Collaboration
Creative makers seek out employers that facilitate the kind of non-political and symbiotic relationships that are essential for great work.
One of the most significant contributors to great work in the chemistry between team members. Creative makers work best in multidisciplinary teams: highly skilled wolf packs of designers, engineers, developers, strategists and concepting teams.
It is essential that they feel they can work together to deliver something real, innovative and impactful, focussing on the same goal and backing each other to achieve it.
Political and overly hierarchical environments are like poison to creativity, actively disheartening creative makers and preventing them from leveraging the power of the pack. Too many organisations allow aggravation and power struggles to thrive at the expense of the team, dampening efforts to deliver on complex innovation.
The pandemic has also delivered entirely new methods of collaboration, unlocking the limitations of geographical proximity whilst also asking people to value the moments in which they can work together in person.
Key questions
Have you created a non-political environment?
Do you in any way encourage or enable the kind of political behaviour that can undermine creative collaboration? Are people scared or intimidated into not collaborating, or feel that they will be undermined by others when making team decisions?
Do you train people to collaborate?
Do you make it easy for people to understand how to collaborate with diverse groups of people? Do you provide training on collaboration?
Do you prevent toxic behaviour?
Do you have guidelines in place to prevent toxic behaviour from clients and amongst colleagues? Are there understood requirements on how people are expected to collaborate and are those standards maintained? Do you act quickly if issues are raised?
“As much as we're isolated, the pandemic has broken a lot of barriers because you're not counting on being physically present in order to connect. In a way it's an isolated freedom where the world feels a little bit more connected and a bit bigger in that anything is possible.”
— Strategist, South Africa