When Newsweek published an article this month headlined “The Creativity Crisis,” I was intrigued. After all, I’ve spent my life directing and managing creative people and it’s a topic I know something about.
But the article’s focus was all about the drop in scores on a test that measures creativity in children. These scores had been rising from 1958 (when the test was created) until 1990, but have been dropping since then, especially in grade school children. This is a serious problem, Newsweek noted, because “the necessity of human ingenuity is undisputed.”
Well, take it from me that despite the concern about the creativity drop off — a recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs cited by Newsweek identified creativity as the No. 1 “leadership competency” of the future – creativity doesn’t get a lot of respect in many parts of the business world.
Yes, there you can point to areas where creativity is elevated, celebrated, and viewed as a key corporate competency (think Silicon Valley and companies like Google), but in large parts of the business world, there is a lack of understanding of creativity and what it takes to help encourage it.
In other words, how do you manage creative people?
I don’t know how they do it at Google, but I’ve managed writers, editors, graphic designers, photographers, artists, and other creative types and found the process comes down to one key element: putting people in the right environment to encourage creativity.
That’s the hardest thing for a lot of people in the business world to get their heads around, because there is not one single way that creative people work, nor is there any single path that leads to a new breakthrough or idea.
I often think about a publisher I once worked for who complained to me (I was editorial director) that he saw too many people on the creative team simply goofing off and reading magazines and newspapers, many with their feet up on their desk in a casual manner. They were fueling their creativity I replied, and I noted that creative people need time away from regular tasks in order to do whatever they do to fuel their creative juices. Well, the publisher didn’t buy into that line of thinking entirely, but he told me that he guessed it was okay – as long as the creative types only did it from 9 to 9:15 in the morning.
I’ve learned a few things about managing creative people over the years, and a lot of them were fueled by that conversation with the clueless publisher who didn’t know anything about creativity or the process it takes to help it blossom and grow. Here are a few of them:
“Creativity has always been prized in American society,” Newsweek noted, “but it’s never really been understood.” Nowhere is that more evident than in large parts of the business world, where the creative result is the always goal, but the creative process is less-than-celebrated.
Managing creative people is always a challenge and hard to get your hands around. Managers and HR professionals should know this intuitively, but all too often, they don’t. You’ll prosper if you find the right way to encourage creative thinking while also keeping an eye on the business imperatives for your organization.
It’s not always easy, but when creativity and your organizational goals line up and click into place, you’ll know it by the superior business results you’ll see as a result.