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The Checkpoints - Putting It All Together

I wanted to talk a little bit about creative leadership and a little bit. But some of the dynamics of leading people on teams who are stumbling awkwardly into the unknown together, um, there kind of their five essentials. So I call them of creative leadership, specifically five essentials for helping people get their best work out of them if they're accountable for turning their thoughts in the value every day. So I want to talk to these very quickly, and we'll talk about how to apply the rhythms of the creative rhythm that we talked about earlier those elements of rhythm to leading a creative team. So the first essential is what I call B a laser, not a lighthouse. So a lot of times, creative direction looks something like that. Looks like a lighthouse. Well, there's a lighthouse. Do there's a lighthouse, tell you where to go or where not to go. No doubt you were not to go, right? So a lot of times creative direction lighthouses that don't go over here. Don't go over there. Don't go ov...

er here. Don't go over there. But all this is wide open to you. Do anything you want out here. It's time, but don't go over here. Don't go over there. That's what a lighthouse does and a lot of creative directors. That's how they approach their work. Or people who are leading creative teams, managers, other small business. And they say, Well, just don't do these things and you won't screw up And then this would have been playing field, but that that doesn't really help people understand what you expect of them. It creates sometimes even more uncertainty than if you weren't saying anything to them. So when I say be a laser light house when I mean it's very specific and precise and cutting in your direction say, these are the This is the end goal. This is what I expect of you. Now the way you get there might be very wind e and curvy and squiggly, and that's fine. But this is what I expect of you at the end. This is where we're gonna land no matter what. So Beal laser be very specific and precise because the work that we're doing is uncertain to be as precise as you can and what you expect of people. The second is, and this relates to the hiring thing a little bit to encourage descent and foster discontent on your team. Okay, Now, some people here, this new thing where you're telling me to make my team miserable. You're telling me to, you know, create strife. And why would you do that? Don't we all just want to get along and hug each other? No, no, not at all. If your team never argues you have an incredibly unhealthy team, you know, and that's counterintuitive. But people often, you know, when I encounter teams, they say, Hey, we haven't had a fight in six months and everybody's getting along and, you know, we all just seem to always agree and we walk lockstep. Aren't we so healthy? No, absolutely not. If you've done a great job of hiring and you brought people in who have that virgin viewpoints and strong opinions and the very talented there are going to be natural disagreements, there have to be natural disagreements just by virtue of the fact you have people from different perspectives and different with different opinions and different skills. Now that they were going to be the average an opinion, so why would you want to squelch those. What happens over time is that those hard edges get rounded off Ray over time and we try to conform everybody to the organization. So everybody says, Well, all right, I'll just kind of play along. Just go along for the ride because we're not allowing those kinds of dissent were not encouraging dissent. I want people on my team speaking their mind, being very verbal, very vocal about their opinion, arguing fiercely for their opinion. And then at the end of the day, I want them toe follow lockstep behind whatever decision is made. Because again, they know that next time it might be their idea. But I want to, and I will seed the descent. You know, I will say his You may disagree with this because that seems a little weird. Anybody else having problems with that? Because that idea doesn't really seem toe register with me. I mean, I want that kind of dissent when I'm working with teams of people, but yeah, I was just thinking about this. Like, where do you see the line there? Yeah, you know, because there is a line. Yeah, Yeah, right. Um, well, again, we have to honor that I keep pointing to this non existent diagram did not appear anywhere. We have to honor the process. So there are times for dissent in their times. For let's move on, that conversation is over, right? So that's one. That's one place we definitely draw the line. So if we're having that conversation here once, we crossed through this wall and somebody comes back and tries to have an argument No, no, we're done with that. We're done right. We're not gonna argue about that anymore because that could just be a perpetual cycle. We can. We can argue something forever, but something we have to make a decision. The other thing I will say the other line is if it gets personal right, argue about ideas, don't argue about people. So if, um, you know, if you came to me and you said, you know Shaun's idea, I don't like Shaun's idea. Cash on. Stupid right? What? You're not by the way, but like that's a clear line, Ray. I mean, it's argue about ideas. I want people dissenting and arguing. I wanna have a Nen Vyron mint of debate. I want to argue about ideas all day long, but it can get personal. And there has to be a clear line where you say, if you have any opinions about this, let's get them out now. Because once we cross midnight tonight, we're not having this conversation again, right? We're done. We're making the decision. We're moving on. And if somebody brings back up, say that that that that we're not having that argument. We've