Creative Reaction

“When forced to work within a strict framework the imagination is taxed to its utmost - and will produce its richest ideas. Given total freedom the work is likely to sprawl.”
- T.S. Eliot

As tired as I am about “boxes” and “thinking” both in and outside of them, Think Inside a Self-Constructed Box an article on effective brainstorming by the folks at Behance is based on research and deserves mention. They offer the following “tips”, though I think they’re being modest; these are success ingredients:

1. Keep the brainstorming groups small (ideally four people or less).
2. Gather people from different backgrounds, experiences, and interests.
3. Ask questions to build context, a brief, and core values, all to ”frame” the discussion.
4. Have a singular goal. For multiple decisions, hold multiple specific sessions.
5. Leave the meeting with “Next Action” steps.

With the time pressures faced by creative businesses on a daily basis, we would all benefit from more effective brainstorming.

In  The Perfectly-Designed Office, we contrasted offices that foster creativity and those which portray the idea of creativity. The pristine, image-conscious agencies want to look creative, yet what better way is there to woo new clients than to let them see your (often messy) creative process at work?

From Leland Maschmeyer (in this morning’s linked-to post), “Imagine being a prospective client walking into an agency… As you tour the office you’re inundated with ideas wherever you look. The energy of the agency being so vibrant and intoxicating that you feel the need to jump in on a project. And as you marvel at the prolific thinking swirling around you, you can’t shake the notion that maybe – just maybe - you are standing in the womb of creativity… Wow – what a great feeling to leave a prospective client with.”

Which brings us to our segue quote from earlier, “Clients who value your designs are good. Clients who also value your design process are better”.

The essay from which the above quote comes, details how Tupperware choose Frog Design to create Tupperware’s FlatOut! line of storage containers. “Tupperware liked what Frog had created for other clients (in other industries), but they also recognized that Frog’s design process was at the core of all those great designs. And most important, Tupperware understood how that process would benefit them.”

“Many clients don’t fully understand how designers create. And if your clients don’t understand it, or even know about it, then they won’t value it.”

Likewise, many clients do not fully understand how advertising agencies and production companies create.

Those who don’t, need to be taught. Those who do are more likely to trust agencies with their business without rounds of reviews and business pitches.

The Design Funnel, another great manifesto on ChangeThis, is not about design as a gift or a rare ability or spontaneous insight; it is the process of design. Our clients have messages - stories to tell - and in creative businesses we must interpret (more often than not) vague requests, from which we form “concrete goals and results which are satisfying to (us), and effective for (our) clients)”. In a business setting, we cannot simply sit around and wait to be inspired; we have deadlines and air dates. And so while the work we do is creative, we must have a framework upon which to build, in order to meet business demands as well. The Design Funnel is a process which will undoubtedly prevent much of the heartache and frustration in “dealing” with clients, as it involves listening, communicating and collaborating. Download it and read it. It should change the way you interact with your clients.

On The Official Google Blog last week, there was a post entitled Our Googley advice to students: Major in learning, where Google outlined what it looks for in its employees. (The post was written by Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior VP, Product Management.)

I found this line intriguing; “At the highest level, we are looking for non-routine problem-solving skills. We expect applicants to be able to solve routine problems as a matter of course. After all, that’s what most education is concerned with.” (Emphasis mine.) In other words, Rosenberg is saying that Google is looking for problem solving skills beyond what most education provides.

After reading the ChangeThis manifesto Turning Learning Right Side Up I imagine its authors would agree; “traditional education is about teaching, not learning” they say. 

Both Google’s blog post and the Turning Learning manifesto dovetail nicely; Rosenberg’s post is about the lifelong process of learning, and not simply earning a degree; “keep on challenging yourself, because learning doesn’t end with graduation… success is inexorably determined by the lessons you glean from the free market. Learning, it turns out, is a lifelong major.”

(I won’t summarize the manifesto’s content. I’ll only say that after reading it, managers will realize they will need to focus their training on the educational system’s gaps!)

So finally, what is Google looking for aside from problem-solving skills?

1. communication skills
2. a willingness to experiment
3. team players, and
4. passion and leadership.

I would argue that the very same skills should be sought by every creative company; after all, being creative within a business setting is largely about working within numerous constraints.

Australian online business magazine Smart Company has a great article on company-wide innovation, based on the research of RMIT University in Melbourne. The researchers studied 92 fast growing companies, finding 10 common characteristics which promote innovative business cultures.

The first finding: innovation starts with the leadership qualities of the CEOs or founders. “They were passionate about their work, had a positive and optimistic outlook, do not allow setbacks to hinder their drive and vision, are forward thinkers, determined, thrive on difference and change; surround themselves with like-minded individuals, concentrate on team culture, learn from their mistakes, and aim to resolve problems quickly.”

Not surprisingly, many of the other characteristics had to do with the work environments, made possible by savvy management; an emphasis on training and learning, collaboration, and open communication.

A few other things we’ve recently mentioned include investing in technology and recruiting (and rewarding) innovative people; it’s good to see some common themes here within Creative Reaction’s pages.

