Creative Reaction

It seems happiness is a powerful force, not only affecting people we meet, but also cascading outward through up to three degrees of separation. Being Happy Affects Even Those You Don’t Know, details research carried out over a twenty-year period, offering these astonishing findings.

Study co-author James Fowler says, “To think about the way we’re connected to one another has caused me to take more responsibility for my own actions… If I head home in a happy mood, I’m not just making my son happy, I’m potentially making my son’s friend happy. I’m not just making my wife happy, I’m making my wife’s mother happy.”

Managers and owners, you can already tell where I’m going with this. (See Attitude Adjustment, the Day-to-Day Management Affects Creativity series, Part I, Part II and Part III  and Negativity is Poison!)

Not a lot of CR blog fodder from 37Signals lately, until this caught my attention last week. Hire managers of one offers some great advice for the small, creative business owned and managed by an artist (used loosely) who would rather be doing what he loves than having to deal with the business of business. Clearly the business is important, though following 37Signals’ advice allows one to “to work more and manage less”.

“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?

Is the end of management near?

These are some of the questions asked on Harvard Business Publishing’s Conversation Starter blog. The post itself has to do with larger corporations, though clearly applies to smaller companies as well. In a day and age where creativity is necessary for success, yes even survival, managers must adapt quickly and foster creativity.

Harvard Business School professor (and researcher) Teresa Amabile opines that we will need to reinvent management in order to:

• Enable collaboration by people with diverse perspectives on a problem
• Respect the fact that creativity thrives in situations where there is slack and redundancy.
• Rethink job design and incentive systems in light of what really motivates creativity: intellectual challenge and public affirmation.
• Manage as though we expect creativity from everyone — not just isolated “lone geniuses”

Much of this is antithetical to “conventional wisdom”, but that’s the one of the keys to success, isn’t it? Sensing when conventional wisdom is passé and reinventing the “rules”.

“You need to have muscles. You need to have muscles on your muscles! You need to have muscles on your eyeballs!”
-Reg, Bouncer for the Salty Spitoon

Three Traits of a Tough Leader is a brief post on leadership traits on Harvard Business Publishing’s Blog, and despite the above SpongeBob quote, the traits all have to do with inner strength.

Toughness, defined by the author as inner resilience and character, is often overlooked, and yet is an essential leadership quality.

“Toughness matters because you need a leader who has the wherewithal to stand up for what she believes in, as well as stand up to others to achieve team and organizational goals.”

(I find humor in that the author apparently lacks the toughness to stand up to the politically-correct grammar-rewriting Nazis. Counting skills come into question as well, since there are actully four traits listed, in boldface type, no less. But I digress; I really like the post.)

Anyways, the four traits common to tough leaders are that they:

1. Defuse tension
2. Get up off the floor (when knocked down)
3. Let off some steam (in a good way) and
4. Are humble (which seems to be counter-intuitive)

It take a tough man to make a tender chicken. Likewise, being humble and “owning up to failure, is not a weakness; it’s a measure of strength.”

(I’ve written about the freedom to make mistakes in Making Mistakes Must Be Corporate Policy  and Making Mistakes Must Be Corporate Policy II)

Good reading. Check it out, then see where you might stand some toughening up.

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.)

“Don’t care what people say, I got my attitude”
-”Attitude” by Bad Brains

I’m definitely not one of those vapid “positive attitude” people. While a positive attitude is foundational to shaping thoughts and leading to actions, it means nothing in and of itself.

So when I clicked on Phil Gerbyshak’s 5 Ways to Make a Positive Attitude and it opened by wishing me a “Happy Positive Attitude Day” I almost closed the web browser window in disgust. Once I realized it was grounded with elements of gratitude and perspective, I continued to read.

I find a lot of what passes for “Positive Attitude” is actually perspective. Good things and bad things of various degrees happen to everyone every day; keeping things perspective helps us moving forward through the bad stuff. I would put the first three tips into that category. So, here they are:

1. Reframe the situation.
2. Count your blessings.
3. Give thanks to those who’ve helped you.
4. Read or listen to something that makes you smile.
5. Smile or make a silly face for no reason.

So why am I blogging about this? As owners and managers, our attitudes have an huge impact on everyone around us; it is vital for us to keep our attitudes in check, if for no other reason than that it’s good for business. (See my Day-to-Day Management Affects Creativity series, Part I, Part II and Part III  and Negativity is Poison!)

