Earlier this week I was travelling from New York to Las Vegas. A beautiful young lady wearing a pink bomber jacket and a beige fedora started chatting with me as we were standing in the line to the airport security. She asked me what I did for a living and, my response, even though it felt a bit awkward was,
"I'm a Creative director."
Wait... Why did that feel awkward?
For me, in that moment, there wasn't a long line ahead of us and I didn't have the time to explain well enough in detail what I do without setting unnecessary limits on what all I'm capable of within the position. And, in all honesty, I'm not the type of guy who loves to talk about himself. But, we did have time for me to explain myself a bit more when she picked up where I left off.
"A creative director for what? Do you work in fashion?"
"I mainly work for global brands nowadays, but I've done fashion shows too."
Then I decided to try be more clear and added,
"I've planned and done a lot of events,"
although I feel that the world is rarely that simple that any brand could focus only on one communication channel anymore and you need have a holististic approach in everything you do.
"Oh, that's great.",
she said with a smile. She then told me that she works in fashion, and loves how the creative director of the company she works for designs the sets of their fashion shows.
"Oh, that's awesome. Have a safe flight.",
I replied to her, went through the security check, and ran to the gate since I was almost about to miss my flight.
The main reason I typically avoid telling people what I do is because the title "Creative director" is often misunderstod and has suffered inflation. Quite frankly, I've been a little annoyed to see so many people call themselves a Creative director without even knowing what it means or what the job entails.
Let me elabororate!
First, we need to define two words: creative and director.
I love the definition from Finnish creative director, Saku Tuominen:
"Creativity is the ability to see and the will to do things better."
The often forgotten aspect of creativity is responsibility. A person shouldn't just come up with totally non-related, random ideas thrown together and call it creativity; it's not what creativity is all about - no matter how beautiful or adroit those ideas may be. A creative director needs to have brighter, bigger and lasting vision. With great ideas come great responsibilities.
Then there's the word director. If you don't have a team around you, it's better to call yourself a lead creative or maybe just a creative. A Creative director is a leader. In my experience you need to lead the people around you on three different levels.
1.Leading like an orchestra conductor
Sometimes the right way to lead is by making people (especially people who hate authority) feel like they are not led. Every Creative director has been in a situation where there's been someone who's more talented and more experienced in their field of expertise than you are. You need to consider them as experts and advisors - be curious and listen. Even presidents have advisors. Let me give you an example: if you have a degree in business and there's someone in your team who has studied architecture - you need to ask questions and listen carefully to understand their spatial vision - and at the same time be ready to explain what needs to be improved for the idea to work holistically. A Creative director is always a jack of all trades. You need to be able to lead the orchestra, not be the master of playing each musical instrument.
2.Leading like a father
If there are people in your team who are really ambitious and possibly less experienced than you are - you need to guide them in a fatherly manner. For example, listen to them and do your best to get their potential out of their head and into their work. Sometimes you need to spark an idea and they'll take it further. As all fathers know, sometimes they might test their limits and you need to show leadership. Someone needs to steer the ship!
3.Leading like colleagues
And then there's people who have about the same amount of experience as you do - you need to lead them in a pally way without losing the vision and focus. A few important tools are: show by example, listen to what's being said and show respect when leading extraordinarily creative people; people who are often very sensitive and emotional. Make sure they all know that you'll be the first one to defend their work against all the non-believers out there, as you should be.
Naturally leading creative people is a chaotic and complex mix of all of these three styles and categories.
I have to admit that I love the Danish architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group. I've been very inspired by their slogan:
"Reaching for practical utopias."
I think this is what the best creative teams do. They come up with something that seems like an utopia - something that doesn't exist and seems impossible. They have a solid understanding and arguments on how this utopia can be achieved - making the unthinkable thinkable. Bjarke Ingels and his team don't believe in thinking outside the box, they believe in discovering the dark, scary and unpredictable borderlines of the box and making it the new reality by expanding the box.
A Creative director needs to understand business and the strategy behind it, as well as have solid understanding of art, entertainment, fashion, their aesthetics, and of course the underlyeing societal changes that art, entertainment and fashion often imply. For these reasons, Bjarke Ingels Group's New York office is located at the crossroads of Wall Street and Broadway. This is where a modern Creative director needs to be standing - a metaphor for grasping, understanding and defining what creative direction actually is in 2016.
But one might ask, where is creativity located then? All over both Wall Street and Broadway.
With that being said, there are different types of Creative directors: some have an emphasis on business thinking, some on aesthetics, some excel on communicating the creative vision to others and some are just idea machines. The one trait I believe the best Creative directors have is, they constantly remind themselves that they'll always be a student. You have to put in work before you call yourself a Creative director and not lose that desire to learn something new every day.
Should every organization have a Creative director? If you believe in constant improvement, taking action and leading other people to do the same, then the answer is YES.