One characteristic I found interesting was making sure that vendors, suppliers, and even bankers understand the company’s vision, which makes sense as they all play supporting roles.

The article covers a lot of ground in four pages. Worth reading.

Another post on the size of a design team and its effect on creativity. In this post on his blog Subtraction, Khoi Vinh, Design Director for NYTimes.com speaks largely from personal experience and makes several excellent points. I’ll summarize by mashing his words:

— Design doesn’t scale well. This craft rests on the efficiency of transferring ideas from the brain to the hand. The perfect design staff is a single designer who can conceive of and execute an idea from start to finish, maintaining the same coherent creative vision throughout. Of course, as an economic matter, this is impractical - it almost always has to scale. The smaller the scale, however, the more efficient the practice of design —

Plenty to think about here. So how can we keep our staff/departments lean and agile enough to provide the best possible work for our clients? You could pay the slackers to quit…

Creative Reaction - Now with new features, renewed commitment, and comments!

You may have noticed some craziness with your RSS subscriptions this past month, as Creative Reaction has been completely overhauled.

We’ve moved the site to a new web host, updated to the latest version of Wordpress, added new categories and new links, and edited every post to include tags! We’ve also published over a dozen drafts which were backlogged.

The tags are a really cool feature! Just click on a tag, and Wordpress, which powers this blog, will display all the posts containing with that tag!

Most importantly, we now have tools in place to fight comment spam, so comments are now open on all posts. To participate by commenting, all you need to do is register by providing a screen name and an e-mail address so that a password can be e-mailed to you. Thats it!

And now that we have all these upgrades, you will see more frequent posts, helping you to embiggen your business!

Thanks for reading!

I love this story! I’ve long held the opinion that the agency/client relationship should be a long-term commitment based on trust, not unlike a marriage. Staking your livelihood on how well you help a client be successful is bold, as well as allowing an agency to own a piece of your company, and rewarding its work based on performance. Story on Adweek. A number of other groundbreaking examples of agencies owning their ideas (aka IP, aka Intellectual Property) are detailed.

I just retrieved a book from one of our many bookshelves and returned to my desk. Along the way, I passed my wife who gave me a very puzzled look. The book I had in my hands was “The Cat in the Hat” by Dr. Suess. I choose this book because I am an IT consultant, and a few moments earlier I came across something that I had bookmarked with this hillarious perspective on the book:

“This little tale, which appears to be a book for children, is actually a clever evocation of what happens to a corporation when a management consultant is hired by absent, clueless senior management to evaluate its organizational structure and to effect change. Beginning slowly, the Cat proceeds to take everything apart, make a total mess and get everybody in potentially the worst trouble in the world–all at no personal cost to itself. By the time the Cat leaves, it has frightened everybody, and very little has changed except the mind-set of the protagonists, which has been forever disrupted and rattled. Students of business etiquette will draw their own conclusions about the kind of behavioral standard called for in dealing with such situations.”

Read the article, “Top books on business etiquette”

I have to admit, this book has always disturbed me on some level, and for the very same reasons. It would be like me punching someone in the face, then giving him some ice and a few Advil and expecting no hard feelings.

(For what it’s worth, my consulting involves defining a problem and a successful outcome before anything is implemented…)

Creative Cow magazine has a very astute article on the traits of great clients pages 40-41 of its Dec. ‘06 - Feb. ‘07 issue, which was later repackaged and posted here.

Clients are defined as those who pay well and expect excellent work and with whom relationships are based on mutual trust. They value expertise, they appreciate your attention to detail and they rarely second-guess you.

“Grinders” are at the opposite end of the spectrum. The are suspicious, highly demanding and they micro-manage at every opportunity. They are highly protective of their own money, yet they do not seem to understand that your company needs to make a profit in order to keep providing great service; they haggle, make excuses, and pay late, if at all.

(FWIW, I wish the author could think of a better term for “bad clients”. “Grinders” makes me shudder almost as much as an Olive Garden commercial.)

The author puts everyone else - about 70% of the market (!) - in middle, somewhere along the continuum.

After advising us on how to spot the grinders, we are shown how we can make our relationships with the other groups more profitable, largely based on their perception of quality.

Honestly, I don’t think I’ve come across an article which so clearly shows us the key to a successful creative services business.

After reading the article, you will probably agree heartily with it; in fact, you will probably look back at your career, identifying the grinders in your past. But before you start feeling too good about yourself, having compared yourself to a grinder, take a few moments to think about how you’ve treated your vendors, suppliers, and service providers. Where do you lie along the continuum?

In a short, worthwhile article, Fast Company explains how nearly-bankrupt Puma retooled itself.

Instead of waging an uphill battle against Reebok, Nike, and Adidas, Puma flipped it’s priorities, emphasizing style over performance to become the fourth-largest athletic apparel company in the world.

After some drastic business changes to become more efficient, the CEO of Puma did something unbusinesslike - putting an “unrestrained 21-year-old skateboarder named Antonio Bertone in charge of a new division called “sport lifestyle” to incubate experimental fashion projects”. There were plenty of skeptics, yet the risk paid big dividends, ultimately saving the company.

