Creating Goals

Individual Reflection: Creating Goals for the Blueprint for Professional & Personal Growth

Michele Siegfried

Walden University

June 26, 2015

Executive Summary

The MBA course in Foster a Culture of Innovation at Walden University has broadened my knowledge and understanding in many ways. Most importantly the assignment and information that had the biggest impact on my ability to foster a culture of innovation within an organization was during week two when we examined our creative thinking profile. Analyzing my profile and thinking style didn’t really change the way I thought of my role in the process as much as it helped me understand more clearly my role. I was able to understand that my creative profile is best described by the digital thinker (developer) and operational thinker (clarifier).

Understanding and analyzing the different profiles of individuals and the type of thinkers they are will help create a successful team that can foster creativity and innovation. This process enables us to be able to determine the difference of individuals to ensure we develop a diverse team. As John Buchan said, “The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already." By examining each type of thinker and ensuring there is a mixture of each type will allow us to identify the strengths and weaknesses and produce a team that is able to work together and complement each other in order to foster a creative and innovative culture. I feel that being able to analyzing and understand these different thinking profiles would be a benefit and add value to my role as a manager in the organization.

The insight that I gained in this course has shown me that to create a competitive advantage organizations should adopt creativity as a core leadership skill and increase training in creative problem-solving (Grivas, Puccio, 2012). Ensuring that the organization is made up a diverse team consisting of individuals from...