Empowering a Culture of Creativity - St Louis Presentation
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This document outlines how an agency empowers creativity in their organization. They do this by first defining their purpose and values. They develop a culture that rewards sharing and collaboration. They embrace frameworks over rigid processes and create an open and empowering work environment. They encourage exploration and discovery by allowing teams to tinker with new ideas. Their goal is to solve business problems from a digital perspective by connecting different experiences and viewpoints.
Empowering a Culture of Creativity - St Louis Presentation
- 1. Empowering a Culture of Creativity June 23, 2011
- 2. About Us ‣ Digital agency ‣ Based in Brooklyn ‣ 50 People ‣ Two dogs ‣ In our second decade
- 3. Clients
- 7. HOW DO WE EMPOWER CREATIVITY?
- 8. BETA
- 9. BETA “ We’re only 1% done. —Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook
- 10. BETA Stop chasing perfection.
- 11. BETA Stop chasing perfection. Start listening.
- 12. BETA Stop chasing perfection. Start listening. Continue optimizing.
- 13. BETA
- 14. It starts with three questions ‣ What’s our purpose? ‣ What are our values? ‣ How do we want to work?
- 15. Purpose can shi over time… but it has to be clearly understood.
- 16. EXISTING NEEDS EMERGING PRACTICE
- 17. EXISTING NEEDS EMERGING PRACTICE
- 18. EXISTING NEEDS EMERGING PRACTICE
- 19. EXISTING NEEDS EMERGING PRACTICE Help businesses communicate digitally
- 20. EXISTING NEEDS EMERGING PRACTICE Create deeply engaging Help businesses experiences communicate digitally
- 21. EXISTING NEEDS EMERGING PRACTICE Make useful stuff Create deeply engaging Help businesses experiences communicate digitally
- 22. Make stuff useful EXISTING NEEDS EMERGING PRACTICE Make useful stuff Create deeply engaging Help businesses experiences communicate digitally
- 23. Inent new products Make stuff useful EXISTING NEEDS EMERGING PRACTICE Make useful stuff Create deeply engaging Help businesses experiences communicate digitally
- 24. Sole business problems Inent new products Make stuff useful EXISTING NEEDS EMERGING PRACTICE Make useful stuff Create deeply engaging Help businesses experiences communicate digitally
- 31. What’s our purpose today? ‣ Help businesses communicate digitally ‣ Create deeply engaging experiences ‣ Make useful stuff ‣ Make stuff useful ‣ Invent new products ‣ Solve business problems
- 32. Values must remain concrete.
- 33. Our values ‣ Have fun because fun leads to quality ‣ Take care of each other ‣ Be brutally honest ‣ ...but don’t be a brute ‣ Always take clients beyond their comfort zone ‣ Flex every single muscle in the company ‣ Everyone has a voice and everyone participates ‣ Everything we do must be exceptional
- 34. We have to rethink what work means.
- 35. STRUCTURE APPROACH
- 36. STRUCTURE APPROACH Culture People Space
- 37. Collaboration Creativity OUR CULTURE Commitment Caring
- 38. What does work sound like without collaboration?
- 39. What does work sound like without collaboration?
- 40. What is creativity? (hint: it’s not art)
- 41. Our people ‣ Everyone participates ‣ Everyone shares ‣ Everyone has a depth of expertise and a breadth of knowledge ‣ We don’t hire jerks no matter how talented ‣ We keep relationships personal ‣ We want people to bring their personality to work ‣ ...and we take care of each other
- 42. Our Space
- 43. STRUCTURE APPROACH Culture People Space
- 44. STRUCTURE APPROACH Culture Frameworks People Iteration Space Tinkering
- 46. “ Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. —Attributed to Albert Einstein but first mention was made by Rita Mae Brown, 1983
- 48. Teams are guided by three principles ‣ Work as a multi-disciplinary team ‣ Produce exceptional work ‣ Be profitable ‣ Take care of each other ➡ The rest is up to you
- 49. uestions are guided by zero presumptions QUESTIONS WE ASK CLIENTS ‣ What are you trying to accomplish? ‣ What are your business goals? QUESTIONS WE ASK OURSELVES ‣ What are we trying to do here? ‣ How are we going to do it?
- 50. Develop notions quickly and act on them LISTEN THINK DESIGN AMPLIFY ITERATE
- 51. “ Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask a creative person how they did something, they may feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after awhile. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or have thought more about their experiences than other people have. Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. They don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions, without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better designs we will have. —Steve Jobs
- 54. How we encourage tinkering ‣ We’ve created a culture of sharing ‣ We encourage people to explore ‣ We look outside for behaviors we can borrow ‣ We provide budgets to teams for the explicit purpose
- 56. WHAT’S NEXT?
- 57. SOLVING BUSINESS PROBLEMS We solve business problems (from a natively digital perspective).
- 58. A cheat sheet for empowering creativity Define your purpose Agree on your values Develop a culture that rewards sharing and collaboration Allow everything to be questioned Embrace frameworks over processes Create an environment that’s open and empowering Look for efficiency only where it’s needed Let people explore and discover – encourage tinkering Don’t penalize well thought out decisions that don’t work Don’t confuse creativity with art
- 59. ...and have fun.
- 60. anks. @bigspaceship www.bigspaceship.com June 23, 2011