Accidental Creative

Give ‘Em The Boot

This weekend my band played (yes…I still LOOSELY have a band, all…) at a festival in downtown Cincinnati. I was so struck by the scene to the left that I promptly snapped a pic.

 Over the past few years, I’ve come to understand that there is an entire sub-culture of "novelty car drivers" and festival promotion workers. Rob Seddon, who many of you know from AC, once held the privilege of being the driver of the "Swiss Army Knife Mobile". He would travel the country from festival to festival promoting the wonders of this amazing piece of finely-engineered steel. (And plastic.) When he wasn’t at a festival, he was free to do…well…whatever he wished. (Rob has some great stories…) As long as he made it to the next destination on time, he was free to do whatever he wanted in the meantime.

A healthy creative process is very similar to this. We need lots of freedom in between set "checkpoints." We need rails, but we also need room to explore. These checkpoints need to be adequately spaced to allow us to veer out into the nether regions of sanity, but not so far spaced that we get lost in the process. (Setting these checkpoints for an organization, by the way, is one of the key roles of the creative leader.) Too often we are faced with poorly spaced checkpoints that leave no room for exploratory time. On rare occasions, projects will go for weeks or months at a time with no set checkpoints and the entire process will de-rail.

Do an analysis of your checkpoints. Make sure you’ve given yourself space to create, but set your rails in such a way that they keep you focused on the project at hand. 

Some Things Never Change

"But where organizing an effort is concerned it is sometimes better to have mediocre talent than a bunch of creative individuals who disturb the situation by questioning everything. In terms of performance, if you have a slow but sure operation, mediocre personnel, including your nephews, can carry it out beautifully. In planning, mediocrity has and still does hurt the company."

Alan Harrington, "Life In The Crystal Palace" (1959) - an account of his experience within a large American corporation 

Organization: Friend or Foe?

Q: Organization: Friend or Foe?

A: Yes.

Depending on our perspective, organizations can either be the life-sucking entities that bring us eternal woe or the life and resource giving entities that facilitate our creative growth. Organizations are about the BOTTOM LINE, whether it’s financial (usually), humanitarian (rarely) or spiritual (hardly ever). And guess what - they SHOULD be. That’s why they exist. Organizations exist to serve themselves. They are set up for maximum efficiency and profitability, not for creative brilliance or health. (Of course, one could argue, as we often do, that better creative equals a bigger bottom line, but that’s a topic for another rant.)

In his excellent book, “Orbiting the Giant Hairball ”, Gordon MacKenzie suggests that creatives should treat the organization as…well…a giant hairball. Each time a new rule or procedure is implemented, it adds another hair to the hairball until it’s simply a big messy bunch of rules and bureaucracy. When this happens, creatives get stuck in the hairball and find it difficult to innovate.

What MacKenzie recommends is that creatives “orbit” the hairball drawing resources from it when necessary, but not getting stuck by its limitations. This enables the creative to have the best of both worlds - the resources of the organization without its limiting short-sidedness.

Orbiting is mostly a mindset. Few of us have the freedom of time and place to avoid organizational chaos, but we can implement some mental disciplines to help us find freedom within the organization.

Here are a few AC principles we teach to help creatives find freedom from the organization:

1. Be certain that you are defining your work, not being defined by it. See your work as a subset of your greater purpose in the world, not the sum total of it.
2. Resist the victim mindset. It opposes the creative process. It will suck you dry and spit you out. Victimhood is inward-focused whereas creativity is inherently outward-seeking. If you become all about yourself, you are limited to your small subset of experience rather than drawing from everything.
3. Cut your organization some slack. Organizations are made up of people. People are {GASP!} not perfect. We screw up. We inflict pain. But at the end of the day, we all wrestle with the same concerns. (Did I do right today? Could I have done something better?) Whether you’re on the giving end or receiving end within an org, cut some slack to others. Yes, your boss might be incompetent. So what? You can still choose to engage.
4. Beware of competition. Competition makes us do weird things like going after jobs we don’t really want just because they’re perceived as “important”. Know what you’re about in the world and go after it. Celebrate others’ success. There’s more than enough to go around.

AC Podcast: #57, David Allen

David Allen is largely recognized as THE guru of personal productivity. His book Getting Things Done is an international bestseller and he regularly speaks to sold-out crowds in his seminars and personal appearances

In this interview, we ask David how creative professionals can better implement GTD and find increasing degrees of productivity and freedom. Learn more about David’s work at www.davidco.com .

Rest, Rabbit. Rest.

I am a fan of children’s books. No joke. Love them.

My friend Ben often brings children’s books to work to teach simple principles or illuminate some problem that’s been going on in the organization. There is a clarity that emerges in the midst of these short parables or no-frills proverbs that often touches something deep and primal within us.

A children’s book that I came across in the past year (and have since passed on to others) is called "Rest Rabbit Rest." The book is about a rabbit who is unable to be still because of all of the obligations in his life. He is constantly turning even the simplest task into a complicated and anxious demonstration of futility. He works to make processes more efficient so that he could fill his "saved" time with more activity. His life is scheduled to the minute, and any little distraction becomes a huge issue.

