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Managing for Creativity

Posted by Zonk on Sun Jul 17, 2005 04:55 PM
from the make-life-better dept.
Software Businesses IT
theodp writes "After seeing some of the ideas management comes up with as a result of reading the Harvard Business Review, you may be tempted to hide their copies. But make sure they see this month's Managing for Creativity by Dr. Jim Goodnight, the still code-cranking CEO of SAS, the world's largest privately held software company." From the article: "Many academics and businesses have made inroads into this field. Management guru Peter Drucker identified the role of knowledge workers and, long before the dot-com era, warned of the perils of trying to "bribe" them with stock options and other crude financial incentives. This view is supported by the research of Harvard Business School's Teresa Amabile and Yale University's Robert Sternberg, which shows that creative people are motivated from within and respond much better to intrinsic rewards than to extrinsic ones."
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  • Dream on, sucker! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Seumas (6865) * on Sunday July 17 2005, @04:56PM (#13088720)
    Then along came "global resourcing" and the concept of "bribing" knowledge workers at all became unnecessary and said knowledge workers learned to be grateful that they still had a position at all.

    Seriously, in a world where any and every position has, is or will eventually be outsourced, the entire concept of "bribing" an employee is anachronistic. Maybe if you have the name recognition of a Shawn Fanning and someone wants your name to bootstrap their venture capital process, but not if you're Joe-Average-Buying-Four-Dollar-Milk guy.

    Today's "crude financial incentive" is "not being downsized".

    And to continue harping on the ridiculousness of such an article in an outsourcing world, I have to ask - when you're outsourcing for one tenth the salary, do you really expect any of the outsourced people you're managing to be "creative"? I've worked with a number of them and however they may be in their personal life, when it comes to the job they're paid for, they are anything BUT creative.

    This guy is one of those idealistic dreamers who has the misguided notion that you can employee people, treat them well, encourage them to be creative and non-comformist and original and not ditch them for the lowest bidder and somehow run a successful company in the long term. Learn a thing or two from today's top public-CEOs and start laying people off. Be a man! Send out some reduction notices! Cut some salaries! Freeze hiring and raises across the board! Freeze available training and education! Put the fear of outsourcing into your subordinates or you're going to end up on the garbage heap. In fact, it is downright un-patriotic to treat his employees like he is doing and promote those communist labor-friendly, creativity-inspiring warm-fuzzy propaganda ideas.

    Completely off topic - what a name...Jim Goodnight! I can see the Abbot and Costello sketch for it, now...
    • Seriously, in a world where any and every position has, is or will eventually be outsourced, the entire concept of "bribing" an employee is anachronistic.

      Actually, if all employees were given stock options, and not just 1 share or some token, I bet there would be less outsourcing, or if there was, it would be less painful.

      If I had 4000 shares of Walmart stock, and I worked for them as a programmer, I would feel much more incentive to work harder, because the better my company does, the better the stoc

      • Re:Dream on, sucker! (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Seumas (6865) *
        Yeah, but employees know that options are worthless until they are fully vested. And if your dipshit of a CEO fuckwaggled the stock price down 95% sot hat what was a good million in options when you were hired was now worth less than the one-ply you wipe your ass on in the company bathroom, why would you even care about options?

        Plus, while options from WalMart might not be so bad, you'd be insane to take options as any manner of compensation in the tech industry these days.

        • Re:Dream on, sucker! (Score:2, Interesting)

          by cduffy (652)
          Not all options take time to vest. I've got retention options, which take time to vest and go away 30 days after my employment terminates -- but then I've got compensation options, which are vested the moment I get them and stick around even if I leave the company.

          And yes, I'm one of those people who's doing the insane thing and taking options in lieu of compensation at a tech company. There's a pretty decent chance I'll come out of it well, though -- and if not, the existant-though-small paycheck was enou

          • Re:Dream on, sucker! (Score:2, Insightful)

            by hax4bux (209237)
            blah, blah, blah. My life is great, don't you wish you were me. blah, blah, blah.

            My name is "hax4bux" and I've been contracting for 13 years. I want the money and I want it now. I hope you get rich, but I bet you don't.

