Developing a Rationale for Leading Creative Teams:

A Manifesto from the Corporate Underground

Creative teams within the corporate environment are responsible for producing a highly
specialized product. Individuals on those teams comprise many roles, including artist, designer,
writer, and programmer. Not run of the mill corporate types, within organizations, they are the
people less beholden to the metaphors that undergird the corporate world.

The culture of the organization may be indifferent or even hostile toward signs of creative
life, so creative professionals often band together into a subculture that allows them to freely
create without worrying what others are thinking. In the halls and buildings of corporate America,
the creative team becomes a corporate underground of special agents. The leader of the creative
team, their spymaster, must know how to slip fluently in and out of languages, and direct the
network with an invisible hand. Further, the leader must nurture this network, develop its unique
thinking processes, and help navigate the individuals through waters treacherous to their self-
expression.

In this eclectic analogy—a manifesto for leaders of creative teams— we will look at the
nature of the creative underground, how it comes to exist, and how leaders can improve their
thinking in order to operate, grow, and coax intelligence out of it. Such leaders will need to be well
versed in the unusual modes of thought that characterize the corporate underground. Hopefully
this journey will begin to develop logical rationales for leaders of creative teams for nurturing,
cultivating, and integrating these thought patterns into the greater organization.

Leading the creative team is primarily a mental exercise, so being a thinker is important.
Understanding how to develop critical thinking must begin with a working definition of thinking
itself. Thinking, from the book by the same name, written by Gary Kirby and Jeffery Goodpaster,
is the activity of the brain that can be potentially be communicated (Kirby, Goodpaster, 2007).

Multimedia–the expressive output of the modern corporate creative team—is the digital
language that results from mixing together a wide array of communications vehicles into a
cohesive whole. The multimedia production performed by the creative team infers that these
cross-functional multimedia professionals are unique thinkers within the organization. Their
technically sophisticated products of graphically designed, animated, and interactive
communications represent a crucial material output of an organization’s thought.

From a high level, leading a group such as this is a process involving thought processes
not different from those of project manager: understanding the requirements of the project during
an initial phase, working alone or collaboratively to determine the creative toolset that should be
applied to the particular project, managing the resources, understanding the technology, and
ultimately, delivering a completed project.

The difference in leading the creative team is the addition of variables, which add to that
basic list of skills, an understanding of the enigmatic process that results in a work product that
simultaneously performs a business function and embodies complex organizational thought. As if
all this weren’t enough, leaders of creative teams must be prepared to take leaps of faith daily, as
the key to success begins with believing that individuals and groups can create something out of
nothing.

To start, the effective leader will recognize that, for reasons we will examine, the
corporate environment reflexively adds invisible barriers of resistance to creatives who try to
problem-solve. Project managers, media buyers, sales, marketing, customers, and competitors
are not part of the creative team, but they are just some of the deeply involved stakeholders
whose training and experience has taught them significantly different modes of thought, and yet
whose buy-in and approval is ultimately needed. We have no choice but to involve them in the
process, even though their likes, dislikes, opinions and fears pose threats to the creative team.

It’s not that these stakeholders are intrinsically less creative (Kirby, Goodpaster, 2007),
but that their professional experience has oriented them in more linear fashions. The tenuous

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 Developing a Rationale for Leading Creative Teams:
A Manifesto from the Corporate Underground

relationship with these stakeholders becomes the starting point from which the corporate
underground must emerge with a product whose message is original, powerful, and well
executed.

The role that corporate stakeholders play consolidates their worldview. With the
pervasive assurances of our steroid-driven culture to guide them, they expect fast, accurate, non-
ambiguous answers. This expectation stands in the way of the creative process. Additionally, the
people in this role represent the dominant culture of the organization. They will be outside of their
comfort zones with ambiguity. Contrasting this, the leader of the creative team must be
comfortable with the notion that there are many correct answers—not just one—and be unafraid
to make mistakes in order to learn (Kirby, Goodpaster, 2007).

Following this line of thought, the dominant corporate culture could be characterized as
fear-based. Decisions are made, less for good reasons than to avoid bad outcomes. Risk is
carefully measured and mitigated, and so on. While such behavior is appropriate for non-creative
functions within the organization, it is toxic to the corporate underground.

