Verified
CREATIVES AND SUITS:
We know that a certain view of creativity based on individual exceptionalism has evolved as part of the orthodoxy of Western managerial practice. What happens when this managerial discourse is applied within a creative business (i.e. an organisation in the business of “symbolic production”), such as an advertising agency?
Of course the managerial view of creativity based on individual exceptionalism has certain advantages for anyone defined as a “creative person”; such individuals may be granted some exemptions from the normal social and organisational rules. A refusal to conform to organisational culture may be tolerated, even encouraged. However, this tolerance is unlikely to extend into operational deadlines and targets. It might be that this limited autonomy suits some artists very well. Exempt from managerial responsibility, protected from harsh economic realities, the “artist as genius” is free to concentrate on his or her work. Any problems outside the immediate tasks can be delegated to “management”.
This separation between creators and managers is often re?ected in the organisational culture of creative businesses through factors such as dress code, language, gender, hierarchy-even the office lay-out. One senior television drama producer describes how “creative” and “business” parts of the company she worked for were separated by a long corridor, and this physical distance reinforced the psychological divisions between drama producers and accountants.
Whilst stereotypical perceptions of “creative people” and managers in the creative business provide a kind of licence on both sides for the individual, they inhibit organisational creativity. The person-oriented definition of creativity is the point of divide in the workplace between “creatives” and “suits” making for difficult communication between the two camps, sometimes descending into outright hostility, as with Powell and Friedkin’s description of the stand-off between the financial and programming divisions in an American public television station (Powell and Friedkin, 1986).
For the “creative”, protection from managerial realities comes at a price; vulnerability to exploitation and a loss of control over their career or their intellectual property. Disconnected from markets on the grounds that this will corrupt the purity of artistic inspiration, information about audiences and markets is filtered by management and “creatives” may find themselves having to develop their work in an information vacuum. The lack of communication or synergy at organisational level is a recipe for ill-informed decision-making, both at the “creative” end of the organisation and in the marketing department.
For the manager of a creative business, much energy is expended on the “problem” of communication between the creative department, the rest of the organisation and the client; isolated from any deeper appreciation of their function and value to the organisation as a whole, creators inevitably waste time generating ideas which may be innovative but are ultimately useless because they are inappropriate or misdirected according to the organisation’s broader objectives. Meanwhile, managers are reluctant to intervene in an area of the business that is purported to be temperamentally, intellectually and culturally outside their mental ambit; consequently managerial interventions are often deferred until they are too late to have any useful input into the creative process.
Of course there may be good reasons for mutual suspicion between “creatives” and “suits” in the creative business. Many creators have an ambivalent relationship with the business of creativity and may not share the broader commercial objectives espoused by the management. Yet they are drawn together by mutual self-interest; even if the artist is not “in it for the money” he/she has made the decision to work in a commercial environment, either because he/she wants to make enough money to continue with her “artistic” work, or because he/she sees the commercial market as a way of communicating with a larger audience. Despite any residual misgivings on both sides, it is clearly in the interest of both creators and managers to work together as effectively and harmoniously as possible. The one-sided, person-based view of creativity results in a divided organisation. If managers are to get beyond this polarisation, they will need to engage with a process-based view of creativity, where the key lies not in the individual components (rational vs. irrational, divergent vs. convergent, genius and non-genius) but in the totality of relationships between them. The crucial task for managers of creative businesses then becomes the connecting or brokering of these elements for the mutual benefit of all parties involved in the creative process.