The Art of Followership: How Great Followers Create Great Leaders and Organizations

Chapter 21. Effective Followership for Creativity and Innovation

A Range of Colors and Dimensions

Kimberly S. Jaussi, Andy Stefanovich, and Patricia G. Devlin

Effective followers are often undervalued, but they play a pivotal role in organizations that require new ways of doing business. Breakthrough innovations require an infusion of creativity into the thoughts and behaviors of all organization members. Whereas numerous articles and books have pointed to the role of the leader in creating this infusion,^[342] practitioners and academics alike have neglected to focus on the roles and responsibilities of followers in this process. To fill that gap, we are calling on our unique academic-practitioner research partnership to ground our thinking and present our thoughts on followership for creativity and innovation in organizations.

STARTING POINTS

We would like first to define creativity in organizations and share some general observations. Creativity at work has been defined as the production of ideas that are both novel and useful.^[343] We follow this definition and focus our discussion on followership for this outcome in organizations. Through our partnerships with innovative organizations that constantly search for new forms of being, new ways of working, and new products or services, we have observed several things. First, these organizations fight the ever-lurking threat of stagnancy. They strive constantly to improve themselves and are in continual states of evolution and revolution. ...