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Eliot Gattegno<\/span> Contributor<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Eliot Gattegno is an adjunct associate professor of Practice of Business and Arts at NYU Shanghai, where he teaches in the Program on Creativity and Innovation. He is also director and founder of the Center for Innovation, Design, and Entrepreneurship at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and a professor at the CUHK Business School.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Today\u2019s creative workplaces work hard to obscure the uncreative labor that makes them run. While \u201ccreativity\u201d is presented as the panacea for our overly cubicled society, this often leads to a narrow-minded focus on the stuff that dreams are made of \u2014 to the detriment of those keeping the company afloat.<\/p>\n Alas, our obsession shows no signs of stopping. In 2000, we read books promising<\/a> that the \u201ccorporate winners of the next century\u201d will be businesses that use \u201cevery scrap of creative talent they possess;\u201d by 2013, we were breathlessly devouring articles about \u201c12 weird things that tech companies do to encourage employee creativity<\/a>;\u201d and last year, we saw the launch of a perfume<\/a> meant to inspire creativity itself.<\/p>\n But are we worshiping a false god? Much of what passes for \u201ccreative\u201d in the workplace seems suspiciously surface-level (beanbag chairs at work, unlimited sushi lunches and the like.). Though it might change the floor plan of the office, it doesn\u2019t seem to do much to change work, particularly from lower-level employees.<\/p>\n When employees actually sit down to their workstations (or tote a laptop to the conversation pit), are they really letting their imaginations run free? Or are they focusing on specific, concrete tasks necessary for the operation of the company? Usually it\u2019s the latter: After all, someone has to debug code and manage spreadsheets. Smart managers and executives should recognize that no amount of creativity can replace the less glamorous (and sometimes rote) work it takes to make their companies function. Let\u2019s start celebrating the non-creative, too.<\/p>\n Take a look at some of the most incredibly \u201ccreative\u201d products of our time and you\u2019ll see that creativity isn\u2019t so much a flash of lightning as it is a long, lonely trudge. Look at Pixar, whose films are consistently praised for their vision, humor and heart \u2014 not to mention their mind-blowing animation. But these clearly creative products take 4-7 years<\/a> to complete, and the process<\/a> is incredibly arduous, as each project must go from sketch, to storyboard, to modeling process, to layout process, to \u2014 you get the idea.<\/p>\n Smart managers and executives should recognize that no amount of creativity can replace the less glamorous (and sometimes rote) work it takes to make their companies function.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Almost any creative project has an incredible amount of training and effort behind it, no matter how instantaneous it may seem \u2014 from the master jazz musician improvising \u201cin the moment\u201d (something he couldn\u2019t do without lifelong practice) to the radio show This American Life, which sounds like \u201cfriends swapping stories around a campfire\u201d but takes months to bring each seemingly spontaneous conversation to life. This sort of time to create isn\u2019t usually something that companies can afford to give their workers without significant investment. But investing in creatives is absolutely worth it, right? Not necessarily.<\/p>\n In an era where some companies are hiring splashy \u201cinternet kids\u201d<\/a> off of Reddit and Instagram, it has become trendy to consider \u201ccreativity\u201d a credential in its own right. But the evidence simply doesn\u2019t back this up. A study in Economic Geography found<\/a> that workers\u2019 education level, not their creativity, creates most of the productivity gains associated with the so-called \u201ccreative class.\u201d \u201cBohemians\u201d (as the researchers call creative people without a college education) actually contribute less than uncreative, but educated people on the whole. While exceptions clearly exist, it\u2019s generally education, not creativity, that really makes the difference in performance.<\/p>\n Managers could have learned this lesson from the creatives themselves. The iconic author Haruki Murakami provides a great example of how important training is to the creative life. His memoir \u201cWhat I Talk About When I Talk About Running\u201d is essentially one long extended metaphor comparing long-distance running to writing novels. He argues<\/a> that for artists, \u201cfocus and endurance\u201d are almost as important as talent \u2014 and far more achievable, \u201csince they can be acquired and sharpened through training.