Further, this mode of thought is entrenched, so the challenge is to operate within this
dominant mindset, while withstanding its numerous silently enforced codes of conduct. These
codes dehumanize the creative team by tweaking the insecurity that lies in every artist. Therefore
one of the responsibilities of the leader of the creative team is to cultivate a creative bubble that
protects the team from this encroachment.

Left to their own devices, creative professionals invariably coalesce into subcultures
within the organization that can appear exclusive, elitist, or just downright odd. Their age range
and interests may be unique, their style of dress and social interactions are not “business-like”. A
subculture may seem strange, threatening or worse yet, irrelevant by the rest of the organization;
this possibly due to mindsets steeped in scientific theories of management. Failing to integrate
the corporate underground into the dominant culture means individuals will be marginalized and
grow less effective. On the other hand, forcing it to fit will diminish the creativity of their solutions.
As in the arts, balance and composition are everything, and no one says it's easy.

Even though it may not be explicitly stated, members of the creative underground feel like
they are being observed and judged by conservative corporate culture. People within
organizations will certainly make unfair judgments based on appearances, attitudes, or perceived
value. To deal with this, the leader of the creative team should make sure that the value of the
work being produced is understood by the many.

The leader of the creative team must communicate, with the stakeholders and the
organization at large, the strategic value that the corporate underground brings to the
organization. Regularly showcasing new work is just one way to demonstrate this value, but there
are many more. From talking to people to encouraging the team itself, to working with industry
publications and entering the work for awards, the leader of the creative team must disseminate
and substantiate information about the team, while constantly interfacing with the greater culture,
listening station attuned to non-verbal cues.

These activities become part of a greater effort to nurture the creative team. Thinking
about ways to promote courage and calm, the leader of the creative team should model a state of
mind that allows individuals to feel free to create their best possible work. Listening actively to the
team, paying attention to verbal as well as non-verbal cues, and trusting feelings as well as logic
are all important ways of nurturing the corporate underground and opening up vast storehouse of
creative energy for the benefit of the entire organization (Kirby, Goodpaster, 2007).

The leader of the creative team is further tasked with supplying a safe space for the
creative team to work to be nurtured by understanding that different types of thought inform the
creative output of the network, and at least temporarily holding at bay forces of cultural
conformity. This space may not be physical, it might be virtual, or even conceptual, but it is

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 Developing a Rationale for Leading Creative Teams:
A Manifesto from the Corporate Underground

nevertheless very real. It is important because the creative mindset can be fragile, so it must be
shielded from those that see what they expect to see (Kirby, Goodpaster, 2007).

At the end of this process, the work assigned the creative team must be nearly perfect. It
is brought to maturity as a complex organism that is also the message bearer of a business
initiative. The final product is full-grown, but the job of the creative team is to grow it from a single
cell. The full-grown adult may be able to withstand the blistering effects of criticism, ridicule, and
demands, but the infant, baby, and toddler ideas can and should not.

Self-censorship within teams should be recognized and challenged. If there has been a
highly successful execution of an idea, a design campaign or a particular interaction, then make
sure the start of the following campaign is free of all of the emotion of the first. This attachment to
the success of the previous piece can be acknowledged, but the job during this phase is to serve
the fundamental calling of creativity by creating something that has never existed before.

Ritual and role playing are important to the creative process (Kirby, Goodpaster, 2007).
People on the creative team might need to listen to loud music, converse about subjects far from
corporate in expression. Toys might be strewn about to help the inner child emerge, and when
the pressure becomes too much, the corporate underground may break out into a game of
basketball, or begin online networking and Web surfing.

To the greater corporate culture, all of these activities are questionable at best and
fireable offenses at worst. If the creative team needs to have this kind of freedom to produce
great work, not to mention just enjoy being at work, then the leader of the creative team has to
push the envelope at every opportunity. If the habits of creative professionals are discouraged by
dress codes, monitoring, a zero-tolerance policy on Web surfing, or other policies, the leader of
the creative team must push back. Choose battles wisely, but it’s okay to be assertive on behalf
of the team. This doesn’t mean giving in to anger (Kirby, Goodpaster, 2007). If there are no
alternatives to oppressive policies that stifle creativity, chances are the organization is hostile to
the creative process, and it may worth reconsidering whether the fit is right.

