Be Prepared for Discomfort, Uncertainty, and Failure: Creative Collaboration Part 7

Having been involved in an uncountable number of creative projects, I can safely say that being creative is not about being safe. Safe solutions to creative assignments are rarely creative. If you really and truly want a creative solution, be prepared for uncertainty, discomfort, and failure. Although confirmation of success generally takes some time to appear after the work is completed, the good news is that uncertainty, discomfort, and failure are simply states you may pass through to get to a successful creative solution.

It takes a special kind of environment for truly creative work to happen. Participants need to know it’s okay to break old paradigms and try new things – even when it means foregoing tried and true solutions. When the collaborators know that it’s okay to try possible solutions that might not work out, it will lead to more creative thinking and a better eventual outcome.

When tasked with a creative assignment, it’s not unusual to feel an urge to stick with familiar kinds of solutions that you’ve had success with before, but this “comfort zone” is the enemy of creativity. Some creative people latch onto the first idea that pops into their minds. They jump right into implementing that idea without even considering any options. My advice to people who do this is to push yourself out of that “comfort zone.” If you don’t, you’ll certainly not achieve your creative potential, and you’ll probably burn out at some point. I’ve seen talented people become so locked into one kind of solution that they convince themselves that they are incapable of coming up with other kinds of solutions. Their work becomes one big blur of sameness and you can hardly tell one project from another. When that happens, the cure is to identify what elements you are repeating, and stop doing those things. It might be color, composition, or any combination of many different aspects of your work. You must consciously avoid those habitual solutions and replace them with new habits that keep you from getting into creative ruts. Try to find inspiration in the projects themselves to come up with unique new solutions. Force yourself to try new things and new approaches. This will cause feelings of uncertainty and discomfort, and you can expect a lot of failed attempts, but on the other side of breaking those old habits is the reward of unlimited creative potential.

When you are genuinely going into new creative territory, there will naturally be a certain amount of failure. A good creative process will take this into account and methodically eliminate many possible solutions until the one final solution is arrived at. For example, the multi-purpose WD-40 got its name from having been preceded by 39 failures. Attempt number 40 was so successful it has been a best selling product for almost fifty years and for many of those years it was the only product that the company made.

When your client says they want a very creative solution, it’s important to find out what he or she means by that. It’s probably not what you think, because you and your client probably have very different points of view about what’s creative. In my experience, when a client says they want a very creative solution, two possible scenarios come to mind:

A. The client recently saw something that they liked and thought was creative and now they want you to give them that same thing – but with their logo on it. Of course, this is not creative. Or…

B. The client really does need a very creative solution.

In scenario B, your job is to prepare the client for discomfort. The client needs to know that the degree of creativity of the proposed solutions will be directly proportional to their own discomfort. That is not to say that the more uncomfortable the client is, the better the solution is. Rather it means that creative solutions are unfamiliar by their very nature and may make the approval process somewhat uncomfortable and uncertain.

The magic of a healthy creative collaboration is that team members tend to challenge proposed solutions more than we might challenge ourselves when we work alone. That process of challenging ideas can get very uncomfortable, but it keeps us on our toes and keeps us thinking. Discomfort actually fuels the creative process. It takes maturity and the right kind of environment for this to happen constructively, but that’s just another reason why great creative work is a rare and precious thing.

Please share your comments on my blog, or contact me directly. And please, ask for my help. More to come: watch here for future installments.

Creative Collaboration Part 2: Assign a leader. Please!

 

An orchestra needs a conductor, a movie needs a director, and a project needs a leader. No matter what the title, the project leader is the one person who coordinates the direction of the project, and is empowered to make decisions and take action. A project leader usually has internal or external clients to answer to, but he or she is still the one person who has direct and primary responsibility for the project. The leader provides the vision that will pull all of the parts into a unified whole. The leader helps each team member understand how his or her contribution will fit into that unified whole.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that the project leader is necessarily the most important person on the team, but I am saying that the project leader is key to a successful outcome. The best project leaders know that a big part of their role is to make it possible for the team to deliver an outstanding product.

When management is reluctant to empower its employees or to assign project leadership, the results will be predictably mediocre, and you can expect to find anxiety among the team members. Creative professionals feel more motivated and do a better job when there is a clear chain of command so that definitive answers can be had, actions can be taken, and progress can be made.

There are some schools of thought that it’s best to let members of a creative team work “democratically” without an assigned leader. I’m sure there must be cases where that kind of works, but in a professional setting where time is money, order and structure provide an undeniable advantage.

It’s also important to assign a qualified person as the leader. By their nature, top creative professionals want to grow their skills, and quite often the only growth path they may be aware of is into a management or leadership role. Unfortunately, the skills that help a person become a top creative professional do not necessarily prepare them to lead or manage others. When a top creative pro is put into a leadership position for which they’re not prepared, expect anxiety all around. The tragic result can be that the top creative person feels they must leave the organization to save face instead of stepping back from the leadership role. I learned that lesson the hard way by promoting a very talented Designer into a Creative Director role. I lost this person within months because the new role took her away from her strength and put her in situations that caused a kind of stress that she was not prepared for. With proper guidance and training the transition can be made successfully, but all too often it’s the Peter Principle in action.

It is very important to make sure the person who is moving into a leadership or management role understands how their role will change. More often than not I have found that top creatives resist moving in that direction once they understand that it means they may be doing less of the hands-on work they love, and spending more time supporting others. One good way to help a person prepare for leadership and test their tolerance for it is to assign him or her to lead smaller projects. In practice, most projects can be broken out into a number of smaller projects that will be coordinated to create the whole. For each of these sub-projects, there should be a qualified individual assigned the leadership role and ownership of the outcome of that sub-project.

One indicator of a great leader is how he or she speaks about the team. A great team leader will refer to the project and the team members in an inclusive way with the word “our,” such as “our project” and “our designer,” whereas a lesser leader will use the possessive term “my,” such as “my designer.” The difference indicates whether the leader considers himself or herself a part of the team or above the team. The most effective leaders act unquestionably as a part of the team and feel a responsibility to support the team.

Please contact me with your thoughts and comments. And please, ask for my help. Watch here for future installments. 

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