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?

Photo Props

There is art in life. But in order to have access to it’s power, we have to be paying attention.

More often than not, people discredit the art in their life as commonplace because they don’t feel they are creative or creative enough. We take for granted the fact that we have the ability to create art in things like our jobs, relationships, kids, meals, trips, doctors appointments. You name it, art exists in it…but it’s easy to miss if we’re not paying attention.

One of the first things a person using their creative muscle discovers is the importance of keeping their antenna up all the time. A friend of mine, a songwriter, has written some of the biggest songs ever sung in corporate worship. I asked him one day where he gathers inspiration for these culture-shaping tunes. His answer? Everywhere.

He takes the pictures, smells the air, experiences the relationships. He lives his life. He is consistently tuned in to the fact that the next song may be on the breath of someone he talks with or in the branches as they sway in the breeze.

Time after time, we find ourselves waiting for that “lightening strike” of creativity; for amazing ideas to fall out of the sky and hit us in the head. We go to youtube, or google, or some other church’s website or vimeo and are “inspired” by their work…but, in reality, the inspiration is right in front of us.

See, we control the work. We control if we are paying attention, taking notes, experiencing life ALL AROUND US! Our real lives have the potential to inspire us far more than any blog, tumblr, instagram or flickr. So, GET OUT, PUT YOUR ANTENNA UP and CREATE from the art of YOUR life.

What are some ways you have learned to keep your antenna up?

Just under the gun…

We all need inspiration. What did you find that inspired you this week?