Making Ideas Happen (23 page)

While most people might feel that incorporating two extremely different viewpoints (or features) into a project would cal for an “either/or” decision that dispenses with one extreme, Hennes believes that consensus can often be achieved by taking an “and/and”

approach.

One example Hennes cites is his col aboration with famed architect Renzo Piano on the Steinhart Aquarium project for the California Academy of Sciences. Initial y, Hennes and Piano were at loggerheads—both wanted to achieve seemingly contradictory ends.

While Hennes envisioned the aquarium as a dynamic exploratory landscape fil ed with nooks and crannies, Piano saw a rectilinear space with unbroken sight lines and clean architectural lines. The and/and solution was what Hennes describes as “a series of wild aspects that sit comfortably within a clean, linear architecture.” It was a difficult problem to solve at first, but ultimately Thinc arrived at a solution that preserved the extremes and satisfied multiple constituencies.

Teams should not strive for complete consensus at the outset of a project. After al , consensus-driven teams run the risk of settling on what offends no one and satisfies no one. Early and complete consensus is comfortable but almost always unremarkable.

Leaders of creative teams should identify and highlight the noteworthy, memorable solutions at both ends of the spectrum that, in al likelihood, are not agreeable to al . Over the course of discussions, they should seek to identify the few of these outliers worth fighting for amidst the other inevitable compromises when dealing with other constituencies. These
sacred extremes
are the ideas that you want to hold on to amidst al of the other compromises you wil need to make.

Sometimes someone with a particular expertise should be empowered to vouch for the sacred extremes and make the final decision despite an uncertain team. We should be open to trying something new, especial y when someone we respect is advocating for it. At Behance we empower the department heads to make the final decisions in their domains. For example, while everyone is empowered to question a design decision, our chief of design ultimately makes the final cal . As we debate a solution, our chief of design wil often compromise on a few details but insist strongly on any elements that he deems truly distinguishing (and thus sacred). On these sacred extremes, he wil make the case for why they are crucial.

When it comes to making decisions, we should listen to al constituencies without feeling the burden to reach complete consensus. Ultimately, we must preserve the extremes and seek common ground on the rest. Otherwise, we risk mediocre creations.

In many creative teams, especial y in the creative agency world, I observed an “input by many, decisions by few” strategy. Leaders would engage opinions broadly, then make final decisions in smal groups. The notion of creative autonomy no longer cal s for blocking out the opinions of the masses. Choose a process that engages al while preserving the extremes that make an idea extraordinary.

MANAGING THE CREATIVE TEAM

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.

—President Dwight D. Eisenhower

CREATIVE JOURNEYS ALL
begin with a spark in one person’s mind. From day one, the chal enge is to get others to understand and support the idea as though it were their own. But leadership is not about making people do things. Leadership is about instil ing a genuine desire in the hearts and minds of others to take ownership of their work on a project. Only then can we act together, motivated by a shared purpose.

Sound leadership in the creative world is al too rare. Creative minds flee their teams at an alarming rate, and attrition is a common chal enge. And when creative people do leave, it is seldom for a higher salary. Complaints from creatives who feel that their ideas are underutilized (or unheard) abound, as do stories of micromanaging leaders who demand that everything be done their way.

Across industries, I have found much in common among creative leaders who are able to consistently motivate a team to push ideas to fruition. These admired leaders are able to share ownership of their ideas, operate amidst adversity, and identify and develop high-potential team members. Through your own experiences managing others or being managed, you must develop your capacity to manage a creative team through the long, chal enging pursuit to make ideas happen.

Share Ownership of Your Ideas

The more people who lie awake in bed thinking about your idea, the better. But people only obsess about ideas when they feel a sense of ownership. Alas, sharing ownership is easier said than done. More frequently than not, creative leaders struggle to surrender enough control over their ideas to truly al ow their employees, partners, and other constituents to feel ownership.

