Navigating the 3 C's: how do you score?

Here is a short questionnaire to test how successful your business will be over the next 18 months. It is based on the premise that the most successful businesses are ones that balance

• Creativity,
• Commitment and
• Complexity

Every business needs innovation to delight their customers, stay ahead of their competitors and to keep driving down costs. Creativity is the fuel for innovation and many businesses are brilliant at not recognising when it is needed, or worse, crushing it out of people.

With the commitment (or engagement, as it is often called) of everyone involved in a business, everything becomes that much more possible. People work smarter and more steadily: not just harder and harder (and harder).

In our frenetic world where new technologies and ideas approach us from all angles, and customers want that something different and bespoke: managing complexity is critical. If a business cannot handle the complex demands it faces, it will quickly fade away.

Are you and the other key leaders of your business balancing these three C’s well enough? Try this questionnaire and see how you score

Statement	How much do you agree with the statement? (Where 1 is ‘not at all’ and 7 is ‘totally’)
1.        I can easily remember the last time one of my team had a brilliantly creative idea that added to our overall performance.	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
2.       In fact I can remember quite a few times before then too when people around the business have come up with new and fresh ideas.	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
3.       In my (part of the) business, we do things very differently now to three years ago – new pressures mean we have had to change	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
4.       I usually come away from a meeting with colleagues or business contacts with at least one new idea.	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
5.        When my team and I sit down together, I just expect there to be creativity and there usually is.	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
6.       Often at work, I am delightfully surprised by the ingenuity of the people I work with	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
7.        In my business, there is no effort needed to sell the new strategies, people know what they need to do already – and are doing it	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8.       People all face the same direction in my business, not in some regimented way, but with a clear focus on the future	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
9.       I enjoy coming to work and so do all my colleagues: we work hard, but we also have fun	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
10.     Staff appraisals are not the turgid box ticking exercises I see in other businesses, in ours we have lively conversations about the past and future	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
11.      The plans in our business don’t just gather dust in filing cabinets, we use them to handle the pressures we face	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
12.     In fact we don’t really have large planning documents, instead we have a community of people who all understand what we need to do	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
13.     Just like a good military general, I don’t spend all my time in the valleys, I am often up on the hills looking further & beyond the current challenges	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
14.     I read newspapers, magazines & journals to spot the trends that are coming our way – there are patterns in most things	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
15.     My team and I are able to work the detail as well as we work the big picture – we can link it all together	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
16.     I use every chance I get to talk with suppliers and customers about what changes they are seeing, or would like to see	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
17.     Things are much more complex than they used to be, but I think we have managed to have big enough conversations to handle these changes	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
18.     Sometimes I get scared when I think about everything the business needs to achieve but I know I can rely on everyone to bring their piece of puzzle	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
19.     Come the end of the week, I am able to relax and know we are surfing the waves of change rather than being drowned by them	1 2 3 4 5 6 7
20.    I spend a good chunk of my time managing the future and not just to reacting to the present day challenges	1 2 3 4 5 6 7

If you scored 140, you need to bottle what you company is doing and sell it! Certainly if your score was somewhere above 110, your company is probably far more creative, engaged and strategic than most. You will enjoy coming to work. Between 60 and 109 is probably around average – but is average enough? How might you up your score? And if your score was below 60, there is probably room for some change – you, your business or both.

This, of course, is not a scientific survey but merely one to prompt reflection. The ideas underpinning it though are – the best companies are the ones where creativity, commitment and complexity are blended well together.