already made a decision. It might be the wrong decision. But we're moving on to the next thing because that's the only way we can honor the process. That's the only way we can get people freedom. If And I see this a lot music, Brian, this is a huge issue. So I am. I'm actually gonna draw this because keep pointing to that doesn't exist. I see this a lot. So you've got a project flow that's going on here and you've got these chambers that we talked about earlier, and there's a conversation that happens. We make a decision, we move on, this conversation happens, we make a move on. So now we're in this chamber. We haven't yet, you know, decided on this. So we're in this third phase of the project here, and somebody says, Well, I think we need to go back and we need to revisit this conversation again. We need to start all over again, right? If that happens, organizationally too many times. How much effort do you think that your team is gonna put into the second phase? How much effort do you think you're gonna put into the third phase? If in the fourth phase, we always go back and revisit the conversation anyway, do you think they're really gonna pour themselves fully into this project? No, not a chance. Why? Because it's wasted energy. How many projects you have to go through? Where you your cranking away? You're pouring yourself. You're doing all this stuff. You're trying to do this and you get late in the game and everything changes. Well, if that's the case, too many times in a row, people were just going to start withholding their effort. They're gonna do the bare minimum just to get through that because they know everything's gonna change. Anyway, at the last night, there's no accountability for decisions. A lot of times, that's the result of a leader who's standing up here looking down from their ivory tower and saying, I'm gonna wait and hedge my bets until we get later in the process that I could make sure I'm putting my money on the winner. And if I don't like what I'm seeing, I'm gonna come in and change the conversation right? Rather than taking the risk to get involved early and saying All right, I know that you have a process. It takes the video production right. It's a great example. So many times people will come in at the, you know, a project and say, I don't like what I'm seeing here. We need to go shoot some more stuff. Do you know what's involved in Shooting Mawr? Film right there, shooting more, elected to get more stuff to work with. It's not just let you go do that. Tomorrow we'll come back and it'll be fine, like there's all kinds of stuff that has to happen. Design is the same way, right or right or any of this stuff. It's It's not like you just go do it again. But a lot of times that's what happens. They don't understand. The hours and dozens of hours go into getting you there at that stage. So we have to have the right conversations at the right time. And you have to make sure that people know there is a line here. Were about to cross it. We will not go back across it unless we have a really good reason. Sometimes sometimes that will happen. Sometimes the context changes. Sometimes there's new information in the environment. You know, if we keep in the direction we're going, we're actually gonna waste a lot of time, energy and money. So we really do need to change our strategy. That's fine. But that should be the exception, not the rule. Yeah, but in a lot of organizations, that's just the way it is. Every project is that way. Not good. Doesn't make sense. I'm a lot of sense related. A lot of that. Yeah. Okay, Good. The second part of that is not just encouraged to send the foster discontent. And what that means is don't let people get settled into their role. Don't let them get to a place with Like I had good enough. I'm the best designer on my team. I'm the best writer on my team. No reframe the problem for them reframe how they see themselves in the context of the organization. I don't want you just to be the best designer in the organization. I want to be the best designer in the city, you know, And again we talk about expectation, escalation that could be chat. But it's an encouraging kind of pushing. It's a nudging its pushing people to be better than themselves, to call the best out of them, calling it something to being called out of you. So how can you call out of people what's in them? You help them become better, see, and then what they don't even see in themselves. Okay, that's what it means. The foster discontent, um, defend your team to the death. Here's a trustworthy saying the leader gets to take the most arrows always, always, always, always. The leader gets to take the most areas we talked about that earlier. Unhealthy organizations. The leader is the one who should be leading the charge defending the teams of death. If it gets to a point worth between the leaders career and compromising the team, the leader has to be willing to take the arrows for the team to protect the team with one of the people in the chat room, mentioned that there the go between between the C suite and all the people on the team, right? She was described here. She was describing that exact dynamic, the fact that they sit but between they're going to offend somebody at some point, right air on the side of protecting your team. Because the moment you sell out your team the first time you lose your credibility is a leader forever and ever. You will never regain that credibility. So as a leader, you have to defend your team to the death. You have to take the errors that might sound Polyana. That might sound, you know, incredibly naive like Oh, yeah, right in the world where everybody is looking out for their own rear. Everybody's trying to protect themselves, manage their own career. That's fine. I'm just telling you the dynamic that exists when you sell out your team. You know, we