Creative Reaction

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.

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.

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.

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!

I came across this amazing workplace via The Cool Hunter, though we might as well head straight to the source, architectural firm Clive Wilkinson Architects, which was responsible for the interior design. The photos are inspiring, though be sure to read the project description as well, where we find that the building is designed to encourage collaboration and cross-polination, as well as deter complacency.

The astonishing thing (to me anyways) is that these pictures are not from an advertising agency or a high-profile video game company; they are from an investment bank in Sydney, Australia.

At sundown today (7:06 PM in the Northeast) begins a National Day of Unplugging, adhering to the traditional Jewish Sabbath, and ending at sundown tomorrow.

It’s been a while since I posted about the concept of a Technology Sabbath, so I’m glad to see this.

The National Day of Unplugging is promoted by Sabbath Manifesto, “a creative project designed to slow down lives in an increasingly hectic world.”

Sabbath Manifesto has 10 Principles:

1. Avoid technology.
2. Connect with loved ones.
3. Nurture your health.
4. Get outside.
5. Avoid commerce.
6. Light candles.
7. Drink wine.
8. Eat bread.
9. Find silence.
10. Give back.

Commerce and Technology are valuable tools, though like any tools, they have drawbacks and disadvantages when improperly used. Even if strictly as an experiment, you do not use either for 24 hours, you will be forced to stop and think about your habits. A little perspective is a healthy thing.

Via The 99%, via Ouno Design, I found a fascinating Scientific American/Mind article which explains the link between Architecture and various type of thinking.

Architects have long intuited that the places we inhabit can affect our thoughts, feelings and behaviors. But now, … behavioral scientists are giving these hunches an empirical basis. They are unearthing tantalizing clues about how to design spaces that promote creativity, keep students focused and alert, and lead to relaxation and social intimacy.

Of particular note to Creative Businesses, are the following findings:

• Higher ceilings – even the perception of them – promote freer and more abstract thinking
• Rooms with views of nature assist mental focus
• Exposure to sunlight assists learning and boosts cognition
• Dim lighting can foster relaxation and social intimacy
• Furniture arrangement can be used to encourage either independent work or group participation
• Carpeting encourages social interaction

The more I read about the impact of workplace environments on creativity, the more I realize the importance of having a variety of settings within a workspace. Areas to create, to interact spontaneously, to encourage conversation and to perform detail-oriented work are all necessary. Bringing nature and sunlight into our workspaces, even if this means projected images and artificially produced daytime light, also make a positive impact. Perhaps simple changes can be made in our businesses. Perhaps we should encourage certain tasks to be performed outside of the workplace if the conditions are less than ideal. Let’s keep these factors in mind as we guide our teams.

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.

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.

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!

I’m a somewhat passive fan of architecture, mostly through the pages of Wired magazine and my RSS feeds, and I almost didn’t watch this TED video of architect Joshua Prince-Ramus describing the design process of Dallas’ Wyly Theater. And that would have been a shame.

But I did watch the video and I would urge you to do the same, even if you don’t care much for theater or architecture. Watch it to learn from the collaboration process involved. Watch it to think about your approach to your clients. Watch it to shape an inspirational environment for the artists you manage.

John Cleese gave an excellent presentation at the Creativity Worldforum in Belgium and excerpts of it are embedded here.

Cleese’s background as a scientist has allowed him to observe his own creative process and present some ground rules for creativity.

It’s encouraging to find that he is in 100% agreement with that we’ve been presenting here at Creative Reaction for the past three years. He speaks of the dangers of interruptions. He also speaks of creating the proper environment for creativity; creating boundaries in space (separation from distractions) and boundaries in time (setting a start time and a time to finish). Without these conditions, creative reaction will be inhibited.

Most importantly, for managers of creatives Cleese offers two profound insights. The first is “to know how good you are at something requires the same skills as it does to be good at that thing.” And the converse is true as well. ”If you are absolutely hopeless at something, you lack the exactly the skills you need to know that you are absolutely hopeless at it.”

In other words, we are all blind to any lack of expertise we may have. There’s no point in bluffing. Those who truly excel can call  you out.

The second insight describes a pandemic issue in many advertising agencies.

“If the people in charge are very egotistical, then they want to take credit for everything that happens and they want to feel that they are in control of everything that happens and that means consciously or unconsciously they will discourage creativity in other people.” I’ve seen this first-hand. The impact this makes on creative output as well as morale is devastating. (In fact, it explains some of the career choices I’ve made.)

Humility, a willingness to learn, and giving others credit are not only valuable lifelong skills, they are also the basis for collaboration and learning together as a team. Without them, everyone is working against everyone else. Managers beware!

Be sure to watch John Cleese’s presentation.