Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Nurturing Creativity


Judging by the wealth of articles in current business magazines, creativity is at last recognized as one of the most important processes in business. At the same time, it remains one of the trickiest to manage. Creativity just doesn’t lend itself to routine management like other business processes. Creativity really comes down to some pretty squishy processes that happen inside people’s heads. Nurturing creativity is mainly about getting people in the right state of mind.

Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned while managing high-performance creative teams for many different kinds of projects. The work may vary, but the human aspects are constant.

First you need creative people.

Whatever kind of creative work you or your company do, make sure there is a fit between the people and the work, and go for the best people you can find. I think of it like casting roles in a movie: the player must fit the role. Miscasting just doesn’t work. Yeah, sure, anybody can be creative, and pretty much anybody can play basketball, but there is a world of difference in people’s abilities. I don’t know about you, but I want to be on a winning team and that starts with the right players.

Talent plays a huge role, but attitude is equally important. I’d choose a person who has a solid portfolio of work with confidence and a drive to do great work over someone with a stellar portfolio and a prima-donna attitude. A confident person who focuses on the work and on improving his or her abilities produces more consistently great work than a hotshot prima donna who needs constant attention.

It’s also important to think about how the whole team fits together. Define roles and assignments so that everyone pulls together instead of fighting against each other. Creative people need to clearly understand the role they are expected to play, and then give them the space to run with their assignments.

Nurture the performance and growth of the individual creative team members. Make sure both management and the creative individuals know what’s important in their performance, and then provide thoughtful, meaningful, constructive, honest, and comprehensive feedback.

Second, you need a creative environment.

There’s an unmistakable magic in the air of a great creative environment. And there’s also an unmistakable pall about a place that suppresses creativity. You can have practically everything right, but one element out of balance can ruin the effect.

Physical space is important. There are about as many ways to make a workspace creatively stimulating as there are creative people. Different people like different qualities in their environment. And that’s one of the keys: let creative people have control over their own workspace.

Comfort is important. It’s much harder to be creative if it’s too noisy, too hot or cold, or if your workspace is ergonomically inadequate.

Good light is critical.

A balance of privacy and interaction is important. Creative people need opportunity, time, and space to focus and concentrate without distraction. At other times, opportunity to interact with others is important.

Nothing inspires creative people like other creative people. This could be co-workers, people at creative conferences, creative work in media such as magazines, films, and websites, or any other place where a creative person can find inspiration. When it comes to creative inspiration, quality counts. See my previous blog post for Sweet Inspiration.

Third, you need a creative culture.

Culture comes down to what you celebrate, what you tolerate, and the values you actually live by. If you want to nurture creativity, treat creative achievement with the respect and recognition it deserves. Do not tolerate dishonesty, office politics, or other negative factors because they stifle creativity. Make sure your company’s values (whether formally recognized or not) are sincere and morally respectable.

The number one requirement for a healthy creative culture is to give credit where credit is due. I’ve known creative people to suffer lots of abuses, but having someone else take credit for their work, or not being properly or adequately acknowledged for their contributions is one of the most damaging offenses, and one that would cost the company literally no money to get right.

Celebrating creativity is pretty easy to do, but it surprises me how often I see the opportunity being missed. It comes down to simple things like taking the time to stop and admire creative work that the team just completed, entering your best work in competitions and making sure you celebrate wins, and speaking respectfully of creative achievements in company communications.

Very creative people tend to be a bit more sensitive and pure of heart than the general population – at least that has been my experience. Because of that, negative factors can have a much more damaging effect on their state of mind. It’s not that they are fragile as much as it is that they are more affected because of their sensitivity. Sensitivity is necessary for creativity, so the culture needs to respect and support that.

Fourth, you need to provide adequate resources.

I’m an avid gardener and I often see parallels between gardening and creative management. Plants take time to grow, flower and bear fruit. They need adequate soil, sun, water and air, and fertilizing plants gives them a big boost. Some types of plants grow faster than others, but they all require time, and getting an early start is key. The same principles apply to creative processes.

