Focused creativity is the fourth Principle of Side by Side Leadership. Creativity is critical to identify and meet the risks and opportunities that arise every day. But there is a danger of implementing a creative idea that does more harm than good. The Side by Side Leader nurtures knowledge leaders who share what they know so the best creative ideas are used and implemented. After creative ideas are generated, knowledge leaders step in. They look at their own ideas, and at the ideas of teams.

Mihaly Csikszentmihaly (pronounced "CHICK-sent-me-high-ee"), professor of psychology and education at the University of Chicago authored the best-selling book Creativity. In the book he studied creativity and 80 of the most creative individuals of the last half of the 20th century. He selected the inventor Jacob Rabinow as one of the most creative individuals of the 20th century. Rabinow holds 230 U.S. patents on a wide variety of mechanical and electrical devices. Among these are the automatic regulation of clocks and watches formerly used in all American automobiles, the automatic letter-sorting machine used by the U.S. Post Office, the magnetic particle clutch, the "best-match" principle in optical and magnetic character reading machines, many safety mechanisms for ordinance devices, and the straight-line phonograph. Rabinow described the brainstorming phases of creativity and idea selection in the following way.

You must think of a lot of music, a lot of ideas, a lot of poetry, a lot of whatever. And if you're good, you must be able to throw out the junk immediately without even saying it. In other words you get many ideas appearing and you discard them because you're well trained and you say, "that's junk"i p. 49.

Knowledge and experience help the leader and the team select the best ideas. Rabinow knew the importance of knowledge and experience when he forcefully amplified on how to select the best ideas, "And that doesn't mean everyone can vote on it; they don't know enough" (p. 50 Csikszentmihaly, 1996).ii

Teams are great at brainstorming a huge reservoir of innovative options, but individuals with knowledge can guide the team in selecting the best alternatives by sharing their knowledge.

The psychologist Edwin Locke has conducted more good hard data studies of goal setting than anyone else. He discovered that when leaders set specific, reach-out targets for simple work tasks, productivity dramatically increased. Complex work tasks like planning a new factory or designing a new product cannot be effectively performed by simply setting a specific reach-out goal and working hard (Wood and Locke, 1990).iii
Effective strategies and action steps based upon the best available knowledge are also required.

An automobile manufacturer built an automotive glass factory. After several years of losing money, they brought in an outside expert. The expert calculated the plant's highest ideal production capability. He then proved that even with the highest capacity ever, the plant would never show a profit, because the plant had been constructed too small from the very beginning. The plant had to be closed. The factory did not have the right plant capacity planning knowledge, and the consequences were devastating for all involved.

One creative group of computer chip manufacturing engineers and operators tried to increase quality and productivity in their area. No matter how hard they tried, they could not make a significant improvement. The new set of equipment their manager had authorized to be purchased always broke down, and the equipment manufacturer could not fix the equipment. When the manager had made the decision to purchase the equipment, he had bought the least expensive equipment. The manager did not foresee that the difference in price could have been paid off in the first month of operation with the more expensive, but better performing equipment. Both of these examples illustrate how knowledge and the use of knowledge can make all the difference in achieving breakthrough.

The Side by Side Leadership principle is to use knowledge and experience to pick the best new ideas to further develop and put into action. First, generate as many innovative ideas as possible. Then, and only then, filter those innovative ideas through the sieve of the best knowledge and experience available to promote improvements.