Kickstarting workplace creativity

Given your rich experiences in working with CEOs and young talents, what are your views about the challenges facing the majority of employers in terms of screening and recruiting employees with creative and innovative mindsets?

Dr. Powe: The first challenge is for employers to create a dialogue about what they mean by creative thinking, innovation and what enterprising behaviour means to them and their organisation. Often too much time is spent on what the terms mean. It’s time to move past the definitive answer, let’s get on with the activity. When working with CEOs and leaders of organisations who want sustained growth, engaged employees and a general buzz of activity and purpose, they have to walk the talk. In other words, demonstrate through action what they expect in terms of creative thinking, the use of the tools of innovation and how enterprising behaviour looks and is rewarded.

If the leader doesn’t even do this, then nothing will change. You can’t tell someone to be creative, you have to show them! We can test through scenarios, case studies and imagined situations, this is OK, but everyone has learned the responses to these theoretical situations. This is where the challenge is and the opportunity lies.

Over the last year running Navigos Premium, do you think finding sufficient candidates with creative and innovative mindsets is one of your biggest challenges in Vietnam? What kind of candidates are you more often meeting?

Rudkjøbing: At Navigos Premium, we shake hands with various different professionals every single day. Some of them possess highly innovative mindsets and others do not.

We don’t envision this as a challenge, as not all roles require candidates who master creative thinking and innovation – As a matter of fact, some roles require the opposite, candidates who are content and motivated by working in environments with no or little room for creativity and innovation.

Let us consider people working in marketing, media or advertising, one would obviously want them to be able to think creatively and out of the box. At the same time if we have someone working in quality assurance or the testing of medical products, we would like for them to be extremely meticulous, oriented towards details and not someone who is easily swept away by imagination and good ideas.

 Could you describe how this mindset varies in young people from country to country in Asia? Do you have any specific comments on young Vietnamese people?

Dr. Powe: I have been fortunate to work in many countries, cultures, religious and political frameworks for the last 25 years and am pleased to say, we’re all the same! We have the same fears of failure and of success, the same drive to succeed, provide for our families and our communities. If we strip away the cultures, rules and regulations, we are the same when it comes to creative thinking, using innovation and displaying enterprising behaviour. The surprising thing is that all the adults I have worked with have in many cases simply forgotten those skills we are hardwired with as children. All children are natural salespeople, are wonderful negotiators, think creatively and have wonderful imaginations. What have we done to the children? We sent them to school!

One job I particularly enjoy is working with senior executives in both private and government sectors to ‘remember’ what it was like to play with ideas as they did so well as children, sometimes this is called brainstorming, I prefer the word ‘play’ because it is more fun, highly effective and when adults are enjoying themselves the results are often spectacular. 

Based on the creative and innovative criteria, can you give some short comments on the quality of higher-level employees in Vietnam?

Rudkjøbing: It is difficult to generalise on the basis of nationality or level of a workforce. There are all sorts of people in all levels and across countries. What we are trying to address through the seminar is out of the box thinking for regular scenarios, focusing on people management.

If you are asked to provide some short recommendations to employers and candidates in Vietnam, what will you say?

Dr. Powe: For the employers, strive for authenticity. Use that old approach of literally saying, this is what we do, cannot do and will not do. This clearly indicates to candidates a framework that describes the current corporate culture. This is essential for young candidates whose expectations are often unrealistic. For candidates, do your research, read about the organisation’s history, business plans, press releases. This will create a current context and when interviewed they should use this knowledge of not only demonstrating where they will ‘fit’ into the organisation, it will also be a base to demonstrate the candidates thinking about how they can add additional value and contribute to the growth and success of the organisation.

From the recruitment service perspective, are candidates with strong entrepreneurial skills - described by Dr. Powe as ‘C-level’ candidates – offering a combination of creativity and innovation - also potential job-jumpers which pose a higher threat to long-term human resource planning?

Rudkjøbing: I don’t believe that to be the case. Candidates who hold a strong level of entrepreneurship are not less committed to long term employment. However employers need to know how to effectively channel and put these entrepreneurial skills in to use. If a candidate has a strong need and urge to build up, start-up and initiate business, he or she might not be thriving and utilising their full potential within companies that have entered a more settled and maintenance oriented phase.

Navigos Premium division at Navigos Search offers clients end-to-end recruitment advice. Packaged as a retained executive search option, engaging with Navigos Premium means having the realities of each vacancy thoroughly analysed, with candidates subjected to rigorous assessment. All engagements with Navigos Premium are given the complete attention of a dedicated resource. Through Navigos Premium, we propose partnering on critical and pivotal vacancies, ensuring mutual value in terms of time and effort.