\u201d To Murakami, creativity is only a starting point \u2014 to bring his or her projects to fruition, the real creative needs training and an unstoppable work ethic.<\/p>\n The message is clear: Don\u2019t let a potential hire\u2019s impeccable Instagram profile overshadow his uninspired resume. For most jobs, employers need people who are qualified first and creative second, not the other way around. And be sure they\u2019re willing to help implement their groundbreaking ideas with plenty of hard work.<\/p>\n Companies that want to encourage employee creativity over other useful qualities may face difficult trade-offs down the line. A study<\/a> in the journal Accounting, Organizations and Society discovered that the more a company relies on employee creativity, the more control the company needs to exert over potential dysfunctional behavior. Otherwise, employees can become so focused on individual tasks that they lose sight of team and company goals. It\u2019s no surprise that many companies limit \u201ccreativity\u201d to beanbag chairs \u2014 dealing with hyper-focused creatives who aren\u2019t meeting company deadlines is too much trouble.<\/p>\n The trick is ensuring that all employees \u2014 not just the exciting, colorful thinkers \u2014 are valued, celebrated for what they contribute to the company.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Even at Google \u2014 the guiding light of the creativity-in-the-workplace movement \u2014 certain much-revered creative practices have apparently become unsustainable. Remember their mythical policy that employees can spend 20 percent of their time (an entire workday per week!) on a self-directed project \u2014 a policy that led to the invention of Gmail? Former Google employee and current Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer tore down the curtain when she declared<\/a>, \u201cI\u2019ve got to tell you the dirty little secret of Google\u2019s 20% time. It\u2019s really 120% time.\u201d<\/p>\n In recent years, Google has reportedly been moving away<\/a> from the 20 percent time idea altogether and prioritizing top-down innovation instead \u2014 projects approved by managers, etc. Some have argued<\/a> that this attempt to control innovation will damage Google\u2019s much-praised culture of rag-tag, free-floating creativity. It\u2019s a difficult dance, the one between magic and matter. Uncontrolled creativity can result in employees losing sight of company goals; controlled creativity, you could argue, is no creativity at all.<\/p>\n None of this is to say creativity has no value in the workplace at all. Someone has to dream up the next Gmail, just like someone has to manage spreadsheets and answer phones. But creativity shouldn\u2019t be thought of as the be-all end-all, a fast and poetic track to success.<\/p>\n Today, when hiring, smart companies should be looking for diversity not just in age, gender and race, but also personality types \u2014 creative versus non-creative, introverts versus extroverts, flights-of-fancy innovators versus boots-on-the-ground implementors. Take Slack Technologies: An interesting mix of artistic types (a co-founder with a philosophy degree<\/a>, for example) and engineers has contributed to the success of the company and its ubiquitous collaborative work software.<\/p>\n The trick is ensuring that all employees \u2014 not just the exciting, colorful thinkers \u2014 are valued, celebrated for what they contribute to the company, its products and its culture. Why even draw the line between creative and non-creative? Surface effects shouldn\u2019t be valued over work like engineering \u2014 arguably some of the most exciting and creative work that our age has produced. By focusing too much on creativity, managers could very well find themselves with a workplace full of creative sound and fury, implementing nothing.<\/span><\/p>\n Featured Image: Ivelin Radkov<\/a>\/Shutterstock<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Creativity is a serious investment<\/h2>\n
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\u201cBohemians\u201d don\u2019t pay the bills<\/h2>\n
Creativity requires control<\/h2>\n
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Today’s creative workplaces work hard to obscure the uncreative labor that makes them run. While “creativity” is presented as the panacea for our overly cubicled society, this often leads to a narrow-minded focus on the stuff that dreams are made of — to the detriment of those keeping the company afloat. Read More<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/img><\/a>
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