Embracing agile creativity, Part 1

It would seem that process and creativity are at odds with one another. How, for instance, could a rigid set of rules help inspire great design, great experiences, or new approaches to challenges? In fact, the two can not only co-exist, but work together to create better results and enable teams to be more creative and productive.

Let’s explore this a bit.

Let’s define creativity

First, we need to level-set by defining what we mean by “creativity”. This is where there is often a bit of misunderstanding and preconceived notions. There are traditionally creative fields like art, design, fashion, photography and others that many think of sole domain over creative expression. I believe this to be untrue.

Let’s then distinguish between someone who defines themselves as a “Creative” and someone who is, whether they are a plumber, a lawyer, or a graphic designer, creative. I will thus use the former definition in quotes to label someone who is in the traditionally creative fields, and the lower case version for the broader definition of the term.

Given that latter usage of the term, I can say without a doubt that there are countless professions in which creativity is not only possible, but optimal. In fact, while “creative accounting” is frowned upon (rightly so), there is even room for legal and ethical creativity in the choices that even accountants make through their careers. There are, however, many better examples of this, such as approaches to marketing, employee experience, leadership styles, and much more.

In fact, I would venture to say that there is almost no profession in which creativity is not possible. For instance, I often drive my wife crazy by analyzing how groceries are placed in bags when we go to the store, and have a running list of which cashiers or grocery baggers are skillful in their execution and not. I see creativity in their work.

Let’s define the problem

Many years ago, I used to play and record music for fun. Some friends of mine and I would collaborate over long distances by having recording studios in our respective houses and swap audio files in order to create a song or series of them. Having everything set up and ready to go made it incredibly easy for me to spend an hour here and there and keep the momentum going. I tried to “quickly” record something a little while ago, and found that I spent so long trying to get my audio mixer working, my microphone levels correct, and simply relearning some changes that happened to the audio software that I learned, that I ran out of my available time to do it by the time all that was done. As importantly, I was so annoyed at the process of troubleshooting and setup that I wasn’t even inspired to be creative anyway.

Reinventing the wheel

Your business is undoubtedly more serious about its work than I was with my music hobby, but the same ideas apply. When you don’t have a well-defined process where everyone knows their role, the parts that need to be played, and the expected outcomes, you have to spend time reinventing the wheel each time you start an initiative.

This kills creativity, wastes valuable time and money, and drains motivation. Furthermore, it provides inconsistent results. How can you improve outcomes from your initiatives when the process you use to get there varies each time without a set of controls and tests?

This is reinventing the wheel, time and time again. Remember, it’s not improving the wheel, because there isn’t a baseline wheel that is agreed upon, or even mutual agreement that the original needs to be better. It is starting pretty much from scratch each time and hoping that inventing a new process as you go will take you to a better place than it did last time.

What was the purpose of all this again?

Another big danger is when the initial discovery and creative process seems to be going well but undergoes such great changes by the time the project is completed that the end product is disconnected from the initial goals and strategies. Quite often, this is because there aren’t proper processes to continually align strategic and creative outcomes with the desired end goals and metrics.

When this happens, you hear things like this: “we went through all this work, and I’m not sure if this is any better than the last [campaign, website, widget, etc.].” We’ve all heard that one before.

Stop starting from scratch

I mentioned reinventing processes from scratch earlier, but how about continually reinventing the end products over and over again? When this happens, you hear things like this: “we just redesigned our website 3 years ago because it was out of date then, and here we are doing it again.”

In this hypothetical scenario, a few things likely happened. First, the original product was simply a process of scrapping everything and starting over, rather than learning from past challenges. While this clean slate seemed like the best approach, it also meant that if the slate is wiped clean there can be no iterative learning taking place.

It’s not just inefficient, it’s a morale-buster

This lack of a system of continuous feedback, analysis, and improvement is one of the main reasons why organizations are inefficient in the way they undertake projects and other strategic initiatives. But this is not only about inefficiency and cost-savings.

All of this recreation of process and time spent thinking about problems that don’t need to be creatively solved from scratch each time is a morale-buster. It sucks the motivation and creativity out of a team and uses that energy for something that, while necessary to the end result of the project, is not the part where creative focus should be spent.

Originally published at https://www.gregkihlstrom.com on March 31, 2021.