Reference no: EM132343005

Assignment: Consider the following scenario:

You have just received a promotion to become the supervisor of the public information office for your agency. You are thrilled about your new job and anxiously await the opportunity to work with your staff of seven people, both to improve how your agency responds to requests for information and to create new avenues for communication between your agency and citizens in the community.

At the conclusion of your first staff meeting, you ask your staff to help you begin identifying what they think are some of the problem areas and opportunities that the unit can and should address. After a period of silence, a senior staff member finally says, "What's the point? Our unit isn't a priority. Everything we've come up with has been shot down." Another staff member adds, "Citizens don't respond to our efforts to communicate with them. They are completely apathetic." After a few more similar comments, you conclude the meeting by expressing appreciation for their comments and your hope and vision that things will change for the better.

Later in private meetings, you talk with your staff about your desire to approach problems creatively and to come up with some new and innovative approaches to achieving the unit's mission. In the course of these discussions, you learn that the prior supervisor not only did not solicit ideas but also routinely shot them down if they were raised. The previous supervisor's favorite response to suggested innovations was, "We tried that once, and it didn't work." Staff confided that they had learned a long time ago that they just needed to keep their heads down and do their jobs. One commented, "Besides, it's enough to just keep up with all the requests we get. We don't have enough staff to do anything else!"

Consider the impediments to and the techniques for fostering creativity in organizations that you learned about in your assigned textbook readings and answer the following questions in your discussion post:

In your initial post:

1. Discuss what impediments to creativity are present in the scenario.

2. As the new supervisor, how would you create a culture that encourages creativity among your staff?

3. Thinking about the types of teams that may operate within an organization, what two types of teams would you implement among your staff to help institute change.