            I've had this conversation over multiple contracts, how I should share the vision and work for less because "we're all gonna be zillionaires". Golly, such a generous offer. I'll stick to invoicing you each week, and you don't have to worry about sharing your precious stock pool.

            Oh, y

    • Re:Dream on, sucker! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by asr_man (620632)

      Put the fear ... into your subordinates or you're going to end up on the garbage heap.

      If the kind of organization you want to run is one where the employees do what they do out of fear, you're welcome to it.

      The rest of us will just do our best work, enjoy it, and placidly take the next step with our carreers when management starts serving that flavor of Kool-Aid.

  • Article not really about stock options (Score:5, Informative)

    by robla (4860) * on Sunday July 17 2005, @04:58PM (#13088730) Homepage Journal
    The article is really a reasonably interesting puff piece for SAS. While SAS seems like a very cool company (I'm guessing Google modeled themselves partly after SAS), the article stresses the reasons why you should offer lots of intrinsic perks (such as a ton of onsite services, such as medical staff, massages, dry cleaning, haircuts, and auto detailing), and doesn't talk much at all about avoiding extrinsic perks. So, if you are hoping to find the juicy bits about why stock options aren't very effective, well, don't look here.

    Incidently, if you saw the 60 Minutes story about SAS, you can probably save yourself the time of reading this article. There doesn't appear to be much that wasn't covered on 60 Minutes. However, if you haven't heard of SAS, it is a very interesting summary. Perhaps this is a more accurate teaser, quoted straight from the article:

    Based in Cary, North Carolina, SAS has been in the top 20 of Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For list every year it's been published. The employee turnover rate hovers between 3% and 5%, compared with the industry average of nearly 20%. The governments and global corporations that rely on SAS's sophisticated business-intelligence software are overwhelmingly satisfied: The subscription renewal rate is an astounding 98%.

    Rob

    • Re:Article not really about stock options (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Seumas (6865) * on Sunday July 17 2005, @05:07PM (#13088796)
      I'm constantly amazed at the crappy "perks" corporations pay for that their employees couldn't care less about. For isntance, my company offers a concierge service. This service arranges for other companies and businesses to come in and try to sell the employees shit that they don't want. And they arrange for employees to have free access to very important online resources, like an article about writing a proper "thank you" note.

      I have a better idea. Have someone who gets my lunch so I don't have to leave the office for an hour and can have less stress dealing with traffic and lines and waiters. How often do I need to get my car fucking detailed for christ's sake? Instead, how about having someone who can help me find a quality babysitter or refer me to a great place to take the girl out for a romantic dinner and maybe throw in a corporate discount to boot. How about handling my personal mail and courier packages for me so I can just drop them off at a kiosk on my way into the office? How about offering career guidance or more education options instead of just paying lipservice to how important those things are and then putting a freeze on them to save money?

      I have never used any of the corporate services (mental health experts? medical phone number? car detailing? dry cleaning? thank-you-letter tutorial? discount on granola bars from a local vending machine supplier at a special sell-shit-to-our-capitive-employees-day?) and I don't know anyone who has. How about stop stuffing your offering full of shit just to say you offer a lot and start ovffering fewer, MORE VALUABLE services that actually make a difference.

      And you know, sometimes it's the small things. It's amazing what your workforce can do when they feel important and feel like they matter rather than constantly under the thumb of layoffs. Morale is important. Something as cheap as giving your employees free bagels and cream cheese once a week or donuts once or twice a week will make them feel like someone gives a fuck and like their contributions are valued. Otherwise they're likely to feel like they're just an unwanted burden and as soon as they can arrange to have you replaced by a cheaper drone, you're gone. Even if that's true, get the proper work you can out of the employee by installing loyalty... by treating them with little perks that make their work life enjoyable. After all, they probably will be spending at least 35% of their entire lifetime in your office...
      • I could point you to a certain company in Ohio that I interviewed at if you want. The work seemed interesting, they had daycare (and were getting certified to have kindergarten onsite), free cafeteria, free drinks, and some other things (dry cleaning, barber, massage).

        However, the interview process left me completely unimpressed with the *people* and the way that they acted.