As the leader of the creative team works through these challenges, he or she strengthens
the creative bubble that provides a nurturing layer against cultural encroachment. The bubble
may be conceptual, but its size is easily measured by how far from the creative team you can
keep the forces of fear and self-doubt. The team is deeply immersed in developing new ways of
thinking about a business problem, and the leader of the creative team must keep the doors to
the lab closed.

Let’s say a customer comes to the company to improve sales within dealerships of a
certain product. To the customer dealing with a problem such as this, the issue may be very cut
and dried: supply chain issues, training, customer service, or competition. To the creative team
however the issues may have more to do with the emotional energy that surrounds the situation.

Following this premise, perhaps dealers in the stores don’t have a compelling metaphor
on which to hang their hat as they as they deal with customers on a day-to-day basis. Or perhaps
the company has historically provided far too much wordy, printed documentation to inform the
dealer, who has nothing to gain by wading through the memos. The information might all be
there, but the communications delivery mechanism prevents the messages from being received.

The creative group begins by learning about their audience, so messages will resonate
as designed. Now they enter the chaotic realm of the psyche, which is unusual territory for the
greater organization (Kirby, Goodpaster, 2007). The creative team needs to see their audience,
and the entire situation, not as it should be, but as it really is. Then and only then will they be able
to design a communication that makes sense and works.

Organizations abhor chaos, but chaos is often the precursor to creative output, and it
certainly leads in directions a purely scientific method cannot (Kirby, Goodpaster, 2007). Trying to

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 Developing a Rationale for Leading Creative Teams:
A Manifesto from the Corporate Underground

control this chaos limits the discoveries that might be found in the mess. Artists know that there
are no mistakes, only happy accidents. Renowned photographer and expert on creative process,
Dewitt Jones might refer to this as finding opportunity in a problem.

The dealers should be excited about the product, but in reality they are bored. They
should express loyalty to the company, but in truth they feel an adversarial relationship due to the
control exerted upon them. They should be positive, but they are negative. These are some very
real emotional barriers that stand between the creative underground and the success of their
endeavor. It doesn’t matter if these perceptions are objectively true or false (Kirby, Goodpaster,
2007), for the final creative deliverable must in some way be informed, or even improved by these
strong emotions. At the very least, they can be used as a focusing exercise to help the creative
team begin to sympathetically vibrate with their audience.

As the creative underground is gathering information about the problem and beginning to
react to unseen currents, enculturated forces in the organization will discourage approaches that
do not support dominant realities. This mental filtering, if overlaid onto the creative process will
cause it to break. Worse still, if these forces represent higher levels of authority in the
organization, their points of view cannot be simply disregarded. These forces of enculturation are
the invisible currents the leader of the creative team must navigate. To navigate them the leader
must be able to discern them, and to discern them, the first step is to become aware of them.

Consider the metaphor that drives the business world: the sports metaphor, used well
past the point of cliché. Rather than merely issuing another memo to the dealer informing him of
the benefits of promoting a new product, the creative team is pressured to produce yet another
football campaign, with a theme like Drive to the Goal!

Though it might be adequate, directing the creative team to use an approach that worked
last time creates a dangerous precedent, for as leader of the creative team; we must relentlessly
cultivate the conditions that inspire creativity. It is our job to facilitate an atmosphere of courage,
calm, bravery, and humor, with an attitude of letting chips fall where they may (Kirby, Goodpaster,
2007).

As we begin to become aware of the forces–both internal and external–that pose a risk to
the creative team, we have to take account of personal barriers that inhibit thinking (Kirby,
Goodpaster, 2007). The enculturation represented by the greater organization is lent authority by
the same forces in our greater culture and appeals to the same tradition and authority (Kirby,
Goodpaster, 2007). The attitudes they bring to the table are supported and informed by the
greater enculturation that affects everyone. Just as creative people can be seen as somewhat
suspect in society at large, the corporate world holds similar suspicion of the corporate
underground.

