ITB December 2024/January 2025 - Magazine - Page 29
Creative thinking is one of
the skills expected to rise in
importance in the years to come.
The view that creativity is not
inherent to the accounting
sector is changing.
Creativity plays a key role
in improving business
processes and performance.
Creativity is permeating all areas of business and is no longer
preserved for stereotypically “creative” professions such as design or
performing arts. More and more, our work lives involve stepping outside
our day-to-day to devise novel solutions to old and new challenges.
WORDS AMANDA WOODARD
C
reativity is increasingly recognised as a skill
that is essential to all industries.
According to the World Economic Forum’s
The Future of Jobs Report 2023, creative
thinking and analytical thinking will be the top skills
needed to thrive in the workplace over the next
few years. Resilience, flexibility and agility also rank
among the top five skills on the rise, highlighting
organisational demand for workers who can adapt
quickly to business disruption.
Mykel Dixon, author of Everyday Creative:
A Dangerous Guide for Making Magic at Work
and adviser to companies on how to unlock creativity
among their ranks, argues that these skills are in
demand right now.
“The world we live in used to value those who
could ace the test, the ones who could memorise
information, master instructions … Now we have
machines for that, and they don’t need to be fed or
need a break … What the world values now are those
of us who can dream, those who can reinterpret and
reinvent the world in new and exciting ways,” he says.
Unhelpful stereotypes portraying artists and
creatives as flaky and self-absorbed, coupled with
reductionist myths about people having either
left-brained or right-brained capabilities, have
served to encourage a dysfunctional relationship
with our latent creativity, Dixon says.
The good news is that creativity and innovation
can be cultivated. Christy Forest, CEO and executive
director of LiveHire and former member of the
Business Council of Australia Innovation Taskforce
says, “It used to be that innovation was the task
of a small development team in the corner of an
office, but now innovation happens in an environment
that taps the entire workforce. You have to harness
soft skills and hard skills and have a lot of precision
around process and reward.”
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