Proper funding, tools, training, and technical support are critical, but one of the most important resources is simply time. High-quality creative work needs adequate time for incubation and production. There is no substitute for an early start. When I garden, I have learned what an amazingly gratifying experience it is to plant a seed or root a cutting and to come back days or weeks later and discover a beautiful plant has grown. I practice this same principle with a creative team. As early as possible I plant the seeds of ideas for the project with the creative team. Then a wonderful thing happens; the team members begin to formulate ideas seemingly almost without effort – because their subconscious minds have been at work.

How many times have you had a creative assignment and delayed getting it to the creative team? It’s so easy to put things off, and yet so easy to plant those seeds early on.

Fifth, you need processes that facilitate creativity.

Every creative assignment should go through the following processes. The steps can overlap and vary quite a bit, but this is the time-tested way to arrive at the best creative solutions.

1)   Discovery – learning all you can about the assignment

2)   Experimentation – trying a range of possible solutions to find the best one

3)   Refinement – refining the selected solution

4)   Production – bringing the solution to final form

The pressures of this hurry-up world we live in make us want to skip through the process and go straight to production. On very rare occasions, circumstances are right for rushing to production to work out to an acceptable result, but consistently high levels of creative excellence require this step-by-step kind of process.

Digital tools have undermined this time-tested creative process. They make it possible to polish up a poor idea with treatments and effects so that the end result looks “polished” even though there is no substance behind it. I see this happening all around: in websites, in advertising, in consumer products. It’s the creative equivalent of junk food.

I have no idea who originally said this, but there’s a lot of wisdom in it: “Practice safe design: use a concept.”

Take care of your creative staff and they will take care of you.

Of course, this is a very simplified overview of what it takes to nurture creativity in a business setting, but if you get these things right, your creative staff will be in a much better position to achieve a consistently high level of quality. It’s all about getting the creative team in the right state of mind.

Please contact me with your thoughts and comments, and don’t be afraid to ask me to come into your business to help you achieve a greater level of excellence.

Copyright 2009, Billy Pittard

Friday, August 7, 2009

Imagine the Possibilities


Developing a solution to a creative assignment means just that: developing A solution – just one. So that means we’re eliminating an entire universe of other potential solutions. What gems are we leaving behind?

I suppose it’s human nature that over time we learn what works for us in various situations, and we become less aware and less concerned about our options. It is after all, a lot of work to consider every option. We also learn (the hard way) when certain options don’t work, so we tend to narrow the options we consider. We get into mental ruts by following our career and academic disciplines. As we go through life, our brains are also known to lose their flexibility and the natural curiosity we develop as small children. It all subtracts from our ability to think creatively.

The good news is that we can actually do something about it. The remedy is mental exercise. But unlike physical exercise that is largely repetitive, mental exercise is all about challenging our minds to do new and eclectic things. As much as we might enjoy the mental workout of sudoku, crossword puzzles or other structured games, they probably aren’t going to stimulate our creative thinking abilities. Mental exercise is about looking at things in completely new ways.

By now you may be thinking “Oh that’s nice. I just need to start doing ‘eclectic mental exercises’ and I’ll be able to solve this creative problem I’m facing that’s due like yesterday.” Mental exercise is something can work right now with any kind of creative challenge. As a matter of fact it’s a method that should be a regular part of any creative professional’s work process. And like physical exercise, the more we do it, the easier it becomes and the greater our abilities become.

My experience has taught me that the number one barrier to creativity is limited thinking. It’s so tempting and easy to latch onto the first decent idea that comes along, or to do yet one more iteration of the same solution we used yesterday and a thousand times before that. Wayne Gretsky famously said “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take,” and I say you miss 100% of the creative solutions you don’t consider. So the trick is to take the time – and force ourselves if necessary – to seriously consider as many different solutions as we can. Just try to imagine the possibilities. This doesn’t need to be a time-consuming process, but it will be some of the most valuable time we put into the project.

