Posts tagged: creativity

Why Brainstorming Rarely Works (Plus Five Tips For Better Work Sessions)

March 27, 2012, by No comments yet
Imagine by Jonah Lehrer

I haven’t read Jonah Lehrer’s new book on the science of creativity (Imagine: How Creativity Works) but I suspect I soon will.

Imagine by Jonah Lehrer

Imagine by Jonah Lehrer (click to buy)

In this interview with Barnes & Noble Lehrer covers territory guaranteed to cause traumatic flashbacks in at least half the copywriters I know:

BNR: The discussion of brainstorming is particularly counterintuitive; you point to research that indicates how “criticism and debate” — despite the former term’s association with repressive negativity — is a more fruitful model for groups working together. If brainstorming is so unsuccessful a strategy for generating innovation, why has it held on for so long?

JL: I think the allure of brainstorming is inseparable from the fact that it feels good. A group of people are put together in a room and told to free-associate, with no criticism allowed. (The imagination is meek and shy: If it’s worried about being criticized it will clam up.) Before long, the whiteboard is filled with ideas. Everybody has contributed; nobody has been criticized. Alas, the evidence suggests that the overwhelming majority of these free-associations are superficial and that most brainstorming sessions actually inhibit the productivity of the group. We become less than the sum of our parts.

As you note, researchers have shown that group collaborations benefit from debate and dissent; it is the human friction that makes the sparks. Alas, the presence of criticism means that a few people are going to get their feelings hurt. So I think one reason we’ve clung to brainstorming for decades is that it increases employee morale, even if that comes at the cost of creativity. That’s an unfortunate truth, of course, but that doesn’t make it less true. There’s a reason why Steve Jobs always insisted that new ideas required “brutal honesty.”

I have participated in a lot of “no criticism” brainstorming sessions, and the best that’s ever emerged was one or two possibilities for further exploration.

In fact, I can’t imagine a worse way to create the next organizational ad campaign, logo, tagline, or mission statement.

Yet every day, some poor creative sap gets marched into a room full of eager amateurs who produce cliches, puns and off-target ideas by the bushel. Frankly, it would be more productive to eliminate the brainstormed ideas from the universe of possibilities and work with what’s left.

The best ad campaign I ever crafted came after I turned most of a 200-page artist’s sketchbook into trash can filler, then presented my ideas to three other colleagues (writer, art direct, art director), who trashed all but three of them.

Creative meetings among peers can be painful — and they can turn toxic if the relationships within the room are the least bit poisonous — but unlike the morale-building “we’re all OK” sessions, they regularly produce viable ideas.

(This is a good reason to maintain a small group of marketing “friends” who can offer you intelligent feedback — the same way writer’s groups offer reality checks to novelists.)

Over the years, I’ve developed a few rules for work sessions:

  • Criticism has to focus on the concept itself, not the presentation (don’t discard a great idea because someone mocked up the comp with the wrong stock photo or typeface)
  • Don’t throw out a promising concept because of one flaw; you’re not there to shoot down ideas, you’re there to make good stuff
  • If a tit-for-tat dynamic develops between two (or more) people, it’s time to take a break and short-circuit it
  • Keep sessions around an hour; longer and you get punchy (this from uber-comedian and writer John Cleese)
  • Be merciless, but have fun

Lehrer also focuses on a few of the “romantic” misconceptions about creativity, namely that it’s the province of only a few, and for the anointed, creativity is largely effortless — not the product of hard work.

Somewhere, somebody fits that mold, but in my experience, the best ad concepts and copy were the result of a search for a (preferably dramatic) truth, and if it’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, truth of any kind rarely comes cheap.

Simply put, it’s lying that’s easy.

Naturally, feel free to disagree in the comments; I can’t help but welcome creative debate and dissent.

Keep writing (and creating), Tom Chandler.

Ira Glass On Creativity (or, The Gap Between Our Taste And Our Work…)

April 28, 2011, by 50 comments

Ira Glass of PRI’s This American Life talks about creativity, and absolutely kills it (via these wonderful transcriptions from the Design Talk blog):

“What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me . . . is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not.

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story.

It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

He’s referring to those producing video, but alter a few words, and it maps to pretty much any creative endeavor. Including writing.

The entire 5:20 segment is here:

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.

Our "Design by Committee & Looking It" Post: London Unveils 2012 Olympic Mascots

May 21, 2010, by 3 comments

You can’t get a better guarantee of soft, formless mediocrity than to assign a creative project to a committee – especially those expressly designed to avoid controversy.

In this case, we’re confronted with the Power of The Group to Do The Wrong Thing in the form the 2012 Olympic Mascots (apparently, if you can’t create one good mascot, make two really, really bad ones).

Brilliant design move? Or shocking example of England’s Growing Drug Problem?

Reaction has not been positive; even AdAge opened fire with:

Graphic designers continue to weep openly in the streets. Schools have brought in crisis counselors to comfort frightened youngsters. Many Webkinz have reportedly formed suicide pacts as fears spread that — what were their names again? Warlock and Mandible? whatever — the monsters are part of a robot master race that has come from Planet Focus Group to stamp out cuddliness and cuteness on Earth.

Those in the fetish community are simply scratching their heads (as a commenter who goes by Murray Hewitt noted on the Deadspin blog, “The blue guy put his assless chaps on backwards”). And at Advertising Age headquarters in New York, those of us who didn’t go home sick yesterday ended up forming an impromptu prayer circle in the conference room — and that includes the atheists among us. Afterward, I manned the internet barricades, carefully recording reactions on Twitter to the attack of Warlord and Matlock. Click through the slide show below for the voice of the Tweeple.

What happened?

For those with little experience, committees often deliver results like the above; the unwanted byproduct of an illicit three-way love triangle featuring a drunken alien, a fetishist politician, and a foam pillow.

Welcome to the power of the committee.

Obviously, this is not the first time this has happened.

I once sat in a room filled with intelligent people brainstorming their company’s new tagline.

A truly spellbinding idea was circulating (not mine), and was within seconds of acceptance – when another writer (we all take the hit for this one) fired off an idea so convoluted and potentially damaging to the brand that I knew immediately it was destined for acceptance.

Later, the company happily “unleashed” (actual tagline verb [shudder]) their new tagline – which largely equated their product to the family pet – and I could only shake my head in wonder.

Six months later, it was quietly killed in a much smaller meeting.

To see such a thing happen before your eyes is like watching a train wreck, only in slow motion and slathered with the highly flammable, sickly syrup of good intentions.

Good creative work can die a painful a death a hundred different ways, yet the “committee” has to feature at the top of the list.

At least that’s what Wenlock and Mandeville keep telling me.

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.