Catalyst S+F: Creativity in a Box - Chris Arens - MediaBizBloggers

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The other day I sat down with a colleague and he told me a story. One I'd like to share, as it is a great representation of one of the biggest misconceptions in our industry: that structure and process impede creativity, when in fact the opposite is true. Here's his story:

Bob was 22 when he first started at the biggest media agency in the world. He was just out of college and as green as springtime leaves. He remembered vividly those first few years, where it seemed most everyone was talking a completely different language. He recalled one sentence that took him nearly a month to figure out: "Our CRM department will round out our integrated approach by leveraging the wind from our other marketing efforts to fill the sails of loyal customers to reach the desired KPIs." He couldn't quite figure out how nautical references made sense in the context of online media, but he didn't want to, ahem, rock the boat. While his college friends were off working in many other industries, Bob felt that despite the lexicon issues he had scored. He was able to be creative and utilize his brain to think of new and innovative ways of solving a client's problem.

By the time Bob was 29, he recalled, he had become disenchanted with his situation. Recently married, he longed for more work-life balance and more importantly, he thought, he wanted a more creative, free-flowing environment. He felt stifled, and unimaginative despite constant praise from both his client's and his bosses that suggested otherwise. But he couldn't shake the feeling that the grass was greener and so he began his job search. Through his exploration he found many opportunities that enticed him, all of which promised the very things he had been looking for: no stifling structure, a committed focus on work-life balance and creativity sessions up the wazoo! Naturally he took the one that he felt offered him the best opportunity to succeed, they also offered him the most money. He had always ascribed his success to the notion that if you want something you go get it, so it wasn't long before he was getting ready for the first day of the rest of his life.

He landed at a small start-up agency, fresh off a vacation to Mexico, so he was recharged and ready to go. The first thing he remembered noticing was the passion. As he stated to me, "the passion at the new agency was so great you could cut it with a knife, man, it just oozed out of everyone's pores. It was so powerful you could just feel it as you walked through the door, I think it's how we were able to win so many new clients." And they did win new clients, and as a result they grew quickly. Bob was on cloud nine he had found smart, passionate people to be around and they were growing and making a name for themselves.

The new clients seemed to pour in faster than they could staff them, a nice problem to have, he thought at the time. But looking back now, Bob attests, it was a sign of things to come. As their staffing issues multiplied so did their morale issues. With low morale comes lack of inspiration and dedication. The passion was slowly dissipating, and they couldn't move fast enough to capture the loss. In fact, it got so bad, he said, that they felt as though they were trying to squeeze juice out of a thrice-used orange. He too felt disillusioned by the experience, and second-guessed his move from a leader to a fledgling. What really ate at him was that he could see the potential in every one, but couldn't quite figure out how to re-establish the mojo. We were so good, what happened, he would ask himself. Individually they were still smart, passionate people, but collectively they couldn't reproduce the magic.

He later would come to realize that it wasn't that they grew too fast or that they weren't good enough. But rather it was a product of thinking creative people could just go about creating in any environment. What he detailed to me, was that their biggest mistake was assuming that the free-flowing nature of the small shop could exist equally as a larger shop; that because they were all smart and creative that they had tackled the hardest part. But in reality they missed the fact that creativity needs a box. For someone to be creative and think outside of norms, you need norms. The biggest misconception in our industry is that creativity is a product of free-flowing free space, but really creativity only happens when you have developed a process and a structure that allows creative-types to focus on the problem or task at hand. By not alleviating the stresses of growth through structure and process, Bob continued, the agency did their employees a disservice and squelched all possible creative thoughts. "Everyone was working so hard and so fast and no one was being responsible enough to take a deep breath and assess the situation."

Many have documented the necessity of getting the stresses of life out of your head, see David Allen, Scott Belsky or Robin Sharma. These people talk about insuring that your mind is free to think about, focus, create and lead without the distractions of minutia. Through ritualized processes companies, and individuals, can achieve amazing creative things. Some of us are predisposed to act in this manner, but most of us are not and need help concentrating, Bob then ended our conversation with this, "if you are growing, and wondering why your agency is not as good as it used to be or should be, focus on your process and your structure, and the rest will take care of itself."

Chris Arens is a Partner and Head of Client Services at Catalyst S+F. He can be reached at chris@catalystst.com

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