Trying a lot of different options can be tough for some people because of their work process. For example, graphic designers who go straight to a graphics program on their computer tend to limit their thinking to what the program does best. It’s much better to start with a pencil and a sketchbook because thumbnail sketches are faster for trying a lot of very different ideas. For writers, jumping in and filling a page with text can be just as limiting. Personally, I’ve found that mind maps are a good way to work out broad options before committing words to the page. In both of these examples, the trick is to start with a method that allows us to quickly consider a wide range of options before becoming invested in the solution. Once we start down the path of a solution, it becomes more and more difficult to let go – even if we imagine a better solution while we’re working. So the trick is to allow ourselves to imagine a lot of different possible solutions and then follow through with the one we think is best.

So now the skeptics may be thinking “Great. Now all I have to do is be sure to have a lot of great ideas. And how is that supposed to happen?” This is where it gets interesting. If we keep thinking about things in the same way, we’re going to keep having the same ideas. The trick is to stimulate ourselves to think differently and to do that in as many ways as we can. This isn’t as difficult as it might sound.

With any problem-solving process, the starting point is always to develop an understanding of the essence of the problem. This is actually more difficult than it sounds and will be a topic for another time.

"A well stated problem, is a problem half solved"

- John Dewey, Philosopher

Perhaps the greatest creative method of all is to open up our minds and take criticism as a golden insight to make our work better. The annoyance of an unexpected criticism can actually be great fuel for fresh thinking.

Sometimes I like to pick up a magazine from a completely different field while I’m wresting with a creative problem. It’s amazing how I can find fresh ideas this way – but I have to thinking about the problem for it to work. This is a great example of preparing my mind with an essential understanding of the problem so that I’ll recognize possible solutions when I encounter them.

"Chance favors the prepared mind."

 -  Louis Pasteur

Some people are naturally good at challenging their own thinking to come up with new perspectives and new ideas. For the rest of us mortals, a little prompting can go a long way. One method I’ve used is to put together a list of simple ideas to prompt myself to consider the problem from different perspectives. Here is a sample list.

  • Change the emotional tone
  • Change the time frame.
  • Change the size: make it huge, tiny, etc.
  • Change the color: make it colorful, monochromatic, etc.
  • Think like a child, alien, hipster, banker, cave man, etc.

And the list goes on… Add any ideas that you think will help you look at the project with a fresh point of view

If you’d like something a little more ready-to-use, here’s one of my favorite resources. Naomi Epel is a writer who had a unique opportunity to interview a lot of great writers to learn how they stimulate their own creative thinking. The result is a book and a deck of cards called The Observation Deck. Just shuffle the cards, pull one out and you’ll have a great suggestion for a technique to stimulate a new perspective. Even though this “book” is mainly about writers, the principles apply to any creative field. The Observation Deck is great addition to any creative professional’s library. It’s stimulating and a lot of fun to use.

A few years ago I met a very interesting marketing consultant named J. Howard Shelov. When I met him he was already up in years, but he was full of energy and great ideas. One of the things that I most remember about him was how important he believed it was to keep your mind open and your thinking fresh. To drive home his point, every year he deliberately changed some life-long habit just to help him keep from getting into ruts. That particular year he had changed from wearing boxer shorts to briefs – which I took his word for without demonstration. The point is that it’s important to take initiative to keep our thinking fresh.

No matter what method you use, just be sure to imagine the possibilities. And maybe even change your underwear.

Please contact me with your thoughts and comments, and don’t be afraid to ask me to come into your business to help you achieve a greater level of excellence.


Copyright 2009, Billy Pittard

Monday, August 3, 2009

Sweet Inspiration


Inspiration can come in many forms and from many places. It can come from daydreaming, or seeing someone do some amazing thing, or even being faced with a seemingly impossible situation. But it always has to do with suddenly seeing things in a new way. Something happens inside our imaginations and we suddenly see a new possibility, and are stimulated to pursue that possibility.

Traditional business has long been about efficiently executing more or less routine operations and managing existing assets, but that approach is fading away quickly as anything routine is moving to third world countries. Today’s leading businesses are more about innovation and creating new assets – and that’s why it’s so important for businesses to actively nurture inspiration and creativity.