        They contacted me for an interview (I'd never heard of them before that) and gave me a day to come up. I got there a few minutes ea
          • As a general rule, I don't respond to that sort of a question unless the answer is in the negative since I don't like to potentially burn bridges. In this case, however, I'll make an exception.

            Yes, it was. Like I said, the work actually seemed really interesting, but the practiced work philosophy left a whole lot to be desired (even though I did meet a few cool people there).

            I'm impressed that you got it without my even mentioning the industry they're in. My guess is that you either have experience wit
              • I can completely understand not wanting to burn bridges. I figure that it's been long enough that the only ones who remember me are the ones I still talk to, so it's not a big risk.

                Yes, they do require umpteen certs while you're there. I thought that was rather silly as well. I could understand the need for some of them for certain of their employees (they're largely a C# shop)

                That reminds me of something else. I was given their test in C++. At least they said it was going to be C++. It was really a

    • Re:Article not really about stock options (Score:4, Insightful)

      by techmuse (160085) on Sunday July 17 2005, @06:33PM (#13089259)
      The reason that stock options don't work is that if you underpay someone, they will be unhappy. But if you pay someone enough, then increasing their pay has diminishing returns. Example. I pay a CEO $400,000 per year. They can afford just about anything they want. Now I pay them $5 million per year. Do they work harder or more intelligently? Nope. Same thing applies to other workers.

      On the other hand, if you make your workers *happy*, they will work for *less* money. See university profs for an example. So many people want to be a prof that universities can afford to pay less - but only because lots of people WANT those jobs.

      Happiness motivates. Too much money doesn't do much. Too little money demotivates.

    • While SAS seems like a very cool company...

      Looks that way to me too. They support open source [sourceforge.net], for example.

      • The employee turnover rate hovers between 3% and 5%, compared with the industry average of nearly 20%.

        I work in the RTP area myself, and those numbers are more or less correct.

        The governments and global corporations that rely on SAS's sophisticated business-intelligence software are overwhelmingly satisfied: The subscription renewal rate is an astounding 98%.

        It's because the SAS software stops working when the license expires (or at least it used to, I'm not 100% sure about today). After a year, th
        • It's because the SAS software stops working when the license expires (or at least it used to, I'm not 100% sure about today). After a year, the statistical software has become indespensible to the customer and extremely important for their competitive advantage, so they almost always renew.

          The lock-in goes beyond that -- it's pretty much essential for FDA submissions and I'd imagine there are other regulators who regard it similarly. And for a lot of experienced statisticians, that's almost all they know.

          • "The statistical quality is excellent (which is obviously the most important issue). But the UI, even on the Windows version, is absolutely horrid. And the Unix version doesn't (at least in the version we have) even have the "Advanced Editor" -- the one where the text isn't deleted when you run it!"
            Sounds like software that that is written for people that know what they are doing. Wonder how many support people they need :)

        • They supposedly have the largest continuous integration build farm in the world

          We do. :)

          http://www.jaredrichardson.net/blog/2005/06/23/ [jaredrichardson.net]

  • Creativity may come from within (Score:3, Interesting)

    by autopr0n (534291) on Sunday July 17 2005, @05:00PM (#13088741) Homepage Journal
    But creative types would much rather work for a company that tried to 'bribe' them with expensive stock options then simply paid them a sallary and kept all the profits from their work for themselves.

    • A better read: Hare brained, tortoise minded (Score:4, Interesting)

      by EmbeddedJanitor (597831) on Sunday July 17 2005, @05:43PM (#13088984)
      Creativity does come from within, but most corporations build an environment that is not condusive to creativity/innovation.

      Task-oriented activities are suited to a typical corporate management model. You can monitor their progress set effective deadlines, describe them on papaer and outsource them.

      Creativity (including intuative thinking) does not respond well to any of these. Intuition happens on its own schedule and attemptng to drive it harder kills it. It has been often demonstrated that people under stress/pressure are less likely to find innovative solutions. Threats, direct (fix it this week or you're fired) or implied (downsizing/outsourcing) work against innovation.