all know there's people, the managers that nobody wants to work for, Everybody hates that. Do you really think that those people are effective? No, they're not because I don't have the trust in respect of their team. Defend your team to the death. Think back word for word what that means. And we talked about this earlier. We talked about snapshot productivity with Mel. And if Mels manager comes in and says What happened? Says what happened? The Mel Mel used to be awesome. But now Mel was in a you know, a swell or melas, you know, doing really awesome right now. Maybe, you know, um, when that happens and it happens too often and it becomes this sort of what have you done for me lately? Mindset. We forget the spill blood in the past. Maybe Mel worked 80 hours one week to deliver something on time rate, which I'm sure happens all that work 80 hours to deliver a project. But we've forgotten all about that because this week Mel doesn't seem to be doing well as a leader. We have to take into account the history we have to think backward forward. Not just what have you done for me lately, but what have you proven to me over time? It's in the context of relationship and finally be clear when uncertain. What this means is as a leader, You will never, ever, ever be certain that a decision is the right decision. You see all these CEOs who get up or all these leaders who get up on stage. And they say, You know, I am absolutely confident this is the right direction for my company, and I know for sure this is the right, you know, they don't know. They don't know for certain that you could make data, say anything and, yeah, there's some data that will help us major trends and whatever. But there's always an element of uncertainty. What's important is that in the midst of the uncertainty, you're incredibly clear. So if you're a soul preneurs, if your photographer and you're working with a client, they're gonna be things you don't know. There are always uncertainties in your environment. You have to be clear about what you're gonna bring, what you're going to deliver even when you're uncertain about what the outcome is going to be. Um, if you're a manager, this incredibly important you're running a small business, say, listen, I don't know the right answer. I don't know which direction we need to go, but I'm going to be very very clear about what I expect of you, even though I'm uncertain that that's the right direction. Okay, I'm just be really clear about that. So we have to be clear when uncertain. So to apply that to than the elements of rhythm you focus relationships, energy, similar hours. How do we talked about how to do this? Is an individual creative? How do we do that? In the context of an organization so related to focus, obviously established challenges, right? Build challenges into the rhythm of your organization. Make sure that we're defining the project strategy before we jump into creative strategy. Make sure that people understand the problems that we're trying to solve is incredibly important. We have to get the horse before the cart almost got that backwards. I have to get the horse before the cart, not the cart before the horse. Not that anybody uses either anymore. We have to get We have to get that right. Um, define the big free. So what are the big three for your organization right now again? Keep them on the white board. Put them up in front of everyone. Say hey, these right here are the three big challenges that we're trying to solve right now. You can even put a bounty on them. Hey, whoever comes to me with the best idea before next Tuesday for one of these three, but keep them in front of people all the time. Relationships. Um, again, it's important that we be cultivating, stimulating relationships in the context of the organization. A lot of times we end up in an environment where everybody's kind of looking out for their own thing. We're not cross pollinate without talking about the work that's being done and so encourage circles right. Put people in an environment where they are talking to one another from different different silos in the organization. Make sure that we're talking to one another about the work we're doing. What's inspiring us, Yes, but the different circles are you talking about Onley the different creative circles or like princess in our company, even engineering product. Absolutely. Yes. Okay, yes and all. Yeah, because I mean it's easy for organisations to turn into an echo chamber if you only have like minded people or similarly skilled people getting together and talking. If only the creed like the creative way we've expanded creative to mean anybody who solves problems, who works with their mind, right? But let's say it's on Lee, the domain specific creative designers, the writers of videographers, you know, whatever. It's only those people getting together and talking. I guarantee you they're gonna talk about the same dynamics, the same problems, the same things coming up over and over and over. But if you start getting other people from engineering or marketing or other said, you know people who are managing finance for the organ, you you start getting these people together and talking about what you working on. What are you seeing right now? What's inspiring? You're gonna have an entirely different conversation. A. It's going to expand the perspective of those creatives on your team. They're going to say, Whoa, I didn't realize the stuff that the people in the Finance Department have to deal with. Maybe there's a way I could help those people do their job better, right? Same thing for the finance people were the managers, the people who are like, Well, let's just go back and shoot some more film, right or shoot some more footage. If you're starting to talk about like, you know, it took me 40 hours to edit that footage, and then we had to go back out, shoot