Ms. Adverthinker

I recently completed the book “The Accidental Creative” by Todd Henry. It is not a self-help book; at least, that is what I am telling myself to feel better about loving it so much. But it kind of is a self-help book for those with creative pursuits, specifically in the advertising business. The author has a background in agency business and it felt like he was talking directly to me and only me, the experiences and stories were so dead on.  And, I am a not a “creative;” I work in account management.

As the readers here know, based on an epiphany and an encounter I had in April, I have taken on a mission to recreate the account management department at our agency to act, and be perceived by their peers, as more than notetakers and communications conduits between clients and creative teams. There are a lot of aspects to this shift, but one major piece is that the account managers have to think of themselves as creative and thereby contributors to that creative process and output. To quote the book:

“While a designer will solve a problem visually, a manager may solve it by developing a new process. But they’re both using the same creative tools and wrestling with many of the same obstacles.”

I have been doing a lot of work against this effort, mostly in the form of research and notes, without much implementation yet. I believe this  book can explain to my team how important their creativity is, that they are all creative, and they just need the right attitude, approach and plan to be creative in their contributions to the agency, their teams and their lives. To that end, I am going to ask everyone on my team to read this book. (Don’t worry, I’ve learned none of them read this blog, so I am not spoiling any surprise for them by posting it here. Although, if my boss wrote a blog about our business, I would definitely be reading it regularly. Perhaps that is a post and vent for another day.)

The book starts by walking through the hinderances to creativity, especially those in an ad agency. Then, it takes the reader through recommendations for overcoming those obstacles. I am not going to outline them for you here, you have to read the book. Some of the recommendations seems so obvious, but none of us our doing them, making the time to even attempt to do them or thinking twice about skipping over the obvious steps to creativity just to check something else off our to-do list. Other recommendations are easy to accomplish, it is just a matter of setting out to do them and getting them on the calendar.

So, why is this book my new “life guide”? “The Accidental Creative” it also about leadership, team work, time management and life happiness. To quote the book again:

“It is more and more difficult in today’s world to segment your life into buckets like ‘work,’ ‘home,’ ‘relationships,’ hobbies,’ and so on. Every area of your life affects every other, and a lack of engagement in one area will quickly infect the rest. As you implement these practices, you will find that your newfound creative energy will infiltrate not just your work life, but other areas of your life as well. A rising tide raises all boats.”

This book is a definite recommend.

Rework, by Jason Fried and David Hansson (the founders of 37signals), is a simple book of wisdom for business, entrepreneurship, and really, life. The authors are realistic, to the point and minimalist in their advice.

I wanted to highlight the entire book. It inspired me to think about my day-to-day job approach differently and to think about possibility and opportunity differently. Rather than complicating business with structure, people, planning and excuses, Rework advises–among many other things–things like making do with what you have to force creativity, doing every job in the office before you hire someone else to do it, doing what you have to do not what you could and want to do, making decisions and moving on rather than sitting on things, and not always worrying about the details.

The book is short and easy to read. Pick it up, read it and be inspired.

One of the most interesting facts from this book:

“A recent major survey of high-level executives, including chief executive officers, chief financial officers, and presidents, revealed that 70 percent of them regularly play casual computer games while working. That’s right: the vast majority of senior executives report taking daily computer game breaks that last on average between fifteen minutes and one hour.”

I wouldn’t believe this startling statistic had I not spotted one of my clients playing Solitaire during a meeting, and another playing Words With Friends while walking to a meeting. The bottom line is that everyone is playing games and in surprising numbers. Games have huge power and potential influence over our behavior. Because there has been a lot of talk in the technology and social worlds of this influence of gaming and its growth potential, and because I believe know nothing about gaming–not being a gamer myself–I decided to read the most talked book on the subject. While I am still trying to figure out gaming and how it can be used in our business as an effective tool, this book did shed some light on the appeal of games and how they can influence change:

“The real world just doesn’t offer up as easily the carefully designed pleasures, the thrilling challenges, and the powerful social bonding afforded by virtual environments. Reality doesn’t motivate us as effectively. Reality isn’t engineered to maximize our potential. Reality wasn’t designed from the bottom up to make us happy.”

Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal explores why people play games, the psychology behind good game mechanics and gives real examples of games that have the potential to change behaviors for world-wide good. I have a new appreciation for both game developers and game players after reading this book. McGonigal walks through specific games, like World of Warcraft, and talks about specific skills the gamers learn and build by playing these types of games.

Ultimately, McGonigal is saying that game play makes people happy, and when they are happy they will play more, and when they play more they will ultimately reach the defined game goal:

“There are many ways to be happy, but we cannot find happiness. No object, no event, no outcome or life circumstance can deliver real happiness to us. We have to make our own happiness–by working hard at activities that provide their own reward.”

…

“On the other hand, when we set out to make our own happiness, we’re focused on activity that generates intrinsic rewards–the positive emotions, personal strengths, and social connections that we build by engaging intensely with the world around us. We’re not looking for praise or payouts. The very act of what we’re doing, the enjoyment of being fully engaged, is enough.”

So McGonigal wonders if we can define a goal within a game that can fix really big world issues, and that is the impetus for the book:

“What if we decided to use everything we know about game design to fix what’s wrong with reality? What if we started to live our real lives like gamers, lead our real businesses and communities like game designers, and think about solving real-world problems like computer and video game theorists?”

