Creative Reaction

Seth Godin has an excellent post on the Art v. Commerce debate. What’s great is that it isn’t polarized. Some things are truly difficult to monetize and some are easier. Sometimes monetizing what you do ends up corrupting it. Sometimes you can try to make money in the same business as something you love, and you can still end up being miserable. Ultimately, there has to be a market for what you love do and you have to execute it in a way that is profitable. Read the post here.

“I make more mistakes than anyone I know. And eventually I patent them.”
-Thomas Edison

Harvard Business Publishing’s Discussion Leader Blog has a post about the value of learning from mistakes, which is an ongoing theme here at CR. (See here, here, and here.) The post is framed by current political discussion of choosing leaders, so for those of you who need a break, I’ve excised the good stuff and brought it here.

In choosing leaders “most people seek a litany of accomplishments that demonstrate sound judgment, and failure is considered radioactive.” This is a shame, as “the character and worldview of leaders are shaped not via their accomplishments but by their setbacks in the crucibles of challenge”.

Shifting gears slightly to look at “mistakes” in a business context, the post points to a Business Week cover story, saying that “breakthroughs depend on failure, and the best companies leverage their mistakes” and that “according to that article, ‘breakthrough innovation… requires well-honed organizations built for efficiency and speed to do that what feels unnatural: Explore. Experiment. Foul up, sometimes. Then repeat.’” (italics mine) This is a business principal known as “intelligent fast failure.”

So experimentation and honest mistakes should be expected and encouraged as many creative breakthroughs are happy accidents. Are we encouraging creativity and innovation in our workplaces through experimentation and fast failure? Or are we stifling creativity by quashing mistakes?

37Signals had an excellent post last Spring entitled Sleep Deprivation is not a Badge of Honor, in which David speaks frankly to recovering workaholics (myself included). His apt analogy equates “borrowing” sleep with borrowing money from a loan shark; you pay a high interest rate with high stakes.

The costs of not getting a healthy amount of sleep include:

• Stubbornness
• Lack of creativity
• Diminished morale
• Irritability

I would dare say this is rampant problem. In fact, creative people tend to brag about how little sleep they got (along with other aspects of the previous evening’s exploits). This is clearly to the detriment of business and creativity.

Managers and owners, adequate rest is all the more vital for us! We must be “always on”. Being well-rested enables us to be agile, keep a healthy perspective, be able to make decisions quickly, and have the emotional energy to inspire others. Our employees depend on us.

Aside from strongly encouraging (and allowing!) employees to get healthy amounts of sleep, and leading by example, is there more that we can do? Do we have a “napping” policy and the means to accommodate napping? Do we downplay the “masochistic sense of honor about sleep deprivation” in our offices? Do we manage our businesses in a way to allow our employees to “have lives”, being able to spend time with their families, be involved in creative endeavors, volunteer their time and/or spend time outdoors, perhaps by shortening the work week?

We owe it to ourselves and our employees. (And our employees should give their best to us and each other.)

In an NYT article entitled Even the Giants Can Learn to Think Small (free subscription required - don’t bother) we see another nail in the coffin of the “if you’re not growing, you’re dying” mantra.

Part of the “thinking smaller” movement is a desire to provide better service through personalization, and part of it is the need to be leaner in an increasingly global marketplace. In the Times article, Professor Thomas W. Malone of MIT’s Sloan School of Management offers another reason - employees’ “noneconomic goals” like freedom, personal satisfaction and fulfillment. “How much energy and creativity might be unlocked if all the members of an organization felt in control?” he asks. Thinking back, this ties in perfectly to other times we’ve mentioned globalization making good talent harder to attract and keep.

Being smaller and agile has competitive advantages as well; companies as a whole tend to be more entrepreneurial. Philip Rosedale, founder and chairman of Linden Lab (Second Life), says optimizing a company for creativity involves helping all employees regardless of position develop an entrepreneurial spirit. “Most companies erroneously focus on competition and on differentiation from their competitors…the business opportunity lies in turning creativity into productivity.” And as most entrepreneurs know, ideas are worthless unless they are executed.

(If you do read the article, you may pick up on some similarities between Linden Lab’s and Pixar’s philosophies. And if have a really good memory, you’ll remember some similar posts on company and team size here, here, and here)

So, focus on fostering a collaborative, entrepreneurial spirit company-wide, and not growth for the sake of growth, for your business’ success.

Wow. I stumbled across this amazing post, The Perfectly Designed Office, which discusses designed-to-impress ad agency offices and which is a must-read. (I’m somewhat embarrassed that I haven’t come across Leland Maschmeyer’s writing/blogging until today, though it’s safe to say I’ll be following his blog closely from now on.)

The Perfectly Designed Office drops a bombshell of a question, “should an office’s architecture communicate creativity or foster it?” then answers, “I think we’d all say ‘foster,’ but I don’t think these pristine offices do that.” Such offices are “not all that effective in generating creative thinking”, he writes, then provides four reasons why he thinks this way. Clearly not the type of person to merely observe and complain, he then offers a series of seven solutions. I’m intentionally not summarizing his points - read the article - though I will include a few quotes. “I think an agency should not look at its office as a place: it should look at it as a tool.” “After all, clients hire agencies for their thinking - not their architecture.”

While all of this is squarely aimed at advertising agencies, it is fodder for any creative or innovative business.

In another post, Maschmeyer provides a quote from another web essay, which I’ll both leave you with and use to segue into my next post:

“Clients who value your designs are good. Clients who also value your design process are better.”

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.

Second Wind has an article this week on collaborative workspaces within ad agencies designed specifically for brainstorming, which apparently some have dubbed “think pods”. 