      I know that from my own experience I very rarely make breakthroughs while doing what management would consider "work". I have figured out many things while doing something else: having a crap or a shower (no, not simultaneously), fishing, shooting hoops... perhaps they should pay me to do more of these.

      I don't know much about SAS, but from what I understand they are a privately owned orgainsation that really does take care of their employees. This must be a far lower-stress environment that a corp with a quarter-by-quarter driven approach that treats their employees as expenses/resources.

      • Programming isn't creative? Writing code is all about thinking outside the box, how can you solve x problem?
        • It's no more creative than being a caprenter, mechanic or any other number of standard professions. Sure, they all have to employ creative thinking (or, rather, problem solving) - but it's still within very rigid contstructs. And even when it comes to programming, most of the decisions are made by a small group and the grunt work is carried out by the rest of the crew.

          Creative problem solving is not the same as being creative. Almost everyone in the tech profession is paid to have creative problem solving
          • > And even when it comes to programming, most of the decisions are made by a small group and the grunt work is carried out by the rest of the crew.
            Only if you work for a faceless mega corporation...

            For the rest of us in medium sized organizations (1000 or so employees) - and particularly in the case of a non software company - there _is_ no rest of the crew.
            The few programming staff they have cover pretty much all the bases, and are therefore frequently responsible for all parts of the design and imple

  • Most important part of the article (Score:5, Interesting)

    by John Seminal (698722) on Sunday July 17 2005, @05:04PM (#13088772) Journal
    Creativity can't be shoehorned between the hours of nine and five. The Muses don't always show up on time for appointments.

    How true this is. I know, for myself, if you want me to work at 9am, you will not get the same productivity as if you let me work at 9pm. I was a night owl in highschool, a night owl in college, and I still am one today.

    I have had some jobs, where I did nothing more than veg out at 9am, waiting for the coffee to kick in. It was a waste of time. The company paid me for those hours of morning work, and got very little back in return.

    But just after lunch, I would have much more energy. The brain would start working. I was very productive. And what sucked about it was, by the time 4:30pm came, quitting time, I was deep in thought and work, and I did not want to leave. I was pumping out great results. If I was working on a database, it would be around this time that everything was comming together in my head, that I was able to play with lots of ideas at one time, to visualize what I was doing. Those hours from noon to 4:30pm flew by too fast! Contrast to the hours of 9am, which every second felt like an hour.

    If only the managment would have asked me, when is work the best for you. I would have told them, let me start at noon and stay late. But they did not want to pay overtime, they had fucked up rules about who could stay on company property after a certain hour, so everyone had to go home.

    • I have had some jobs, where I did nothing more than veg out at 9am, waiting for the coffee to kick in. It was a waste of time. The company paid me for those hours of morning work, and got very little back in return.

      But just after lunch, I would have much more energy. The brain would start working. I was very productive. And what sucked about it was, by the time 4:30pm came, quitting time, I was deep in thought and work, and I did not want to leave.

      When I came back to my current job, I accepted t

      • No-brainer jobs don't pay the bills.

        If you don't pay the bills, you don't have the time or resources to pursue those more interesting things in your "productive" hours.

      • Flexitime rules (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Brave Guy (457657) on Sunday July 17 2005, @06:37PM (#13089275)
        When I came back to my current job, I accepted the position on the condition that I could shift my schedule several hours forward from the usual "9-5". This not only makes me more productive when I am in the office, but let's me shave a couple of hours off my commute because I avoid rush hour. Win-Win for everybody.

        It's interesting that one of the most highly regarded "perks" in every survey of geek staff I've seen for years has been flexible working hours.

        At my current employer, we have quite a clever policy: the rule is you have to be in the office for at least 5 hours between 9am and 6pm every day, but other than that, you can work your 37.5 as you see fit, with common sense applying when it comes to organising meetings and the like. What this means is that you're guaranteed to be in the office for at least an hour of overlap with any of your colleagues in a given day, so you never miss someone completely. However, you can effectively take a half-day off without using leave, or go in before the morning rush and then leave mid-afternoon to pick the kids up from school, etc.

