Creative Reaction

It’s no secret that I am a big fan of 37signals, and it made my day when this TED Video was posted. 37signals’ Jason Fried explains the sad irony that people do not find their offices to be the place where they actually get work done. He blames both managers and meetings – two involuntary forces that interrupt work. Creative people (including engineers and developers) need blocks of uninterrupted time.

Managers, you owe it to yourselves and your employees to watch Jason’s presentation and rethink the way you manage.

Managing Space to Foster Networks over at Blogging Innovation offers some great insights on fostering culture, many of which have a direct application in creative businesses.

The post first provides some context by stating that “the foundation of innovation is what people believe, say and do” as an organization. In other words, the foundation of innovation is culture – creating the conditions for brilliant talent to share and manage ideas and knowledge. This is admittedly difficult.

“A lot of people say that knowledge management is like herding cats”,

says one manager, who prefers a different analogy,

“I say that it’s really like herding butterflies. You can’t make butterflies go anywhere – if you want them around you have to create a garden that attracts them.”

While job design and business processes which “encourage the generation and execution of ideas” are important to fostering  a creative culture, an often overlooked aspect is that of the workspace architecture. The “gardens”.

Does your workspace architecture feature “gardens” – oases to refresh frazzled minds? Perhaps games and areas of temporary distraction to allow creatives to step away from their challenges and see things from a different perspective? The means for various departments to congregate and cross-polinate?

Pixar, for example, is famously designed to create spontaneous encounters; it’s mailroom, meeting rooms, cafeteria and restrooms are all centralized.

Best Buy’s corporate headquarters’ most popular feature is an in-house café.

Patagonia’s offices are located on a beach and employees are encouraged to grab their boards whenever the surf is up.

What kind of gardens can we create?

Need some inspiration? Review some of our other posts on this topic.

At first glance, it would seem odd that a culture of creativity would have to be designed within a large advertising firm. An ad agency should be teeming with creativity, right? Culture, however, takes years to develop, and advertising is no different.

James Shuttleworth, Chief Strategy Officer at Draftfcb Chicago recently made a presentation, which, while targeted to Agency Planners, offers excellent advice to managers and HR as well. Some of his (heavily paraphrased) points:

• Culture and Corporate Values can only be codified by observing how people behave. (Translation: a Mission Statement by itself is empty)
• Dreaming is not enough. It must be based on research and leveraged to provide innovative solutions.
• HR and Planning should work together to make smarter hiring decisions, enabling digital and traditional teams to become better integrated.
• There is a need for well-rounded people who can connect the skill sets and strengths of various teams.

A Winning Culture is rewarding work, and is often the basis of success and profitability.

Gizmodo has compiled a list of its favorite “serendipitous innovations”.

A reminder that allowing for affordable mistakes and learning from them is an important part of an innovative culture.

Over the weekend here in Boston, a well-known chef did something so surprising, it made the headlines. He kicked a patron out of his restaurant.

While his restaurant had made mistakes, every effort was made to appease the unhappy customer. Rather than listening to reason, the customer continued to complain so obstinately, that it upset other patrons, causing one table to leave and another patron to slam a glass of wine, breaking it.

Quoting Chef Andy Husbands,

“I love my staff, and they work very hard, and I have to back them up. And this woman was being really unfair and mean.”

How would his staff have felt if Husbands did not back them up? How many other patrons would have stormed out had he not ejected this toxic customer? I think it is clear that Husbands values morale and acted to protect both the atmosphere and the reputation of his establishment. His patrons agreed. They gave Husbands a round of applause for his actions.

HBR’s What Happens When You Really Meet People’s Needs, explains the mechanics of Ritz Carlton’s excellent customer service, which starts with its commitment to its employees and extends to its guests. (This is a perfect follow-up to Monday’s post, Marketing is HR, HR Marketing.)

Half a dozen examples detail how the Ritz Carlton culture is reinforced, the most astonishing of which is the fact that each employee may spend up to $2,000 on a guest without managerial approval. This Forbes interview goes into even more detail and clarifies that $2,000 is merely a guideline and that the money spent is not necessarily to solve a problem, but to create an “outstanding experience” for a guest. The hotels’ General Managers often find about about these expenditures after the fact; further evidence of the trust they place in their teams. (The Forbes article describes its recruiting and training methodology as well.)