Organizations seem to develop a sort of institutional cognitive dissonance that protects

the organization from admitting unpleasant realities. I led a creative team tasked with creating an
eLearning experience meant to engage a group of highly paid professionals within the
organization. The only problem was that the target audience had already made it clear many
times that they hated the eLearning. They were critical and vocal, and their attitude threatened
the entire eLearning initiative and needed to be dealt with.

The organization was operating under the assumption that the audience should use
certain tools and techniques to learn. This decision was the result of many years of decisions, all
cobbled together. For the decision-makers, it was more convenient to do things the way they had
always been done; requiring people to spend long amounts of time reading simplistic and
repetitive material. When assumptions this faulty are carved in stone by decision makers,
unwilling to acknowledge the unique problem-solving capability available to them in the creative
underground, there is little hope that the solution will be any good. To this day, millions of dollars
have been spent, and the intended audience of highly paid professionals still hates eLearning.

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 Developing a Rationale for Leading Creative Teams:
A Manifesto from the Corporate Underground

An alternate approach may have been to design learning that gave the audience an
opportunity to demonstrate their extraordinary levels of knowledge and expertise; to allow them
the sovereignty to determine their own path. To approach the problem from this angle would have
been a declaration of trust from the management of the organization to the target audience.
Instead, fundamental assumptions ruled out this and perhaps other creative solutions that might
have not only created a better eLearning experience, but also improved employee morale.

Participating throughout this protracted and painful process, I began listening below the
main levels communication and finding there was important background information that should
have been surfaced and addressed. Completely unrelated to eLearning, there was a great degree
of resentment toward the company due to recent changes in the workplace. This made the
eLearning requirement seem like just another annoyance imposed upon them by management.

The most likely creative solution in situations like this is a patchwork of compromise.
Worse, the long-term effect is that organizational relationships are further damaged. Allowing a
creative process to address this cognitive dissonance, and embrace the emotional truth of the
audience rather than fear it, would have gone a good distance toward healing the relationship.
Though the direct outcome of a single project might not have been vastly different, the
groundwork would have been laid for future collaboration and perhaps greater freedom being
offered the creative team.

To the greater organization, and in the traditional modes of management, words are
given much more weight than non-verbal communication. Contracts are carefully worded, emails
are fired back and forth, and Powerpoints drive endless meetings full of the verbal opining. And
while we agree that well those words are necessary to thought, we also know that words carry a
lot of baggage (Kirby, Goodpaster, 2007). This is why the leader of the creative team must be
fluent in more than one language, and particularly good at listening for deeply shrouded verbal
and non-verbal meanings.

There is no scientific method that will guarantee the ability to listen well, but with practice,
one can learn to actively or “powerfully” listen (Kirby, Goodpaster, 2007); to focus all of your
attention on the issues and concerns of people. The more their concerns, hopes and dreams are
understood, the greater the chance the creative team will succeed. Actively listening not only
provides valuable information, which leads to better decision-making, but it builds trusted
relationships within the organization (Kirby, Goodpaster, 2007). For the leader of the creative
team, powerful listening forms the basis for all nurturing.

The leader of the creative team must use listening and a sensitivity to language to
navigate multiple perceived realities; from those of his own creative team, to the more concrete
issues and concerns of the project stakeholders. Developing the habit of actively listening will
grant valuable insights transmitted by feelings, body language, and other non-verbal
communication.

Further, the leader of the creative group will need to get comfortable with the ambiguity of
chaos and understand that eradicating it would be like throwing the baby out with the bath water.
The object is neither to revel in, nor to eliminate chaos, but to plumb its depths for associations
that elude a linear thought. It is possible that the chaos might lead in new and interesting
directions, so prepare to rebuff suggestions that chaos is indicative of an undisciplined mind, and
develop the rationale that it is representative of great stores of thought that exist at the
unconscious level.

Just as in the outside world, underground music, literature, and art scenes forge new
ideas; in the corporate world there is a similar structure of underground thinkers whose ideas
have great potential to push creative problem solving to new vistas. Leaders of creative teams
can develop and harness this potential by deeply examining their critical thought processes. Done
well, this examination will help to build a rationale that will allows the leader of the creative team

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 Developing a Rationale for Leading Creative Teams:
A Manifesto from the Corporate Underground

to nurture and cultivate the corporate underground, while integrating the team’s unique and
powerful thought processes into the organization as a whole.

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