Accidental Creative

In this interview, John Winsor of Crispin, Porter + Bogusky shares his insight on career and creating. John is the author of Spark and Beyond The Brand.

 

 John Winsor: Play Now | Play in Popup

I want to thank my new friends at Intuit for their hospitality at the XD Forum. I had a great, though short, jaunt to the San Francisco area. A few highlights of the trip:

- Intuit CEO Brad Smith spoke for an hour on leadership lessons. It was killer stuff. Best line of the day, in my opinion, was “Be both Greek + Roman”, or be both a lover of ideas AND action-oriented. It’s fine to philosophize, but be MOVING.

- I experienced the magical stylings of Jamy Ian Swiss, who designs illusions for Penn and Teller (among others) and has consulted and taught magic to many of the greats. In addition to wowing all of us with his sleight of hand, he talked about his work with Edward Tufte on a project illustrating magic. The killer line was about using the “smallest effective difference”, or the least amount of difference required to effectively illustrate data. He also talked about magic as a model for disinformation design. Fascinating.

- I was approached after my talk by someone who volunteered to start a San Francisco AC Group with some friends/colleagues. (Thanks Rochelle!)

- Mmmmmm….dinner at Izzy’s. (Enough said.)

One of the biggest killers of creativity in the workplace is dissonance. It’s the sensation we experience when the “why” and the “what” don’t line up. It’s what happens when we talk big but can’t deliver on the details + the deliverables. It’s what happens when we lose our sense of purpose but feel the need to keep moving forward. It’s what happens when we are afraid to say “I don’t know.”

There’s an interesting post on FastCompany.com about what happens when we choose to fight reality and a bit of advice about how to escape the temptation to fight, argue or pout:

Learn to be a lover of reality, greeting each new piece of information with a welcoming attitude of, “Good to know.” Conserve your precious energy used in the past to argue with reality and use it instead to innovate and to problem-solve.

We each need to embrace our role is keeping the workplace “dissonance-free.” We all reap the benefits of a reality-embracing mindset.

LINK: Fighting The Facts: How’s That Working For Ya? [FastCompany.com]

…or why I’m in favor of leading with the best idea.

Dear Mr. Corporate-Brainstorm-Guy,

I love the quirky ways in which we sometimes try to jar ourselves into experiencing communal brilliance or the effort we all make to try to flip it, live in it, have it show up on our doorstep, or otherwise shift our perspective on the problem. I do, in fact, believe that these often eye-roll-inducing tactics can help the groupthink-prone to shift into new ways of experiencing the problem.

But that is where my tolerance must end.

You see, I’ve been hearing more and more discussion in meetings about this “straw-man”, or getting the first idea “on the table” so we can shoot holes in it. I thought we’d killed that buzz-phrase a few years ago, but he is - like Rasputin - clinging stubbornly and desperately to his life.

Now, I love bad ideas. I think that they are the only way to get to good ones. What I am opposed to is getting the first idea out for the sake of getting the first idea out. At least, I should say, I am opposed to it in the corporate context.

When we are in groups, we tend to default. Because organizations are set up - organized - around an objective, we will always tend to eventually default to the quickest path to that objective. As a result, when we throw out an idea it naturally sets the tone for the conversation and we immediately begin working from that idea to try to get to the objective. If the first idea is notion-shifting and insightful then it can spark new thinking and alter the conversation for the better. If it is simply the first thing we think of, it can set us on the path to mediocrity.

What I AM in favor of is the burn draft. This is the method many writers use to get their first, instinctual ideas on paper for later revision. I am in favor of exploratory creating, just not in the group context. I am in favor of everyone coming to the meeting with well-formed and purposeful ideas that can be smashed together for the good of the group. I am in favor of second-draft discussion.

Let’s make more of an effort in our sessions to have “second-draft discussions.” Let’s introduce fully-formed thoughts - the best ones we have - and let them shape and define our conversations. We will all be better off for it.

Sorry to bring up the - ahem - “elephant” in the room, “moose” on the table, or whatever other buzz phrase you prefer, but I hope it will lead all of us to more intelligent, insightful and brilliant conversations.

Yours Truly,
Jon Q. Creative
Everybiz Tech

When is enough “enough”?

We create and we tweak and we refine, but at some point we have to stop typing, designing, animating, etc., and say “enough.”

Sometimes the decision is made for us by clients, managers, etc. (OK…time’s up…let’s see what you’ve done.) But for many of us who are juggling multiple projects and trying to balance doing our best work with bringing it home on time, the decision to say “enough” can be one that strikes to our core.

Is it excellent enough? Is it reflective of my abilities? Does it meet expectations?

Or the ever-plaguing, “what does this work say about me?”

This last one is a real zinger, because so often we find it difficult to separate our work from our identity. (I wrote about this one in our Battle Lines series.)

Whenever we are making something up - I mean TRULY making it up - we have nothing to rely on but our own instincts. Sure, we can rely on standards and practices and draw from the well, but realistically each new thing we make depends on our own instinctual ability to guide it to the target. When we distrust our own instincts, we will often find that we lack the desire to create. We have lost traction. We’ve become disconnected from curiosity. We’ve become pragmatists.