“They needn’t be small enclosed cubbyholes; you simply need to carve out a corner where thinkers can retreat”, says the writer. “Help your creatives think by offering them objects, music and images that create visual, tactile, aural, olfactory and taste sensations” and then describes in great detail what these items might be. Read it yourself. For some reason it reminds me of a movie star’s green room requirements.

Personally, I’d like to see a set of Oblique Strategy cards included as well. What else should be included?

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…

Harvard Business School Working Knowledge has an article today on creativity within business, featuring HBS professor Teresa Amabile, whose research we mentioned in September 2006.

The article largely focuses on the environment created by managers, and its effect on employees’ “inner work lives” - “thoughts, perceptions, emotions, and motivations”. This inner work life “directly influences creativity and other aspects of performance.”

Quoting professor Amabile, ”managers are not in tune with the inner work lives of their employees; nor do they appreciate how pervasive the effects of inner work life can be on performance.” Ouch.

So what should managers do? ”Support employees’ progress in their work every day. Set clear and meaningful goals for them; provide direct help, versus hindrance; offer adequate resources and time; respond to successes and failures by drawing on the experience as a learning opportunity, not just a moment to praise or reprimand; and establish a culture where people are treated with respect.”

There’s quite a list there; perhaps one thing to work on each day or week or month. Clearly, sharpening these skills is well worth the effort, as this kind of culture provides what may be the best work incentive available, “the desire to do something because (the employee) find(s) it deeply satisfying and personally challenging” which “inspires the highest levels of creativity, whether it’s in the arts, sciences, or business”

Lots of meat here. Digest it slowly.

This post, dating back to 2003, is mentioned in a Hivelogic post that I mentioned early last month and I want to ensure that it does not go unnoticed. In Bionic Office, Blogger Joel Spolsky (Joel on Software) details his (successful) efforts in creating an office which optimizes productivity for software programmers and attracts top-notch talent. Very interesting reading, containing lots of practical and inspirational ideas, all of which can be applied to a creative business. Let’s hope that we all get to take part in designing an office at some point in our careers.

I came across this Hivelogic blog post (via another blog, Daring Fireball) which keeps talking about this thing called getting in “the Zone”. Of course, we all realize that what’s being articulated is more commonly known as “Creative Reaction“.

Specifically, the post has to do with the difficulties of experiencing creative reaction in modern office environments (cubicle farms and open office designs). “Think about it: you’re hiring somebody who needs to concentrate to be productive, and then you’re putting them in a situation where they can’t.”

Nomenclature aside (wink), an awesome post!

Take a look at Do Not Disturb - I’m Experiencing Creative Reaction for some other tips.

This recent Fast Company interview with Gartner (IT) researcher Tom Austin articulates something that I’ve been preaching for years - IT is a business tool that should enhance human interaction and collaboration. Favorite Quote (italics mine): “There’s a recognition that if you relax some controls — not all — you’re probably going to get more creative behavior out of the individuals than if everything is locked down. The organization gets far more flexible as well.” WARNING: This article contains cringe-inducing buzzwords.

This post from Kathy Sierra’s archives points out a subtle difference from a previous Creative Reaction post from last June, entitled (Too Much) Time Pressure Affects Creativity. In Creativity on Speed, she writes, “One of the best ways to be truly creative–breakthrough creative–is to be forced to go fast. Really, really, really fast From the brain’s perspective, it makes sense that extreme speed can unlock creativity. When forced to come up with something under extreme time constraints, we’re forced to rely on the more intuitive, subconscious parts of our brain. The time pressure can help suppress the logical/rational/critical parts of your brain.” Now she’s the brain expert, so there’s little need for me to comment, except to say that this doesn’t necessarily contradict the research studying time pressure. As she explains, “I’m not talking about the kind of time pressure we get from trying to get real work done under unreasonable deadlines. I’m talking about a specific technique for using speed as a creativity driver.” She then goes on to describe a number of “creativity deathmatches”. Lots of great information and links as well.

A study referenced at Freelance UK highlights the downside of e-mail.

“Not only is a deluge of mail stressing out workers, by constantly having to answer senders’ requests, but repeatedly checking for new messages is dragging down productivity levels.”

The recommendations are very simple and easy to implement, provided that managers are on board. (Italics mine)

“They recommended that e-mail senders at work should never press their colleagues, especially those they oversee, to respond to their emails as they would to a phone call.

Recipients should not constantly monitor their emails “since this will negatively affect all other work activities”, and should instead set aside dedicated email reading times to catch up on their messages.”

I found this while digging around the archives of the Harvard Business Review Working Knowledge archives: Time Pressure and Creativity: Why Time is Not on Your Side. The editor interviews Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile, who at the time was in the midst of a ten-year study looking at creativity in a corporate setting.

Amabile notes, “Some people are convinced that time pressure stimulates creative thinking, and others are certain it stifles creative thinking.”

She later explains that time pressure is one of many conditions that may have a positive or negative effect. “…the results suggest that, overall, very high levels of time pressure should be avoided if you want to foster creativity on a consistent basis. However, if a time crunch is absolutely unavoidable, managers can try to preserve creativity by protecting people from fragmentation of their work and distractions; they should also give people a sense of being “on a mission,” doing something difficult but important. I don’t think, though, that most people can function effectively in that mode for long periods of time without getting burned out. At the other end of the spectrum, very low time pressure might lull people into inaction; under those conditions, top-management encouragement to be creative—to do something radically new—might stimulate creativity. But, frankly, I don’t think there’s much danger of too little time pressure in most organizations I’ve studied.” So some pressure is actually good.

The interview also provides an explanation as to why people think they are being more creative while under time pressure. “while our participants were giving evidence of less creative thinking on time-pressured days, they reported feeling more creative on those days”. Reality v. perception is always interesting.