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How often do you hear employees of large corporations or institutions complaining that their jobs lull them into passivity and daily rote? Apart from some departments which had been designed to deliver change and innovation within bigger organizations, like research and development or marketing, most modern firms take pride in arrangements that minimize risk by relying on standard procedures, checklists and other kinds of restraining routines. They even go as far as outsourcing more challenging tasks to consultants or outside providers, leaving their own people with the job of executing rather than thinking up solutions. Everyday administration may be the core of operation in most businesses, but putting too much emphasis on predictability and stability saps a lot of creative potential from employees and turns them into dispassionate administrators.

It does not need to be this way. In fact, most large organizations are guilty of grossly undervaluing the impact their employees can make by generating more ideas at work. The indictment is the most damning in the public sector, where routine and misguided sense of job security both contribute to discouraging people from sharing ideas or becoming agents for change. In the short run, it may enhance the integrity of the workplace, which can concentrate on perfect execution of its arrangements, but in the long run this policy runs the risk of draining employees, ultimately slowing the organization down.

There are different ways of reversing this pitiable state of affairs. Google deals with it by setting aside some twenty per cent of contractual working time that each employee can use to engage in whatever activity they are fond of. This is done in the hope that such freewheeling periods of spontaneous creativity in the employment environment will result in ideas for practical improvements for the company. Even though it tends to look like wasting resources, setting up some experimentation time might translate into increased activity and increased quality of service or ideas, possible returns applicable to the public sector too.

Holding regular brainstorming sessions can energize workplaces, too, and beyond what most people realize. The only thing is to do it with conviction and with clarity which problems need to be solved. Thanks to their everyday insights into business operation, they are indeed in a pole position to contribute and tangibly improve things around, including supplying superiors with information that goes well beyond what can be garnered in the course of executive training or other high-level development methods. If aided with common techniques like mind maps or key questions, such sessions can considerably help organize thoughts and guide employees towards a joint goal.

Energizing employees to look beyond their routine responsibilities and roles works even better if it involves more unusual techniques. From a long list, one that seems very productive is harnessing the benefits of analogical thinking, metaphors, similes and the likes. This allows people to see their sometimes mundane experiences in different terms, very often totally creatively, and branch out from them in search of practicable ideas. This and other techniques are taught during corporate training , but they should find their way down towards rank-and-file employees as well, for the benefit of entire organizations.