Accidental Creative

In any creative organization, one of the more difficult things to deal with is perspective. I’m not referring to the artistic term, but rather to the scope of an individual’s responsibility and level of insight. This can also be a major source of dissonance within an organization. If a manager is not clearly articulating expectations based upon his or her perspective, then artists are left to guess at whether their work will be acceptable. This is especially true if the artist is left to worry or guess about things that only the manager can or should know. The difficulty for the manager is to give enough critical insight to the artist to allow them to do their job effectively without over-burdening them. One of the organizational problems I’ve written about before is the “black box” phenomenon, which is when there are decisions being made that affect the entire organization, but no one is certain exactly how they are made or which criteria are used to make them. This can create a sense of helplessness within the organization, especially one in which people are expected to be creative on demand, and will ultimately create massive dissonance and hopelessness. The right level of timely information-sharing is crucial to productive creative organizations.

Here are a few questions to help determine if the artists you lead have the right information:

1. Are you noticing a “just tell me what you want me to do” attitude?

This is common among artists when they feel as if they are simply trying to please you rather than truly pouring themselves into a project. This attitude will often crop up in seasons of high stress, low rhythm, and shifting strategy. Your job as a manager is to provide a beacon. You are emitting a sound that is drawing the artists to a destination, but you are not telling them which path to take. As long as they can hear the sound of the beacon, they will feel safely within the scope of your expectations and will feel free to create.

If the cause of this attitude is low organizational rhythm, then you need to get a handle on the pipeline or think about your project workflow in order to make it more predictable for the artists in the organization. As counter-intuitive as it seems, creativity thrives on predictability. Just like a child needs boundaries in which to grow and thrive, an mind needs a level of predictability in order to fully engage on a problem. Without this predictability, the mind shifts into survival mode and a lot of creative energy is wasted.

If the cause is shifting strategy, either client or creative, then it is critical that you cease all work on the project and back up to strategy phase once again. You MUST nail down and document client strategy, then creative strategy before any creative work can begin on a project. Shifting strategies will fry and demotivate your organization. Once these strategies are set, they must not change. If they do change, then it is important for expectations to be adjusted. In other words, it will either take more time, or more money to finish the project. (And the more money does not simply go into the organization’s pocket, it is for outsourcing some of the creative talent needed to finish the project based upon the compressed timeline.)

2. Are the artists in your organization falling short of their potential?

They could be (a) overworked (b) demotivated (c) mismatched.

By overworked I don’t mean a lot to do. There will always be a lot to do. I mean that there is no rhythm or predictability to their work, and as a result, they never pour themselves into anything they are doing because they don’t know when “the next big thing that can’t fail” is going to drop into their workspace. Once again, predictability is critical to any creative process. There must be a rhythm to your workload. This doesn’t sound good to investors or agency heads, but ultimately it will produce better and more value-building work for the organization.

By demotivated I mean a general lack of energy for their work. Are they recycling a lot of ideas? Is a lot of their work starting to look the same? Are they “stretching” in order to justify what they did? If so, then they are in serious need of creative stimulus. Know them. Find out what pumps them up. Send them to a museum, a bookstore, a movie. Do something to get them fired up, then set them loose. Tell them to spend a day working on a project of their own. Give them organizational resources to do it. The important thing to remember is that long-term productivity is more important than snapshot productivity. These types of activities produce long-term all-stars.

By mismatched I mean that they might simply be in the wrong role. They might not be producing simply because they are not equipped to do so. Have they ever really hit the mark? Have they ever done great work? If the answer is “no”, then perhaps you need to work with them on exploring their passions and helping them find a more appropriate role.

3. Do the artists understand your unique pressures and constraints?

Seriously. A lot of managers think it’s taboo to talk about their problems or constraints. It’s not. It’s important for the artists to see that you are in the battle with them. I’m NOT (hear me clearly) NOT NOT advocating talking about those you report to. I am advocating talking about the bigger picture of the organization. Not so that they feel the burden of it, but simply so that they know that you are looking at a bigger picture and have insight into what that bigger picture is. When this is a “black box” to them, resentment can build. When they know what’s going on in your world, they might even be able to offer help and will certainly understand better the next time you come to them with an issue. This will also help you identify those people within the organization with the potential to be managers.

Perspective is difficult, because “excellence” can look different at each level of the organization. The more encompassing your perspective, the more factors play into excellence and a piece that an artist thinks is amazing is no longer excellent at the manager’s level because it took too many resources. This can be frustrating to artists, so these conversations must happen early in the process.