10 Tips For Managing a Creative Environment

Managing a creative environment is tough. Creativity can be an intensely personal, time consuming and elusive process. It is made even tougher (sometimes) by clients, budgets and large teams.

The guys from Adaptive Path interviewed organisations where the creativity has to thrive inside a very defined and time sensitive environment where there has to be a well oiled team dynamic else things will fail - these included theatre, professional kitchens, script writing and orchestras. 

From the responses they got they found a lot of commonalities, Adaptive Path have tried to integrate these into their own processes to great success (according to them).

1. Cross-train the entire team.

People should have focus and specialisms, but even a basic grounding in all the discplines will help others respect decisions that are made.

2. Rotate Creative Leadership.

Keep team dynamics fresh by changing the hierarchy project to project.

3. Actively Turn Corners.

Free thinking and brain storming time is, of course, important - but cap the amount of time and move on to the next phase. If new ideas come further down the line, document them but don’t allow them into the project as it may lose momentum and focus.

4. Know Your Roles.

Make sure each team member understands their role and it’s part in the bigger picture. And trust each other to deliver.

5. Practice, Practice, Practice.

Once you find processes that work, use them at every opportunity - stressful situations or working under tight timescales will be easier to deal with.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t change the processes, use R&D projects to try out and practice new process ideas until they are second nature. 

6. Make your mission explicit.

Ensure all members of the team know and understand the overriding goals of a project.

7. Kill your darlings.

When selecting which ideas and concepts to run with - check all of them against the criteria they must meet. If one doesn’t meet them, then don’t use it - no matter how much you think it would be fun to do, or groundbreaking, or interesting. Save it for ‘phase 2’ or another project.

Be sure that your review process is systemic and respectful. 

8. Leadership is a service.

Represent the team. Listen before you talk.

9. Try to generate projects around group interests.

Tricky to do all of the time, but if the team has a vested interest a successful outcome is more likely.

10. Remember the audience.

Always ask yourself ‘are we doing this for us or the client or because the audience needs it?’ 

They tagged on an eleventh too:

11. Celebrate Failure.

It’s okay. It’s inevitable in the creative process. Learn and move on.

You can’t move forward if you don’t take risks, so embrace the fact that they might fail. It’s no one in particulars fault. So don’t try and place blame.