Creative Reaction

“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?

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!

A few days after I posted about creative spaces and This Ain’t No Disco, I came across this Behance Magazine article, where Ian McCallam, the creator of This Ain’t No Disco is interviewed. Ian shares a number of excellent ways to be both productive and creative in a business setting. They include:

• Meetings where members have only 40 seconds to make their point.
• Chair-back signs to indicate frame of mind; “don’t disturb” or “inspire me”.
• Completely clearing desks each month to minimize clutter.

He also talks about actively giving and receiving feedback on ideas, “The more inspiration and ideas you put out there, the more you get back.”

A worthwhile read, though you have to dig a bit to get to the good stuff.

This Ain’t No Disco is the ad agency counterpart to On My Desk, which we mentioned last week.

“This Ain’t No Disco is a portfolio of some of the best agency interiors in the world,” according to the blog’s description. Read The Perfectly-Designed Office first to gain some perspective. Let’s hope the best interiors inspire the best work!

As a quick follow up to today’s earlier post, Designing Your Optimal Creative Environment, I’m linking to the CreativityLab, designed by Paul Williams of IdeaSandbox. Within Starbucks headquarters, “this once drab conference room, filled with corporate-stock chairs and boardroom style table, is now a 336 square foot haven for brainstorming, problem solving and thinking. The room can hold up to 15 people comfortably - and all the ideas anyone can think of.”

While not for the IKEA-averse, this room is certainly designed to stimulate the senses. The linked blog post includes a description of the room, the philosophy behind it, several photos, and floor plans. Whether you love the space or hate it, it will definitely cause you to think.

There is no formula for a creative environment. What works for some people, would inhibit others. What works for some people under certain circumstances may not work under different circumstances, depending on the weather, mood, and other factors. Some creatives have more than one creative setting for just this reason. 

Innovative Space Exploration: Designing Your Optimal Creative Environment is an excellent essay to help you answer for yourself, “Where do I get my best ideas?” and then create one or more environments to help you do just that. (You’ll have to look past the bad, early 90’s web page design, though it’s worth it.)

Of course, managers and owners have a much bigger challenge as they have several or dozens of creatives to accommodate. You may want to look at earlier posts here, or here, or here.

I recently came across On My Desk: Creative folks share the stuff on their desks, which CR readers will likely enjoy. It’s not about desks, per se, as it’s actually more about studios/work environments. Several artists have posted photos of the inspirational environments which they’ve created. 

Interestingly, all of the photos demonstrate artists with strong organizational skills. Is there a connection between order and creativity? Perhaps the messier artists are simply too embarrassed to submit photos. Draw your own conclusions.

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.”

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?

This boston.com article largely covers ground we’ve covered here at CR before, even quoting a few experts we’ve already mentioned; yet we need to remind ourselves and our employees that constant interruptions by e-mail, IM, meetings, conference calls and text messages get in the way of getting actual work done.

According to the article, “workers get an average 156 e-mails a day… they switch tasks every three minutes on average… spending more than a quarter of the workday… dealing with interruptions and their needed recovery time”

Furthermore, “there’s a strong connection between trying to do lots of different things at the same time, and feeling overwhelmed,” says Ellen Galinsky, of the Families and Work Institute. There’s no need to explain that constant interruptions are stressful, and therefore unhealthy.

Are we fostering creativity in our workplaces? We need to allow ourselves and others to disconnect for blocks of time to do what we are paid to do, especially if that means being creative.

*if you are to deliver a breakthrough product or service.

I am not talking about a culture of sloppiness or irresponsibility, but one of difference, change, and creativity. Our society, our educational systems and our workplaces stress rewarding what we do correctly, yet it is experience, and, yes, making mistakes, which allow for the biggest opportunities for personal growth and innovation.

Two items I recently read support the above statements. The first is a ChangeThis manifesto, Turning Learning Right Side Up, a free .pdf report and an excellent read for “students” of any age. The second is an NYT article (free subscription required) explaining the importance of being “growth-minded”; the mindset of lifelong learners and entrepreneurs. If You’re Open to Growth, You Tend to Grow, talks of managers who hire the “best & brightest”, only to hamstring them by placing them in an environment of high expectations and fear (of failure).

