Entrepreneurship was once like the Olympics – only those with elite business brains and brawn could successfully get a company off the ground.
Today, entrepreneurship is more like your local gym on January 2. It's crowded, competitive, and everyone has a chance to play. In fact, approximately 550,000 Americans became entrepreneurs each month in 2016.
In such a congested climate, it takes more than business savvy to thrive. You need to build a creative edge that sets your company apart.
Redefining Creativity
Creativity is not a matter of being artsy; it's a matter of being innovative in how you approach every aspect of your business – from your branding to your product design to your packaging and beyond.
Today’s consumers are innovation addicts and connoisseurs of creativity. My mom is a perfect example. She knows next to nothing about technology and design, and she probably thinks "UX" is a Latin pronoun. But she can intuitively sniff out a design fail when she sees one. I recently heard her shun an entire tech company because its smartphone wasn't user-friendly enough.
Your customers have made design and UX their top priorities, and it's time for your company to follow suit.
Become a Creativity Magnet
Your creative edge will not arrive overnight. It's a process that requires strategic planning and staffing.
It can be broken down into three core steps: attract, retain, and sustain. You need to attract great talent, retain your employees, and sustain their output over the long haul.
Here's a deeper dive into each step of the process:
1. Attract by solving big problems.
In a world where both consumers and employees care more about purpose than their pocketbooks, it's pivotal to solve problems that are worth solving. No amount of compensation will convince a top-tier creative professional to take on menial projects. If you’re launching an app just because everyone else is launching an app, you'll struggle to find willing participants.
Creatives are like mountaineers who are drawn to Everest "because it's there." They want to help your brand address an ongoing problem that people actually care about. If you frame your full-time and freelance job opportunities accordingly, you'll send out a Bat-Signal to proven professionals who can help you find your edge.
Related | Recruiting with Content: A Lookbook for the Candidate Journey
2. Retain by providing leadership.
It's easy to say that creativity and design are pillars of your business, but do you actually mean it? If you don't, it won’t take long for new hires to realize they've been duped. In my experience, when a creative professional decides to seek greener pastures, it's typically because he or she doesn't feel valued or heard.
Your recent hires need to know that their input is taken seriously and their contributions matter. They also need to be overseen by a manager who speaks their language, actually understands what they do on a day-to-day basis, and has a seat at the bigwigs' table. Over the past few years, we've seen countless companies across all industries hire chief creative officers and chief design officers to show their employees – and the world – that they take creativity seriously.
If you don't already have creative representation on your C-suite, it's time to take action and fill that role.
Related | The Employee Retention Playbook
3. Sustain by fostering the right environment.
Exciting projects and impressive leadership will help you attract and retain, but the final piece of the puzzle – the cherry on top – is offering a work environment that celebrates creativity and encourages it to bloom.
You cannot force neckties, cubicles, and 9-to-5 schedules on a creative team and expect optimum results. But you also can't expect unlimited snacks, ping-pong tables, and "Call of Duty" tournaments to do the trick. Sustained creativity requires an open-minded environment that promotes experimentation, imagination, and collaboration. It also requires flexibility. In fact, "flexible work hours" and "work-from-home options" ranked as two of the most important work perks a company could offer in a recent study.
Lastly, nearly every creative professional I know is juggling some sort of personal passion project in addition to his or her primary job. Encourage your team to pursue these outside-of-work endeavors, and perhaps even support them. For example, if you know someone just created a Kickstarter campaign, consider making a small contribution on behalf of the company. That would mean the world to your employee and help sustain his or her output.
Creativity isn't a nice-to-have skill you should only apply to arts-and-crafts projects; it's an essential business function that will differentiate your company from the pack.
As you build your creative edge, make "attract, retain, sustain" your mantra. Develop meaningful projects, find a leader for your team, and provide an environment that fosters growth.
Learn more about how to attract top talent, retain your best people, and build a sustainable work environment, by downloading Glassdoor’s Culture Codes of Best Places to Work eBook.
About the Author:
Justin Gignac co-founded Working Not Working in 2012 with Adam Tompkins after deciding to address a lack of structure and support for freelance creatives. Working Not Working is an invite-only community of the best talent in the creative industry. To date, there are more than 10,000 creatives on the roster broadcasting their real-time availability, and thousands of the best creative companies in the world use the platform to discover and hire their creative talent, including Apple, Google, Droga5, VICE, Wieden+Kennedy, Airbnb, IDEO, and The New York Times.
