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160 Power Up Your Mind

Setting out your intention to harness the full range of people’s tal-
ents gives out strong cultural messages to your workforce. When
Jayne-Anne Gadhia set up Virgin One Account, she had to persuade
people in good jobs in other more traditional financial services com-
panies to come and work for her. The idea that Virgin One would
be a more creative environment and one in which individuals would
realize more of their potential was an attractive element of the
package for them.
As more and more businesses become service and not manu-
facturing based, being a multiple intelligence workplace becomes
more and more important.
Jonas Ridderstråle and Kjell Nordstrom, the Swedish authors
of the bestselling Funky Business, are convinced that “the only thing
that now makes capital dance is talent.”

Do you agree with them? Do you think that the multiple intelligence approach is helpful?
How much of this happens in your own organization? What impact might it have on your
business if your workplace became multiply intelligent?

BARRIERS TO CREATIVITY

You will have heard of the idea of the learning organization, but
what about the creative organization? It has many of the charac-
teristics of creative people listed on page 149. It is an organization
where the culture is one of constantly celebrating the value of ideas.
For, as Charles Browder said:

A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn, it can be
stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right
man’s brow.

Creative organizations understand the barriers to creativity and
know how to overcome them. I think of these barriers as the seven
deadly sins because they all, rather conveniently, begin with the let-
ter S: