Clever: Leading Your Smartest, Most Creative People by Rob Goffee & Gareth Jones

Author:Rob Goffee & Gareth Jones [Goffee, Rob]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
Published: 2009-08-31T14:00:00+00:00

CREATIVE TEAMS

These teams consist of individuals who define themselves in terms of their creativity. Like techie teams, creative teams see themselves as distinct from the commercial culture of the organization. They may be suspicious or even scornful of people they regard as suits. Creative teams are to be found in a variety of places, including media organizations, such as the BBC and CNN, and advertising and marketing companies, such as WPP.

Creative teams are prone to four slightly different problems. First, as Belbin observed many years back, the most creative member of the team tends to dominate. Unless they are handled carefully, other team members may become frustrated—and even sulk.

The second challenge with creatives is that they are drawn to novelty at the expense of quality. So they confuse new ideas with good new ideas. These are the people who might suggest mountaineering holidays in the Netherlands or a beach break in Nebraska.

The third characteristic of creative teams is that, in common with techie teams, they often do not see their work in a commercial context. They want to do the best—and hence most creative—work regardless of cost. As a result, they don’t always think commercially, regarding themselves as a creative team rather than a creative business team. Controlling program-making budgets at any TV station is a constant struggle, with each side reinforcing its stereotypes of the other—suits who see only cost, and creatives who are perceived to live in a world of their own. It’s the same in an advertising agency that needs to work to a client’s budget but where the creatives want to produce award-winning ads. The two goals may be compatible, but it requires skillful leadership to accomplish them.

Bernard Arnault, the man who gave us a whole new generation of designers—including John Galliano at Dior and Marc Jacobs at Vuitton—is clear about the challenge: “Designers here know that they have the freedom to create, they are not controlled by others. But then ideas have to be a commercial success. Designers are artists, but artists who have to make sales.”7

In addition, the creatives at LVMH are reminded that their role is to serve the brand. As Pierre-Yves Roussel of LVMH puts it, “When I am putting together a team, the first thing is fit with the brand. Each brand has its own personality—and it’s always more important than the creative people. It’s there forever. Some brands are 160 years old. Our job is to nurture and grow them. We must make sure to cast creative talent to fit the brand.”

Finally, while creative tension can be a positive (and even necessary) force, passions run high in creative teams. Individual members are likely to come into conflict with each other in ways that move beyond differences in opinion about the task and stray into personal conflict. They can become emotionally highly charged and as a result are prone to blowing up. You can often see this pattern in advertising agencies and design companies, for example. In sociological terms, while cognitive

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