Want your organisation to perform poorly? Here are six ways to kill creativity in business, or anywhere.

Many organisations claim they want to foster creativity—and so they should—but unintentionally, through their working practices, creativity is killed stone dead.

That’s what Teresa Amabile, now Director of the Harvard Business School, found when looking back over decades of her research in organisations (Amabile, 1998). As part of one research program she examined seven companies in three different industries, having team members report back daily on their work.

After two years she found marked differences in how organisations dealt with creativity. Whether or not they intended to, some of the organisations seemed to know the perfect ways to kill creativity, while others set up excellent environments for their employees to be creative.

Since so many organisations seem to be aiming to kill creativity, here are the six main methods:

1. Role mismatch

2. Restrict freedom

3. Ration resources

4. Reduce group diversity

5. No encouragement

6. No support

Keep it Subtle
Remember that all these methods for killing creativity are best done with subtlety. You should say you provide support, freedom, resources and so on, but only do it half-heartedly. This will give you the appearance of a creative organisation but you won’t produce the truly creative solutions which mark out the best.

If you are interested in fostering a creative organisation be sure to do the opposite of all the above, read the ebook: how to be creative.

Source and read the full text here.