Managing Creative People: Lessons for Leadership in the Ideas Economy [Hardcover]

Having read all of the literature I can afford to buy on Innovation and Creativity over a period of decades, so much of which is utter tosh (though sincerly well-meant tosh, in most cases) I can honestly say this book is really very good.

It draws up a framework for managing creative people that is not only very lucid, but also exceptionally useful. Coming from a background of R&D and Software Engineering Management, where Agile methods are all the rage, this book helped me understand what does and doesn't work about Agile methods and why that should be. It also, for me at least, dovetails nicely with books like Kandinsky's classic "Concerning the Spiritual in Art" or Hofmann's "Search for the Real", in explaining the essential differences between craft and fine art, which for me told me all about what went wrong in the Bauhaus, or at least wasn't fully realised.

Where I disagree with the author is in his denigration of the sincerity of the practitioners of Creative Problem Solving techniques. My view is that they didn't really know any better and that these techniques can be useful, if only to wring what creativity there is from the ordinary mortal who may lack the confidence to express it. But like the author intimates, no amount of creative problem solving is going to make you more creative. That would be like expecting training to turn right handers into proficient left handers. Ain't gonna happen.

What the author's amusing and somewhat forthright style does is illuminate some uncomfortable truths about toxic work environments and white collar sweat shops that currently attempt to use creativity like it was some kind of commodity (baked beans, not statues, in the author's words).

I really liked the chapter on 5th Exit companies and the Maze. Buy the book, if you have any interest at all in making new things happen, be you a Donatello, a Cosimo or just curious.

Highly recommended and readable in a single sitting, as was my reading.

On the shoulders of brilliant thinkers before him, and often running counter to their positions, Gordon Torr, in his book "Managing Creative People", has brought forward, in his own refreshing, thought provoking and humorous writing style, some compelling new ideas about the nature of human creativity and how to make it work in organizational structures such as businesses, government agencies and non-profit groups.

It's hard to do justice to this book in a review... but after reading it I can say with conviction that if you work with or manage creative people, or you want to work with or manage creative people, then you should read it, perhaps several times, and take copious notes. I'm reading it for the second time and am catching a lot of valuable insight that I missed on the first go-around. Get ready for some ideas that will run counter to everything you've learned so far. As Dorothy said in the Wizard of Oz, "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."

Having worked in the design and advertising industry as a creative for most of my adult life, I have to say that I concur with Gordon's thesis that creativity and creative output has suffered greatly for the last 100 years or more. And it doesn't seem to be getting any better. One only has to look at the current creative output in almost any discipline, with few notable exceptions, to see how low the bar has been set. As Gordon points out in his book, the machine of the industrial revolution has ground up many of our creative workers into sausages and unless there is wide spread corporate, societal and governmental change I fear we will continue down this path for many years to come.

Interestingly, I've noticed similar or parallel arguments cropping up in other books and articles (the collective unconscious at work?). Seth Godin's Meatball Sundae, for instance, speaks of how many companies lack big ideas and innovation in their DNA because of their fear of changing the status quo. Other studies point out that companies using rigorous quality and performance standards such as Six Sigma and ISO 9000 can in some cases hamper the output of creative individuals hired to perform their magic (3M, for instance, after implementing Six Sigma principles, is returning to their famous "3M Way" and policy of allowing workers to spend 15% of their time on independent projects).

Some adjectives, phrases and words to that come to mind when reviewing this book: refreshing, thorough, exhaustive, humorous, enlightening, brilliant, scrupulous, disturbing, compelling, thought provoking, topical, counter to popular opinion, a call to action, just in time (hopefully).

It's a shame the publishers didn't call it what it is - The Suit's Guide to Massaging Creative Egos. But even then they would have missed the real point of this weirdly compelling joyride through the frontlines of the creative economy, which is that we get the culture we deserve. And it all hinges on the way we manage the aspirations of the compulsively creative individuals in our society and, more specifically, in creative-sector businesses like ad agencies, music companies, broadcasting, film, architecture, publishing - even in R&D. Torr rips into the lateral thinkers, the "we-thinkers", the brainstormers and the 360 degree bloviators, blasting a massively refreshing hole in contemporary management and leadership speak. Exhaustively researched and delightfully written, Managing Creative People will surely become the benchmark text in the increasingly fractious debate about how to plan for creative cities, creative societies and successful creative companies. Read it. Managing Creative People: Lessons for Leadership in the Ideas Economy