it again. It took me another, you know, whatever. Like it's gonna be a totally different there's gonna bring perspective to the entire organization. So does that make sense? Yeah. And the cross pollinating is really important. Teoh. I mean, having those kinds of conversations, especially the What's inspiring you. You'll start seeing trends and tendencies in the organization. Wow. A lot of people seem to be really inspired by this thing. Maybe we need to do something around that. So, um oh, on the five conversations, make sure you having the five conversations we talked about really energy energy. Prune relentlessly in your organization. Make sure that there are no legacy projects going on. Make sure that in your there's nobody spending cycles and spending energy on projects that are marginally important to the organization, make sure that you're only doing this stuff that is truly valuable and contributed to the organization on and then think whole organization. You know, we talk about thinking whole life earlier. A lot of times there are managers, especially if they have insight into other parts of the organization or other parts of the business. They might be doing something like, um, you're creating all this work for their team. But then somebody else if we have, like, a matrix reporting relationship comes in and give somebody a project that there may be not aware of. And there are all these people from different parts of the organization placing demands on your team, depending on how the organization set up. Think whole organization before you start asking people to do things and make sure checking with other people saying, Hey, I'm gonna ask Brian to do a project or I'm gonna show, you know, Is it okay if I do that? What else is on this plate right now? You know, make sure that you're not that you're communicating about that and then provide air coverage. Make sure your team knows I am here to provide air coverage for you. Your ground is taken by the ground troops, but the air coverage is what provides the capacity the white space for the ground troops to take that ground, so provide air coverage. Make sure that you're looking out for your team. You're watching out for them that you're defending them when necessary, you're creating the space for them to do their best work. Um, stimuli. So establish a stimulus queue for the organization. Funnel. Interesting resource is articles. By the way, you could do this peer to peer to. This isn't just if you lied in the organization, you identify other riders or photographers or other people in your space. Start funneling resource is back and forth toe one another. You created a forum to start sharing things that are inspiring. You don't rely just on serendipity alone, but you can sort of structure that serendipity, resource inspiration, meaning. Give people a budget to go out and get inspired. You know, give them a budget to go out and buy Resource is or do whatever it takes to keep themselves inspired. Teoh toe to stay focus inspired on their work. Finally, team outings. So, you know, fun team outings goto interesting environments go out and get out in the world and challenge people to think in new ways that this could get really annoying and crazy. Sometimes you like, we're going to go do ropes courses in trust falls and isn't that going to know it's not what I'm talking about, right? I mean, everybody knows this kind of eye roll organizational types of things that people do sometimes. And all your thinking is I really would just rather be at my desk designing right now are writing. Why are you making me do this right? I'm talking about fun stuff that really fills people's wells. Really? Get some stimulate gets in thinking in new ways. Okay, so sponsor some team outings. Finally hours. Um, encourage idea time. Give people the space in their world in their life. Don't walk into an office if you somebody staring at the wall. So why aren't you working? What do you know? I am working. That is what I'm thinking. I'm processing. I'm taking some time going for a walk. You know, I'm gonna think about the problem. Give people the freedom to prove value to you. If they can prove that that is valuable, that they're contributing value, then let them do what they have to do to contribute that about. You're not paying them for the time. You're paying them for the value. So take a risk of the leader. Stick your neck out and let them do that, prove it to them and then share side work. And what this means is encouraged people to bring in their unnecessary creating and display it for the organization. Encourage people to bring in side projects and show Hey, here's what I'm learning I'm seeing I'm noticing guy Tommy Lynn Adele, who created a sort of internal gallery at Dell for people to bring in some of their side work and show it some of the stuff. Fantastic idea, right, because it encourages people to show off the stuff that they're doing That's not in the confines of the organization. Guess what? I guarantee that there are a lot of ideas that come out of that, you know, from people talking about the work they're doing on the side that's unnecessary, creating that apply to the work in hand. All right, so question for those in Internet world in the Internet, land, Internet, world, Land, place in the World Wide Web's, um, would be a the of those five practices that I just described which one resonates the most with you. Where do you see that those those five things is five practices that just described specifically. Be a laser, not a lighthouse. Defend your team to the death. Think backwards. Forward pruning relentlessly being clear when not certain where of those five. Do you see your organization struggling the most right, where your leaders not standing in the gap in doing those things? And do you have any ideas about ways that they could do that more effectively?