Finding Mnemosyne
Why managing creatives is not about being creative
I once read an interview with Andrew Stanton, a director at animation powerhouse Pixar who supervised the creation of classic films like Finding Nemo and Wall-E. Seeded among the various anecdotes was a tiny maxim that has stuck in my mind ever since. It’s not a famous quote. You can’t source it online, but it’s still something that crosses my mind almost every day:
“Your job as a director is not to have the best idea, but to foster the best idea” — Andrew Stanton
You become good at your job by doing things in the best way, not by inventing the best way to do things. Therefore, as a leader, the ability to recognise a good idea and adapt it to your situation is more important than having good ideas of your own. This applies just as much to managing any creative project as it does to film direction.
Don Draper’s ego
Returning to one of my favourite subjects — the TV show Mad Men — there is an episode where iconic creative director Don Draper’s advertising team comes up with one idea and he comes up with another. He likes his idea; they don’t. They agree to pitch both to the client, but Don leaves his team’s mock-ups in the taxi. As it turns out, the client loves the pitch, but Don’s staff hate his guts.
It may have worked out for the company, but it’s terrible management. Even coming from an advertising genius like Don Draper, doing everything yourself is not a long-term strategy. Having your team there simply to help you carry your over-inflated head around is always going to be less effective than running a group of capable, creative people working together. Working collaboratively, your team learn, improve and feel motivated and challenged, therefore staying with your company and not running off to success elsewhere like Don’s protégé, Peggy Olson.
Of course, that means managing the expectations of your ego. There’s a feeling for most people that being a manager means being the hero; the one who earns every victory and reaps every reward. In fact, being a good manager means letting your team win all the battles while you take responsibility for their failures.
As Stanton said, your job as a creative lead is to act as a filter for your team’s ideas. If they have a bad one — we all do — you don’t just fix the work yourself, you go back to them and say “try again”. If they have a good idea, you need to find them all the resources, help and support they need to fulfil the potential of that idea, then make sure they get all the praise for the result. As Don said of management later in the series:
“Do you ever feel like there’s less to do, but more to think about?” — Don Draper
Being in charge of a creative team means doing less creative work, but spending your time creating the best environment for your team to make their best art. This, in itself, brings challenges. Many a creative director winds up wondering what to do with themselves, since all of their creatives are producing all the content. There’s a temptation for the CD to kibitz the work of their team.
The CD’s job is to act as a sounding board. To provide feedback on the work and guide the writers to improve it; not to try to tinker with it themselves. When a CD acts like Don — as if they always know better than their team — it leads to a terrible working environment. A creative’s job is to produce quality work that satisfies their brief, not to satisfy their manager; or, to put it another way:
“I’ve learned that any fool can write a bad ad, but that it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one” — Leo Burnett
You should think of yourself as a teacher. You teach your student how to approach their homework, then let them do it and mark the results. You don’t dictate the answers to them, nor do you redraft their work when they hand it in. If you do, they’ll never learn anything.
This is a far better creative process, because in creative work, there are no right answers; or rather, there are many right answers, some more right than others. There are, however, numerous answers that are definitively wrong. Accepting right answers, even when different to the one you would give, and bouncing back wrong answers is a creative director’s job.
Mnemosyne
In Greek myth, Zeus, legendary philanderer who would become king of the gods, dallies with Mnemosyne, an elder goddess who embodies knowledge and memory. The products of their union are nine beings known as the Muses — goddesses whose purpose is to inspire mortals to create great art.
The metaphor here is pretty clear:
authority + knowledge = creativity
As creative director, you manage the team into a position to do their best work, give them the benefit of your extensive knowledge of the creative process and then let them create great content. To do that, you need to inspire your team’s trust and respect and you need to know your shit.
To become a great leader, you need to do pretty much the opposite of what Don Draper does. In the show, he runs his team by the power of his knowledge — he’s such a good creative that they all wants to be like him, even though he’s a pretty-terrible manager. What Don doesn’t understand is that you can’t manage by force. A leader is a servant of their team, not the other way around. If you want authority, you need to get it by unanimous consent. People trust the best leaders in their choices, even when they disagree with them.
In practice
For example, I recently moved my team over to a new messaging system, which I believed had advantages over the old. After using it for a while, the team didn’t like it and felt it was just another browser window they needed to have open. As such, I returned to the old system. Likewise, we recently switched over to a Scrum process. There were some teething problems, but my team liked working that way, so we stuck with it and it’s been a success.
When I correct what I see as a grammar error in some of their work, I encourage them to argue the toss with me if they disagree. At worst, they learn something new; at best, they persuade me that I was wrong and we go forward with the correct text.
Another time, one of my team mentioned a vague idea they had. I encouraged them to write a proposal. I assessed it, fed back and then encouraged them to iterate on it. I then roped in a few other people to cost and analyse it. When it is ready, I will take it to the business and ensure everyone is aware it was my report’s idea.
Manage by consent and offer support and advice, and your team will develop and grow. That’s how a manager can add value to their business. Of course, it isn’t an infinite process.
“Who’s the more foolish? The fool or the fool who follows him?” — Obi-wan Kenobi
Rumours persist that Alec Guinness wanted to be written out of the Star Wars films as he hated being in the first. George Lucas, however, maintains that he wrote Guinness out as, once his character, Obi-wan Kenobi had set our hero, Luke Skywalker on the path to fulfilling his destiny, he had nothing else to do in the story.
Leadership is all about helping those you lead to achieve their potential. Essentially, it’s a process of rendering yourself redundant. Your goal is to develop your team to the point where they can function perfectly without you. Once you have, it’s time to either find new team members to mentor or move on to other challenges. Either way, only when you’re obsolete can consider yourself a successful manager.
