Managers Are Creative People Too
Mike Ferguson, Fresh Ground Consulting
Our tag-line at Fresh Ground Consulting, “What Happens Next,” is an attempt to capture the seemingly diverse nature of the services we provide. At the same time, everything we do revolves around a fundamental function that is as critical to the life of a business as breathing is to the life of an individual: creativity.
I find that strategic planning requires just as much creativity as developing content for a website or providing communications consulting or assisting a company founder define his changing role in a growing company. The question, “What happens next?” is an unending, if unspoken, question that helps fuel the creative process. The difference in my mind among the various types of assistance we offer at FGC is only in how the paint is applied to the canvas. It’s all painting to me.
If you are a leader at any level, you’re an artist whether you admit it or not. Your ability to imagine is as critical to your operational success as is your ability to execute. You may think of what you do as problem solving, but it is no less creative than the act of design or the process of writing. Here are just two of my ideas on keeping your creativity active.
NEVER STOP LEARNING. You don’t need to develop a variety of passions, but you should develop a variety of interests. Maintaining even a mild interest in a variety of subjects will keep your creativity ready and accessible.
The industry I am most familiar with is coffee. As an industry and as a product, coffee is endlessly fascinating, and it is difficult to learn everything there is to know in a lifetime. For this reason, some coffee professionals develop a near singular focus in their learning on coffee and subjects close to coffee. I think this is a mistake. You should always be learning about something new, and the further it is “off the beaten path” of your primary areas of concern, the better.
I once read a book on tying knots, though I had very few practical applications for what I learned. And yet, I believe that reading that book improved my problem solving skills.
DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT. I believe that creativity emerges from switching gears and changing one’s focus as much as it does from relentless pursuit. I believe there is no shorter path to burn-out, career burn-out or project burn- out, than feeling like your imagination is not needed or not available to you. Do something different. It can be as simple as taking a walk. One of my favorite ways to switch gears and take a break while still feeling productive is to organize, purge a drawer of files, clean out my desk.
I have used this approach with an entire project team. When it became clear that we were hitting a wall in terms of problem solving on a project, I scheduled a day of organizing the storage room. Yeah, there was some whining about it, but by the end of the day, we all felt good about accomplishing something, and the next day we solved several nagging issues on our larger project in quick order (admittedly, this could have been out of fear of being assigned “clean-up duty” again, but it resulted in the desired outcome in any case). Note, I banned all discussion of the stalled project while we worked on the storage room.
On a more immediate level, during a very openly creative process, it can be helpful to not only do something different, but also a little off-the-wall. In brainstorming meetings, I have had everyone switch seats, I have had everyone stand up, and I have had everyone remain silent for two minutes. Sometimes, when I am writing and I feel blocked, I might look at a magazine upside down and backwards. The important thing to remember is to only do these things when you sense the creativity or energy dropping. If you attempt one of these tactics while the energy is flowing well, you’ll stall it.
As important as creativity is, it will forever be only part of the story. And creativity in and of itself should never be mistaken for innovation. Management theorist and “creativity skeptic”, Theodore Levitt, wrote that “Creativity is thinking new things. Innovations is doing new things.”