The risk of failure is small compared to the risk of irrelevency. How are we encouraging our staff and co-workers to take chances and risk “failing”. Do we encourage them for making a best effort? We should - we learn far more from our failures than our successes.

Last Thursday’s post was about a Harvard Business School study (in progress) on “how the work environment can influence the motivation, creativity, and performance of individuals and teams”.

In our third and final installment we look at what people term, “having a good day” or “having a bad day” (and I’m going to use that word again) - this is something we need to be sensitive about.

The researcher, Professor Teresa M. Amabile, said in an interview,
“We analyzed the connection between the daily events that people reported, their reactions to those events, and the effect of those reactions on their performance, including their creativity as a central aspect of performance”

“There are three main points…

One, people have incredibly rich, intense, daily inner work lives; emotions, motivations, and perceptions about their work environment permeate their daily experience at work.

Second, these feelings powerfully affect people’s day-to-day performance.

And third, those feelings, which are so important for performance, are powerfully influenced by particular daily events…

An example of the influence of these feelings on performance is my finding that if people are in a good mood on a given day, they’re more likely to have creative ideas that day, as well as the next day, even if we take into account their mood that next day. There seems to be a cognitive process that gets set up when people are feeling good that leads to more flexible, fluent, and original thinking, and there’s actually a carryover, an incubation effect, to the next day.”

Lets do what we can to enable our coworkers and staff to have more “good days”. Re-read Last Thursday’s post to remind ourselves what we can do. Pick one thing. Make a conscious effort. And try to tell us it didn’t help…

Yesterday’s post was about a Harvard Business School study (in progress) on “how the work environment can influence the motivation, creativity, and performance of individuals and teams” and specifically we spoke of the positive behaviors that managers exhibit to positively impact creativity.

Today we look at negative behaviors we all hope to avoid.

Again, quoting the researcher, Professor Teresa M. Amabile:

“We found three leader behaviors that had negative impact.

One was the under- or overspecification of assignments… giving people either too little guidance or too much guidance…

The second one is monitoring in a negative form—that is, checking on assigned work too often or not often enough. Or, checking on it for too long, like hanging around and going too much into the details of what people are doing, and giving unconstructive feedback.

The third negative (behavior) has to do with problem solving—either avoiding solving problems that crop up in the team or the project, or creating problems.

Seemingly ordinary, trivial, mundane, day-by-day things that leaders do and say can have an enormous impact. My guess is that a lot of leaders have very little sense of the impact that they have. That’s particularly true of the negative behaviors.”

Wow. Heavy Stuff. This, coupled with yesterday’s post shows there’s something to be said for “being sensitive”, particularly if you do not feel compelled to be the sensitive sort. It looks like that’s something we need to consider if we want to be successful. Again, a direct link between “people skills” and good creative.

Are we aware of how our behavior affects our coworkers and staff in negative ways? What are we doing to remedy the situation? If you have any advice or anecdotes, please tell us for the benefit of all (in the comments).

The key to making a great cup of coffee is using enough (freshly ground) coffee.

2 Tablespoons per 6 oz. of (filtered) water.

Yes, that sounds like a lot. Yes, it’s more “expensive”. No, it’s not a Starbucks conspiracy - it’s scientific.

Ground coffee contains a finite amount of good flavor. Putting hot water through it extracts this flavor. Putting too much water through too little coffee pulls out bad flavors and results in bitterness.

So it is with creatives.

People have finite amounts of time, energy and creativity. If you try to extract too much of any of these, the quality of the work suffers.

Good creative drives your business. Your reputation depends upon it. It is often the *primary source* of income.

Your business has invested thousands, tens of thousands, or possibly millions of dollars in infrastructure, staffing and training - all so that the creatives can make their magic.

Over-extract at your own peril.

A Harvard Business School study (in progress) on “how the work environment can influence the motivation, creativity, and performance of individuals and teams” is already yielding some encouraging, and sometimes sobering, findings.

The link above is to an interview with the study’s researcher. Since it involves research, it is dense with insights, so we’ll stick to one insight per posting.

Todays thought: “ordinary, seemingly mundane things (Managers) do or say carry great influence on workers” We’ll focus on the positive behaviors today.

Quoting the researcher, Professor Teresa M. Amabile:

“There are five leader behaviors that have a positive influence on people’s feelings…

One of these is supporting people emotionally.

The second is monitoring people’s work in a particularly positive way… giving them positive feedback on their work or giving them information that they need to do their work better.

The third behavior is just plain recognizing people for good performance, particularly in public settings.

The fourth is consulting with people on the team—that is, asking for their views, respecting their opinions, and acting on their needs and their wishes to the extent that it’s possible.

And the fifth category was a grab bag of things. But the most important aspect here was collaborating—that the team leader rolled up his or her sleeves and actually spent time collaborating with somebody on the work.”

(Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that it’s uncanny how much of this parallels the Dale Carnegie classic, How To Win Friends and Influence People published in 1936?!)

As we see, there’s a direct link between “people skills” and good creative. What are we doing to improve our skills? If you have any tips, please post them in the comments.