Creative Reaction

The romantic notion of being a creative recluse in a cabin by a lake in the woods is far from the day-to-day reality of a collaborative creative business. Time management as well as the “management” of interpersonal relationships is an integral part of work.

Making Time to Make by Merlin Mann of 43Folders deals with exactly these concerns from the creative person’s perspective. We’re going to repurpose Merlin’s article to take a look at meeting creatives’ needs from a managerial perspective.

One of the keys to productivity is making a conscious choice to determine the most important thing to be working on at any given time. Of course, this choice alone is not enough; structures and conditions must be present to shelter creatives from distractions and the office environment must be conducive to creativity. Ultimately, it is up to managers to ensure these conditions are present.

Merlin’s article is primarily about interactions with people and determining what is appropriate; specifically, interacting with people “enough”, yet not so much that work is inhibited. It asks a series of questions (and I’ve added a few of my own) to optimize both work and creative output.

Environment/Conditions:

• What kind of environment does my talent need to do its best work? The needs may change depending upon personalities, moods, energy, and even the time of day.
• What can I change today to protect that environment for extended blocks of time?
• How much busy work is expected of the creatives? Meetings? Paperwork?
• Does the busy work support the creative work by optimizing blocks of time or inhibit it?
• Can you assist with the busy work or hire an assistant to do this for the creatives?

Time to Create:

• How can we allow our creatives to be “unavailable” for blocks of time?
• How can we keep interruptions away from them?
• Can we shield them from phone calls, e-mail, IMs, and meetings?
• How can we structure work schedules to allow blocks of time to work?

We need the entire company as well as clients and collaborative third-parties to understand the reasoning for this.

Finally, creatives need to be trained to be social and yet stay on task. “Creative breaks” such as foosball or video games are healthy in small doses.

• Which kinds of interaction with clients and co-workers are necessary?
• Can we encourage mealtime interaction?
• Do co-workers make unnecessary demands on your creatives’ attention?
• Can we run interference if need be?

We may need to be the bad guy for them. Enforce a kind of elitism where you help shape interaction to focus on the bigger picture, whether that be the current project, client service, or long-term career decisions. Some requests for attention do not even deserve a response.

Ultimately, this is about keeping perspective. Creatives’ ideas are our company’s products; they’re often the primary source of income. Everything that gets in the way of ideas is a waste of precious talent, so let’s allow creativity to flourish!