        I'd say most of the guys' typical hours are somewhere between 9:30-5:30 and 10:30-6:30. We also have quite a few habitual early starters and a few habitual come-in-at-lunchtime guys. There are even some guys who change quite radically from week to week or even day to day, such as the guy next to me whose fiancee works shifts at a hospital, or one of the girls who finishes early-late-early-late to alternative picking her son up from school with her husband.

        This is a great arrangement, and it was interesting that when we were bought out by a US corp a few months back, this was one of the Big Things everyone was adamant we would keep in the new contract. (We collectively made them rewrite it so we could.) Of all the other "perks" brought in by the corp, none has anything like the value of this one, and I'm not sure I actually use any of the others.

        • Re:Flexitime rules (Score:3, Interesting)

          by TheRaven64 (641858)
          I worked at QinetiQ for a little while, and they had the policy that everyone had to be in between 12 and 2 (I think - something like that) if they were not claiming the day off (which you could do a small number of times a month if you had worked overtime, or if you wanted to use up some holiday time). This had the advantage that there was a time you could guarantee someone would be around if you needed to see them.

          Apart from that, you could turn up whenever you wanted as long as you kept track of how ma

    • How true this is. I know, for myself, if you want me to work at 9am, you will not get the same productivity as if you let me work at 9pm. I was a night owl in highschool, a night owl in college, and I still am one today.

      Nobody is naturally a "night owl". You are a human, you are supposed to be awake during the day and asleep at night. The fact that you your brain wasn't active until after lunch suggests that there is something very wrong with you. Here are some suggestions:

      • Eat breakfast. A big b

  • Creativity needs no management (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Andrew Tanenbaum (896883) on Sunday July 17 2005, @05:21PM (#13088874)
    Management sucks the creativity right out of you

  • ugh (Score:2)

    by sbma44 (694130)
    Shorter version:

    - pensions cost most than an on-site masseuse

    - the amount of salable intellectual property generated by your employees remains constant regardless of compensation. Just make sure you lock it up in their contracts!

    I know businesses exist to make money, but when I was last interviewing I viewed lots of in-office perks as a big strike against prospective employers. It's great if there's a foosball table in the break room, but not if the payments on it come out of my salary.

    Even worse is t
    • This may be the case for many companies, but SAS must be doing something right as they've consistently throughout their history been ranked by various different sources worldwide as one of the best companies to work in, and it seems to be something they are genuinely proud of and working hard to achieve judging from their website and from other public presentations.
  • Sure, stock options and bonuses are great and all but I've found I'm more motivated with the promise of free pizza for lunch.

  • A place for managers to start... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by OSXCPA (805476) on Sunday July 17 2005, @06:00PM (#13089071) Journal
    Ok, you are my manager. Here's where you can start...
    1. Judge me by my work, not be how many hours I put in. You wrote the job description - if I can do the work you need in X hours, why should I hang around my cubicle for X+n hours, especially when I use 'extra' time to try and figure out better ways to do our job, which you ignore?
    2. Substance trumps form. This applies to not only work, but policy enforcement. Telling me that we use XX product, and because XX cost $YY and took KK consultants ZZ years to implement, it can't suck simply tells me the management team didn't know what kind of pit they were digging. My advice, to get out of the hole - stop digging first!
    3. I'll dress the way you want me to and conduct myself by your standards of 'professionalism', as long as you don't treat me like a three-year-old until I give you a reason. Then, just fire me - don't fsck with me.
    4. Don't fire people for exchanging their own information - i.e., if we want to talk about salary at lunch, that is our business, period, especially if we aren't on company property.
    5. Recognize the utter stupidity of office politics, and no, that jerk from Finance will not become less of a jerk if I learn to golf so I can make nice-nice with him. In fact, it will get you sued and me fired when I put a five-iron through his thorax.
    6. Keep the HR group away from me. I do NOT WANT another flier about the suicide hotline, nor do I care about our new marketing effort in Outer Namibia, and as far as Frank Jones, the new VP of Operations, New York, is concerned, re: promotion, well, good for him - I'll never meet him, and I don't think he wants to hear about my promotion either. Nor do I want to know about the class offered for "all professionals" held in San Francisco, that I can't go to because I am either not high up enough, or I don't sell for a living. You expect my work to be relevant to what we do. I expect the same sense of appropriateness and relevance as you do.
    7. I realize we have a fiduciary duty to our clients. If you are really worried about my taking advantage of proprietary information, by all means, call the feds. In the meantime, my wife's 401K is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS - we have no say in how it is invested, the trustee handles that. You should know that, being a large international bank.
    8. Before you give me any static about how overworked any/everyone is, and how short on resources we are, how about firing that useless sack of cr@p you complain about so loudly at after-hours work functions? I know he's been here 15 years, and it would make upper management wonder "how did this bag of cr@p last so long?" when you have to justify canning the id10t, but trust me, it will be worth it.
    9. Offering benefits and then implementing workplace policies that make it impossible to use them is the same as not offering them, except a whole lot more annoying. ("Gee, we would pay for your night-school classes, but we'll need you to work overtime for the next few months, then as needed after that - you're a professional, so I know you'll get the job done. What? No, we don't pay overtime or comp time, are you kidding?") Odd, how this sudden overtime need hit after I applied for tuition reimbursement...
    10. Mandatory fun isn't.
    Please note: The above have been aggregated from several different employers, so if you happen to know who I work for, and are a member of management, read #11...
    11. Respect my privacy outside of work. Unless I slander you, flaming me at work over what you think I may have implied is unprofessional - yes, that word can apply to management too!

