Walter Lippmann, the Pulitzer Prize-winning American publicist and political commentator who coined the term “Cold War” once said, “When all think alike, no one is thinking.” Nearly four decades after his death, we continue to see the ill-effects of “structured” thinking, most so in the world of business where creativity and innovation are critical to success.
Over the years, honchos of small, medium and large businesses have confided in me about feeling rudderless in their corporate journey. “My business is not going anywhere in particular,” is a refrain I’ve heard several times in interactions with CEOs and other decision makers across the country.
At a recent conference, for example, the CEO of a mid-sized company sidled up to me during a coffee break and asked if we could discuss a problem he was facing. He began by telling me that though his business was booming across traditional product lines, he knew his company was unable to cash in on all the opportunities available.
He gave his diagnosis of where the problem began—in team meetings his managers were high on enthusiasm when it came to implementing ideas, especially if they came from him. “But they rarely contribute ideas of their own and seldom contradict my words during team discussions,” he added. He had a talented and experienced team at work, he said. So, he was finding it difficult to understand this palpable lack of creativity and innovation within his teams.
I curbed my instinct to begin dishing out advice, and instead asked my friend if he had heard the story of the “Naked Emperor”. As legend goes, there was once an emperor who was known to be deeply narcissistic, and cared only about showing off and indulging preferences for expensive clothes. Two con-men who visited the kingdom heard of the king’s penchant and decided to exploit this weakness. They went to the palace and offered to stitch the king the finest outfit he would have ever set his eyes on. They told him they used a cloth so special that only a few people with a very high intellect and refined taste could see it.

Captain disparate opinions. Surround yourself with advisors and team members who think differently from you, and from each other

Not confident about his own ability to judge this fabric right, the king decided to try out the new outfit before two of his trusted lieutenants. The con-men had planned the ultimate deceit. The costume was nothing at all—the con-men had convinced the king that an invisible outfit was the special one. So, the king was basically in the buff after he thought he’d tried the new outfit on. His trusted lieutenants were shocked to see their master naked but were scared to admit it. They not only praised the king’s costume but also invited other courtiers to take a glimpse of the amazing cloth that was invisible to those who did not deserve to see it. Soon, the entire kingdom turned out to witness a grand procession where the emperor would showcase his new dress.
The crowd praised the magnificent clothes of the emperor, each more afraid than the other to admit that they weren’t “good enough” to see the dress material. At this juncture, a small child, who did not understand shame or fear, shouted out naively, “The king isn’t wearing anything.” The crowd caught on and people started discussing the king’s nude procession, first in hushed tones that got louder as the truth dawned on more people. Undeterred, the emperor continued his procession with his head held high but without a shred of clothing on his body.
After patiently hearing the story, my CEO friend asked whether I thought he was behaving like this emperor. Well, maybe not. It would be more appropriate to say that the company’s core philosophy was to implement one person’s desire while putting the lid on new ideas and innovation. They were functioning in an environment where the management team preferred to demonstrate collective ignorance. Individual opinion never came out during discussions and nobody thought it fit to critique the leader’s opinions and ideas. In all fairness, I believe that my CEO friend had sensed this situation but was unable to pinpoint where the fault was. It lay in his style of leadership!
Most first-generation entrepreneurs face similar situations in their journeys, especially those that have built their business up from scratch. During this period, they transfer the core values and ethics to the business and often unconsciously hand-pick a management team that mirrors these beliefs and values. The team, on its part, slides into a comfort zone, a major constraint to creative thinking.
But my friend was not ready to give up without another fight. It wasn’t just his leadership style, he claimed. He told me in no uncertain terms that his frustration stemmed from the knowledge that his business growth demands frequent doses of innovation. He thought he was in the classic “What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There” phase, to borrow from executive coach Marshall Goldsmith’s bestselling book of the same phrase. That was his problem, he asserted, and he needed to figure out the steps he should take to overcome this entrepreneurial ennui.
I wasn’t about to get sidetracked from my diagnosis though. I harked back to Star Trek, the super-hit television serial of the 1970s. James T. Kirk, the iconic commander of the Space Ship Enterprise, once told his close confidante and friend Dr Leonard McCoy—the advantage of being a captain is being able to ask for advice without necessarily having to use it.
I also reminded my CEO friend of Captain Kirk’s closest confidants—Mr. Spock, a Vulcan married to a life in logic and Dr McCoy, who was driven solely by compassion and scientific curiosity. Both these characters are frequently at odds and suggest different courses of action based on their subjective view of the situation. The captain hears both his advisors and often comes up with a third option, built entirely from his perspective.
The fact that the leader has advisors around him with a world view vastly different from each other and from himself provides a clear insight into the captain’s confidence as a leader. A weak leader always surrounds himself with people who are loath to express their opinions. Any organisation that fosters such a behaviour ends up stifling creativity and innovation. This eventually results in a situation where decision-making and problem solving is centralised and the company is seldom able to change course mid-stream.
On the other hand, enterprises that allow diverse opinions to be aired support greater innovation and prove to be better at solving problems. They avoid group-think and team meetings and discussion forums become genuine platforms for sharing ideas. This is where a Mr Spock or Dr McCoy can be of help—they fuel creativity and innovation by airing their views and forcing the leadership to think.
As noted American educationist and philosopher George F. Kneller said: “Creativity, as has been said, consists largely of rearranging what we know in order to find out what we do not know. Hence, to think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted.”

—Krishna Kumar can be reached at kk@intradconsult.com