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In this edition:

• Column: Fostering A Culture Of Creativity In Efficient Times

• Inspiration: Pague Menos’ “No Ad”

• Timeless Wisdom: Bukowski’s Take On Freedom and Loneliness

Column: Fostering A Culture Of Creativity In Efficient Times

Building a culture of creativity is one of the hardest things to do.

Creativity requires inefficiency to properly flourish. That goes completely against what business managers are taught in school. This obsession with maximum productivity that we have today across the business world, while delivers great results in the short-term, hinders a long-term culture of creative innovation that so many seek for obvious reasons.

Which is why businesses that operate outside of the “creative industries” continue to fail miserably every time they attempt to instill even an extra ounce of creative thought into their companies.

So, why not look at the creative agencies themselves for some advice?

So many of them have written great books on the topic, such as Rethink’s “Rethink the Business of Creativity”, but so few folks outside of our industry have actually read them.

With that, today I’ll unpack what I believe to be some (not all) of the keys to operating a creative machine that delivers short-term results as well as builds habits for a flourishing creative environment.

If It’s Not In The Calendar, It Doesn’t Exist

Contrary to common belief, creative workers actually need discipline and structure to do their jobs properly.

Without it, we’d be running around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to move projects down the field.

While you can get away without much structure in the early days when you only have a handful of projects on the go, as a business grows and more “planes are in the air”, landing them becomes a Herculean task without proper calendar management.

Let’s start with “Office Hours”. This concept was stolen from universities where profs would hold a set number of hours in their calendars each week for students to book increments of 15-30 minutes to get direction, ask questions, and in the case of having them in a business, gaining quick signoffs to keep things moving.

The reason this is such a key element of running a well-oiled creative machine is because directors are often swamped in meetings most days and finding time in their calendars becomes nearly impossible on short-notice. Which is why, depending on how many projects your team typically has on the go, having at least one block of office hours per week will save you and your team countless hours waiting around in the hallways for a piece of your time.

Secondly, performance reviews. These are quite common in larger companies, but you’d be surprised with how few smaller businesses actually do them.

Reviews, to be effective, need to be in people’s calendars way in advance, otherwise the busyness of the business will run it over with “higher priority” things. But the reality is, nothing is of higher priority than giving your staff formal feedback.

These reviews enable your team to understand where they stand with their performance over the last six months, allows them to voice their career aspirations and build plans with their manager, and forces leaders and direct-reports to have uncomfortable conversations that might not otherwise happen without proper time carved out for it.

Last, but not least, is focus time. When I first started my career at PepsiCo, our president at the time gave a valuable piece of advice: “if you don’t book things into your calendar, someone else will.”

It’s amazing how as companies grow the less control over one’s calendar do people have. Client meetings, ad-hoc connects, “visibility” invites, and so forth start popping up everywhere and suddenly the only time you have to sink your teeth into a creative problem is at night after your mental energy has been drained by all day, back-to-back Zoom calls.

Protect your focus time around the time of day that your creative juices are at their peak (for me, that’s before 11am) — that’s the most important thing in making sure you’re working on what matters most.

Plan For Inefficiency

Unlike a car assembly line, knowledge workers cannot operate like machines.

So many times I’ve seen business leaders implementing a gazillion different processes to ensure maximum efficiency in their business.

These folks pushing this type of thinking are “excel warriors” who have never stepped a foot on the ground floor of a creative studio.

Have you ever wondered why your best ideas come while you’re in the shower? Ideas don’t come from sitting behind a desk forcing yourself to think through a problem. They come when your conscious mind has stopped thinking about the challenge at hand, and instead pushed it to back of your mind — and that’s where the magic happens.

Afternoon walks, mid-day dog frisbee playtime, calling a friend, picking up a book at one o’clock, and so on have historically been seen as killing time in business. But the reality is that great ideas require non-active thinking time to come to life.

