mirror?

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It has always been frustrating how these two words have been ill-defined and interchanged in the workplace. The confusion over their definitions has added to the cynicism with which they are greeted and acts as an impediment to their beneficial application.

While differing contexts and needs determine variations in definition, complicated definitions are ultimately unhelpful and only serve to confuse people. Simple definitions with clarity and are most likely to elicit action.

Accordingly, I’d like to distill multiple definitions into simple, broad terms and add a few simple rules of thumb.

“Creativity is somehow bringing something new into being.”

“Innovation is applying that creative something to add value.”

It is only through application and value adding can creative output become an innovation.

Not all creative output will add value, so creativity is not a guarantee of innovation. Organisations needs “idea-creativity” because the development of new ideas and concepts that are developed for “a purpose” have objective value.

Depending on our industry it is important to differentiate between “artistic” creativity and the harder-edged “idea” creativity. I can do some wonderful finger-painting and sit around a team-building campfire singing kumbaya, but is it going to add any form of business value? Artistic creativity may have a subjective place in organisations but when seeking to add value to service delivery and the bottom-line, a far greater focus and objectivity is required.

To spend time arguing about definitions beyond this is often little more than a mental form of punishing that proverbial primate. Argument about strict definitions is counterproductive for two reasons:

1) It wastes time and stops people from moving to action in the form of the experimenting, proto-typing and probing required to uncover new value, and 2) the very nature of creation indicates whatever is produced is new, so how therefore can it be appropriately categorised with any foresight?

Many people argue endlessly about the definitions of creativity and innovation and when this happens more mental energy goes into this, than into the generation of value adding ideas. Debate on the exact definition is unhelpful and acts as a fallback position that simply provides an excuse for a lack of action.

Organisations should take the hint, “Create” and “Innovate” are both verbs and if you’re still talking about them, you’re not doing them.

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