The creative act is fueled by possibility. When we self-limit these possibilities because we mistrust our instincts, we continue to drift and experiment and experience significant discontent with our work. It is never “enough.”

Why should you trust yourself? Well, that’s a question that YOU have to answer. I can say that for me, it has little to do with accomplishment or experience or even skill development. It has more to do with curiosity, passion and a willingness to fail. If these things are all present, the odds of success increase exponentially. And when that trust is lacking, I will tweak, experiment and change things endlessly until all of the soul has been sucked out of the project.

Trust thyself. Seriously. Fail magnificently.

Thanks to David Quigg for forwarding this article by Malcolm Gladwell in the latest issue of The New Yorker. Gladwell investigates why some artists are successful and prolific early in their careers and why some labor in obscurity until their genius is finally recognized late in life. (This article also references Daniel Pink’s WIRED article in which he discussed research on coneptualist vs. experimentalist creativity.)

Gladwell opens his article with the story of Ben Fountain, an attorney who decided in his late twenties that he wanted to write fiction.

He began his new life on a February morning—a Monday. He sat down at his kitchen table at 7:30A.M. He made a plan. Every day, he would write until lunchtime. Then he would lie down on the floor for twenty minutes to rest his mind. Then he would return to work for a few more hours. He was a lawyer. He had discipline.

Fountain had some immediate success, and continued to write - eventually gaining critical acclaim for a collection of short stories. But lest you think this was an overnight success story, the article continues:

Ben Fountain’s rise sounds like a familiar story: the young man from the provinces suddenly takes the literary world by storm. But Ben Fountain’s success was far from sudden. He quit his job at Akin, Gump in 1988. For every story he published in those early years, he had at least thirty rejections. The novel that he put away in a drawer took him four years. The dark period lasted for the entire second half of the nineteen-nineties. His breakthrough with “Brief Encounters” came in 2006, eighteen years after he first sat down to write at his kitchen table. The “young” writer from the provinces took the literary world by storm at the age of forty-eight.

It was through disciplined, regular creating and supportive relationships that Fountain was able to engage in his work in a meaningful way. For those of us questioning the value of our creative disciplines or who are still on the fence about establishing unnecessary creating time in our lives, please read this article.

LINK: Late Bloomers (NewYorker.com - Article) | Late Bloomers (NewYorker.com - Podcast)

A few years ago psychologist Barry Schwartz released The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. The central argument of the book is that we as consumers are not better-off as a result of infinite choice but that choice does, in fact, force us to self-limit and to become “paralyzed” in the moment of decision. (Schwartz also gave a talk at the TED conference espousing his arguments. You can read more about the book here.)

I find that this dynamic often plays out in my life and creating as well. When I am faced with limitless possibilities about how to approach a project, I often find that I am unable (or unwilling) to engage. It’s almost like I’m afraid to take the first steps for fear of eliminating other equally valid or better solutions. (For example, when I’ve not written a blog post in a while I stew over what to write and often the perceived possibility of writing something ineffective or inappropriate invokes a kind of “paralysis”. The longer I wait, the more difficult it is to engage.)

The only thing that seems to be effective in tackling this paralysis is (1) a disciplined regimen of unnecessary creating, (2) disciplined and regular “blue sky” idea time and (3) extremely clear objectives for the project. When I have too many options I often find myself drifting and ineffective. This is especially the case for those of us who have some discretion about how we spend our day-to-day time. (Are the freelancers connecting yet?) Every project needs an authority to limit choice, even if it is an authority that we invent and rails that we self-impose.

I seem to see this dynamic playing out a lot in the lives of other artists as well, and I’m curious…have you experienced the paralysis of choice and if so, how have you dealt with it?

In the effort to continually keep great (and often under-the-radar) resources top-of-mind for the community, I wanted to share a book that has helped crystalize answers to a few fuzzy areas for me regarding creative leadership.

I recently had the chance to lead a few sessions at Design Revival, a conference sponsored by the AIGA. One of the other presenters was John Winsor, VP/Executive Director, Strategy and Product Innovation at Crispin, Porter + Bogusky and author of one of my favorite books on co-creation SPARK. (Yes…I got the chance to play “fanboy”, but I didn’t embarrass myself…I don’t think.)

One of the best ways to learn “how to” in any area is to ask people who are already doing it. SPARK gives insight into how leaders in creative organizations have shaped their cultures (or allowed the culture to define itself) and how we can all better deal with this tension of process and product within our teams. Interviews cover a diverse set of topics and companies (Nike, Oakley, Mother, Miller Brewing, etc.)

Who is it for? Anyone in the create-on-demand world, specifically those who are already (or think that they might eventually be) leading others.

John and I talked about doing an interview for the AC podcast, so more to follow, but in the meantime pick up a copy of Spark and let me know what you think.

My family just arrived home from vacation in Florida. We spent the majority of our time at Disney World, hitting many of the parks during our stay. I’ll be writing more about the trip over the next few weeks, but I wanted to share a video that my friend Steven turned me on to a few years ago. It is a film of Walt Disney sharing his vision for Central Florida and what could become the “city of tomorrow.” (EPCOT, by the way, stands for “Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow.”) You can see that Disney was a man of immense vision, and even though his dream was only partially realized, his legacy still impacts millions of people each day.