    • I have to agree on pretty much all of what you wrote. I've seen it far too many times.

      One of the differences in my case would not be a suicide prevention hotline, but a homocide prevention hotline =]

      I am generally a calm and amicable individual. Heck, I even end up being a mentor and older brother to the team I'm on (which is amusing when you are younger than some of them), but once I hit my bullshit threshold (largely from certain managers I've worked with), I need to go to the lake in order to work of

  • A little bit more about creativity (Score:5, Insightful)

    by roffe (26714) <roffe@extern.uio.no> on Sunday July 17 2005, @06:10PM (#13089128) Homepage

    Robert Epstein (last to receive a Ph.D. from B.F. Skinner) lists four strategies for generating creative output. These are

    • Capturing: The main thing that distinguishes "creative" people from the rest of us is that the creative ones have learned ways to pay attention to and then to preserve some of the new ideas that occur to them. They have capturing skills. In other words, get a PDA and learn how to use it.
    • Challenging One way to accelerate the flow of new ideas is by challenging yourself--that is, by putting yourself in difficult situations in which you're likely to fail to some extent. A challenging situation is like an "extinction" procedure in the behavioral laboratory. We extinguish behavior when we withdraw the reinforcers that usually maintain that behavior. In challenging situations, a great deal of behavior goes unreinforced; it just doesn't work.
    • BroadeningIf you want to enhance your own creativity, take courses in subjects you know nothing about. Once a year, at least, take a course at a local college in the last thing you'd ever want to know about. Land's own breakthrough invention came about because of training he had in crystallography, chemistry, and other fields. The invention of Velcro, the modern theory of electron spin, and countless other advances were made possible because their creators had training in diverse fields. Steve Jobs recently made a point of how his training in caligraphy contributed to the intitial success of the Macintosh.
    • Surrounding Finally, you can enhance your creativity by surrounding yourself with diverse stimuli--and, even more important, by changing those stimuli regularly. Diverse and changing stimuli promote creativity because, like resurgence, they get multiple behaviors competing with each other. If you put a Mickey Mouse hat and pliers on your desk in the morning, your thinking will move in odd directions during the day. Call these items distractions, if you like; they are great reservoirs of creativity

    Sometimes, though, I wonder about the opposite--how can I learn to quit being "creatve" and just get the damn job done? It's not that I ever get any original brilliant ideas anyway--all really great ideas I have had, I've found out were conceived by somebody else before me.

    Anyway, here goes:

    Capturing creativity [findarticles.com]

    • Re:A little bit more about creativity (Score:4, Insightful)

      by OSXCPA (805476) on Sunday July 17 2005, @06:19PM (#13089176) Journal
      A possible answer - if you are a singularly creative, producing person, hire a 'do-er' or team thereof who can take what you set up and explain and grind it out. Assuming you have the means to do that... Otherwise, try setting self-imposed limits, e.g., "I am not allowed to do (X very nice, imaginitive thing) until I implement (Y grindingly dull job done).

