Smart Creatives and 5 Ways to Keep Them

Earlier this month, Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman at Google, published something on Slideshare that made my heart beat faster than usual. It was not a research report, nor a business education book, but something much more powerful --- an insight into how Google ensures its profitability and sustainability for the future. Acknowledging the fast pace of the modern-day world, instability and dependency on human capital, Eric explains how "smart creatives" bring innovation and fluidity into the organization. Go ahead and check his presentation:

How Google Works from Eric Schmidt

So, here's Eric's formula:

TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE + BUSINESS EXPERTISE + CREATIVITY

=

SMART CREATIVES

I have come up with 5 ideas on helping the smart creatives thrive and stay with the company longer.

1. Cross-pollinate.

• Innovation comes from combination. Instead of encouraging silos, make sure that employees from different departments, geographies, business units, etc. share openly and try things out together. Make diversity work. Collaboration should not be a value on the wall but a way that the organization thinks and lives.

2. Do not underestimate deep expertise.

• It is a natural tendency to spend money and other resources on developing broad professionals (think MBAs). Fair enough: growing general managers for your business is a dire need and it will be even more acute in the future. Yet, balance investment into Hi-Potentials with that into High-Professionals. Technical knowledge does not appear out of thin air: it needs to be cultivated, retained, transferred, taught. You need it to create really great products (think Apple). 

3. Reward honest mistakes.

• Honest mistake does not equal failure. It means that you have tried and learnt. It means that your brain has worked in a new way, since, had you been following the instructions, you would not have made that mistake. Yes, well-done, you have tried novel methods! One never knows which idea will be the next Uber or Netflix. 

4. Teach coping with failure.

• Success lies not in avoiding failures, but in quick recovery after something bad has happened. Encourage people to try. Make sure they learn the lessons and move on. See the previous point. 

5. Change the business for the talent you need, not vice versa.

• As Daniel Pink said in his book A Whole New Mind, unless you work with the right side of your brain, soon your job will not only be outsourced, it will be automated. Computers can follow algorithms, but true creativity and innovation comes from humans. Those skills will become more and more valuable. Those professionals will be less and less loyal. So, don't try to hold them to fit your company, as they'll flee places where they don't feel at home, but rather change your workplace to attract and keep the smart creatives.

Luxury Calling

What is luxury: flying business class or flying a private jet?



This question did not appear in my head all of a sudden. I've just returned from a master class in Fashion, Luxury and Creative Venture Design by María Eugenia Girón, a profession from IE Business School, who came to Moscow to meet with prospective students and alumni among other important things. I took her entire course earlier this year, and still I was not disappointed: new examples, fresh looks of the materials - the fashion industry is moving rapidly and it is moving rapidly in the cyber-direction; that's one important takeaway from me. María Eugenia said today that life is too long to live it without passion, and it is so true about the fashion & luxury industry: if it's not in your heart, you won't be able to be a success there. You might want to check out these posts on jobs in luxury:

• HR in the Luxury Industry
• Future of the Jobs in Luxury, Fashion and Design

And here the key notes that I took from today's session (I'm sorry, I'm too tired to arrange them in logical order and make look pretty :)

• Sixpocket children generation is emerging: they get money from their parents and both pairs of their grandparents;
• Creativity at the right time is the innovation in the fashion industry;
• Most rapidly growing luxury areas in Russia are food & wine;
• Facebook is now the second biggest country in the world;
• 70% of all internet sales of luxury products are done at full price;
• Polarization: flying Ryanair to stay ay Four Seasons;
• Move from conspicuous consumption to authenticity;
• The luxury consumer is always looking for the best. And the best is related to the values.
• Loro Piana and Ermenegildo Zegna put together sustainability programs to preserve vicuñas in Peru (http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/oct/01/ethicalfashion.vicuna.wool);
• Tiffany stopped using coral in their jewellery. Drop in the ocean in terms of coral reef preservation but huge visibility for the company.
• Ethical mining of diamonds is sexy: moving from B2C to B2B now.
• Elvis & Kresse: rubbish to fashion.

At the end of the master class, María Eugenia left us with a wise thought that I also liked immensely:

The best moment to plant a tree is 20 years ago, but the second best is now.

How's Beethoven's 5th similar to an iPod?