Author and
Wired
editor in chief Chris Anderson, mentioned earlier, is a big proponent of sharing ownership of ideas. In fact, Anderson gauges the worth of an idea on whether or not anyone else is enthusiastic about owning it.

“When I have ideas within the magazine, I don’t say, ‘You, you, and you, act on this idea,’” he explains. “What I do is I say, ‘Here’s an idea. Who’s interested?’ And, you know, I articulate it to the best of my ability and I evangelize and I get people al enthusiastic and do as good a sel ing job as I can, and very quickly people might say, ‘Man, that’s exactly what I was thinking about!’ . . . Or they’re like ‘meh’ and in those cases I drop it. I don’t push it through.”

Getting people excited about your idea, however, is just the first phase of sharing ownership. The second and much more chal enging part is empowering team members to push the idea forward rather than micromanaging them every step of the way.

Ultimately, truly sharing ownership of ideas means permitting your team members, the people you have entrusted with the fate of the project, to make meaningful decisions —even decisions that you might have made differently. The best creative leaders are able to recognize that the cost of variation from their original vision is often outweighed by the benefits of shared ownership and the scalability that it provides. You want your col aborators to stay up at night thinking about how to execute the ideas at hand—in their own way.

One seasoned creative leader who understands shared ownership of ideas is Peter Rojas. Original y the editorial director of the technology blog Gizmodo, Rojas went on to cofound the hugely popular tech/gadget site Engadget and become the chief strategy officer for Weblogs, Inc. In 2007, Rojas cofounded RCRD LBL, a forward-thinking online record label and blog, which became profitable after just fourteen months.

During our conversation, Rojas expressed his approach to shared ownership as largely pragmatic. “Leaders tend to want to put their hands on everything—but it is not productive [to do so]. . . . Engadget would have never functioned properly if I was that hands-on. . . . My approach is to hire people that I trust and let them do their thing. And if I don’t trust them, I’l get someone else.”

Trusting someone’s judgment does not mean that everything is being done the way you would do it. Different people wil make different decisions. The question, as Rojas points out, is: Did their alternate approach make a material difference? As long as the desired outcome is achieved, control ing how it is achieved shouldn’t be that important to you.

The problem among especial y passionate leaders is that their vision—and their obsession with perfection (or control)—often al ows micromanagement to get the better of them. This happens for the best of reasons: We care deeply about both the process and the end product.

The problem is compounded for many leaders in the artistic sphere—such as fashion designers, architects, and photographers— because their names are often part of the end product. Understandably, sharing ownership can become even more painful when your name and reputation are literal y on the product.

However, the benefits of having your team feel col ective ownership—waking with the impulse to improve the product and fal ing asleep generating new ideas to make the product succeed—wil often outweigh the costs of having particular parts of the project develop differently than you may have intended.

Leaders Should Talk Last

Jack Welch, the legendary former CEO of General Electric, was known to walk into a boardroom ful of his top deputies—al gathered to solve a problem—and proclaim, “Here’s what I think we should do.” Welch would explain his vision and reasoning. Then, after sharing his solution for the problem at hand, he would say, “Okay, now what do you think?” It is no surprise that Welch would get many nods of support and not much in the way of disagreement or bold, new ideas. Those who disagreed (and had the guts to say so) might share alternative ideas, but only in a context relative to what Welch had proposed.

Welch’s good intentions were likely heartfelt. He was a seasoned executive with tremendous experience. However, even if he had the right solution in mind, he was stil failing to ful y engage—and develop—his team. And perhaps he didn’t always have the right answer!

The tendency to talk first is a common flaw among visionary leaders. After many years in an industry, visionary leaders become revered by others and convince themselves that they have seen it al before. As a result, these leaders are liable to talk first, act quickly, and fail to engage others. When asked why they depart agencies, start-ups, and other creative teams midcareer, emerging creative minds often explain that they feel their ideas are not heard.

When we get passionate about our solutions, we tend to share them with excitement.