…

“Game developers know better than anyone else how to inspire extreme effort and reward hard work. They know how to facilitate cooperation and collaboration at previously unimaginable scales. And they are continuously innovating new ways to motivate players to stick with harder challenges, for longer, and in much bigger groups. These crucial twenty-first-century skills can help all of us find new ways to make a deep and lasting impact on the world around us.”

With this as her premise, McGonigal walks the how games are created, defined, played and improved upon. From the basics like the four defining traits of a game:

• A goal
• Rules
• A feedback system
• Voluntary participation

To the details like scalability and social integrations. With this kind of detail and range, this book is great for a non-gamer looking to understand what impact games have and how to go about thinking about game design. I enjoyed reading and learning from McGonigal’s extensive experiences and would definitely recommend this to anyone curious about game mechanics and design.

“Our morning social media browse to check in on what everyone has been up to became the equivalent of the old-timers’ early morning stroll to the diner for pancakes and coffee. We check Facebook and comment on a friend’s photo of her new shoes (which we know without asking are Kate Spades and were bought at Nordstrom’s because she said so in her status update) the same way we once would have remarked, ‘You look lovely in that hat, Margie,’ as we passed our neighbor.”

For those that don’t understand the draw of social media, the excerpt above can help put it into a context they may understand. In “The Thank You Economy,” Gary Vaynerchuk does a fantastic job of clearly explaining the significance social media can have on a business and its customer relationships.  For those that are still wondering if and why they should engage with customers through social media, Vaynerchuk knocks down the arguments. The book is bursting with real examples of brands that have used social media to make a difference in the business engagements and the brands range in size, awareness and business type. Vaynerchuk shows that you can be a dentist and use social media with successes to show for the efforts.

Some quotes from the book that hit home for me:

“When given the choice, people will always spend their time around people they like. When it’s expedient and practical, they’s also rather do business with and buy stuff from people they like. And now, they can. Social media has made it possible for consumers to interact with businesses in a way that is often similar to how they interact with their friends and family.”

“Social media has transformed our world into one great big small town, dominated, as all vibrant towns used to be, by the strength of relationships, the currency of caring, and the power of word of mouth.”

“People thought they had seen a massive cultural shift when the public adopted the Internet into their daily lives, but the bigger shift occurred when the Internet began to allow for two-way conversation. Learn how to implement a culture of caring and communication into your business, scale your one-to-one relationships, and watch your customers reward your efforts by using their new and massively powerful word of mouth to market your business and brand for you.”

“The drawback to resisting social media engagement is clear: the longer you wait, the farther the competition can pull ahead.”

“Some people try to use social media…by pushing sales pitches and gimmicks. Their efforts might get brief attention, but the message will fade and it certainly won’t have long-term value; it’s just not worth thinking about. If you’re going to launch a campaign, it has to be one that evokes an emotion–positive or negative–so that people feel compelled to share. Give them something to talk about, unleash the power of word of mouth, and allow them to pull you into their consciousness.”

“The Thank You Economy works when you build a sense of community around your brand, not when you simply sell to it.”

I heard Vaynerchuk speak at SXSW this year where he enthusiastically revved up the audience with his passion for social media. You can feel his personality, enthusiasm and passion come through in this book.  This book can make a believer out of the biggest skeptics to social media.

Recommendation: read it.

The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains is a book by Nicolas Carr that provides a history of how our brains process and absorb information delivered in evolving channels from oral storytelling, to the written word, from broadcast media to now through the web.  The impetus for the book was a 2008 article in The Atlantic titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” So, the premise of the book is the possibility that our continued digital media consumption in bits and bites could be diminishing our capacity to understand and process complex issues the require in-depth information analysis.  The conclusion, however, is not that our intelligence is waning, but instead that our faculties are changing, even evolving.

The Brain Changes as It Needs to Change

Through the first few chapters of the book, we learn that our brains are amazingly adept at adapting to these changes.  The brain actually re-wires itself to deal with the new experiences: “Evolution has given us a brain that can literally change its mind–over and over again.”  Experts quoted in the book support this fact:

“Our neurons are always breaking old connections and forming new ones, and brand-new nerve cells are always being created.  ’The brain,’ observes Olds, ‘has the ability to reprogram itself on the fly, altering the way it functions.’”

“‘If we stop exercising our mental skills,’ writes Doidge, ‘we do not just forget them: the brain map space for those skills is turned over to the skills we practice instead.’”

Are We More or Less Creative as a Result?

Our brains become more accustomed to cursory scanning of data for relevant bits of information; in turn, it becomes more difficult for the brain to focus on long-form, single-source reading.  This is not a bad thing, as we are able to gather the same amount of information, but now diversify the sources from which that information comes.  However, a question was posed about the stifling of creativity as a result of reduced focused on reading as a meditative act.  Many of those quoted in the book felt the opposite was true:

“Friedman told me…that he’s ‘never been more creative’ than he has been recently, and he attributes that ‘to my blog and the ability to review/scan “tons” of information on the web.’”

“Karp has come to believe that reading lots of short, linked snippets online is a more efficient way to expand his mind than reading ’250-page books’…”

“Muses Davis, ‘The Internet may have made me a less patient reader, but I think that in many ways, it has made me smarter.  More connections to documents, artifacts, and people means more external influences on my thinking and thus on my writing.’”

Conclusion

History has shown that our brains adapt to the way information is processed: we did it when converting from oral storytelling to the written word and we are doing it as we convert from the written word to the digital word.

Recommendation

Read The Shallows.  It is a quick, interesting and relevant read right now.