Creative Reaction

Mike Myatt of Blogging Innovation has heard way too much about Equality & Team Building, the idea “that for teams to be productive, employees have to feel ‘empowered’ by having an equal voice”. In fact, he calls this “ridiculous”.

“Whether you look at athletic teams, military teams, executive teams, management teams, technical teams, design teams, functional teams, or any other team, you’ll find that the best of the best have structure, a hierarchy of leadership, a clear understanding of roles, responsibilities and expectations, clear and open lines of communication, well established decisioning protocol, and many other key principals, but nowhere is equality found as a key success metric for teams.”

“Great leaders and highly productive organizations always focus on team building as a key priority”, says Myatt. If you want to be an effective leader of a productive company, read his post.

Matt Heinz at Blogging Innovation: “I love the idea of employees… thinking of themselves like entrepreneurs.” I couldn’t agree more.

He asks rhetorically, “What constitutes a set of entrepreneurial attributes that employees could emulate?” then answers his own question. I’ve paraphrased (somewhat).

1. Customer-centric thinking.
2. Frugality
3. Creative problem-solving
4. Immunity to fear
5. Acceptance of failure

Imagine having an entire company of people with these qualities. Wow. That’s an engaged workforce.

I came across this zeldman.com post via Daring Fireball, and while it’s from the perspective of a writer and web designer, it applies to any creative-for-pay endeavor. It makes a powerful case for results-based work (the opposite of presenteeism). A must read for any manager of creative sorts.

For a metaphorical approach to this very topic, take a look at Coffee and Creativity.

And  since we’re kind of on a “you can’t rush art” theme here, take a look at Pixar’s “How We Do It“.

Who would think that a 128-slide HR presentation could be inspirational? This one  has statements such as, “Imagine if every person at Netflix is someone you respect and learn from”. Try to keep in mind this is a company that is big enough to be publicly traded.

TechCrunch has some great commentary and the embedded slide deck, which can be viewed full-screen.

Managers, set aside some time to scour this Netflix presentation. And be prepared to take notes.

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.