Creative Reaction

This excellent Talent Culture post includes a (fictitious) letter to a CEO from the perspective of an employee, who wants to be more engaged in her job. Unfortunately, the CEO hasn’t allowed this to happen. Clearly her company, like many, has gone through some difficult times. The employee truly hopes her company will thrive. The CEO needs to do a better job communicating and connecting, and the writer diplomatically offers many excellent suggestions.

If you are a Manager, CEO, or owner of a company, no matter what size, do everyone a favor and read this post! Then take a few moments to think about the measures you are taking to retain your biggest asset – talent.

Owners and Mangers, if you aspire to motivate your teams; if you need them to commit to a vision or a greater purpose, read this Simon Sinek account of “servant leadership”.

Sinek witnessed first-hand an important, yet from a strictly personnel standpoint, costly Marine Corps policy, which exemplifies their culture. The lesson?

The strength of an organization is easily measured by the steps it takes to look after its own.  To what lengths does a company go to show its people that they matter?  An organization that shows commitment to its people can expect its people to show commitment to them.

If you are having morale, motivation and turnover issues within your organization, Sinek gives us plenty to chew on.

Simon Sinek has a fascinating post about the impact that environments have on the creative and problem-solving characteristics of the brain.

He says if we force ourselves or our teams to “sit and think”, especially in sensory-deprived conditions, we are inhibiting our brains.

Alternatively, “mindless” activities such as driving, running, showering, as well as “distractions”, such as toys, games, or foosball tables, all access

“our subconscious brains – our limbic ‘feeling’ brains – (which) have access to vastly more information than our conscious ‘thinking’ brains.”

So encourage your teams to take regular breaks to interact and be inspired. Make sure they get outside and get away from their desks at lunch. Explain to management the importance of having music, books, artwork and even plants and fishtanks. Most of all, remember that creativity is subject to the law of diminishing returns. Over-extract at your own peril.

I was reading an interview with a newly appointed ad agency CEO in a business newspaper, and was honestly excited about the changes he would bring to the company as well as its impact on the local creative economy. It was a short interview, and unfortunately the interviewer started playing “mind association”. For one of the questions, the interviewer asked, “What is your greatest fear?” He responded, “Failure”.

The answer sucker punched any hope I had.

I was stunned. What kind of pressure is the parent company (Cough!Havas!Cough!) putting on this guy? What kind of culture shapes such a response? Clearly he was hired to make big improvements; there’s a stated goal of doubling business in five years’ time. He’s not going to accomplish this following the same trajectory of his predecessors. He will need to take the company in a bold, new direction, but apparently he’s expected to do so by playing it safe!

Contrast that with a blog post by a rival agency’s Chief Creative Officer, Mullen’s Edward Boches. In The fastest way to success might be to fail first, he mentions how refreshing it was to have a conversation with a company president who was transparent about the mistakes his company made.

“Yet each anecdote about what didn’t work was immediately followed with, ‘But here’s what we learned.”

Quoting Boches:

We live in an age where there is so much pressure to succeed.  Every proposal and idea gets scrutinized, analyzed, and too often paralyzed. But there’s a real value in trying things, in experimenting, in taking a calculated chance.

At Creative Reaction, we are not fans of “mistake avoidance”. We are fans of “mistake recovery”. Success requires taking risks. Rather than having a culture that avoids mistakes using the blunt mallet of bureaucracy, mistake recovery values a culture where mistakes can be made, then quickly corrected.

Nobody has all the answers. Even the most well-thought-out plans fail. Mistakes will be made. Just be sure to learn from them and let them vault you to success.

(Click to search for “failure” or “mistake” to see related posts.)

This really interesting article by CCL popped up in the newsreader today, explaining the hidden costs of companies which insist on over-managing their employees. These are the companies which feel they need to tell their employees (grown adults, mostly) exactly how their jobs should be performed. While “process” plays an important role in certain industries, not leveraging the experience of employees is shortsighted.

Anybody who does a job eight hours a day is going to see ways in which that job could be improved or simplified…

This is particularly true for Professional Knowledge Workers, where the costs are huge:

At best, it limits growth and innovation. At worse, it solidifies inefficiencies, undermines company goals and creates an environment where employees are unmotivated and disengaged.

So be sure to give some thought to employee engagement and motivation. It is far better for everyone to be working together toward the same vision. It could very well mean the difference between success and failure.

When leaders give people control over their work, stop telling them how to do their jobs and focus on the goals, the hidden costs are replaced with numerous benefits. Employee stress goes down, absenteeism decreases and engagement goes up. Productivity improves and innovation is possible.

There’s been so much press on the iPad that we’ve avoided mentioning it at all, though we believe that even in version 1.0, it is already an important creative tool.

We see it’s greatest potential in situations where ideas can be directly transmitted from the brain, via the fingertips, onto the screen, without the need for mice, menus, or keyboards. Abstract ideas can be visualized without words getting in the way, and they can be visualized immediately. Those who mistake the iPad as “just a large iPhone/iPod Touch” miss the point that an iPad is faster than a computer, a feature that becomes all the more important when you are experiencing creative reaction.

Another important aspect of using an iPad is that you have only one task (application) in front of you at a time, encouraging you to focus.

