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Creativity is a battle. It’s fighting for great and refusing to settle for good. It’s being willing to fight and do hard work to develop something new, better, different, unique, awesome. It is an honor to get to lead creative teams into battle every day. From time to time, though, we have to be reminded that we are responsible for showing up and fighting every day. As we develop in leadership, we find ourselves responsible for others’ creativity, as well. We move from being individually creative to being a true creative team – even if our teammates are volunteers. There are five things we need to remember as we lead our creative teams and attempt to create momentum:

- Just because we lead does not mean we know it all. – It’s not just OK to admit this, it is necessary. When we are good leaders, we are surrounding ourselves with diverse teammates who have unique skill sets that compliment our own. When we let people become owners instead of renters of our vision or departments, it makes us better. Unfortunately, creative people are often insecure and fear losing their “position” rather than realizing that the success of the team or teammates is success for everyone, including them. We have to learn to trust the people that surround us.
- Be Gumby – We have to be flexible and preach flexibility. Without a flexible team and system, the frustration will not be manageable. Understand that things rarely go as scripted. People bring different filters into relationships and at the end of the day, if we are flexible, we can figure out the best results and creations.
- Imagination Hustle. – As creative teams, we are first and foremost problem solvers. We have to be in touch with our ability to see, feel, smell, think and communicate differently. Employ these practices regularly but, in doing so, understand that employment requires WORK. We have to be committed to a whatever-it-takes mentality that doesn’t give up, refuses to wear out, and agrees to be “CAN DO” instead of buying the lie of “can’t”.
- Chitter Chatter – Leaders communicate, but also encourage, communication. Communicate frequently – internally, externally, with other teams, with volunteers. Then, keep communicating. Be willing to be inventive on how we communicate. Do whatever is necessary to communicate the message, cast the vision, and get the point across.
- Understandably Unique People & Projects. – Creative teams are full of eccentric and unique people and projects. Understanding this helps us find solutions on how to manage projects, systems, and staff. Embrace the unique qualities of your surroundings. We have been hired, and look to hire, unique people to deal with unique problems because they are unique. Remember that. They don’t fit and thats not a good thing, it’s an essential thing!

What are some of the lessons you have learned about leading creative teams?

Ben is an inspiration. He takes giant leaps of faith that require audacious faith. When I asked him a few months ago in NYC what he was dreaming up next he started to unpack this amazing and massive idea. Today I get to share a piece of it with you.

He and the rest of team STORY are launching a campaign called ONE THOUSAND PREMIERES that invites people around the world to help bring the epic story of David and Goliath to a new generation via an international simulcast (live-stream).

With trademark creativity, they are appealing to individuals, churches and community organizations to support the project by purchasing “licenses” to show the film to their communities. In doing so, those who host premieres in their communities will fund the production of this Biblical story.

People can book a screening of the film for as little as $99 for a home showing or as much as $999 to show it to an unlimited number of people during premiere weekend, October 12-14.

This beats a kick-starter campaign in the can. Would you consider helping share this story?

Sundays are whiplash.

There are emotions everywhere on a Sunday because we are passionate about creating great experiences for people to engage our Creator. Most of us get the privledge of working with volunteer teams in order to create these environments. Since we are responsible for creating great and creative church services it is our job to champion and critique everything…but our words carry a lot of weight.

When we choose to engage conversations is important.

When we get to thank someone do it … NOW
When we get to brag on a person or a team do it … NOW
When we can highlight something great do it … NOW
When we have to make a correction … WAIT
When we have to engage in a hard conversation … WAIT
When we need to coach through something major … WAIT
When we need to encourage someone do it … NOW

The WHEN is as important as the WHAT. How we approach individuals and teams inside the emotion of a Sunday will impact how they respond for the rest of the day. This will set a tone. We need to think before we speak. Use wisdom. Sundays are for bragging on our teams and Mondays are for correcting, coaching, and redirecting for the next service. Do the work before Sunday and remember that in the moment the best we can do is be a champion..

Have you ever had to wait to engage a hard conversation? Do you champion your teams enough on Sundays?

A very important lesson that I have learned in life is this:

Adjust or be adjusted.

