Speaker 1: Early in my career, I worked with a number of organizations that had fantastic leaders, visionary leaders, but they had such a horrible culture within the organization, I knew those visionary ideas would never happen. Creating a creative culture, an inspiring culture, a productive culture in your organization is absolutely critical. If you're not in one of those or you want to know how to make that happen or go to the next level with your culture in your organization, today, this episode is for you. Hi, I'm Phil Cook, and thank you so much for being a part of this community, being a part of these episodes, listening, sharing, rating. It means, it just means so much. I really thank you for doing it, and remember, our hub of everything we do is philcook.com, my blog. You can sign up there and get my regular monthly newsletter. If you sign up there, it's absolutely free, and I'll mail you the top five blog posts every week, and it's really interesting the stuff you'll find on there. I get such incredible responses from people because if you're a communicator, if you've got a message you want to share with the world, this is the information you need to know. I'll tell you, today, we're going to be talking about building a creative culture. Early in my career, as I said, I worked with a number of organizations that had a horrible culture, and it made me aware early on that it doesn't just take visionary ideas, it doesn't take productivity, it doesn't take original thinking, it takes an organization that has a culture that can nurture, build, and execute creative ideas, and we're going to talk about that today. A few months ago, I was asked to speak at a conference for Sam Chan, my old friend. I tell you, he's a mentor, he's a partner, he's just a brilliant, brilliant guy, and he'd just finished his new book, New Thinking, New Future, and that book was really about how we need to change our thinking if we're going to redirect our future and come to a better outcome, and he asked me to talk about this issue of building a creative culture because without it, you're really never going to achieve your destiny, your purpose, the future that you have in mind, so what I want to do is I want to pull that talk and share it with you today because it's so important. I think it'll give you a lot of interesting ideas about how you can transform your organization and turn it into something that just is really quite amazing. So, let's go back a few months to that talk that I did for the Sam Chan conference. His book, New Thinking, New Future, it's an incredible book, and I encourage you to go get it, but let's go back to my talk about building a creative culture. I want to talk about five key things that I believe are absolutely critical to creating a creative culture in your organization because if you can't think about the future, if you can't position yourself there, you're ultimately going to fail. So, let's talk about five key things. Number one, you need to create stability. One thing that creative people need is stability. You can't threaten them with being fired if this project doesn't go well. You can't constantly be talking about, we're going to fall apart if this idea doesn't work. You can't push them on the edge in that way because stability is really the key for creative ideas to happen, and that's very important in your organization and with your team. The second thing I would encourage you to do is be flexible. You know, creative people are not necessarily like the same people in the accounting department or the people in the sales department or the people in the youth group. Creative people are a little bit different, and sometimes they're night people, sometimes they're morning people. I've had many situations where a creative person who had enormous talent just drove everybody in the organization nuts, so I helped him move away, get in an office in another part of the building, give him different hours. If he wanted to come in in the middle of the night, fine, let him do it. If that's when he works best, be open to that, and you'll get amazing creative work out of that person, so just be flexible. The third thing I would say is get them the tools they need. You know, it's one thing that we often think, you know, we're on a budget, particularly if you're a nonprofit or a ministry organization, we're on a budget, we really can't get that new computer, we can't get that new video camera, but the truth is, remember, they're telling your story to the world. Those are tools that they need to tell that story more effectively, so when it comes to design, when it comes to video production, when it comes to digital media, all these kind of areas, get them the tools they need as far as you possibly can. Help them create the tools so they can create remarkable work to tell your story out there. You're just holding them back. You're just holding them back if you can't give them the tools they need. The fourth thing I would say that I think is incredibly important is understand the difference between organizational structure and communication structure. Let me just take a minute with this because I think it's so, just very, very important. Organizational structure is great. I'm all for it. Having the hierarchy who reports to who, president, vice president, executive director, whatever positions you have, that organizational hierarchy matters. However, when it comes to communication, I'm a fan of throwing that out the window. I think that creative people need the ability to communicate with whoever they need to communicate to get the job done. Remember that. Think about that for just a minute. For instance, if you have a lowly designer, if that designer needs to go to the president of the company or needs to go to a person