9: There Is Not Just One Way To Do Things: Fostering Creativity Like The Earth Kingdom of Omashu

When Aang returns to Omashu in the Earth Kingdom for the first time in many years, he is excited about the opportunity to ride mail carts again like a roller coaster. His friend Bumi had invented the idea, a creative use for the system that had been just used for mail in the past. While this was a great use of creativity, Aang in his visit though did not want to do new creative things, rather just the mail cart fun from the past. It took other actions of Bumi to get Aang thinking creatively again.

We often are like Aang, wanting to do the same old things we have done before. This can be fine in many contexts, but for leaders and organizations to succeed and thrive, creativity is often crucial. We will discuss in this chapter about why being creative and doing new things can be hard. We will then talk about the nature of creativity and ways to be creative. Finally, we’ll discuss how leaders can help their own teams to be creative. Aang and friends needed to be creative to succeed against the great strength of the Fire Nation, and the success of your own organization can be helped by it, too.