Daily Creative with Todd Henry

There are some natural tensions that creative pros must wrestle with in order to remain effective. One that I wrote about in The Accidental Creative is what I call the process vs. product tension, which describes the dynamic of compromising the process in order to pre-maturely shape the product to match pre-defined expectations. Instead, we must embrace the process, ask good questions, and pursue the problem. On the first part of this episode, I share some thoughts about how to embrace process.

Today's interview features Uri Levine, founder of Waze and author of the new book Fall In Love With The Problem, Not The Solution. He shares how entprepreneurs and creative pros can embrace process in their pursuit of important problems rather than starting with a product and trying to make it fit the market.

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There are many things a good leader or collaborator does to help their team gain focus, stay motivated, and produce great work. However, there are also some very common mistakes that many leaders make that they don't even know are killing their team's ability to engage with their work. This is especially true when doing creative work, because it requires tremendous trust and an ability to take risks that could be costly to correct later.

The better you are at setting good rails for your team, the more they will feel freedom to bring their best ideas and work to the table.

1. Failing to define the (actual) problem
2. Judging an idea on its presentation, not its merits
3. Doing everything in groups

I hope you enjoy the episode. Please let me know your thoughts.

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I don’t like to say “no.” I think it’s partly because I tend to gravitate toward possibility rather than pragmatics. But that tendency to always look for new solutions has at times significantly hamstrung my creative process and has, in the past, seriously affected my ability to creatively lead teams.

One of the most important disciplines that any of us can learn, especially if we create for a living, is to close doors.

“What if?” is a fantastic question to ask early in the process, and can even help clarify our work as we progress through a project, but as we enter the middle and later stages of our work we must be disciplined enough to close doors on decisions that have already been made.

The unfortunate result of not closing doors is that we can (1) be in perpetual brainstorm mode and unable to complete great work, (2) be constantly second-guessing past decisions and trying to correct perceived (or feared) mistakes or (3) be confusing in our articulation of creative strategy to our team or co-workers.

It’s simple to close doors, but requires resolve. We have to be willing to say “no” to ideas that could potentially improve the work but could also do a lot of damage or be unfeasible. We also have to check our ego at the door, because a lot of these later-stage ideas offer us the chance to swoop in and appear heroic in crunch time. But it’s not worth the fire drill mindset that becomes engrained when we are constantly shifting strategy, especially within a creative team setting.

Closing doors is critical in client work. It’s important to guide the client through the decisions that need to be made, then to let them know that we’re navigating forward and that old doors are no longer available unless the scope of the project changes. To do anything less is to create an unpredictable environment for your team and to provide less than the best for your clients.

We need to honor the process and recognize that perpetual brainstorming mode on a specific project is not only ineffective, but can be significantly damaging to the climate on our teams. We need to get comfortable with making decisions and closing doors. At least, I know I do. It’s a work in progress.

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Complexity can creep into your life and process largely unnoticed. Before long, you are attempting to leap hurdles and navigate around pointlessly complex obstacles just in order to do your work.

On this episode, we discuss a few areas where you can seek simplicity in 2023 and some strategies for doing so:

1. Your process and workflow
2. Your relationships and leadership
3. Your space and tools

Seek simplicity on the other side of complexity.

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So much conflict and stress in organizational life, or just in life in general, is the result of missed or conflicting expectations. Sometimes, this is because expectations are not clearly articulated and there is a vacuum that needs to be filled. Everyone is living out their own assumptions, which means that “ghost rules”, or invisible and possibly unfounded narratives, emerge. Team members may resent one another and be completely unable to articulate why. It’s just some deep sense that they are being robbed in some capacity. In reality, it’s just that there are unmet expectations that may have never even been spoken.

These unmet expectations aren’t limited to team life. They can also affect you personally. Today, I want to discuss a few ways in which our expectations can impact us heading into 2023 and how we can act to reduce miscommunication and misunderstandings for ourselves, our co-workers, and the teams that we lead.

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You probably need new ideas consistently in order to do your job. Where do they come from? If you're like many people, you push pixels, midlessly scroll, or stare at the problem or just hope that you have a breakthrough before time runs out.

What if there's a better way?

On this episode, I share a technique I use called "nonsense notebooks". I use freewriting and review to connect patterns that I often miss because I'm simply too busy.

Then, I interview Mike Rohde on the 10th anniversary of his book The Sketchnote Handbook to discuss how sketching ideas can lead to breakthroughs, even if you're not an artist.

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Download a packet to help you answer all twelve questions in this series at ToddHenry.com/2023questions.

If you don't set markers for growth you will drift. How will you be different this time next year? In this final episode of our three part series, I offer up four questions to ask as you make plans for the coming year.

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Download the packet to help you follow along with these questions at ToddHenry.com/2023questions.

"The unexamined life is not worth living" is a saying attributed to Socrates. If you fail to understand why things happened the way they did, you are doomed to drift.

In this episode, I offer four questions to ask as you look back at the past year that will help you understand what happened and why and will also help you as you make plans for 2023.

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To get a worksheet for this mini-series, visit ToddHenry.com/2023questions.

Now's the time when many people begin to make plans for the coming year. However, just setting big, indiscriminate goals without first assessing how things currently are is a recipe for failure.

This week, I'm releasing three shorter episodes to help you prepare for 2023. In today's episode, I offer up four questions to help you self-assess and develop self-awareness with regard to your ambitions and current situation. Over the next two mini-episodes, I'll share eight additional questions to help you plan for the coming year.

Make sure you follow the show in order to get each episode as it's released.

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In aerodynamics, when an airplane has structural integrity it means that all of the parts are working together as a whole. It is intact. If there is a violation of that structural integrity, you are likely to experience a problem.

Similarly, integrity in our lives and leadership means that all of our individual parts are integrated, or intact and whole. What is on the inside is what's on the outside. Integrity is critical both for effective leadership and for valuable creativity. Your intuition functions best when you are intact.

Today's guest, Dr. Martha Beck, is a NY Times Best-selling author of many books. She holds three Harvard degrees in social science, and Oprah Winfrey has called her "one of the smartest women I know." Her newest book is called The Way Of Integrity, and on this episode we discuss how the pursuit of integrity affects life, leadership, and your body of work.

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