Angular

While it might be pressure and time that creates diamonds, it is the facets, which make them shine, create the sparkle, and brilliance - Brett Cowell

Angular: not flowing smoothly, discordant, original.

The theme “angular” this edition/play of the newsletter originally came when I planned to talk about creativity in the organizational context (i.e. Move III. Growth Leadership) and for some reason the cover of The Strokes fourth album popped into mind. You can read more about that in Postscript. Instead, pondering what you most likely want on LinkedIn, it seemed like an omission not to focus on creativity in your career first, what I call Move II. Career Moves. So that’s what we’ll do.

Let recap a little first, I talked about the WHY of creativity in your career HERE, in summary:

• Higher Income. Those that identify themselves as creative also report higher incomes too. “Changers” report higher incomes than “Stayers”, and this compounds across a career as percentage jumps, stack upon each other
• Creativity lets you do and be things that you couldn’t or wouldn’t have otherwise. This can be immensely rewarding, and meaningful, helping you reach your potential
• A flexible and creative approach is a way to manage risk

When I think about the one creative thing that can make a difference in your career most quickly it is Mindset. We’ve talked already about having a growth mindset over a fixed one, but there is another level or at least a complementary one to a growth mindset and that is a creative mindset, which perhaps not what you might initially think.

The learnable traits of a creative mindset are the willingness to make change which also often involves challenging the status quo. A creative mindset is the willingness to play and experiment, and be flexible in taking what works and leaving behind what doesn’t.

It also means being comfortable being original, or at least original in the context of where you are now at work and in life. Sometime the right path and the creative path is angular, it stands out and sticks out and might feel dissonant, at other times the creative path feels different because it is simplicity and the truth.

The quickest way into this creative mindset is to learn and be inspired by others, both inside your field and externally. And to believe that you too are creative, and act.

Top Down - How

If you were to take a strategic or so called top down approach to developing creatively in a way to boost you career that might look and feel like:

1. Creatively Improving/Supplementing Core Leadership Skills. You will have strong(er) leadership skills than, and be differentiated from, others. You are seen as strategic, visionary, and a problem solver, and can articulate the value you bring impactfully up the chain, to potential employers, customers, stakeholders, investors, and so on. I’ve identified 10 skills as part of the creative capability model, so we work through these in a prioritised way.
2. Build Up and Scale Up Creative Confidence. You have the confidence, based on actual practice and completing projects in the real world, and desire to try new things, take on further diverse problems and projects, and apply different ways of doing things. Taking those stepping stones opens up new possibilities that you can’t even see now
3. Learn and Apply Creative Tools, Processes, and Perspectives. In times of high uncertainty, proactively working on creative skills development, and exploring different perspectives, should enable you to prepare for whatever comes, avoid getting blindsided.

The above three items have been the focus of our approach so far in the newsletter and videos as part of how to be more creative in work + life.

A small example that hits all of these, are the techniques shared by Cliff Goldmacher in our recent videos/chat. Improving your ability to use metaphors is a creative tool, but also helps the core leadership skills of communication and influence. An intervention and/or habits in using these techniques regularly builds the creative confidence of you/the group to take on ANY future challenges across diverse arenas (that is a well-documented feature of creative confidence/self-efficacy). Check out the videos for more details!

I plan to come back and tackle each of the three above in more detail in upcoming editions. In fact the plan for this newsletter going forward will be to keep the emphasis on career for the next little while and make it a single bite sized “how to“ per edition!

I’ve said already that although I completed a Business Degree then an MBA we hardly spent much if any time on creativity. I hope this drip feed of the newsletter and videos will help address that for you over time. If you want more sooner please reach out to hear more about individual and group creative coaching and learning programs.

Bottom Up - How

The statement in the above paragraph does beg the question if I hadn’t had any formal creative education and yet I did stuff a good portion of which was creative what DID move the needle on my career, and how might that have been different if I’d had the resource I’m endeavoring to provide for you?

