Creativity is Connectedness
Today is a special day. It’s my wife’s birthday. Well, it’s not actually her birthday as I type this. We’re on a plane to New York so she can run in the TCS New York City Marathon as part of Team Boomer raising money for Cystic Fibrosis (CF).
If you heard Speaking of Impact episode 21 (from last November), you heard about how CF has affected my family. It’s a pretty complicated disease that causes respiratory, digestive, immune, and fertility problems. My cousin, Gunnar, suffers from it.
Thankfully, people like my wife and generous donors have supported the Boomer Esiason Foundation (BEF) and the prognosis for CF patience is far better than it was when Gunnar was born. In fact, Gunnar was married this past summer and he and his wife are expecting a miracle baby in a few months.
Creative Fundraising
I have had the honor of spending quite a bit of time on web chats with Sylvia Brown over the past several months. She was on Speaking of Impact episode 63 and she gave me some time to ask her questions related to the subjects of my book, “Personal Finance in a Public World”.
I learned many lessons from Sylvia, who is a member of one of the most philanthropic families known to man (her ancestors founded Brown University). One thing that sticks out in this instance is that today’s fundraising for charity is very creative. It has to be. There are so many causes to give to and so many great people asking for your money.
The bombardment of digital stimuli also affects the generosity space. Organizations have to compete for eyes and ears. Sylvia is a proponent of being a smart donor and provides education as part of her work at sylviabrownsmartdonors.com.
One of the things that BEF has had to do is find ways to engage people in their cause. Their biggest fundraiser every year is called Booming Celebration. It’s an amazing event but it’s only one night. What about the other 364 every year? They needed a way to attract a different crowd; one that wasn’t in NY for the event, one that wanted to help raise awareness, and one that was attracted by athletic competitions. Thus, Team Boomer was born.
Team Boomer is great because if gives people a chance to compete in a sporting event of their choice while also creating a community around their efforts. That community is connected and builds momentum for BEF. My wife raised over $5,000 but perhaps more important was the awareness that she raised and the resulting support that BEF will be beyond just the 2021 NYC Marathon.
Creative Jobs
There are a lot of jobs out there and even a lot of creativity but there will only be one Steve Jobs. One of his best quotes, in my opinion, is “Creativity is connectedness”.
Steve knew that creativity attracts attention and builds community. One person’s creativity will encourage another’s by default. I’ve spent a lot of time on Twitter over the past few months and have started to develop a community. It’s been a great experience and on the days where it starts to feel different, I am inspired by other people. It’s great to have a group of people (most of whom I’ve never met in person) that I can lean on for inspiration, ideas, and on demand training.
Apple is a mark of creativity and connectedness.
Twitter is not Jobs’ creation but I have to believe that he appreciated the platform. Coincidentally, Jobs’ company, Apple, has been a mark of creativity and innovation and it holds it’s own Twitter account with 7.1 million followers.
Steve knew that the environment and culture of Apple was critical to its long term success. They could develop the greatest personal computer the world has ever seen (maybe the Apple II at its time). But, eventually it would be obsolete. There needed to be a connected community of creativity. Employees of Apple need to be independent innovators but working together to develop new, cutting edge products.
Creative Impact
Not all impactmakers need to raise millions of dollars like BEF. I repeat, you may not change the world but you can change the world for one. And that change may require creativity!
I believe as the world changes and artificial intelligence continues to evolve, we have to stay ahead. We have to develop new ways to stand out and new ways to get our message to the masses. We MUST innovate so that others will appreciate our desire for positive impact.
I encourage you to consistently evaluate your methods and make sure they are as efficient and effective as they need to be. It makes more sense for long term sustainability to spend some effort on modernizing your process over keeping the old process viable. It will only get harder and efficiency will drop. People will get burnt out and old ways will not attract new, creative minds. Your impact organization or project should be appealing to the young innovators the world produces.
