The challenge in building your creative currency

Why ‘Leader’ is misleading

It occurs to me that the term ‘leader’ is one of those terms that is bandied about with a plethora of different interpretations. So I looked up a few meanings in ‘Word’ (yeah I know it isn’t very extensive research but…) here’s what I got.

• Somebody in charge of others
• Somebody whom people follow
• Musical conductor
• Line at the end of fishing line
• Guide in printed matter

Of all of those the only one that really excites me is ‘Musical Conductor’. Here’s why.

I reckon the role of a leader has changed. It is no longer effective to rally the troupes and expect them to follow you as you head off into the wilderness with your blunderbuss in one hand and a machete in the other. Especially when it comes to working with creative people. A great leader inspires his people, gives them direction and lets them blaze the trail. It’s like a being the inspiration leader of a professional sports team. The leader doesn’t get on the field with the team; instead they set the game plan and let the players fight it out, and then point them in the right direction every so often if they need it.

For me, a great leader of creatives is one who is prepared to let creative people do their thing, who understands them, who knows they are motivated by different things, who knows how and when to turn on and off the creative controls, and who knows how to get the very best from creative people while directing their talents and genius towards successful business outcomes.

So perhaps we should change the word ‘lead’ to ‘nurture’ or ‘empower’ or ‘to be guardian of’.

And perhaps we should change the term ‘leader’ to ‘Creative Conductor’.

When did your people last fail and what did you do to them when they did?

Let me take you back to the first century AD when Rome was at her peak and led the civilized world. Advanced in many ways, Rome built roads, aqueducts, and sewage. It wasn’t all gladiators, armies and politics; Rome was in many ways an engineering marvel. So much so that one of her most prominent sons, an engineer named Julius Frontinus declared ‘Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development’.

We all make mistakes and we all get it wrong sometimes.

Take Steve Jobs of Apple for example because there’s a man who has failed quite a bit. He dropped out of college; was fired from his own company; and many of his ideas never made good - who remembers the ‘Next Cube’? But thankfully failure leads to success and Steve Jobs pressed on. Thomas Eddison failed over 1000 times inventing the light bulb but saw every failure as learning what didn’t work.

Today, someone in your company failed when trying to find a creative solution. I don’t know who they are or what the idea was BUT I do know that one of two things happened.

Either their creative spirit was squashed and reigned in, or they were elated and challenged and spurred on because they work within an environment that encourages creative risk taking and where it’s okay to make mistakes.

Recently, I asked a range of creative people what were the biggest hurdles they faced working in organizations and one of the constant themes that came through was working in a culture that didn’t tolerate failure. Creative people understand the value of failing, of trying different things and seeing different perspectives. It’s this ability that allows them to see new possibilities and discover new things.

But it’s also important to have a culture that captures mistakes and learns from them. Otherwise mistakes aren’t profitable. One of the best examples of this is the ‘3M Post It Note’ - a mistake that made good. What’s more remarkable though is the fact that 3M had a way to capture the mistake and turn it to commercial gain.

Creatively and commercially failure is an important skill. In a recent interview on businessweek.com, Sunil Sinha of Tata Group talked about the importance of ‘failed innovation’ and being comfortable with sharing stories of failures and learning from them.

I believe many business leaders intrinsically understand the importance of failing and how it leads to new discoveries and ideas. Unfortunately I also believe that most businesses aren’t very good at tolerating it and don’t allow their creative people to take creative risks.

So does your business have a tolerance for failure? Does it see failure as part of the process or as a major block? Do your people feel safe putting an idea on the table without fear of repercussion? Are your creative people seen as incompetent if they fail or courageous?

We need to create environments where our people feel comfortable taking creative risks, not inhibited, and where failure is seen simply as a step towards success, because that’s where great ideas often come from.

We need to recognize the potential of failure - and in failing to do so I wonder how many ‘Post It Notes’ we let slip through our fingers.

Creative lessons from Hollywood

Stop trying to get people to come up with ideas

We need to stop focusing on getting people to come up with ideas and start focusing on getting people to want to come up with ideas.

My wife works with horses. It’s in her blood. For whatever reason she was put on this planet to be with and work with horses. The other day, having attended a training session, she was telling me that the best way to get a horse to do what you want it to do is to get the horse to want to do what you want it to do.

If you need to read that again, here it is. ‘The best way to get a horse to do what you want it to do is to get the horse to want to do what you want it to do’.

Which is pretty obvious but also pretty profound.

Think about it, because you can actually get a horse to do lots of things it doesn’t really want to do. For example if you want to horse to jump a creek, you can give it a carrot or whack it with a stick, but to keep the horse jumping you’re going to need a lot of carrots or end up with a horse with a very sore derriere.

Surely, a better alternative is to find a way to make the horse want to jump a creek rather than jump it unwillingly - which is always a lot more trouble. In other words you need to figure out how to get the horse’s buy-in.

But I can tell you that trying to get people to come with ideas is exactly the same thing. You got to get their buy-in if you want ideas that are gold and you have to get ownership if you want people to follow their ideas through.

How many brainstorming sessions have you sat in that have been completely ineffective because your team just weren’t engaged? Sure you may have ended up with a bunch of ideas that were adequate, but it takes passion and fire to go the extra mile and come up with the gold. And how many great ideas have you ever had that never got off the ground because you and your team didn't take ownership of them?

In my experience coming up with ideas is never the problem. The problem is getting buy-in…getting your people engaged and fired up so they own those ideas. When you do that you’ll see possibilities you never imagined and your ideas will really fly.