There is a direct correlation between rest and creativity. The more we are at rest - mentally and physically - the more prepared we are to recognize creative accidents when they occur. Many opportunities are lost every day because we are not in a position to receive them. When we are constantly "on" we are incapable of filtering the noise to get to the signal. Great becomes inseparable from good, and novelty is mistaken for creativity. When we are prepared, rested, and focused we are better able to recognize the truly great moments of creative intuition.

How are you at resting? It’s Monday - after the weekend. Are you going into your work week relaxed and ready, or exhausted from a weekend of recreation and over-scheduled activity?

Rest rabbit, rest!

Robbing Peter Brady To Pay Pauly Shore

My recent interview with Seth Godin spurred me to re-read, (actually re-listen ), to his book Small Is The New Big . Last night I came across a riff that hit me squarely between the eyes.

Seth was recounting the story of a colleague who was trying to secure a deal. She was rebuffed, so she wrote up a contract that esentially said that the company was saying "no" to her offer and that she was free to take her offer to another company.

They refused to sign it.

Seth hypothesized that this was because ANY decision at that point was a risk. The only "non-risk" was to do nothing. Forcing their hand was forcing risk.

And here’s the killer line: they were willing to get the big things wrong in order to avoid making small mistakes now. 

Wow. How often do we live in "NTG" mode (nose-to-grindstone) and spend more energy protecting our rear than in trying to take big swipes? How many decisions are made everyday in the effort to survive another round rather than in the attempt to re-define the playing field? How many people go to their grave having NEVER attempted ANYTHING of significant consequence out of fear of the loss of reputation? 

I want to have the courage to make little mistakes and have people think that I’m off-kilter because I’m working toward something of consequence. I want to focus more on changing the game rather than fitting in.

Cover bands don’t change the world.

Produce! Produce! {rest} Produce!

OK…so we all know the game. You are what you make, right?

Well…not exactly. But those of us with our eye on the ball are always looking for ways to cultivate our creative rhythm and personal productivity. LifeHack.org has posted its 50 Ways To Increase Your Productivity. (I think they forgot one - STOP READING LONG LISTS ON THE WEB. Oh well.)

50 Ways To Increase Your Productivity [via LifeHack.org ]

5 Ways To Build Creative Momentum

If you ask creative-folk what they would wish for if a magical lamp appeared in their cubicle, the most often coveted thing is "more time". Time, however, is not the magic elixir. Sometimes it’s when we have the most discretionary time that things are the most difficult creatively.

We’ve discussed the five components of Creative Rhythm - Time, Energy, Stimulus, Focus and Relationships - and how they are inter-related and unique to each person. These five components combine to generate momentum in our lives and work, and this momentum is what provides the latent energy to think new thoughts and make unique combinations ("creative accidents.")

Here are five ways to use the components of Creative Rhythm to generate momentum in your life:

1. RELATIONSHIPS: Re-connect with an old friend or mentor. Set aside time to converse about ideas, possibilities, dreams.
2. STIMULUS: Do the hard work of experiencing  a new thing - book, restaurant, world-view. This takes intentionality, because humans tend toward  familiarity and patterns.
3. FOCUS: Do something intentional RIGHT NOW to move the "main thing" forward. Ignore the peripherals. They are only distractions.
4. ENERGY: Clear some space. Re-prioritize your work-load. Break your commitments and make new ones.
5. TIME: Answer this question: "If I could spend my days doing anything I want, what would it be?" Really. What is stopping you? What are the boundaries preventing you from doing it? Do something today to eliminate those boundaries.

AC Podcast: #56, Seth Godin

Seth Godin is a game-changer. His work has shifted the conversation about marketing, re-defined the use of social media to engage consumers and challenged the business world to do something worth talking about. His new book “The Dip” addresses a question few of us want to entertain - “how do I know when to quit?”

In this interview, we ask Seth about his new book, why he wanted to write about quitting, and how creative pros can apply these principles to their life and work. Learn more about Seth’s work at www.sethgodin.com .

Shooting for the “3″

In past podcasts and ramblings I’ve discussed the phenomenon that I call "shooting for the 3." This term relates to my experience with market research in the music industry and how the goal of releasing a radio single is "mediocrity". (Ever wonder why pop music is bland?) This is because things that evoke a strong response in research, (a "5"), tend to be polarizing. Either you love them or you hate them. Therefore the goal is to be "just good enough" that a listener won’t change the radio station, but not so good that the song is polarizing. You’re "shooting for the 3."

Once this formula is set, "hits are born", and the entire industry re-orients itself against producing that result. In other words, the same producers, musicians, writers, etc. are hired to manufacture more of the same stuff. The new standard becomes mediocrity. Everyone is "shooting for the 3." This becomes the new standard of excellence. Innovation is out the window.

Think this phenomenon is limited to the music industry? Think again. I’m sure if you examine your industry hard enough you’ll find plenty of examples of the same thing. If you’re a REAL glutton for punishment, examine your own life and work and find the places where this is playing out. We can’t ALWAYS shoot for the "5", but we need a good mix of risky, challenging projects in our portfolio of work.

{mos_ri}