In our recent article about The Creative Manager we started with a series of five essential capabilities that the successful manager of tomorrow needs. In the current article, we will continu with this.

The creative manager not only trusts what he has learned but knows that he needs new and different ways of thinking and capabilities to bring change and innovation in his organisation. He learns to ‘unlearn’’. But above all, he learns to manage the tension between what works well on the one hand and the creation of new things on the other hand. The creative manager balances effiency with creativity or structure with experimentation. He does not create a chaos of ideas.

The more concrete and clear the question is, the more creativity will spark and powerfull solutions will be developed.

Capability 6: Look for the issues

It definitely is a cliché, but every problem is an opportunity for the creative manager to do things differently and better. He is actively looking for ‘issues’ and clearly shows an eagerness to change these. With that, he gets others to be enthusiastic.

Capability 7: Eat an elephant in little pieces

Even though the challenge facing the team is at first sight towering, the creative manager ensures that the problem is clear and concrete and that the issue is manageable. The more concrete and clear the question is, the more creativity will spark and powerfull solutions will be developed.

Capability 8: Go on safari

New experiences create new insights. These insights will stimulate creativity to find new solutions for existing issues. Go and visit other companies, work side-by-side with the advertising team, organise safaris (not in Africa, but simply in town, in shops etc), hand out different and diverse inspirational items (unusual magazines, blogs, videos, speakers etc) and change your workplace. This last item can be a very big challenge as such!

Capability 9: Develop the psychologist inside

A creative manager does not only realize what the assets are within his team, what dreams, personality, interests and talent each of his employees have, but he shares this with the whole team. And together they look for opportunities to use these differences in the best possible way.

Capability 10:
Embrace the sponge-attitude

The creative manager is like a sponge. He absorbes and irrigates. Lifetime learning is not an empty word for him. He is leading by example and stimulates this in his team in all kind of shapes and forms: consulting online sources, books, conferences, coaches, networking…….