Jo Middleton investigates how to maintain creativity in the workplace
Do you ever find that it’s easier to feel creative when the sun is shining and the days are long? With the cold weather, carb cravings and credit card bills conspiring to sap the joy and the creativity from daily life, exactly how do you stay inspired at work in the winter months?
Many people, particularly in the creative industries, subscribe to the idea that in order to be creative you need an office full of bean bags, quirky cushions and ping pong tables. But can you really force creativity like this? Fifty years ago our working environments were far less colourful and yet marketing professionals still managed to produce innovative campaigns. If you don’t work at Google then, how can you stay creative without necessarily sliding to your bean bag desk every day?
A change is as good as a rest
If you’re feeling frustrated and need a fresh take on something, a simple change of scenery is an easy first step. Getting away from your desk, taking a walk, or reorganising your workspace needn’t take hours but can help give a quick, new perspective on things.
“A change of scenery somehow inspires and makes the mind sharper,” says Rob Pollard, managing director of marketing agency Lightbox. “This can be somewhere as simple as a quirky cafe with different decor, imagery and colours which somehow provide creativity.”
As 20th century philosopher Walter Benjamin in The Writer’s Technique in Thirteen Theses, says: “Do not write the conclusion of a work in your familiar study. You would not find the necessary courage there.”
Pick your team
As well as your physical environment, the people you surround yourself with can also have a huge impact on your work. When hiring, think carefully about the kind of skills you need and the type of person who would complement the existing team. Are you interested for example in specific technical abilities or is it more important to recruit individuals with innovative or creative approaches to work?
Tim LeRoy, marketing manager for IT company Novatech, says: “I have a small inhouse creative team and we went for people with real artistic and creative skill and didn’t worry too much about how ace they were at Indesign or Photoshop. Our photographer and film-maker was previously working for the alternative music mag RockSound. He brought a wonderful indie sensibility and a passion for film and photography, which has brought a very fresh and individual quality to our corporate look.”
Inspiration from your industry
We all like a day away from the office sometimes, but how do you know which events are really worth going to and which are going to be yet another uninspiring conference in a bland, faceless hotel?
Kathleen Saxton, CEO of Lighthouse Company and co-producer of Advertising Week Europe, believes we’re blessed in the industry at the moment with a huge range of inspiring options. “Any marketer these days needs to be so much smarter and braver about the way they engage with their clients,” says Saxton, “especially in the B2B world. We can look to some of the best pioneers in this space, when we look at Google with its incredible venues and speakers, TED and its access to the brightest brains, Wired and its window into the future and Unilever’s creative, content and innovation days. If you’re looking for inspiration, get to any of these, it’s worth the ticket price.”
Get physical
We tend to assume that being creative is all about engaging our minds, but how differently might you look at things if you switched it around and put your body to work instead? Getting involved in a physical activity, whether it be starting up a work sports team or embarking on a sponsored trek, wakes up different parts of your brain and is great for team building too.
“I always find that getting out of the office and having some fun fires the creative juices,” says Pollard. “The excitement of an activity like Go Ape and the team bond it creates encourages team members to bounce off each other when it comes to marketing campaign ideas.
“Sometimes we’ve taken a brainstorm into an empty space in the warehouse and scribbled ideas on the top of packing cases,” says LeRoy, “but getting outside is best. Last spring I took the whole team deep into the Sussex woods for the day; we built a fire and came up with a huge campaign complete with sales tools, messaging and execution ideas. It was the most productive meeting we’ve ever had.”
Mix things up
We know that a change of scenery can be good for creativity, but there is more to mixing things up than just going to sit at a different desk or bringing in a pot plant.
Vikki Morgan is head of social at TMW, an intelligent influence agency that’s part of the Creston group. “The key,” says Morgan, “is to mix things up and balance the practicalities of needing to be in the office, with recognising that a change of scenery is refreshing to the mind. Off-sites, training courses, even just getting out of the office to do a meeting over coffee – these are all vital to not getting caught in the same mind set.”
Think too not just about mixing up your surroundings, but also the people you are working with. It’s easy within a creative team to fall into that trap of thinking you are the only people who can come up with creative ideas, but look around you – your organisation is stuffed full of people who know your market and your clients.
Paul Everett, director of marketing strategy at The Marketing Practice agrees: “Some of our most successful campaigns originated with ideas from people in our data, inside sales and client services teams. Getting representatives together from the teams who will be working on a campaign is a great way to inject fresh thinking.”
Be passionate
Increasing emphasis nowadays is put on the importance of employee wellbeing and there is plenty of research showing the link between overall happiness levels at work and productivity. The University of Warwick’s Economic Research Institute for instance discovered that happier workers were 12 per cent more productive.
It isn’t necessarily a good thing, however, to be in a permanent state of relaxed bliss if you are trying to think creatively. Everett agrees happiness is important, but highlights, too, the value of any sort of highly passionate emotion. “Anger can also spark some strong creative thoughts,” says Everett, “as in the desire to prove someone wrong and show that a particular approach is the right way to do something.”
It’s probably not a good idea to go around deliberately irritating your team in the hope of firing up some creative spirit, but the next time you feel angry about something, why not see if you can turn that strength of feeling into a strong new idea?
Wherever you look for your inspiration, remember that creativity isn’t just something for special occasions – try to incorporate new and unusual ways of thinking and working into your everyday life and you’ll reap the benefits long term.
