On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 3:59 PM, Keith Russell <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> yes, I agree with much of what is said on the creative blog except I want
> to be creative and disagree with almost everything?
>
>
>
...
> ...
> we end up with a wishy washy wanky panky dude who spends a third of his
> day working out which new pants to wear, a third working out how to get
> lost better today and the last third working out what he hasn't had for
> lunch, ever.
>
>
>
The easy part about managing creatives is getting them to be creative. The
hard part is getting them to accomplish anything. Some of the smartest,
most creative people I know could never finish everything because no sooner
had they started when they had yet another brilliant idea.
And then there was my really creative postdoctoral student who would come
in one week with a brilliant idea, convince us all that it would transform
the world, and get all of us to stop our other work and get to work on this
idea. Except that once we had all gotten excited and started our work, he
would come back (sometimes the next day, oftentimes it would take a few
weeks) and explain to all of us why it was a bad idea, wrong, and a waste
of time.
And even when my creative folks would actually get a demo to work, one that
truly impressed all the senior company execs, nothing would come of it. The
head of the product division would say "wonderful, give it to me and we put
it into our product." And I would reply, "um, it only works on that on
eexample, and even then, only if X is standing there making it work. And
anyway, it isn't written in c++ like you need, it is written in LISP. And
the code is really sloppy."
So the guy would say "no problem, have them clean it up. rewrite it in
c++. test it." Clean it up? Make it reliable? Check it out against the
thousands of possible use cases? Hey, these are creative guys: they can't
do detailed work. That's not creativity. They have a new idea they want to
work on.
It is rare to find someone who has extreme creativity, but also has the
intense focus needed to spend months working out the tiny details, making
sure it is robust and reliable. It takes a different personality type.
Yes you will all think of counter examples, but they are rare.
--
Life managing the creative zone. Fun, every day. Frustrating every day. I
miss it.
Don
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