As I sit and watch my toddler play Lego, I can’t help but admire his creativity. I notice he’s not hindered by instructions, rules, or predisposed processes – and it makes me wonder: what if within a media agency, we took inspiration from our creative counterparts, or even our own strategic talent? Could applying creativity to our approach to operations help us build better results?
Organisations place high importance on achieving operational excellence because ultimately, it is what drives customer and employee satisfaction, quality, and financial performance. Workflow systems, automation, and dashboarding solutions are the norm, but perhaps we’ve become so fixated on systematically implementing structures that we’ve forgotten the value of creativity to reimagine our operations.
Creativity is often defined as the ability to produce original ideas. However, the application of creativity in operations is with the aim of problem-solving; and therefore, focuses not only on invention, but innovation. It allows us to see old problems as new opportunities, and to identify what is missing in the process. By looking at things from another point of view and doing something differently, there is potential to drive more sustainable transformation.
According to Deloitte’s Insights: Investing in Creative Potential, “creativity is not just something we have; it’s something we do”. So much more than an idea, Deloitte says “creativity is the result of multiple factors that must converge for it to spark… [and] arises out of the interactions of individuals and teams… and the environment around them.” While we spend our time focusing on practicality and logic in our pursuit of operational excellence; it’s ironic that our creative spark; the juxtaposition; is what inspires us to redesign and reimagine new ways to deliver better outcomes.
As easy as it sounds, the spark doesn't happen overnight. Deloitte points out that “integrating creativity into our operations is a major undertaking for business. Metrics need to be developed, organisational measures updated, governance modified, new processes constructed, job profiles rethought, training designed, and a new to-be operating model imagined”. Finally, leaders must truly invest in creativity – in order to light the path to innovation and greater commercial success.
I believe 2023 should be the year of advancing our business operations, by unlocking our true creative potential. This is a matter of urgency, as it allows us to recontextualise conventional frameworks for greater operational effectiveness, not just efficiencies – saving us time to future-proof our talent and focus more on strategic output for clients.
Knowing that creativity in operations is not linear, analytical, or simple – now is the time to empower our teams to recondition their thinking. Thankfully, technology puts everyone on an even playing field, enabling us to foster our cultural creativity. And just like any skill, creativity takes practice.
Allow your teams to experiment, without expecting perfection or scalability every time.
Remember that not every solution has to be bold. It just needs to be useful, action-orientated, and influence how work gets done; yet fluid enough to be further optimised.
Creativity can lead to lots of small operational gains which add up to something great.
Just like my toddler, I’m reminded that creativity is inherent in my agency. In our approach to operational excellence, it helps that we don’t always follow the existing blueprint. Agencies should be agile enough to explore and overhaul processes – as without it; things stay still.
Just like stacking, building, breaking and restacking lego again, a bit of spark to unlock our creative potential might just be the thing that leads us to our next innovative solution. Paving the way for how we operate as an agency now and in the future.