I don't think that there will be anyone over the age of 5 who would not recognize these two and a half bars of music when they hear them. The immortal Beethoven's 5th Symphony. For those of you who need some recollection, here it is (before we progress any further) conducted by spectacular Gustavo Dudamel:



When I got a home assignment to listen to Beethoven's 5th for the next class in our Connections & Inflections Course (can you believe that title is for real?!?!), amusement was too mild of a word to describe my feelings. Listening to music over the MBA course is a luxury one can hardly afford, leaving alone doing that for a grade. The following class was about innovation: how companies innovate, what is innovation exactly, can we agree on a common definition of innovation, etc., and the professor introduced this whole topic by comparing Beethoven's 5th with Mozart's 38, 39, 40, 41 and Haydn's 79, 80. They are similar in their form, but so radically different in composition. The classical sonata form is preserved:

... but the whole piece is so much more economical, shorter, contained... The first 3 bars is not a melody at all, it is rather a gesture - a gesture that gets repeated regularly throughout the entire piece - Beethoven never lets go: it's an experience of rhythm and we are manipulated by it.

So what made Beethoven break off the tradition set by the father of symphony (Haydn) and continued by the genius of Mozart? We claim that it is an example of disruptive innovation: finding a new way and deviating from the establishment. The language of Mozart and Haydn was exhausted and novelty was called for, even though this novelty came in the same old sonata form.

This is where the most interesting part comes: the iPod. Coming in the same old form of a cell phone, it has a totally new look and feel inside and largely performs a different function. It is another example of disruptive innovation (as contrasted to incremental innovation).

Humans cannot grow constantly: there is a limit to our development - is it the same for organizations? What model is most appropriate to describe innovation? We discussed the Sequoia Model: you must grow as high and as quickly as possible and stop once you are above everyone else in order to survive and reproduce. You cannot be too low, otherwise you won't get enough sunlight and attention; you cannot be too high, as there are dangers of breaking down or being hit by a lightening. So basically growth is locked in its essence - only organic and natural growth is good for you. Think how many companies "grew" themselves into oblivion...

Yet... tumor is also a growth, no?

HR in the Luxury Industry

Yesterday I attended a conference at IE Business School boasting a loud name of "Career Development and Management in Fashion, Cosmetics and Luxury Industries". The timing of the event could not have been worse: right in the middle of my exam week and one day before the most feared Advanced Financial Management exam. Still, as curious as I am, I decided to attend, and my expectations did not tumble short. Apart from an insight into an industry which I had not had much dealings with apart from being a loyal customer, it was a great networking opportunity. Thanks to coffee breaks, workshops, round tables and the cocktail party at the end, we got a chance to rub shoulders with CEOs and HR VPs of such companies as LV, Carrera y Carrera, Loewe, Diageo, Pernod Ricard and the like. Quite a fascinating crowd, really, and refreshing as well. I caught myself musing over the peculiar combination of business savvy with an appreciation for what is beautiful to the extent of being useless from the layman's perspective.

I will just share with you the main points that I took away from the conference, in no order of importance whatsoever:

• You must be passionate about the world of luxury. People there work for the idea and the feeling of belonging to the domain of gods, not the money. Luxury pays poorly, worse than FMCG. Luxury brands compensate with a "psychological salary" of being proud for working for that particular brand.
• Cognitive dissonance: selling goods worth thousands of euros while getting very modest wages: potential entrants need to be well-aware and prepared for this step.
• What they are looking for: creativity, innovation management, strategic capacity, brand management, building shared vision.
• Where will an MBA candidate most likely start? Retail. Fresh business school graduates should not expect doing big growth projects - otherwise current CEOs will be left without jobs.
• What value will you create working in the Luxury industry? A dream. You will give your customers a dream they will be living.

Carlos Delso, General Director of Louis Vuitton for Spain, Portugal and Marocco shared his four rules for success in the industry:

1. Set yourself stretched goals
2. Innovate to achieve them
3. Know yourself a bit better each day
4. Love your neighbor

Those might sound trite and common sense, but they are particularly important in an environment where dreams are "made and used and wasted". Otherwise, how will you be better than the others in dream creation?

Thus, if you are considering to enter the world of glamor, think well about the the first question you are likely to be asked at the interview (any interview, in fact):

Why are you here?

Creative Resumes

A couple of nice companies are coming to the campus a week from now, and I was thinking of making something special for a couple of them, like - preparing a creative resume. After all, I need to stand out from the crowd of job-eager throat-cutting crowd of mighty MBA candidates. The question is how far do I want to stand out.

I started searching for creative resume templates, and stumbled across this web page: http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/05/30-artistic-and-creative-resumes/. Some of those are truly awesome and would definitely catch my eye if I were hiring. 

Has anyone had experience with people sending you out-of-the-way resumes? How did you go about it?

