Page 195 - THE DO-IT-YOURSELF LOBOTOMY Open Your Mind to Greater Creative Thinking

CHAPTER 18

Mind Farming

How to Identify and Develop Creative Thinkers in
Your Organization

This chapter has been written principally for people who manage
others. If you’re not a manager, you can learn a great deal about man-
aging yourself for greater creative achievement. You may also learn
more about what your manager might be looking for in you.
When running my ad agency years ago I found that there were
many critical decisions that affected the quality and the success of our
relationship with any given client and the creativity of the work we did
for that client. Of all the decisions we made as managers that con-
tributed to the success of an account team the most important by far
was the choice of exactly who made up that team.
This talent selection process was particularly critical to me, as cre-
ative director, when assembling the copywriter and art director duo
who would lead the creative development process on that account.
Would they have the horses to do the job? Would they match up with
the client’s needs? Would they require a great deal of supervision or
free me up for other fronts?
I often found myself thinking of people in terms of drivers and others.
Who’s going to drive the creative process for this client, and who is
simply going to contribute her or his role to the team?
Now understand, this was long before I became a creative thinking
expert. But it was during these years of moving people around on the
great game board of ad agency account teams that I first got the sense