However, when our responsibility is to engage the creativity of our col eagues, we must practice restraint. A creative team’s purpose is to generate, refine, and execute ideas. If you fail to capture insights from each member of the team, then you are actual y losing value.

The creative process is also a process of engagement. Enabling new or less-experienced members of your team to share their ideas is how you can develop their reasoning and bring them onboard. Instead of overshadowing their ideas with your own bril iant insights, silence yourself and welcome fresh, though sometimes naïve, insights.

Chal enge yourself to ask questions before making statements.

When you are not talking, you should be listening. Even those leaders who do recognize the value of talking last sometimes fail to listen while they are waiting to speak.

Judge and Be Judged Amidst Conflict

There is a saying: “You don’t know who is swimming naked until the tide goes out.” It is only when things go wrong that we are able to see what’s truly going on beneath the surface. While conflict is never pleasant, as leaders we must acknowledge that conflict provides a precious opportunity to judge the leadership capability of others.

Admired leaders use conflict in two ways. The first is to evaluate the reasoning and patience of their partners or superiors. As soon as something goes wrong, they watch and learn. If you are ever unsure about the true chemistry and potential of a team, use conflict as an opportunity to measure it. Whether you are judging the leadership capability of your superiors, peers, or clients, performance during conflict is revealing.

The second way leaders use conflict is to build confidence and earn their team’s respect. A number of accomplished CEOs, creative directors, and other leaders I have met attribute the greatest leaps in their careers to a crisis that they solved. It was less about the actual deal or decision that was made and more about the process of resolving conflict. They encouraged their teams to step back and regain perspective, to quit blaming and start brainstorming solutions. When their teams were plagued with doubt and uncertainty, these leaders seized the opportunity to combat apathy and ral y their teams toward a solution. Natural y, amidst the anxieties associated with conflict, people are most impressionable when something goes wrong. Thoughtful leaders use conflict as an opportunity to align and strengthen their teams.

Develop Others Through the Power of

Appreciation

In the autumn of 2005, I found myself driving from Boston’s Logan Airport to a smal town along the shore of Cape Cod to attend a storytel ing workshop run by world-renowned storytel er Jay O’Cal ahan. One of my mentors at Goldman Sachs, Steffen Landauer, had recommended that I learn how to tel a decent story. “Leadership,” Steffen would often say, “is most effective through the art of storytel ing.”

Without a doubt, Jay O’Cal ahan is one of the greatest storytel ers in the world—a true master of his craft. One of the highlights of the workshop was just sitting back and listening to the man. With his wild, white hair, imposing stature, and careful y calculated delivery, Jay was positively captivating. Not only a great storytel er, he was also a thoughtful and patient teacher.

Storytel ing is a very sensitive form of artistic expression. The stories one shares are often deeply personal—attempts to make sense of childhood memories and reconcile our understanding of life’s mysterious ways. For this reason, feedback on stories must be handled careful y. This was especial y true for my storytel ing workshop at “Alice’s House” in Cape Cod. In a group of nine other students, I was the only participant under the age of seventy. While I had come to learn storytel ing as part of my own professional development, I quickly realized that the other attendees had come for a different purpose. They were there to learn storytel ing as a way to pass on their legacies, as stories, to their families. How do you critique one’s tel ing of their life’s story? While al creative projects are passion-driven and cal for a delicate touch when it comes to feedback, storytel ing lies at the far end of the spectrum.

O’Cal ahan would rely on the insights of those listening as he helped both experienced and aspiring storytel ers hone their craft. Each participant would tel a story, and afterward the group would go around and share what O’Cal ahan referred to as “appreciations.” The first story I told took place at col ege, during a moonlit walk through a graveyard with a few friends. I stood while recounting what I considered to be a mysterious and ultimately uplifting story about my friendship with two classmates. I tried to use my hands, because O’Cal ahan had commended the hand motions of the person who had spoken before me. I also tried to speak clearly and with whole sentences, often separated by a powerful pause—just as O’Cal ahan had done during his stories.