Friday fun: of Sport and Brain

As Haruki Murakami said in one of his books, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, "Muscles are hard to get and easy to lose. Fat is easy to get and hard to lose." Same logic applies to mind exercise and IQ. It is hard to get smarter and easy to slip on the way and yield to laziness and bad habits. Undoubtedly, we can go into lengthy discussions about different types of knowledge and that it's not that bad, but quoting the same book again, "The most important thing we ever learn at school is the fact that the most important things can't be learned at school." Who teaches you determination or will power? Resilience? Humility? Forgiveness?

I started going to the gym last week again. After four years of going to the gym 5-6 times a week, a 4-month break was grueling. My body was crying at first needing its daily fix of exercise, but then it sort of reconciled to the fact that it's not getting any. The battle in my mind was even more fierce: how do I balance the MBA pressure with the need of regular exercise? After my short vacation trip to the South of France beaches I could not postpone joining a local Madrid gym any longer. Since then I have been good with attendance and intensity of exercise. Surely, the muscles were complaining at the beginning but now I am getting back into the routine again. After all, PAIN IS INEVITABLE BUT SUFFERING IS OPTIONAL.

One of the reasons I decided to join IE Business School was to get back into the mind gym routine - precisely the same withdrawal symptoms as with physical exercise. I am not saying that when you work there is no intellectual stimulation, but the levels of abstraction are quite different. I was managing to compensate the lack of academic load as much as I could with books, short term courses and learned talks with people of science, but I did not feel it was enough. Morale of this story is: PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE! Every day, in every situation - your body, mind and soul must be working - stagnation is death. On this inspirational note I am leaving you with a couple of suggestions for intellectual stimulation when you have nothing better to do :)

 

Best "Out of Office Automatic e-mail Replies"

Somewhat related to the discussion started yesterday about adding biblical verses to your professional e-mail signature, I am always fascinated about what people put in their out-of-office replies (if any). I mean - it's always irritating to get one, but it is even more irritating not to get anything!!! So how can we get this level of irritation a few notches down? Getting a reply within just a couple of seconds gets you excited only for a jiffy until you realize that you have just be dinged by a robot.


Most of out-of-offices are plain and boring as hell. "Hello... i am out of office.. bla bla... back bla bla... contact bla bla. Get out of my life". Come on, people, where is your creativity? By creativity I do not mean going overboard. The examples I have below is overstepping the line somewhat, but you can always structure your out-of-office in a way, which is humorous, professional and makes the sender smile, rather than sulk in frustration on account of your two-week vacation.


I have a couple of those in store, but first I would be interested in anyone would come up with unusual ideas:)

 

Best Out of Office Automatic e-mails Replies

1. I am currently out of the office at a job interview and will reply to you if I fail to get the position. Please be prepared for my mood.
  
2. You are receiving this automatic notification, because I am out of the office. If I was in, chances are you wouldn't have received anything at all.

3. Sorry to have missed you, but I'm at the doctor's having my brain and heart removed so I can be promoted to our management team.
  
4. I will be unable to delete all the emails you send me until I return from vacation. Please be patient, and your mail will be deleted in the order it was received.
  
5. Thank you for your email. Your credit card has been charged $5.99 for the first 10 words and $1.99 for each additional word in your message.
  
6. The email server is unable to verify your server connection. Your message has not been delivered. Please restart your computer and try sending again. 

(The beauty of this is that when you return, you can see who did this over and over and over....)
  
7. Thank you for your message, which has been added to a queuing system. You are currently in 352nd place, and can expect to receive a reply in approximately 19 weeks.

 8. Hi, I'm thinking about what you've just sent me. Please wait by your PC for my response.
  
9. I've run away to join a different circus.
  
10. I will be out of the office for the next two weeks for medical reasons. When I return, please refer to me as 'Lucille' instead of Steve. 

how creative are we?

What is the source of creativity? Are you born with a talent to make things others cannot even conceive of? Can this skill be developed? There are many training offerings on the market - Creativity Management, Mastering Your Creative Skills, etc - but how effective are they? For some reason, there is still only one Da Vinci and Kahlo in history.

However, if you take two objects (ideas, whatever) and put them together, that is already functionally and conceptually a new thing. You have created it. Does it make you creative? When you cross-breed Mr Bean and Avatar, the result can be actually beneficial for both...

I am sure there was someone who thought of the idea and someone who has brought it to life. So creative functions do not need to be present necessarily only in one person. It can be two. Or a group. Or a country. We speak about creative nations. Russia is one of them. Which other nation will think of cooking soup in a hotel sink with nothing but a length of an electric cord and a razor blade?

Lynda Gratton claims that innovation comes through combination. The more you are trying to break out of the limits of the conventional, the easier it becomes to innovate. Boundary-spanners go to the top! Networks connect millions! Question of the next decade will be: How Do We Develop Fluid Identity?