Small Group Facilitation: Improving Process and Performance in Groups and Teams

Importance of Work Environment

When people who work with creative people, creative and innovative teams, and creative organizations talk about work environment, they almost always talk about the development of ideas from what appears to be chaos, chance, and uncertainty. The story about the development of Post-it® Note pads by a 3M engineer who sang in a choir is legendary. “The slips of paper he used to mark the hymnals kept falling out, and it dawned on him that adhesive-backed pieces of paper might solve his problem” (Peters, 1988, p. 433). The story does not stop there. Although market surveys of the idea were negative, secretaries at 3M loved the product. Post-its® finally took off when samples were mailed to the personal secretaries of ...