For many, the word “inspiration” is about mystery and divinity. While I like that aspect of the word, I also have a more down-to-earth version. It’s one that has a lot to do with having prepared mind, and then purposefully stimulating imagination.

During the fifteen years that I lead the amazing team of high-performance creative people at Pittard Sullivan, we were faced with a continuous demand to develop fresh, high-end creative solutions. I had both the necessity and the opportunity to develop reliable ways to help people feel inspired. Grappling with this challenge through the years, I learned a lot about inspiration.

I found the number one thing that inspires people is seeing what other people do. Much of what people are able to accomplish (or not) has to do with what they believe can be done, and seeing someone else do something can be all it takes for an individual to enable them to do it as well. As Henry Ford is quoted, “Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right.” A classic example of this is the four-minute mile. Before May 6, 1954 it was widely believed that it was physically impossible for a human being to run a mile in less than four minutes. But on that day Englishman Roger Bannister ran a one-mile race in 3 minutes 59.4 seconds. Once people knew the four-minute barrier could be broken, it was broken repeatedly. Today, serious runners see the four-minute mile as more of a benchmark than a barrier.

Inspiration doesn’t just come from seeing someone reach new highs; seeing things done differently or being exposed to new or different modes of thinking can also inspire great leaps of imagination. Within my own experience there have been many times when I have seen something “new” that immediately inspired me as if fertile ideas had been there in my mind all along but had been hidden from view. Somehow the inspiring thing cleared away my former limiting beliefs and let me see these beautiful new possibilities – and stimulated me to pursue those new ideas.

At Pittard Sullivan, I set out to provide the staff (and myself) with ongoing programs to inspire. Because inspiration comes from seeing things in new ways, I used as many “new ways” as possible. Here are some of the inspiring programs we conducted:

  • Friday Matinee: There are many wonderful films and videos available about the work of highly creative people, but it seemed like no one ever had the time to watch them, so we scheduled a screening every Friday at lunch time. This was possibly our most successful program.
  • Life Drawing Classes: Life drawing is one of the most fundamental – and most stimulating things a person in the visual arts can do. Our classes were conducted in the early morning before regular business hours – and the classes were always packed – voluntarily.
  • Lunch with Billy: Every Tuesday that I was in the office, we held an open lunch for all employees. I would prepare a few notes in advance about the kinds of creative projects we were currently working on, and engage an open discussion with all attendees. It was a great way to stimulate ideas about the work we were doing. The conversations could be heard to continue days after the gatherings.
  • FYI / For Your Inspiration emails: I would distribute whitepapers, links to websites, etc. via email to the entire staff. Eventually a few clients got wind of this and asked to added to the distribution as well.
  • Expert Classes: We brought in various types of experts for either single appearances or carefully-planned series that lasted several weeks. We had outstanding teachers from top universities as well as expert filmmakers, authors, and other top professionals.
  • Design Challenges: I developed a series of design challenges that put very different kinds of restrictions and requirements than our work normally entailed. Participants were able to accomplish wonderful results that they would have otherwise thought impossible. The lessons learned translated directly into our client work. And it was a lot of fun.

And those are just a few highlights. Notice the variety of forms of these sources of inspiration: watching videos, physical skills (drawing), discussion, reading, surfing the Internet, formal classes, and fun challenges. All of which goes back to my point that inspiration comes in many forms.

The examples described above worked great at Pittard Sullivan because they were part of an overall plan. To fully nurture inspiration and creativity, an organization’s values, processes, and structures must be in full alignment with creative endeavors. I am very passionate about this, and helping businesses become more creative is possibly the highest value service that I provide. 

For me personally, I always found it to be incredibly inspiring to seek and share sources of inspiration. With that purpose, and to raise awareness of my services, I have re-instated my [FYI] For Your Inspiration program. This time, it’s for my network of clients and friends. It’s my hope that readers gets as much out of these musings as I do from preparing them. Please contact me with your thoughts and comments, and don’t be afraid to ask me to come into your business to help you achieve a greater level of creative excellence.

Copyright 2009, Billy Pittard