      Works for me, but YMMV.

      BTW - you may repeat great ides of the past, but hey - your timing might be better than the earlier implementation was. Think about all the stories of Steve Jobs seeing GUI, email and OO programming at Xerox PARC - he has even said, he didn't originate them, he implemented them and got them out for use when the time was right. (OK, many of the concepts were implemented by others along the way, but you get the point)

      Cheers!

      • Thanks for the advice!

        As you hint at, the story about Jobs being originally inspred by Xerox is in fact a myth. Jef Raskin, then at Apple, had worked with the ideas both as a professor and as an employee at Apple. The purpose of the legendary visit at Xerox was to see what Raskin had talked about in action. You can read all about it at Raskin's Site [raskincenter.org]

        • I stand corrected. I had seen an interview with Jobs where he talked about the visit and the "6 things he saw there" that he took, and he went to pains to say he only understood 2-3 of them at the time. I don't recall him mentioning Raskin, but that was probably my memory gone bad. Thanks for the reply and correction - and the Raskin link. Good reading!
  • When I RTFA, I noticed something that struck home - the author discusses the difference between a company being held 'accountable' by customers vs. shareholders. I've frequently seen good managers make decisions they knew were bad, because the stock market is fundamentally concerned with the lowest common denominator - it doesn't matter if you can make more money for the year by taking an action that will cause earnings to miss expectations this quarter, but the markets will punish you. Your customers, howe

  • 9-5 Creativity (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Regnard (803869)
    Creativity can't be shoehorned between the hours of nine and five. The Muses don't always show up on time for appointments.

    I can't agree with this more. In my job where I actually use both sides of my brain, creativity just doesn't have a schedule. The best thing I could do is set myself up for a "creative spark" -- surfing the web for things I like, or look at what the latest, although surfing can only do so much.

  • Off topic... (Score:4, Funny)

    by xENoLocO (773565) on Sunday July 17 2005, @07:21PM (#13089556) Homepage

    ... but damn, I would kill for his name at any party I've ever been to.

    Her: Hi, I'm Stacy...

    Me: Hi Stacy, I'm Mr. Good Night

    **slap**

    Ok, maybe not.... but the thought of it is cool.

  • Managing for creativity requires deep recognition of the fact that people are creators. Not only that, but the constant change of circumstances should be embraced as a fertile ground for creativity. And finally, it is very important to realize that the way people perceive reality is critical to them being empowered to be creative... and for their contributions to be valued. I write about this kinda stuff all the time - hopefully in a predominantly practical way - on my blog: Agile Advice [agileadvice.com].

  • Another idea (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Here's another tip: Stop trying to own your creative people. The most creative people are the ones who will be working for themselves in five years, and thus aren't willing to sign non-compete agreements, overly-broad NDAs, and contracts that say "we own everything you create whether you're being paid for it or not".

  • A Clean Code base! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by moultano (714440) on Monday July 18 2005, @12:00AM (#13090983)
    If you are developing software in any capacity, personally I think nothing helps creativity more than a clean code base. When the biggest thing you associate with implementing a new interesting feature is the crap you have to go through to get it interacting with everything else, you aren't very likely to come up with good ideas and act on them often.
    • Well, technically, its written communication, which would make it libel, and its written communication of an opinion, which would make it not-a-crime. You have to make a false statement of a material fact which is also damaging to reputation for it to be libel or slander.
    • Yawn. It's not slander. It's not even directed against HBR. Its saying that the PHBs who read it often do stupid things afterwards. People read stuff like this, and somehow manage to find justification in them for doing whatever it was they intended to do in the first place.
    • meaning that they get paid by tax money.

      That definitely has to be a job where the rewards are intrinsic to the creation of knoweldge, because the external rewards sucketh and getting grants and jobs is even harder.
    • R is an open-source knockoff of the S language. It's hardly a beacon of creativity, any more than Evolution, Mono or Rhythmbox is.

      That said, I agree about SAS. SAS is solid, certainly, but I doubt the word its users associate with it is "creativity".

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