In this episode Matt Alder talks to Doug Shaw from What Goes Around
The importance of creativity in business is well documented, particularly when it comes to transformation and innovation. However what has become clear during my on-going research into recruiting innovation is that many companies struggle to think creatively.
My guest for this episode is Doug Shaw, an HR consultant with a particular focus on creativity and collaboration.
In the interview we discuss:
• Why you don’t have to be a creative business to think creatively
• Why creatively should be a coactive exercise rather than a coercive one
• The business outputs that creativity collaboration can drive
Doug also describes how companies can literally sketch their future into existence and give us his three key principles which can help companies to be more creative
Subscribe to this podcast in iTunes
Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for the podcast this week comes from my own company, Metashift. We live in an age of digital noise and distraction. Cutting through to connect and engage with your audience is a real challenge. Talent attraction is a focus for everyone. But how can you be sure you’re getting the attention necessary to persuade the right people to join your company? Metashift is a talent attention consultancy and we can help you optimize your talent attraction strategy to stand out and be heard. To find out more, go to www.talentattention.com or contact me directly on metashift.co.uk.
Matt Alder [00:01:01]:
This is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 30 of the Recruiting Future podcast. The importance of creativity in business is well documented, particularly when it comes to innovation. However, what’s become clear from my ongoing research into recruitment innovation is that many companies are struggling to think creatively. My guest this week is Doug Shaw. Doug is an HR consultant with a particular focus on creativity collaboration. In the interview, we discuss some of the ways he helps companies and teams be more creative at work.
Matt Alder [00:01:35]:
Hi everyone and welcome to another Recruiting Future podcast interview. I am buried deep in a meeting room in a particularly trendy area of London talking to the particularly trendy Doug Shaw. Hi, Doug, how are you?
Doug Shaw [00:01:51]:
Hi. I’m very well and as you say, super trendy. Excellent. Lovely to be here. Thank you.
Matt Alder [00:01:56]:
Good stuff. So, for those of you who don’t know Doug, Doug, could you just give us a quick sort of intro to you, a bit about your background and what you do now?
Doug Shaw [00:02:07]:
Sure. Thanks. So I’m a freelance consultant. I do a lot of facilitation work, particularly with large groups. I’m interested in helping people in and around organizations both cooperate and collaborate more effectively. I know they’re both very buzzword terms, but I’m interested in what makes people tick, how do you bring people together in order to co create better outcomes? And I’m also really fascinated in the convergence of what we might typically refer to as the business world and the art world.
Matt Alder [00:02:41]:
I think that’s really interesting because I’ve seen a lot of the stuff that you’ve done where art meets business meets creativity. And I think creativity is something that I’ve seen lots of businesses talk, know we must be creative.
Doug Shaw [00:02:57]:
And you see when people are talking.
Matt Alder [00:02:59]:
About skills for the future, creativity always seems to come up, come up really highly. You know, what are your, what are your views on it? Why is it useful? Why does it matter?
Doug Shaw [00:03:07]:
What.
Matt Alder [00:03:07]:
What are businesses doing? What’s your kind of experience of creativity meets business?
Doug Shaw [00:03:15]:
Great question. It’s quite often it’s a bit of a car crash. For reasons that I’m beginning to understand better. We seem to have this situation whereby organisations and people in organisations are very keen to tap in to people’s creativity. However they might choose to determine that is perhaps a subject for another day. But they’re very keen to access this creativity. And yet at the same time, they very often demonstrate behaviors which are highly likely to turn off the creative process in. In anyone’s mind. So we have a tendency to pass judgment very early on in any process. Often we’re very keen to measure the hell out of everything, whether it needs measuring or not. I think there’s a lot of fear of failure baked in, and I’m not one of these people who thinks that failure is the new black and it’s a really great thing to do, but it is an inevitable part of exploring different ways of working. So I think one of the things that really fascinates me when work meets art meets creativity is how do we create the time and space to, in the first instance, set the right mood and tone, if you like, and importantly, set it together. So it’s not about somebody coming in and saying, this is how we’re going to be. It’s about a group of people coming together and saying, this is how we would like to be together. And these are the kind of needs and wants and outcomes that we like to aim for. So it’s very much. I think it works much better when it’s a coactive process rather than a coercive one.
Matt Alder [00:04:59]:
That’s interesting. I think it’s interesting that you talk about it in terms of collective behavior. I mean, I’ve been in lots of businesses recently who have been lots of tech businesses who have been trying to be as achingly cool and trendy and creative as they can. And, you know, their staff can write on the walls and do all this kind of stuff, you know, is that.
Doug Shaw [00:05:24]:
What we’re talking about?
Matt Alder [00:05:25]:
Or is it, you know, is it something, you know, more fundamental, more useful than some of the gimmicks that we kind of see out there at the moment?