As creative people, we need to be intentional with our ability to adjust. We should daily be ready to adjust to markets, timelines, circumstances, personalities, opportunities, risks, or even successes. As creative teams, we develop solutions. When we stay in a posture of flexibility, we allow ourselves the option of adjusting. Often we risk getting rigid. We figure out what we believe is the right way and then we hold tight to that method. The irony is, often times we are right…for a moment.

We are right because we see solutions different than someone who looks more practically at the same situation. But then, we buy the hype that we are right and ego enters the equation. Ego is like kryptonite to creativity. Creativity and ideas are fragile and delicate. They need to be protected and preserved, not boasted and flaunted. We must allow them to grow until they are ready to be shared.

When we refuse to be willing to adjust, we get adjusted. It’s not an opinion, it’s a reality. Think of the industries – not just companies – INDUSTRIES who refused to adjust and are no longer relevant to culture. Textile companies no longer exist. Home phones are more rare than ever before. Newspaper/print media is disappearing right before our eyes. The importance of staying flexible and adjusting is a tension in which we all must live. How can we stay in a posture prepared to adjust? Here are some ideas:

• Stay nimble – Keep your organization or team lean enough that it can call audibles and be flexible.
• Fall in love with results, not systems – Our mission does not change, but our methods should always be changing, morphing, and developing.
• Fight ego and stay coachable – Know-it-alls don’t know it all. Always be reading, learning, and watching what is happening around us. If we are not aware of our current location in our culture, we won’t know how to react.
• Find out “the next” – Be on the look out for what is happening, what is trending. How will it effect or enhance what we do day in and day out?
• The sound of our core – What is our core audience saying? People who are passionate about what we do – are they fired up or are they losing interest?
• The sound of the hater – If we don’t have some haters, we probably aren’t doing anything worth noticing…which means we’ve already started to adjust from relevant to indifferent.
• Avoid the copy cat – Copying and not creating keeps us from being able to know who we are. It prevents us from being able to adjust. When we have lost our identity, we won’t know where to turn.
• Be responsible – Be responsible with our finances, our resources, our momentum, our creativity, our team members. When we’re responsible with what we have, we are able to adjust more readily.

Being able to adjust is like going to the chiropractor. When things get out of line, we have to get reset. It may cause pain and hurt for a moment, but in the long term it corrects and straightens out our posture. Staying ready to adjust is core to being able to succeed.

Is your organization able to adjust?
Have you ever been adjusted?

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The best creative concepts are birthed out of the idea that we may not know the answer, but we are willing to try and figure it out. Finding solutions and making the complex simple is key to great creative teams. One of the biggest creativity killers is an ego. When creative people start to believe they can avoid the fear of creating because they have it figured out, they and their teams get in a lot of trouble and lose their ability to truly create.

A study done by Jaussi, Stefanovich & Devlin proposes “four categories of effective followership for creativity and innovation.” In other words, well-balanced teams are composed of some combination of the following personality types:

• 1. Creative Skeptics – Skeptics are not afraid to ask hard questions. Skeptics are willing to challenge ideas. Skeptics want more than just words, they want to see action and will challenge status quo and assumptions.
• 2. Creative Statics – This personality is rational and calm. They provide stability and some concistency to the team. This personality is never too high and never too low. The Statics have the ability to remain flexible, a lost art with passionate people.
• 3. Creative Supporters – This personality is quick to resist brand new ideas. They tend to be open to creative solutions, but prefer to see them executed incremental steps. They like when new thoughts build off of existing thoughts.
• 4. Creative Catalysts – The people who come in and inspire by disturbing and disrupting. Catalysts drop ideas like bombs. Those ideas go on to become massive momentum creators.

As creative team leaders, it’s our job to make sure we are finding ways to incorporate all of these personalities on our teams. None of them are more important than another, but when we have a great balance of these types, we become our most creative – as well as our most productive. We must be intentional in how we balance these personalities and how we orchestrate their impact on our organization. When our teams become unbalanced, creativity and innovation suffer and the unbalance leads to irrational creation concepts.
At the end of the day, we have to find people who fill roles we don’t…and we have to embrace diversity on our teams. Without diversity we are not only limiting our organizations we are limiting our impact on culture. A culture we have been called to not only be part of…but to lead.

Do you do personality inventories for your team? Are you being intentional in how you are building and developing your team?

Every year around this time, I start to get excited about the STORY conference. This is the conference for the creative class. I love the approach Ben takes to create this experience and the inspiration that is shared by attending.

