“The Power of Ordinary Practices”; an interview at HBS:

There are two myths in defining creativity. One is the genius myth—that creativity is tied to genius. To the contrary, I’ve found that although some people have extreme levels of talent, everyone with normal human capacities is capable of producing creative work under the right circumstances. The second is the trade-off myth. I have found over and over again that, for complex work in organizations, there is no trade-off between creativity and productivity, efficiency, or work quality.

…

We found three leader behaviors that had negative impact. One was the under- or overspecification of assignments. Much of this has to do with giving people either too little guidance or too much guidance by overconstraining the assignment. The second one is monitoring in a negative form—that is, checking on assigned work too often or not often enough. Or, checking on it for too long, like hanging around and going too much into the details of what people are doing, and giving unconstructive feedback. The third negative has to do with problem solving—either avoiding solving problems that crop up in the team or the project, or creating problems.

(Via Ed Vielmetti.)

One big problem you will surely have noticed: every piece of advice therein is a Goldilocks admonition. Not too much, not too little. An even keel, neither a heavy hand nor laissez faire.

A team succeeds by adapting. Not by direction, not by goal-setting, not by being let free: by adapting, collectively.