What Moved the Needle for Me

I've had three careers in my adult life:

• a. An electronic music DJ, and event promoter
• b. An international management consultant working across technology, supply chain, and sales & marketing
• c. A creative/artist, and creative business owner

Reflecting this week on which events or situations were associated with jumps or progress in my career(s), I came up with the following three themes: 

1. (Having the confidence, and courage, to) change – planning, precipitating, profiting from, and persisting with change, proactively
2. Finding my place to thrive – playing to my strengths, with a boss and team that wanted me to succeed
3. Reimagining the network – moving beyond “pumping hands”, meeting as creative peers, building a group on the basis of collaborating around a joint product or output

The bit about making change in the first bullet (surprisingly) surprised me, perhaps because I (and we) traditionally think of our career in terms of long stretches (of working hard, climbing the ladder), rather than those inflection points, which at least for me, only numbered a handful, but moved the needle most in terms of income and satisfaction.

Launching each business was a change but what was in common was seeing an unmet need that I and others had - the first business, a desire for events with reliable vibe and music, the second was finding a new and meaningful way to meet and grow (through shared immersive experiences).

It certainly doesn’t take years of creativity training or an MBA for that matter to spot such opportunities. It is what happens next after you spot the opportunity that is key. Whether you move to preparing (which could eventually mean discarding the idea) or getting stuck in pondering, basking in the warm glow of perfect inaction. Ideas want you to do something with them one way or another, act or leave it for someone else to act upon.

You could say that doing an MBA to move from technology consulting to supply chain is a pretty commonplace way of making change. It is, but after doing it self-funded the department I worked for didn’t care when I graduated and even seemed a bit annoyed. I had to threaten to quit (and I would have) before they allowed me to move departments even though the other department wanted me all along. Then later, I had to move firms, take a chance overseas short term secondment, then move country before I finally reached me goal of being an international consultant working with big clients to regularly traveling the world.

I guess what is common between all three of these changes is having both a dissatisfaction with the status quo AND a vision of a different future that you’re willing to pursue.

What will you imagine, envision, and bring to reality?

Another factor to make change easier was starting small particularly for the two businesses. For the first business I began with a small event that had production costs of like $50. (in 1993). Even for the current business where I left a well paying job, the stepping stone was to write a book, knowing the time away wouldn’t exclude me from returning to the consulting industry.

And I’d written quite a few bits and pieces before that, including some articles for LinkedIn back in 2015. Of course if you’ve been following along you’ll know how passionate about the idea of what I call small tests. Even smaller that a Minimum Viable Prototype (MVP) although the thinking is along the same lines . Make your idea real in a small, quick, rough way!

The second point, finding somewhere to thrive is self explanatory. If you don’t believe that your current environment is supportive of creativity or new ideas then a well worn path is try them, find a buddy with the same mindset or an ambassador or do a project on the side and show them the results if that is possible and makes sense to you. Sometimes people need to see something to really grasp it. If your current environment is not supportive then all I can say is most people after making a change wish they’d done it sooner. Doing creative projects and/or having an outlet helps you to maintain perspective too, and avoid the common tunnel vision that there is only one way forward, ignoring other possibilities that are hiding in plain sight.

The last point of the three reflections is that going forward I don’t want to old school network with people, I want to collaborate with them.

Do something small an article a video, have a meaningful experience together, or several, and see where that leads.

And that collaboration invitation includes you. Especially if you’re already in my network, reach out and let’s see if we can do a small thing that opens up new possibilities.

To wrap, and I want to as typing this on an iPad screen at night on a plane to Cape Town, how would creativity training have changed my careers?

Firstly, it probably would have meant music and creative outlets generally wouldn’t have been out of my life for so long. Between 1998 when I started my corporate job and 2008 or so, there wasn’t much or any creative outlet or work and I think that I was poorer as a result.

This involved being overly focused on work, and a lifestyle that I’ve described many times as “work hard play hard”, which is something you get caught up in and it’s not a very multi-faceted way of expressing yourself. I’m only just now getting around to giving myself to write a novel some 27 years later. Switching from being a consumer to a creator is life changing.

Secondly, having more creative tools earlier would generally have saved a whole lot of time and expense. Learn while you are working rather than try to figure it out on a secondment or when you’ve quit or lost your job.

It’s not really about writing that book, or making that movie, or whatever it is for you, it’s what happens next, the thing after the thing. For example, after writing a book I’ve had opportunities to get paid to help others envision, plan, and realize their own projects and this brings a different kind of satisfaction, seeing someone else’s dream coming true, and where they go afterwards.

What is the vision of your career?

What are the key ingredients?

What is a small test that you can do to bring that to life?

What I’m grappling with at the moment is having opened up too many fronts! But that can be better than being blocked.

What do you need help with?