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027. Productive Creativity with Pete Sena

Introduction
  • Pete Sena (@petesena) is the founder, CEO, and CCO of Digital Surgeons, a design, branding, and digital marketing consultancy
  • Pete explains his responsibilities as Chief Creative Officer
The intersection of creativity and productivity
  • Create / Produce vs. Creativity / Productivity
  • The seesaw of effectiveness and efficiency
  • Creativity is born from curiosity
  • Productivity is how people are a pro at their craft
  • Critical thinking is important for becoming great creatives
  • Being "Creatively productive"
  • "Creativity is just connecting things." -Steve Jobs
  • "My powers are ordinary. Only my application brings me success." -Isaac Newton
  • Understanding shortcuts
  • Repetitive vs. Unique
Managing creative duties and other responsibilities
  • How productivity differs in a CEO and a CCO role
  • “Labels are important but be careful how they define and limit you”
  • Set a vision
  • Remove obstacles
  • Methods for giving all roles the attention they need
  • Mitigating affronts to productivity in different roles
Tips for managing creative people
  • Stop managing creative people!
  • Understand their motivations and enable them
  • Servant leadership
  • Daniel Pink’s Drive: three intrinsic motivators
  • Problems that are unique to creative teams and their work
  • Pete's advice for a new manager of a creative team
  • Dividing work up in a creative team
  • Find out why work is important to the team and client
  • Translating the needs and wants of the client
  • Look at team members, project requirements, brands, rules, etc.
  • Logistical planning meetings for dividing tasks and ensuring consistent messaging
  • Create concepts to review
  • Find opportunities for people to collaborate
Cultivating a creative skill
  • Critical thinking is clearly listening to the intention of the person who is saying or writing something
  • Design thinking exercises
  • Combine uncommon things (three columns exercise)
  • Idea discussion > brainstorming
  • Keep using it. If you’re not, then the skill will diminish.
  • Outside of work: make a vision board, mash sources from media (e.g. magazines)
  • Improving a creative skill over lunch breaks
  • Why do you want to start that creative thing? (5 why’s)
  • Other ways someone can grow a creative skill
  • The importance of motivation, inspiration, technique, gumption, and experience
  • Knowing where to focus your energy when developing a skill
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