In addition, to the degree a laptop is more portable than a desktop, an iPad is more portable than a laptop. You can quickly escape any non-productive environment (cubicles, anyone?) and relocate pretty much anywhere you like.

We recently read this account written by software developer Matt Legend Gemmel, who supports our premises. While his work differs slightly from that of a creative for hire, the parallels are obvious.

Managers, owners and IT departments, take notice!

The ink was barely dry on This Ain’t No Disco – Now in Book Form, when we came across the equally fascinating book, I Wish I Worked There! thanks to Amazon’s suggestive selling robots. I don’t know how I missed this book.

Quoting the book’s Website,

I Wish I Worked There! reveals the world’s most inspiring and innovative places to work, investigating twenty famous brands that place innovation at the heart of their culture.

It’s now on the Wish List. If you get your hands on a copy before we do, be sure to leave a comment and tell us what you think.

There’s a fair amount of debate to the question, “which offers the best learning opportunities; successes or mistakes?”

Those who say, “successes” always seem to point to “stupid” mistakes, not honest ones, to discredit the learning opportunities of failures. Create a Culture of Successful Failure at Blogging Innovation puts mistakes in context and is careful to differentiate between “honorable” failure and “incompetent” failure.

Amongst many examples, the article points to Honda’s mistakes in bringing low-powered motorcycles to the U.S. in 1959, quoting Soichiro Honda, the company’s founder:

“Many people dream of success. Success can only be achieved through repeated failure and introspection. Success represents the 1 percent of your work that results from the 99 percent that is called failure.”

Are we being so risk-averse that we are loosing ground to our competitors? Are we giving our teams the opportunities and “space” to make mistakes and to learn? Are we commending “honorable” failures? There’s plenty to think about in the article.

We installed a new theme over the weekend, and while we love the new features (tag cloud, FINALLY!) we had to choose function over form. We had hoped to modify the theme so that the existing black/green/orange look wasn’t entirely lost, but there are only so many hours (and then it’s time to eat).

For those of you following along via e-mail, RSS, whatever, please be so kind to let us know if anything broke. Thanks for reading!

Read this opening paragraph from Stand Up While You Read This! in the NYT:

“It doesn’t matter if you go running every morning, or you’re a regular at the gym. If you spend most of the rest of the day sitting — in your car, your office chair, on your sofa at home — you are putting yourself at increased risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, a variety of cancers and an early death. In other words, irrespective of whether you exercise vigorously, sitting for long periods is bad for you.”

Yikes! Owners and Managers, take note and look after your most important asset – your employees.

Aside from the health benefits of working and standing, there are creative benefits as well. Authors Lewis Carroll, Winston Churchill, Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Woolf all wrote while standing. Film Editor Walter Murch (pictured here) famously edits while standing up, comparing his work to gunslinging, conducting, brain surgery and short-order cooking.

“That’s the reason I stand when I edit — I’m fully engaged in my body.”

So what should we do? Seriously consider giving creatives the opportunity to stand while working. Consider installing standing-height counters, standing desks or desks that move to allow both standing and sitting. Both Anthro and GeekDesk offer models that move from one position to the other.

What else? Make sure employees get up and walk around. Hold meetings outdoors or in ways that involve activity. Other ideas? Add your own in the comments.

Let’s be sure to get off our butts!

We’ve featured This Ain’t No Disco , which showcases creative workspaces and environments from around the world, a handful of times here at CR. We’re such fans, that we even have the site in our sidebar. So we think it’s really cool that writer/blogger Ian McCallam has used his research and photographs to create a book, entitled Where We Work. Can’t wait to check it out!

Here at Creative Reaction, our number one focus is fostering the conditions in which creativity can occur, so be sure to check out 41 Ways Business Leaders Can Foster a Culture of Innovation from Idea Champions.

In a creative business, the office vibe/environment is arguably a manger’s most important job, and this is largely dependent on people skills and relationships.

This list, while excellent, is essentially 41 behaviors upon which a manger may need to improve. Since even a single behavioral change can be uncomfortable or overwhelming, perhaps one approach would be to concentrate on one tip per day (or week).

Take a look and be encouraged. You’ll be a better manager for it and your team will be more engaged.

Back in Summer 2004, NPR’s All Things Considered produced a handful of inspirational interviews with Creatives, focusing on the environments in which they create. Lighting, time of day, colors, textures, tools, and location are all discussed. The interviews are all short enough to enjoy during a lunch break, under thirteen minutes each.

Author/Illustrator James Prosek’s Studio

Spy novelist Daniel Silva’s Workspace

Trumpeter Steven Bernstein’s Jazz Lab

Managers and owners, be sure to design environments that nurture creativity and allow ideas to be executed!

Laughing Your Way to the Bank by HBR’s Rosabeth Moss Kanter caught my attention a few days ago, in which she explains the importance of a sense of humor and its role in leadership.

Aside from laughter’s healing properties, which alone can transform a business, humor can be used to unlock creativity, foster trust, and counteract the destructiveness of fear and worry.

So lighten up and be more successful!

Gotta love ad agencies with a DIY/entrepreneurial bent.

Via PSFK, is this story about (non-) Ad Agency Anomaly, which recently released a song and a music video to support both the song’s artist and Diesel’s spring/summer line of fashions.

The real story here is Anomaly. Take a few moments to explore their web site. If it doesn’t elicit a response, you don’t have a pulse.