Web 2.0 Expo 9 - Ten tips for managing creative environments

Bryan Mason and Sarah Nelson from Adaptive Path spoke at the Web 2.0 Expo about how to manage a creative organization.

Based on a study of several different creative organizations ranging from theatre groups, over symphonic orchestras to a restaurant kitchen Mason and Nelson had created a list of 10 (turned out to be 11) tips to people trying to manage a creative organization.

You can agree or disagree with these tips, and in many cases the experiences from an avant-garde New York theatre group may not be directly applicable to the world of marketing and digital strategies. However, I find it to be and interesting list to keep in the back of your head if you are sitting on top or in the middle of a creative organization.

The 11 tips:

1. Cross train the team. People should understand the entire working of the company.
2. Rotate creative leadership. Change the person who is in charge of projects. Reduces competition because people get to change roles.
3. Actively turn the corner. Creative processes go through 2 phases. Divergence and convergence. Divergence is about opening up. Rules are not that important in this phase. In the convergence phase rules becomes more important. So turning the corner is about actively expressing when we move from the divergence to the convergence phase.
4. Know your roles. When it is production time, everybody needs to know their roles.
5. Practice as a team. Like sports teams.
6. Make your creative mission explicit. As a company or organization, which creative problem are you trying to solve?
7. Kill your darlings softly. Be respectful about what stays in and what goes out. Develop ways to speak when you are killing ideas.
8. Leadership is a service. The creative leader must make sure that creative people have the tools and the environment where they can perform.
9. Generate projects around creative interests. Find work that really engages people. Work with side-projects, because it will engage people and because side-projects can become major projects.
10. Remember your audience. Look around – take a look at your audience or your potential audience.
11. Celebrate failure. To be creative you must try things and some of them will fail. It is important to be able to talk about failure and learn from failure.