Abu Dhabi: His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, has unleashed creative potential of his people for breakthroughs, through the UAE national brainstorming, a leading creativity specialist told Gulf News.

“Through the national brainstorming and Creativity Lab process, I believe we have seen a clear demonstration of the quality of creative leadership in the UAE,” said Dr Mark Batey, creativity specialist and joint chair of the Psychometrics at Work Research Group at Manchester Business School.

Stressing that creativity is now the most important leadership quality for success, outweighing competencies of integrity and global thinking, Dr Batey said more generally — too often, there is a tendency for organisations to adopt a top-down approach to creating a creative culture. There is a belief that if the mission, vision and values “talk the talk” then the rest will follow. It doesn’t and it won’t. Top down approaches need to be met halfway with bottom-up skills development of individuals and teams.

“The role of the leader in creating a culture of creativity is in orchestrating the three levels. Leaders recruit, assess, develop and set goals, and allocate roles for individuals. They build and grow teams and set the team environment. Together, leaders contribute to the culture and climate of an organisation that allows the people to be creative,” Dr Batey said.

The national brainstorming session generated 82,000 ideas over less than a week. The Big Thank You was splashed on the back pages of many local dailies on December 12.

Mohammad has instructed all federal government bodies to adopt the “Government Creativity Lab” experiment as an official and standard practice that aims to develop government services, overcome practical challenges and enhance performance and competency of government administrative procedures.

Mohammad’s directives followed the success of the first trial of the Government Creativity Lab’ during the UAE Cabinet Retreat.

21st century skills

Underscoring that creativity and creative problem solving are 21st century leadership skills, Dr Batey said.

Mohammad has directed the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education to hold government creativity labs regularly on the ministry’s level to face any practical or administrative challenges in the field and to engage all stakeholders, including officials, employees and specialists, to develop instant solutions.

Dr Batey said, “We can see how His Highness Shaikh Mohammad built a positive environment for effective brainstorming to happen using his tweets for support (and his openness and encouragement over many years); the key now is to get some training into the process so that as the Creativity Lab idea is cascaded throughout the UAE ministries, that same openness, tolerance and invitation for creative thinking applies all the way through the process.”