b.cognosco

After 20 years in a very deadline-oriented industry I've heard my share of people claim that pressure is their ally. As an inveterate procrastinator myself, I've developed all sorts of enforced deadline techiques to complete my own tasks on time. But research reported in the August 2002 issue of Harvard Business Review puts the lie to the assertion that great ideas frequently come from a time pressure crucible.

Creativity Under the Gun
[...]If you're like most managers, you have almost certainly worked with people who swear that they do their most creative work under tight deadlines. You may use pressure as a management technique, believing that it will spur people on to great leaps of insight. You may even manage yourself this way. If so, are you right?
Based on our research, the short answer is no. When creativity is under the gun, it usually ends up getting killed. [...]

The authors used a diary technique and targeted teams working a a project where creativity was deemed both possible and desirable. They collected over 9,000 entries from 177 employees at seven US companies, and used the data to catalog the frequency of creative thinking and correlate it to the amount of perceived time pressure the team members were feeling.

The results of the study were both fascinating and sobering. The great majority of extreme time pressure situations did not result in creative thinking. To the contrary, extreme time pressure seemed to sap creative thinking, even to the point of creating an anti-creative hangover that lasted up to two days beyond the pressure event.

When creativity did occur under pressure it was usually the result of focus -- all other distractions had been removed. There was also a strong correlation to intrinsic importance -- the authors refer to project team members feeling like they were on an expedition -- rather than the feeling of being on a speeding treadmill resulting from poor management decisions.

The authors don't argue for the removal of time pressure -- some time pressure is often beneficial. Rather, they argue against extreme time pressure and in favor of providing opportunities for undistracted focus on core problems when creativity is required.

My own experience, in both managment and team member scenarios, confirms the authors' conclusion -- excessive pressure most often results in what can best be described as a project exit strategy, not a creative solution. [ Source: AudioTech Business Briefings]