Avoiding Creative Apartheid

Right, here we are - new year, new challenges and not surprisingly: probably still a lot of the old challenges about too, hopefully with the wisdom (and increased girth) of some time off during Christmas, we will be able to approach those issues afresh.

So my first post of the year is dedicated to a topic capable of arising fury within me, over and over again - despite my (by now) many years within the field of design and most recently innovation. This topic, so aptly named Creative Apartheid by Gary Hamel, captures the problem very well:

Too many executives seem to believe that while few people in the company may be really clever and creative, most folks aren't. Gary Hamel

Just before Christmas in fact, did something happen that reminded me yet again of how widely spread this notion is and how it can easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy - i.e this way of thinking means that those esteemed to be 'creative' become intellectually lazy and stop making an effort to ensure that those not currently deemed to belong to the 'creative class' can make a useful contribution, thus proving that creative output invariably only comes from those already belonging to this group of esteemed individuals. Sound confusing? Let me explain by using an example of something that happened to me recently:

2 external consultants had been hired to revamp the value proposition of a service. Famed for their role in a number of award-winning commercials and one being a well-known author, this pair had the credentials of 'creative genius' written all over them, certainly within the advertising field. Personally I have nothing against the duo and find their work and ideas highly refreshing, but what happened next is what constitutes the problem.

To boost the creative work a series of brainstorms had been called, with a mixture of both individuals from the team involved in providing the service as well as a few select externals, including myself, whose insight and background was relevant to the task at hand. Coming in to the workshops I was taken aback by firstly, how linguistically focused many of the excercises were in the sense that not only did they focus on creating ideas, but also crafting these ideas into the most beautiful prose ever - all at the same time. Secondly, the sessions dived straight in, with no warm-up whatsoever to bring the team together and with a very ambitious agenda of work to achieve by the end of the day.

As you would expect, the sessions floundered and much less was accomplished in the time available than what the organisers hoped for. The two consultants, like everyone else, were completely drained by the days activities and proceeded to question why some of the individuals had been present at the meeting, when they clearnly weren't going to contribute anything. It appeared that lines had got crossed between the leaders of the group and the consultants as to what was the outcome of the session and who should be involved. Some of the comments from the consultants annoyed me hugely and I began to think in detail about what had happened and why I had adjusted to their working methods and some of the others hadn't.

1. Relaxing before innovating - check out some 'non-method' methods of how to get people to drop some of the familiar office-induced tensions and anxieties that are the enemy of any creative brainstorm Running Creative Brainstorms
2. Beware of imposing your own ideal way of working on others - advertising as an industry seems to be extremely word-heavy, rewarding to people with linguistic intelligence and capability, but those who lean more towards visual or spatial intelligence, or indeed are capable technological innovation sometimes struggle expressing their ideas purely in words. Be aware of your own comfort zone in terms of not just working style, but also jargon and lingo pertaining to your own professional field and how that can turn off people who aren't doing the same work as you. What are the things that all of you have in common? Concentrate on that to bring together a diverse team and build on everybody's strengths rather than exposing their weaknesses.
3. Don't divide people into the creative and non-creative, not even implicitly - a Freudian slip earlier in the day from one of the leaders made the rest of the day excruciating to say the least. When discussing how the groups should be split, rather than just talking names, the person emphasised the importance of having at least one 'creative' per group, this way of talking of course again deriving from the advertising industry's way of talking collectively about creatives when in fact meaning art directors and copy writers, yet to non-advertising folk this sounds like dividing people into creative and non-creative people. Again, when this is the perception, it is needless to ask why anyone would bother contributing.
4. Concentrate on one task at a time - Again, break things down into manageable-sized chunks - if you are a team with a track record of previously working together your chunks can be bigger, but your innovation may only be incremental as being familiar with each other means your thinking may already have got stuck in some grooves. To avoid this manifestation of group-think, you could adopt a role-play approach, where each of you champions the cause of a specific group relevant to the problem you are trying to solve, for instance consumers, marketers, designers, programmers etc. If you are a diverse team, the chunks need to be smaller, yet your innovation can potentially be bigger, because fresh pairs of eyes on old problems can help see things from new angles.
5. Plan accordingly - if it is a huge task you are embarking on, and you have a diverse team to help you with it, one brainstorm or workshop may not be enough, but you instead need to plan a sequence of them, progressively narrowing down the scope. Again, the earlier you start your planning the more options you have at your disposal.
6. The facilitator often does the most work, but invisibly so make sure you have one and that they understand what is expected of them and why the others are there - The best facilitators just make things happen and that's how it seems, but the reality is very much that of the swan in the lake, above the water graciously gliding past, making it seem effortless while feet paddle feverishly under water to keep the bird moving. That is the facilitator for you and with a diverse team the facilitator often has to be the one capturing comments, building on people's comments, coaxing input from the more quieter team members, keeping time, the lot. A task not to be underestimated and often the success of any brainstorm is down to how good the facilitation was.
7. If language is an issue, focus on expressing ideas, not composing the most lyrical prose - Capturing ideas and phrasing them for most conceptual impact are two different things and require two very different modes of thinking: ideas need your mind to be in open-mode, thinking freely, broadly and making lateral links as well as conceptual jumps. Finding the best adjectives to describe a product you already know what it is, requires your mind to be in closed mode - analysing, evaluating. Often people stuggle to leap from one mode to the next in the same session, so it's a good idea to split them apart, forcing everyone to be in the same mode all at the same time.
8. Allow contribution and input, even when the official session has ended - particularly if this is your own team you are drawing upon, it's no good if you normally tell them to zip it when they have a suggestion or idea for you and then you ask them when it suits you. Walk the talk and allow people to be part of the beginning as well as the end. Sometimes you can't make amendments anymore despite people coming up with an excellent idea, but grace them with an honest explanation of the situation and if possible, think up a way of using their idea somewhere where it still can make a difference. If you do that, you find people are more willing to help you too.
9. Having the idea is the easy bit, implementing it is often hard - that means making sure the ideas live on beyond the brainstorm and they will, if you have observed the rules above. People you have involved will have a vested interest in making sure the ideas survive and are acted upon, because they were part of creating them, but invariably it will take a lot of hard work, not just from you, but from everyone - so what better than having a team around willing to help!

So creative brainstorms can work - and pooling people's ideas, regardless of background and don't you believe anyone that tells you the opposite. In fact, if the brainstorm didn't come out as planned, rather than blame others, it's worth taking a long, hard look at yourself to see if you indeed committed some of the mistakes catalogued above. Fix the problem and try again. As Gary Hamel puts it:

When you look at companies like Toyota, you see their ability to mobilize the intelligence of the so-called ordinary workers. Going forward, no company will be able to afford to waste a single iota of human imagination and intellectual power.

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