Doug Shaw [00:05:36]:
Truthfully, it’s probably a bit of both. I think one of the things that I’ve learned, or am learning, I’d like to think that I’m learning all the time, is that there’s a high degree of improvisation in pretty much everything we do. So we haven’t scripted this interview today. I don’t know what questions you’re going to ask me. You don’t know what responses I’m going to give. And that’s how we are all the time. I don’t mean improvisation in a theatrical or comedic context, but just generally. We are highly improvisational, both as individuals and as teams, and I find that really interesting. I think we’re really good at it. But at the same time, again, we often find ourselves in situations where we’re being encouraged to crave a level of certainty that is, frankly delusional and effectively impossible. Things are going on. So many things that go on in and around our working worlds and our lives are out with our control. But I think one of the things that’s really good about approaching these things from an explicitly improvisational context is it helps us get much more comfortable with that. And I think once we can get more comfortable with that, we can then begin to take advantage of what you might see as gimmicks. In other words, opportunities to make a mess on the wall. And what might we learn from that? And on the other side of the coin, maybe more formal parts of the process, if you like. Because I think there is a degree to which creativity. There’s a degree of process around it. And so understanding what that is, being confident that we’re operating in an environment where it’s okay to experiment with it, then means that you can bring all kinds of things to play in terms of how you’d like to look at the particular problem or opportunity that’s facing you differently.
Matt Alder [00:07:23]:
What are, you know, what do you think? What do you see as the.
Doug Shaw [00:07:29]:
I don’t really want to use this.
Matt Alder [00:07:30]:
Word in a creative discussion, but what have you seen as a kind of business output for this? So is it a. You know, is it about team building? Is it about generating ideas for the business? Is it a bit of both? Where does it kind of fit?
Doug Shaw [00:07:48]:
I think one of the things that really interests me is that if you can, Once you can set the appropriate mood and tone and expectation, then I think you can be really quite flexible and you can apply the creative process in order to support lots of different outcomes. So, for example, I see people exploring ways of. Again, so I’m going to use some language I’m not necessarily particularly comfortable with, but I know that people use parts of the creative process in order to explore a more kind of coaching type of culture where we’re trying to be more supportive to each other in work rather than more directional. If you like, which is, I don’t think, a particularly helpful way to work. So trying to kind of coach and support each other. I see it used very often in terms of exploring ideas, things like setting a strategy and a vision. So a very simple alternative to brainstorming and coming up with a bazillion bullet points might be to invite a team of people to have a conversation about what good looks like for them for the next 12, 18 months and draw it. Just get us great big roll of lining paper out and just, you know, map it, literally map it out. It’s not about the quality of the output in an artistic context. I think one of the things that puts people off drawing and doodling is this notion that it’s not good enough. So to my mind, it’s not about trying. We’re not here trying to create something that’s going to hang on the walls in the Royal Academy. It’s more a case of just kind of relaxing and sketching our future into existence, if you like.
Matt Alder [00:09:28]:
I read. I’m always interested in terms of companies who just do this brilliantly and, you know, do this almost naturally. And I read Creativity Inc. The book about Pixar, which was kind of fascinating about creativity as a, you know, as a process and how incredibly successful that they’ve. They’ve been. And there’s obviously a lot of, you know, technology in there as in there as well, which is particularly interesting to me as well. What companies do you admire in terms of companies that are creatives? They’re not necessarily companies like Pixar that have a creative product, but companies that are creative in their approach or their mindset. Who out there does this?
Doug Shaw [00:10:14]:
Well, I’d second the recommendation for the book Creativity Inc. By Ed Catmull. I think.
Matt Alder [00:10:21]:
Yes, that’s right.
Doug Shaw [00:10:22]:
And it is, well, well, well, a read. And for all of you too long didn’t read Merchants. There’s even a lovely little synopsis at the back that gives you the kind of bullet pointed version, but it’s a super story. I think it’s really, it’s a bit of a challenging question for me to respond to. I have seen groups of people within all manner of organizations surprise themselves to the extent at which they are able to apply the creative process to make work better. But also I think one really important element of working like this is actually the simple process of just getting to know one another better too. I think that when we’re trying out different ways of work and when we’re exploring new ways of learning, I mean, all of that stuff really has a very heavy social aspect to it in terms of the environment, the context that we’re in and the kind of people that we’re with. So I don’t. I work with. I’m doing some really interesting work with a group of people in Crossrail, which is a. For those people not in the uk Listening to this is a big civil infrastructure project in London which relies on lots of cooperation and collaboration. And I’m impressed with some of the people I’m working with and the degree to which they’re willing to explore different ways of working. I’ve also had a relationship with various offices in the Thomson Reuters group over past few years, and I’ve worked with them in the Far East, I’ve worked with them in the States and I’ve worked them over here. And they’re a group of people, again, are very open to exploring these things. I think, for me, it’s much more about the kind of. The degree to which we’re willing to park certain behaviors while we’re. While we’re working together. This whole idea about trying to suspend judgment and trying to be less worried about. Let’s worry less about blaming somebody for why something went wrong and try and find a way that we can take an appropriate share of responsibility both for what went wrong and what went right. And for me, that capability exists in everybody. I think the challenge is to tease it out in environments where it’s maybe less obvious, but I think it’s. It exists within us all. I’m completely convinced of that.
