This article is by Eliza Esquivel, VP of Global Brand Strategy, Mondelez International, and Ed Cotton, Chief Strategy Officer, Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners.
Do you have a version of the Apple Watch, the Google self-driving car or the next Chipotle to propel your company into the future? Do you have a vision for how your company will grow – not just this quarter but over the next 10 years?
Vision and ideas are what thousands of advertising and marketing executives will be looking for as they head to the South of France for the annual Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. For many attendees, it’s not about the awards and self-congratulations. It’s about drawing inspiration for solving today’s business challenges -- the kind that cannot be easily overcome by following the playbooks we’ve already written.
Today’s problems require bold and imaginative leaps into “The New,” the likes of which demand creativity, “the ability to make new things or think of new ideas.”The one thing business needs right now is new, and its not just new products and services, but new processes, structures, business models and social enterprises.
If growth is what leaders seek, could they entertain the mindset that regardless of industry or corporate culture, their company is a creative company? The fact that more business leaders are heading to Cannes to soak in the creative halo of those who have embraced creativity as a cultural lynchpin is a sign that leaders are starting to see creativity as a way to drive their businesses forward and fight off the multitude of challenges they face.
It is the concept of creative transformation -- a state of mind, an attitude and a set of behaviors that put creativity at the center of things in order to drive growth.
Creative transformation is about the development of the truly new, which is not simply novelty, but in the words of Apple’s Jonathan Ive, “different and better.” It’s easy to be different, but it’s very hard to be better.
The leader who embraces creative transformation is one who creates and preserves the conditions that allow creativity to thrive in an organization. This requires a specific mind-set around responsiveness, and it demands liberation from old processes. It requires leadership in the highest sense of the term, rather than mere command and oversight.
Here are seven things a leader can do to use creative transformation as a way to drive growth and transform his or her company.
1. Supercharge Your Vision. You don’t want your company to be locked into the cycle of a perpetual present, unable to see and create for the future. So being able to point to your North Star is key. What is your version of Kennedy’s mission to the moon? What’s the idea people can imagine, stand up for and be propelled by? Without a supercharged vision, there’s no incentive for employees to move beyond the status quo.
2. Operationalize Creativity. Creativity isn’t an intangible that can’t be measured, tested or conformed to a disciplined structure. Look at a company like Finland’s Supercell, which operates in the world of a billion mobile apps, a world where creating one hit mobile app is hard enough, and creating multiple hits is practically impossible. But, by carefully creating a culture that balances talent, freedom and accountability, they’ve become a hit machine in the most competitive, high-paced industry out there.
3. Watch Out for the Toys. As Harvard Business School’s Clay Christensen stated, “The next big thing always starts out being dismissed as a toy.” You need to acknowledge the reality that threats of obsolescence are around the corner and change accordingly. You need to be paranoid—not just merely aware, but willing to act. And when you act, you need to ask yourself this question and answer with brutal honesty: Are we just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic or are we building a new ship?
4. Race to the Future. Witness the current challenges facing Kellogg’s, Campbell’s and McDonald’s. They’re all driven to overcome rapidly emerging consumer disruptions and are charging ahead to master future consumer behaviors. You need to reimagine how you understand consumers and their future pain points, and solve them before your stealthier competitors rewrite the rules of your game.
5. Find and Free Your Freaks. Look for people who want to challenge the status quo, who understand when different leads to better, and who have the spirit and energy to develop fresh thinking. Look for people who see opportunities where others don’t, and who want to get the best out of others.
6. Build Genius Teams. Curate the best people, inspire them to work together and empower them to do their best work, to create and build together. Creativity isn’t about the work of lone geniuses, it comes from teams who’ve been given the freedom to do their best work and are recognized for it.
7. Practice Brutal Honesty. Don’t just constantly experiment and develop, but tell honest stories about how it’s going. Trying out new things on a regular basis and using the feedback to make better things each time is crucial. Sharing learning and being transparent with information only helps employees to feel like they have the ability and responsibility to make a difference.
Many of the companies and brands that used to dominate and or define their industries are now facing contractions and decreasing relevance. They need to recognize that radical creative engineering is the only way forward.
The turnaround at Disney Parks is a great example of where despite missing the fully realized potential of the Magic Band the vision and execution of the Magic Band served as a catalyst for transformative change. It changed the customer’s experience, but more important, it changed the culture of the organization. This never would have happened without Disney’s CEO, Robert Iger, allowing and creating the conditions required for a creative transformation to take place.
Simply put, leaders and their boards need to embrace creativity, bring it to the center of their companies, and build their cultures around it.
Through creative transformation, leaders will be able to harness and bring to life a wealth of new ideas that will enable them to grow and thrive in the most challenging business environment in history.