in another department to force that designer to go through this incredible ritual of hierarchies and go through this person to get to that person to get to that person, that idea, that question is never going to get answered. The resources he needs is never going to happen. So understand that your hierarchy is important. I understand why reporting to different people matters. I think we need to report to different people. However, however, it's also important to understand in the world of communication, in the world of creativity, in the world of media, we need to be a much more fluid organization. Let your creative people reach out to the people they need to get to, to get their questions answered. Otherwise it will just hold you back. And the last thing I would say is number five, give them credit. Let me tell you something. It sounds so simple and yet you have no idea how many leaders will take the credit for the work that their creative team does. And when you do that, it's such a, oh man, it's such a negative emotional attitude and feeling and culture that creates, I'll tell you what, if you let them have credit for their ideas, they will work, they'll just blow up with ideas. I mean, they'll just grow. They'll do amazing things. Let them have that credit. So many leaders, particularly middle managers and other leaders, even the presidents of organizations tend to take the credit when the creative team does it. I remember working at one organization and completely, our team came in, completely turned around a national media ministry. It was really remarkable the change that happened. Their response increased, their attendance increased, their viewership increased. Just every aspect of their media outreach was transformed and yet that leader would get up on the stage at their big live events and take credit for it. Never mentioned the team, never mentioned the designers, never mentioned the writers, never mentioned the creative people that actually made the change happen and actually had to argue with that leader for us to institute these changes. That leader fought the changes, but when they turned out so well, suddenly there was that leader to take credit for those ideas. Let me tell you something. If you let them take credit, if you let them take credit for it, they will actually knock themselves out to make you look great. Let me give you just a final bonus thing I think is so important is when it comes to creative people, don't be afraid to push them out of their comfort zone. Creative people will tend to say, you know what? Leave me alone. I'll do this on my own time. Let me give you a secret little, kind of a dirty little secret in the creative world. Creative people love deadlines. We love deadlines. In fact, I joke that I don't even start a project until I see the deadline in the distance coming my way. I need the terror of the end of the runway approaching before I even get really excited about the project. Don't be afraid to give creative people deadlines. The truth is it's like a compass. It's like a map. When you give them deadlines, hard deadlines, and by the way, don't let them fudge on the deadlines. Love the deadlines, rock solid, but giving them deadlines gives them a map. It gives them an understanding of when I need to deliver, what I need to prepare, how I need to process this, how to create a schedule. Don't be afraid to give deadlines. In fact, when it comes to pushing them out of the creative comfort zone, inspire them. Challenge them. Give them ideas. Let them run. In fact, don't just come into your creative department and tell them what you want. Come into your creative department and tell you what you feel like God's called you to do or what you feel like your purpose is or what you feel like the mission should be. Let them come up with ideas for making it happen. If you can do that, it will inspire them to do really amazing things for your organization. I can't tell you really how important building a creative culture is in your organization. I don't care if you have three people or you have 3,000 people or 30,000 people in your organization. Whether it be a business, a nonprofit, a church, a ministry organization, whatever it is, I'll tell you creative culture is what allows brilliant ideas to happen. Certainly, if you're the leader, you don't have to carry everything on your back. By building an incredibly creative and productive and inspiring culture, you're bringing along a team that will really help carry the load and take it to the next level. Thanks for being a part of this episode. Thanks for sharing it. Thanks for rating it. I'll tell you, that really does help us move up in the ratings and get seen by more and more people. I encourage you, don't forget my book, Maximize Your Influence. I'd encourage you to get this book. If you want to know how the digital revolution can transform your future, this is the book to have. It's really a reference. How to speak to a digital generation, how to use video more effectively, social media, your website, what's its purpose, how do you really maximize it. Even publishing, we get into so many areas because the digital culture has changed everything. Many people think this digital revolution is more significant than the print revolution. So, order the book, Maximize Your Influence. I think it'll be a big difference for you and remember also I said in the opening, subscribe to my weekly newsletter. Just go to philcook.com, go up to the subscription box up there, you can subscribe and we'll send you the top five blog posts every week in your email, absolutely free. Just be an easy way to check on what I'm doing and how I'm thinking and what I'm writing about. It's so very important. So, thank you. We'll find you at the next episode. Bye.