The theme for STORY 2011 is IMAGINE NATION, which speaks to the power of spiritual imagination. In Exodus 35, the artists of Israel came together to build a dwelling place for God. They carved poles, fashioned gold, and constructed curtains “with cherubim woven into them by expert hands.” The job of these artists was to envision the kingdom and use their gifts to heighten peoples spiritual imaginations. An “Imagine Nation.”

I was honored to get to be part of the STORY BLOG EXPERIENCE. In this, I had the chance to interview Ed Dobson. Interviewing Ed was absolutely amazing. It was one of those times when you talk to someone and you know they just LEAK wisdom. I wanted to talk to Ed all day. If you don’t know about Ed or his story check this out. A-Maz-Ing. Here’s the interview:

• 1. What is your best personal definition of a STORY?

A story involves the mind, the sense, the imagination and produces some sort of change.

• 2. What is one way you have found to grow or engage your imagination?

Jesus said, unless you become like little children you wont see the kingdom of heaven. So, when I watch a little child, I try to act like a child and that stimulates my imagination. They jump in puddles, dig in sand..they don’t miss the little stuff in life. By thinking like a kid, it expands my imagination.

I was preaching on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, so I started thinking…what would a kid do? So, I brought out two goats and started going through the whole Leviticus passage…unfortunately, we had 3 services so the goats were peeing and pooping between service. At the next deacon’s meeting, they passed a rule that we could not use any more live animals in service. I said I won’t until I do it again, until the next time.

So, it’s thinking like a kid.

Another time I wore a suit and I had a kiddie pool with water in it. The point was are you going to splash around or fall all the way in to God, and I fell in with the suit in the water. So, it’s thinking like a kid would think that hopefully helped the story.

• 3. In your experience what is the best non-traditional form or STORY telling you have seen, heard, or experienced?

The greatest storyteller I have ever heard was a guy named Hadden Robinson. He was tall, wore a suit and tie, and his ability to captivate your mind, heart, and soul was incredible. He did it without props, overhead, or power points – just with the power of a story. And I would say that was my greatest experience. And you know, he didn’t have shaggy hair and wasn’t dressed in jeans. He was the antitheses of cool, but his story was captivating to both young and old.

• 4. If you could encourage a creative person with one tip on being imaginative, what would you tell them?

Go through whatever story you are telling and try to think like a kid. How would a kid tell the story?

• 5. What is one thing you are excited about sharing with the tribes attending STORY 2011?

First of all, I had never heard of the STORY conference, so I have no clue what it’s like. My son-in-law went last year, he is the worship arts director of a large church in Grand Rapids. So my answer is I have no clue, but I am hoping to learn more than I get.

If you’re a writer, filmmaker, artist, performer, entrepreneur, church leader, communicator, or other type of creative, you won’t want to miss STORY 2011. To register visit http://story2011.eventbrite.com/ or if you need a little more information visit the STORY site: http://storychicago.com/

Are you attending Story? Can we hang out? What inspires you most?

“Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates. There’s plenty of movement, but you never know if it’s going to be forward, backwards, or sideways.”
- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

There is a big difference between talent and skill. Anyone can develop a skill, but not everyone is blessed with talent. Often we confuse the two.

Talent is a gift. It’s a natural ability to do something that most others are unable to accomplish. We are blessed with talent. Someone who has talent has the ability to exercise it to enhance their work. Talent can take you places – sometimes scary places. In fact, talent can take us to places our character may not be ready to experience. Talent is a wonderful thing when it’s used properly, not abused, and maximized by the person who is lucky enough to own this special gift.

Skill, however, is a learned ability. It can be improved with practice, work, and effort. Skill comes from our knowledge and effort. It’s something attainable for anyone committed enough to put in the time and the reps to get better.

We are not all blessed with the same talents. In fact, some of us are forced to rely on our skill and hustle to get us through because we do not have as much talent as the next guy. I have been blessed to work with some amazingly talented people over the course of my life. All too often, really talented people drift off, losing sight of their goals and solely relying on the talents they have. They stop preparing as much and don’t do the work that others – who are not blessed with the same talents – have to do in order to succeed, simply because they know that their talent can cover their sins.

But, what if we committed to being a creative community that refused to take our talents for granted and were committed to refining them everyday? What if we committed to treating our talents like gifts and put in the extra work to increase our knowledge and develop these gifts? What if we committed to continuously develop and refine our gifts so that we could not only be talented, but also skilled.