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!

An excellent post at Harvard Business Publishing discusses how the best leaders are especially prone to burning out and slipping into behaviors that are counter-productive. Fortunately the intent of the article is to prevent this from happening. What is required are four daily habits that the author equates in importance with eating and sleeping. (You’re eating and sleeping, right?)

1. Listen to life’s quiet wake-up calls.
2. Practice mindfulness. (Paying attention to your mind, body, heart and spirit by finding a few minutes of quiet time alone each day.)
3. Find hope, which actually helps us to counter the negative effects of life’s pressures and burdens.
4. Practice Compassion. There are always people close to us whom you can help (if you are paying attention).

Leaders/managers/bosses have a dramatic impact on the lives of almost everyone they encounter, for good or for bad. Recommended reading!

In Let People Fail over at HR World, S. Caron encourages managers to back off and not redo employees’ wrongly implemented tasks the right way, otherwise employees will be deprived of a valuable learning experience. Worth reading, especially if the advice seems counter-intuitive.

This is a perfect tie-in to today’s inspirational quote over at Make it Great:
“The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” - Nelson Mandela

As I wrote earlier, it is experience and learning from mistakes which allow for the biggest opportunities for personal growth and innovation. If we are to retain our employees by fostering an atmosphere of growth and trust, we have to think long-term.

In this MediaShift post, Mark Glaser explains his methods and motivations for deliberately going off-line for 24 hours once each week. 

More often than not, external forces are at play when we are away from the technologies we are (overly) dependent upon; the theft of a CrackBerry, a power outage, or a natural disaster. As one of the subjects of the post puts it, “the truth is that we don’t want to be disconnected, though we desperately need the break”.

The article profiles both those who purposely disconnect, and those who feel they are unable to do so. Very thought-provoking.

Technology is neither inherently good nor bad; we simply need reminders to keep it’s usage in perspective. There are times where connectivity enhances relationships, and times where connectivity distracts us from focusing on friends and family in our midst. Connectivity allows us to work from home, though it can also bring work into any environment at any hour, leading to workweek creep. 

As business owners and managers the example we set for our co-workers and employees sends a powerful message. We need to show that we have clear boundaries between work life and personal life, while enabling and encouraging our employees to have the same. It’ll do us all some good. (See here and here.)

Yesterday we looked at Google’s Our Googley advice to students: Major in learning, where we got a good look at what Google looks for in its employees. Today we look at how Google attracts its talent and we need to look no further than Google’s Top 10 Reasons to Work at Google. (Go read it.)

How many of you have articulated your own company’s vision so well? How many of you are challenged to make your own departments or workplaces just as inspiring? How many of you want to work for Google now? What if they promise never to use the word “googley” again? Well, that’s what they want; they want people to desire to work there. And they get 100,000 job applications each month!

Of course, they are not simply looking for people who want to work there; they are looking for people who deserve to work there. And it’s getting harder and harder as they have doubled in size in each of the last three years.

Google is known for measuring and tweaking pretty much everything, and even its procedures for finding qualified employees are starting to implement statistics, formulas, and automation as detailed in this NYT article. (free subscription required.)

As I’ve said many times, Google’s efforts and money are proportional and make good business sense for Google; likewise, our company’s efforts must make business sense for us.

“Management guru Peter Drucker noted that companies attracting the best knowledge workers will ’secure the single biggest factor for competitive advantage’”.  Drucker’s quote appears on The Official Google Blog; clearly Google recognizes this fact. You don’t have to be Google to appreciate this fact for yourselves; all of us need a competitive advantage.

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.

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.

Pure schadenfreude. This tale of a well-meant, but poorly implemented idea is equally delightful and cringe-worthy. Paint Chips tells the story of the Esquire, “a building of high-end duplexes and spacious lofts”, where the “building’s board decreed that each floor would be allowed to choose the exterior colors of their doors, as well as each door’s jambs, lintel and sill.”

The building’s tenants are largely creative & intellectual types and no framework for the decision was mandated. At the time of writing, 16 months later, only one of the seven condo floors had reached consensus.

This well-written account has so many lessons, it’s simply too hard to pick one, though if I have to, it would be that constraints are a necessary and healthy component of creativity. Add your own in the comments.