And while creativity is a muscle that can be exercised (try coming up with 100 ideas for a problem you’re working on now — chances are you’ll struggle to get to 50, but that’s just part of a creative’s daily life), we just haven’t found a way to hack our human brain limitations yet.

Plan for inefficiency in your business, and make sure your staff doesn’t feel “guilty” about it, that defeats the purpose of it. The pay back in the long-term will be higher than the hour here and there that you’re saving by being a hyper efficient mediocre ideator.

Environment Matters

Have you ever walked into a creative agency’s office and immediately felt a child-like giddiness inside?

That’s likely done on purpose.

For great ideas to flourish, one cannot work inside a boring, poorly-lit, beige cubicle maze, sky scrapper.

The presence of dogs running around the office, paintings on the wall, sunlight in every room, ping pong tables, video games, couches, beer carts rolling around in the afternoon, these are all thoughtful tactics to create an environment of ease.

As I mentioned in the previous section, great ideas come to us when we’re not thinking about the problem at hand. Additionally, research has shown that increased serotonin levels in the brain enhance creative thinking by promoting divergent thinking, a key component of the creative process.

Fostering an environment of levity and fun is one of the most important priorities a business must commit to in order to promote a culture of creativity. And it’s not just about talking about it, one must walk to talk.

Invest in hiring an interior designer to create such a space. There’s an actual science to this art that so few know about. And most importantly, make sure you’re encouraging your staff to make use of it.

So many times I’ve walked into offices with big screens and video games that have been collecting dust for years.

Organize FIFA tournaments, put someone in charge each month to run the beer cart around the office at 4 o’clock, buy comfy couches for people to lounge in and talk to their co-workers.

This isn’t about keeping your staff at work for longer (although I warn you that this might happen), it’s about creating a homie space that people feel comfortable in and excited to come in to work each week.

I Might Need A Part Two

I’ve only unpacked 3 key aspects of fostering a creative culture. There are many more.

Depending on how this column is received, I will write a part 2 (and 3, 4, …). Share this column on LinkedIn and tag me on it if you think I should write a part 2. I’d love to hear about some examples you’ve seen of creative cultures flourishing.

But here’s the thing, there’s no “formula” for this. It’s trial and error, but it’s important that you actually attempt these things first.

It’s quite clear when you walk into an office to understand what the company actually prioritizes — is it profits, processes, costs, or… its people?

Prioritizing people isn’t something just reserved for the creative agencies whose “product” is the talent they can attract and retain. Every business in the world depends on having great talent.

Whether or not you’re holding a space that enables them to flourish, that’s completely up to you.

Inspiration: Pague Menos’ “No Ad”

I was born and raised in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

In Brazil we have this saying “o brasileiro já nasce formado em marketing”, which translates to “Brazilians are already born with a marketing degree”.

And that is no joke. The crafty marketing tactics you’ll see as you drive through the streets of Sao Paulo, Rio, or even smaller towns, will amaze even the legends of adland.

So, whenever Cannes season comes around, it’s no surprise that Brazilian agencies pick up quite a bit of hardware.

This campaign by Pague Menos, a pharmacy chain in Brazil, shows how great advertising doesn’t have to be an ad — but the absence of it.

Timeless Wisdom: Bukowski’s Take On Freedom and Loneliness

“And when nobody wakes you up in the morning, and when nobody waits for you at night, and when you can do whatever you want. What do you call it, Freedom or Loneliness?“ — Charles Bukowski

More of PPA:

• 🤝 Connect with Pedro on LinkedIn and/or X

• 🍻 Come by the WJ office for a brew

• 💌 In case you missed it:

  • Strategic Thinkers Are Playing A Different Game

  • What Is Your Product Hired To Do?

  • Getting To The Insight

PPA 

Pedro Porto Alegre is a seasoned marketing professional with in-depth experience building brand and communications strategies for top-tier B2C and B2B organizations across Canada. His repertoire extends from crafting and executing integrated multi-media brand marketing campaigns to the commercialization of performance-driven innovations for multimillion-dollar and nascent brands alike.