Matt Alder [00:12:44]:
And I suppose your sort of second, second last question. Does the actual physical environment make a difference to this? Because I think sometimes when people talk about creativity, it’s like, how can we, you know, be as cool as possible with our.
Doug Shaw [00:13:00]:
With our building and put slides in.
Matt Alder [00:13:02]:
Reception and, you know, build like a playground and all this sort of stuff. And that, you know, is obviously something that companies in certain sectors can do, but not all companies can do. Is there, you know, is there anything about environment? Is there anything that any company could do to sort of enhance creativity or a creative mindset within their employees?
Doug Shaw [00:13:28]:
I think the physical environment that we’re in is important to some extent, and it needs to be flexible in order to meet our needs. So if we’re working as a big group, then I find it’s much more helpful if we have lots of small tables to work at so that we can facilitate dialogue in small groups rather than end up around a big meeting table and end up listening to one monologue after another. Monologue after another. For me, that’s not a particularly enthusing or enthusiastic way to work in groups. So I think, particularly over time, the physical environment that we have access to matters. I know it’s a bit corny, but I actually think getting outdoors is a really useful thing to do periodically, just, you know, changing the scene. I think that kind of thing is important and it’s also not necessarily essential. One of the most energizing workshops that I’ve run in the last two or three years was in, frankly, a real dump of a room. I won’t name the company, I don’t wish to embarrass them, but we were working in pretty unpleasant conditions. But we actually produced some really excellent work because what we did was we managed to ignore the physical environment, which wasn’t dangerous, it was just uncomfortable, and we focused instead. So to your point about what are the things that we can do? I think there are a number of things that we can do very briefly, and they are be willing to suspend judgment for a period of time. So think more about responsibility and less about blame. Recognise that the creative process has a high degree of ebb and flow. So a lot of people are put off exploring creative ways of working because they think it’s somehow highly chaotic. It can be and it needn’t be. So I think there’s something really important about recognizing the way that that sort of, of thing can, can move and shift. And the other thing that I think, another thing I think is really important is having the confidence to show your work as you go. Because if you can be confident in doing that, then I think you can achieve better outcomes together. And I think you can. What it shows is that you’re willing to learn from, from each other and you’re, you’re confident to let your, you know, give you a new idea, a bit of air and a bit of space. Whereas typically, again, what we do is we tend to think it’s not good enough and so it never sees the light of day. So those are the. Some of the principles and procedures that I think are really helpful, much more so than the physical environment.
Matt Alder [00:15:51]:
Cool, thank you. And final question. If you could kind of sort of succinctly put a, put a case for, you know, creativity to, you know, sort of any CEO on the planet. So anyone who’s thinking about, you know, how do I set up my organization for success in a, in a very sort of fast changing world that we, that we live in, what would your.
Doug Shaw [00:16:14]:
You know, what would your pitch be?
Matt Alder [00:16:15]:
If you could sort of pitch any, you know, any, any CEO or kind of, you know, leader, leader, leader out there, you know, what’s the pitch for creativity?
Doug Shaw [00:16:26]:
I think most CEOs already recognize this stuff’s important. I think it was the Design Council who ran a CEO survey in 2013, so reasonably current, a couple of years old now. And when they asked their, when they did the research, they found that creativity was the most in demand, discipline, if you like, from CEOs around the world, it was more important than management skills, rigor, and all kinds of other things. So I think to some extent, the case is already made for me. I think it’s about giving people the confidence that there are a number of small steps like the ones I just mentioned before, that you can simply model, for want of a better word. I think one of the things that’s really interesting about this is that if you’re, if you’re the kind of person who is willing to take some. An appropriate share of ownership and responsibility in order to achieve a good outcome, then I think you people will see you doing that, taking that, what it shouldn’t be called a risk, but in a lot of organizations it’s seen as one. Modeling those kind of behaviors, thinking about the kind of principles I mentioned a couple of minutes ago. I think those kind of things come together to allow this stuff to flow in a really useful, powerful way.
Matt Alder [00:17:45]:
Doug, thank you very much for talking to me.
Matt Alder [00:17:48]:
My thanks to Doug Shaw. For show notes and past episodes of the podcast, please go to www.rfpodcast.com. you can also subscribe to the mailing list there and find out more about me on the Work with Matt Alder page. You can, of course, subscribe to the podcast itself on itunes and on Stitcher. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next week and I hope you’ll join me.
