Creative Reaction

Lean Startups follows up with a Part II to a great post from last Summer, How a foosball table can kill your startup.

At issue is motivating employees, but not in a way that hurts morale or adversely affects work. I agree with everything Apollo says. Focus on teamwork, health, having a life outside of work, and developing relationships with clients.

Every company has its own culture and needs. Maybe a foosball table or an espresso machine makes sense for you. The important thing is to choose what is best for your team members as individuals – people with mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual needs –  and in ways that allow them to be engaged in their work.

Lifehacker.com’s Gina Trapani explains what multi-tasking really means and why it’s such a bad idea. If you still think multi-tasking is a virtue or a valued skill, check out this one-page article:

Work Smart: Stop Multitasking and Start Doing One Thing Really Well

Some of our recent posts have discussed the importance of  exposing yourself and your team members to new ideas and experiences. Today, we’ll discuss a hurdle to this, namely, perfectionism.

It is a well-known fact that perfectionism can keep us from finishing projects that we work on. It wasn’t until I read How to Suck at Anything, that I realized perfectionism can also inhibit us from trying and learning new things. When perfectionism is coupled with competitiveness, as is the case with me, it can result in even more missed creative opportunities.

So learn to be comfortable with not having mastered something and/or not being the best at it.

“Sucking is absolutely necessary. There’s no way around it. In order to get better at anything, at some point or another you’re going to have to suck. That’s just the way it is.”

Encourage your teams to suck.

Last May, in Walt Disney Had Three Heads, we looked at a post discussing success in both creativity and commerce. This week I came across another such exploration where the whole “heads” analogy breaks down and where “personality traits” or “roles” is a better choice of words.

Take a few moments to read Deconstructing Creativity: The 4 Roles You Need to Play to be Fully Creative, where blogger Luicano Passuello takes a look at Roger von Oech’s theories.

A few days ago, in Surrounded by Inspiration, we offered some ideas to encourage managers to nurture the “Explorer” role in their team members. Deconstructing Creativity should help management and executives think in ways that ensure their businesses as a whole address all four personality traits.

Creativity and business success are not mutually exclusive.

Don the Idea Guy offers 10 Idea Inspiring Lightning Rods, a list of ways to constantly expose your creative self to potentially inspirational ideas.

Though this list is aimed at individuals, it works on a number of levels, and even more powerfully, for creative companies. Many of the ideas can be incorporated into the work environment; others could be used as social activities. Your company could:

• share magazines and paperback books
• arrange lunch hour or after-work museum field trips
• hold book discussions
• have show & tell once a week allowing team members to inspire one another
• play word games as teams
• have a variety of music on hand
• attend lectures
• participate in Pecha-Kucha
• create a Wiki of inspirational ideas and web sites
• take classes together (or even offer them on-site!)

Please add your own ideas in the comments!

It’s such a simple thing, yet we often allow ourselves to get “too busy” to take care of fundamentals such as feeding our souls. Managers, do your part to inspire those around you!