That takes more than a carrot. It means you need to build an organsational culture that supports and stimulates the creativity of your people. Where empowered and feel safe to put ideas on the table without fear or ridicule.

How do you do that? Here are are some (but not all) essential ingredients to get ownership.

- Involve people early and often
- Be open
- Create a stimulating environment (no more grey, drab boardrooms please)
- Give your people permission to be creative and explore possibilities
- Nurture creative risk taking
- Collaborate
- Have a decent feedback mechanism

Non-Thinking Time

Does your company have the DNA for Creativity?

Here's a recent interview I had on Bnet on the importance of building a creative culuter that nurtures and encourages creativiity. To listen to the podcast click here. click here for more details on Bnet

A winning organisation is a creative one

This was recently published in 'Not-forProfit Management' Jul 09

Having a creative organisational culture that stimulates fresh ideas is vital to survival and future growth – Creative and idea generating should be part of what you do on a daily basis

Ideas are valuable. Always have been. Whether new products and services, new ways to connect with our clients and employees, refining internal processes, meeting challenges head-on or creating new opportunities.

In 1902 an enterprising man had an idea. He owned a stationery shop and in a competitive market he was looking for ways to gain the upper hand. In the days of inkwells when you bought writing paper you would buy it in packages of loose sheets. So our hero decided to glue individual sheets of paper together to make writing things down more convenient. J. A. Birchall of Launceston in Tasmania had invented the notepad – and boosted his sales at the same time

Today, with the financial crisis, increased competition, eco-awareness, technology changing faster than I can write this article, ideas aren’t just important, they’re vital.

And it’s the Creative Companies – the ones that not only have great ideas but also have creativity as a key organisational value – that are better placed to deal with changes in their industry and their market.

But what is more valuable is creating a workplace environment and an organsational culture where ideas and creativity thrive. Where people feel safe, positive and confident to voice their ideas and their creativity without fear of ridicule or judgement. Where ideas are allowed a chance of life, to grow and evolve.

But how do you create such a culture? Creative Companies such as Disney, Apple and Toyota do two things. Firstly they build an organisational culture that stimulates and supports creativity and ideas. Secondly, they put in place processes that allow ideas to flourish.

However, you don’t have to be a giant to have a culture that stimulates fresh thinking and tap into the creative potential of your people

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The Intangible Beast

Creativity is not black and white but full of contradiction and paradox. Once we understand that we can use it to our advantage.

However, most organizations see creativity as an intangible beast, a kind of waffly, imponderable monster that is untamed, unstructured and difficult to harness.

We often have images of artists splashing paint around studios or of writers heading off into a transient wonderland and finding inspiration through them and not by them. And although much about creativity seems intangible there is a definite structure and method to it. Otherwise it founders and has no direction or purpose.

Creativity thrives on structure; in fact it needs it to survive.

Think about it for a moment. If you were to learn to paint there are definite rules and guidelines to follow. A painter must learn the rules of perspective, composition and colour before they can truly let their creative spirit loose. A writer must understand such things as structure and genre. Great masterpieces and epics have been built around strict rules and form.

But in our quest to understand creativity and bring in into the business world, we end up restricting it. By putting in place rigid, ‘step by step’ systems we only inhibit the creative process, limit our vision and stop ourselves seeing all the possibilities available to us. By implementing ‘cookie cutter’ processes all we are doing is trapping the beast in a cage, constraining it and making it angry.

What if, on the other hand, we were to tame it, understand it, direct it and allow it the freedom it needs to do its thing in a controlled and directed manner?

I’m a big fan of structure and process but that structure and process needs to support the very nature of the creativity not constrain it. We need to set very clear objectives, direction and boundaries but also allow the creativity to do it’s thing, because that’s when we find the gold.

There’s balance to be found. A balance between having a structure that directs and contains the creative process but at the same time allows it the freedom it needs to let ideas flourish.

So don’t fear or kill the beast – you’re going to need it.

What’s Your Revolutionary Idea?

When it comes to being creative small ideas can make huge differences.
(here's an artilce I wrote recently for MICE.net magazine)

As a young lad many, many years ago when I worked for retailer Grace Brothers during the school holidays, I won a competition called ‘is your voice smiling’. It was a clever idea really because it got the staff answering the phone in a bright and chirpy way, which in turn engaged their customers more than the usual lethargic ‘how can I help you?’

Recently this part of my life came full circle, which happens a lot at my age, when I was working with a client on their strategic plan for the year and we were looking at creative ways to better engage their clients. What came up was new and different ways to answer the phone.

Now you may be wondering what answering a phone has to do with revolutionary ideas? Isn’t being creative in business all about coming up with the next ‘iPod’, ‘Post it note’ or ‘electric light bulb’?

When we think of creative companies we tend to think of those creative juggernauts such as Apple, 3M and Google who come up with ‘Breakthrough’ or ‘Big Bang’ ideas and create products and services that change the world. And IPod is one of those because it didn’t just change the way we listen to music, it also changed how we bring music into our lives. It’s sexy, fun, colourful, and individual. It isn’t just about music - it’s about lifestyle. Then just add iTunes, iMovies, and iPhone and the rest of it and what you have is an outstanding business model of collaboration and product evolution. I know you’ve heard it before because everybody goes on about iPod as a pinnacle example of creativity and innovation and there’s a very good reason for that. IPod is revolutionary.

But it is also true that many ideas, in fact most are not ‘Big Bang’ at all but quite the opposite. Let’s call them ‘Small Jolts’.

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