The results?

• The company’s turnover rate is a fraction of the industry average.
• Employee engagement scores are significantly above other “best in class” benchmarks.
• An increase of one per cent in employee engagement measurements translates into as much as $10M in additional revenue.

Hey, Economist: do you still think engagement is a “popular management fad of the moment“?!

In Brand Is Culture, Culture Is Brand, Mavericks at Work author Bill Taylor discusses the importance of “personal identification between employees and customers”.

Success is not just about marketing differently from other companies… It is also, and perhaps more important(ly), about caring more than other companies — about customers, about colleagues, about how the organization conducts itself in a world with endless opportunities to cut corners and compromise on values. (Emphasis mine.)

Taylor explains this giving two examples. One, a banking executive who is VP of both Marketing and Human Resources. Another, an insurance and financial-services company serving the U.S. military and their families, which trains its employees by putting them through “boot camp”.

You can’t be special, distinctive, and compelling in the marketplace unless you create something special, distinctive, and compelling in the workplace.

This starts by codifying your culture, aligning management, then the workforce, making personnel changes as necessary. Harsh, perhaps; but this is not hiring and firing to line someone’s pockets. It is hiring and firing to create the best possible team to best serve your clients, who alone determine your success.

Read Taylor’s entire post.

This provocative article in The Economist, Down with Fun, takes direct aim at empowerment, engagement and creativity, deriding them as “popular management fads of the moment”.

They write, “surveys show that only 20% of workers are “fully engaged with their job”. Even fewer are creative” with which few will argue.

They state that “as soon as fun becomes part of a corporate strategy it ceases to be fun and becomes its opposite—at best an empty shell and at worst a tiresome imposition”. Again, no argument with “compulsory ‘fun’”. It’s reminiscent of the “pieces of flair” scene in “Office Space“.

While The Economist is mostly correct, the danger lies in what is left out.

A glaring omission is that The Economist has removed “fun” from the context of corporate culture. Re-read the previous quote. They misunderstand culture as strategy.

In a purpose-based company with a strong corporate culture, the hiring, operations, markerting, customer service, and the “fun” environment are completely aligned, making the motivation intrinsic, not compulsory. This alignment leads to breakthrough products and breakthrough customer service, both of which lead to profits.

Clearly, there are “managers (who) hope that ‘fun’ will magically make workers more engaged and creative.”, but this is not proof that the premise of culture is wrong. While a Truth (capital “T”) is shown to be right by those who follow it, the converse, is untrue.

So what kind of “fun” does The Economist support?  Heavy drinking, chain smoking, and workplace promiscuity. Hyperbole, perhaps, but it panders to our base motives. This more extreme “fun” ranges from mere self-destruction to socially and morally irresponsible behavior, adversely affects the lives of entire circles of people, and is clearly counter-productive. Surely we’ve learned something from Mad Men.

So what kind of “fun” is our ideal?

When empowerment, engagement and creativity all spring naturally from a carefully cultivated corporate mission, happily espoused by everyone starting with the CEO, through the management, to the employees. That, my friends, is something magical. It appears The Economist has never witnessed that magic – and it’s a shame.

I’ve always wondered about the wisdom of playing music in creative environments. I’ve often thought in terms of group dynamics. Who gets to choose? Is anything off limits? Musical taste can be very personal to some people, and it’s easy for feelings to be hurt. Clearly there are people who say they don’t mind a particular genre to be diplomatic, even though their skin is crawling. This would definitely impact their work.

At other times, however, I’ve thought about how hugely distracting music can be. There are dozens, if not hundreds of pop songs which can completely detour us, especially if they are catchy, sing-along songs. Songs with a visual connection, in particular, can completely distract people by causing people to think of the song’s music video, the movie the song was in, or the Weird Al Yankovic parody video.

Some recent research suggests my concerns were not without merit. While music in general can lift moods, music can impair cognitive thinking.

Should music be played in open offices? Should employees be expected to use headphones to create their own “privacy” in open offices? Is something fundamentally wrong with the design of of workspaces if they impair getting work done? Should employees be made aware of the potential impact of music on their work?

This should give us much to think about.

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.