I love new challenges and sometimes you have to find them. Seeking creative impact will assure you are challenging your team to stay on the cutting edge.
Living in Creativity
The most successful teams I have ever been a part of made creativity a must. But interestingly, it was a posted placard or special rule. It was part of the community.
My freshman year of college was a whirlwind. You can hear a detailed version of the story on Speaking of Impact episode 1 and a little bit of it on the episode with Gunnar that I mentioned earlier.
The relevance of my 2001-2002 academic year was that I joined two teams that year. Each of them was extremely successful. You can check out the record books for the Hofstra University football team (Atlantic 10 champions) and the lacrosse team for proof but it wasn’t really the numbers that stuck out. Each of these teams had a great group of veteran leaders. They were juniors and seniors; grown men (some with families).
The culture in those locker rooms was tremendous. We were confident but not cocky. Smart but not arrogant. And most importantly, creative but not risky.
I have to be careful not to contradict the “Do your job!” story from E-Impact 39. However, these teams had a collective culture of creativity. The way an athlete expresses their creativity is certainly different than a tech mogul or computer engineer but the mindset is certainly linked.
A good business empowers its people to do their job to the best of their abilities without fear of failure (which is different than the acknowledgment that it is a possibility). An employer should hire people because they have special talents that would add value to the organization. They may not have anyone with their type of skills or a limit of people like that. The leaders will lead from the edge (remember what Rick Chromey said on Speaking of Impact episode 67)
A lot of football or lacrosse teams have a variety of players with a wide variety of skillsets. The best have a system that allows all of the skillsets to flourish.
I love watching the National Football League (NFL) draft and following the young players as they develop. There is much debate in professional circles as to what an effective draft strategy is. Some analysts believe it’s best to draft for need and others believe you should take best available. Metric wise, I would imagine some combination is the best. But, usually each team skews one way or the other. This concept is relevant because in the business space and especially the impact space, there is no doubt in my mind that you have to engage the most talented people and work to use their strengths.
Let your team live in creativity. You do this by fostering a connected culture where innovation is encouraged and everyone supports each others efforts.
Making it Happen
One challenging thing about creating a connected culture of creativity is that it’s not something you can force. I KNOW this is a problem for any good sports coach with a type “A” personality. It can quickly make a great motivator and strategist into an ineffective dictator if not handled properly.
I would encourage you as a type “A” impactmaker or even a type “B”, “C”, or “D” (how many types are there?) to work on finding the right people and encouraging them to create. It’s contagious (kind of like kindness). You can’t force them to use their skills more or find more inspiration. You hired them because they are unique and compliment your skillset, not match it. Give them the leeway and the tools they need (within time, moral, and budget restrictions of course) and get out of the way. Keep doing this and the culture will develop.
I can’t seem to forget my amateur sports career but I always remember the best coaches giving us all the tools we needed and spending endless hours creating gameplays. But, what was most important was we had the leeway to just “make a play” when the moment called for it. You could “freelance” a little to do something game changing. There were times it wouldn’t work but you’d come to the sideline and a good coach would say, “I see what you were trying to do in that situation, it was worth the risk.” That gave you encouragement to try it again at the right time and not be afraid to mess up again.
In order to make it happen you have to let it happen. If you put the work in to find the right people you HAVE to let them be the person you recruited.
Acknowledging the Environment
I said you can’t force it. But what you can do, is acknowledge it when you see it. Do these three things to make the creative connectedness in your organization known:
Celebrate the wins. (Even small ones, see the E-Impact from July 21, 2020) - This is easily the most important.
Practice creativity. - Dedicate time for innovation where your team is allowed to create any idea they want and let them bring it to the proverbial table for discussion.
Document ideas and the processes for creating them. - A lot of places will document things. It’s a limited practice though unless you remember the way you developed the new idea. With a map, you can get to that creative place again and stay on the front end of your industry.
Acknowledging is essential to the environment you desire.
You have the passion. You found the purpose. You are creative.
Get connected!