What if we choose today to be our absolute best so that we can regain our position in culture as the leaders in creativity? Not because we could, but because we are called.

Have you ever taken advantage of your talent?
How do you fight that temptation?
What do you do to refine your skills?

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I root for disaster.

Disaster happens when things fall apart, get destroyed, and fail miserably – all things we are usually afraid to embrace. The truth is, however, if we are going to have magnificent successes, we have to be willing to risk disastrous failures. Choosing to avoid disaster forces us to live in the middle. The middle is safe and is cluttered with a bunch of safe noise that can’t grab anyone’s attention. The only thing worse than being hated or failing is being ignored. At least when we are hated there is passion behind how people feel. When people ignore us they’re indifferent. Indifference is dangerous because no one is forced to be passionate about what we’re creating. When we play it safe, we live in a place where we give people permission to ignore us…which is the last thing we should ever desire.

But, in choosing to take chances, break the status quo, and attempt to deliver something spectacular, we risk magnificent success or terrific disasters. We force people to either love us or hate us…but they have to choose. We create the reactions that separate us from the safe middle, the most dangerous place in the world.

So, as you create, try to find ways to avoid being safe. Take some chances. Do things that will force people to love or hate you but whatever you do, don’t live in the middle. If you do, we will never notice you.

What are some decisions you have made that risked disaster if they did not succeed?

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Some people work best when they’re alone.

But, even the loners need a sounding board from time to time. The more time we spend with teams, the more we realize that great art gets better when the right team is built. When we couple a great team with talent, vision, and hustle, there really is no ceiling for what can happen.

So how do we know we are building the right team? Here are ten clues:

1. Surround yourself with people you like to work with. There is nothing worse than being in a high stress situation and not enjoying the team that you are doing life with.

2. Find people who care passionately. If members are renters and not owners, it will breed frustration.

3. Respect the unique. Each person brings a different and unique tool box to the job each day. Respect the difference. Diversity creates better creative concepts.

4. Individuals united under one vision. Know where we are going, make it clear, repeat it often, and make sure everyone can buy into that direction. If not, they should move on.

5. Be clear. Define roles and expectations so everyone knows exactly what’s expected of them.

6. Trust Matters. If we can’t trust each other we will always start to wonder if intentions and motivations are pure.

7. People who can talk. We have to have teammates who can communicate, be clear, and be willing to have real and sometimes uncomfortable conversations without it becoming personal, unless it’s personal.

8. Identify people who understand the opportunity in front of us and have a sense of urgency without having a sense of panic.

9. Learners. People who desire to learn. Learners find out what is coming, better ways of doing what we do, and make creative teams much more creative.

10. Talent matters too. You can have all nine of the above traits, but without talent, everyone will become frustrated.

What are some of the clues you look for when creating a team.

The hustle of church is intense. There is always something to be created for someone – videos, stickers, brochures, marketing plans, announcements, songs, set lists. It can be tiring just writing all these things out. In the middle of all of the chaos, there’s something we should always remember to do in order to make sure we are creating MOMENTUM in our creative departments and not just PRODUCTS: EVALUATE! Evaluate everything we do.  After a project take stock.

• Did it meet the goal?
• Did we create a good experience?
• Did we make our communicators job easier?
• Did we shorten the gap for a first time visitor?
• Did they feel welcome?
• Was each service all that we intended for it to be?
• Did we communicate the story in the absolute best way possible?

Evaluating the effectiveness of a project helps us refine for the next time. Looking back provides us the ability to look forward and be even better in the future. Doing this after each major – or even minor – project helps us make sure we are not just creating stuff, but that we are intentionally creating to tell an amazing story, communicate properly, and manage the momentum of our organization. We are not always going to hit home runs…especially if we are swinging for home runs. Often, we might strike out and THAT’S OK! We will strike out from time to time trying to do our absolute best.

It is so important to Be prepared. Be Intentional. Be flexible. Be Reliable.

The services we are creating, or have created, for this weekend matter. If they did not meet your goals, get better – but never forget that God is bigger than our sermons, programming, and songs. We are responsible for stewarding our resources, effort, and work. HE is responsible for it impacting people’s hearts and changing their lives.

What are some questions you ask when you are evaluating your process?