The best part of the article details how Scott Forstall, an SVP at Apple, put together the team which developed the iPhone’s software. First, Forstall “identified a number of superstars within various departments at Apple and asked them in for a chat.” During the subsequent interview he explained that though he could not reveal the details of the project, he said to each recruit, “(we may) make mistakes and struggle, but eventually we may do something that we’ll remember the rest of our lives”. It is important to note that these people would be walking away from their previous successes and positions. Those who jumped at the opportunity made the team; Forstall was looking for people willing to stretch themselves, rather than rest on previous successes.

A post I wrote about Google back in September ‘06 also addresses this way of thinking. And 10 Ways to Foster Innovation in Your Company ties the room together.

So… Be great! Encourage greatness!

This short post over at HR World, Dress to Impress, sites a CareerBuilder.com survey where 41% of employers admit to having a tendency to promote those who dress more professionally.

Is that fair? I’m sure that there are readers whose immediate response to this is that “people shouldn’t judge…” or that this is superficial; and yet I would have to disagree.

Selling the Invisible author Harry Beckwith explains that in any business that is a service, and thus has no tangible product, the intangibles, such as how we dress become far more important.

There’s a somewhat well-known story involving management guru Tom Peters, an airline executive, and coffee stains, in which the airline executive explained that when passengers see coffee stains, they have a tendency to wonder if other aspects of the airline, such as its maintenance, are also sloppy. The airline made a better effort to clean the planes and profits rose.

So perception matters; it’s simply a reality of life. How we dress is something we have complete control over. And “dressing up” can another effect; it can actually improve our attitudes - if we let it.

Ars Technica lead me to this The New Atlantis article entitled The Myth of Multitasking. As an amateur “mutitasking” myth-buster (mentioning the myth here and alluding to it here) of course I took notice. I had no idea what a gold mine it would turn out to be! The article is quite simply the most comprehensive I’ve read on the subject. (And Creative Reaction readers may notice several of the article’s references have been mentioned on our pages.)

The article starts with what I think will become one of my all-time favorite quotes, “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.”

The article continues with a short history of multitasking, from its appearance on resumes as a “skill” and its subsequent exposure as a fraudulent ideal, quoting numerous studies, and pointing out that our very culture may be at stake. This is an article worthy of printing/reading/tagging/digging/forwarding to colleagues!

A book I’ve been meaning to mention has been burning up the blogosphere. I haven’t seen a post about it befitting Creative Reaction until a revolutionary business think tank reviewed the book, putting the book’s premise into perspective.

The book is Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It.

The review is written by Verasage Institute founder Ron Baker.

The way to fix work is to establish a “Results-Only Work Environment” or “ROWE” (both coined by the Why Work Sucks authors), which is an environment where employees have complete autonomy to work wherever and whenever they want, as long as their work gets done.

Ron Baker frames this perfectly; “Firms are struggling with work/life balance, flextime, time management, etc.  But all these are a joke… Work/life balance is not up to firms to define, but rather their team members… they need control over their time.  They need to be trusted to do their work.  They need to be judged on results, not putting in time… After all, if a team member isn’t performing, working longer hours is not going to make a difference.”

Baker asks, “Isn’t this how we all worked in college?  We were responsible for our own schedules, getting our work done, studying for exams, etc.  What makes firms think they need to treat knowledge workers like children after they graduate?” What an apt analogy!

Baker’s own mission, banishing the Marxian “time equals money” fallacy, dovetails perfectly with the premise of ROWE. Again quoting Baker, “Work is what you do, not where you go, or where you are.” Spending hours and hours at work is not the same thing as producing results. (Creative Reaction has touched upon this here and here and here.)

So, read the full review, consider buying the book, reward those who are engaged in their work and show results, let the slackers go, and enable your business to be more creative and more focused on its customers.

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.