Over the past year, there’s been a notable shift in the types of creative projects we’re working on towards more consulting work. Given current economic and technological trends, this evolution isn’t surprising.

More businesses have sought to bring creative production in-house, investing in technical design capabilities and tools that can aid this to ease the escalating pressure and cost of meeting the ever-increasing demand for creative content.

However, while this production-line approach to creativity might answer the need for more content at speed, it doesn’t foster creative ideas or help with business differentiation. There is also a danger of creativity becoming even more siloed and separate from the core business if it is viewed in manufacturing terms.

That’s where strong creative leadership comes in and is needed. Without this, the process becomes king at the expense of creative strategy and the commercial edge this can provide.

It’s also where we come in and explains why we are being called in more to consult on creative strategy and approaches to creativity.

Leading a business to be more creative

I always find it intriguing how creativity is viewed by business. When I get asked into organisations as a consultant, I often hear something along the lines of, “We need the team to be more creative, we think it will make a difference to output.” At which point, my heart sinks. This objective totally misses the point of what a more creative team can achieve. Creativity has the potential to be a business differentiator.

But in order to get the maximum from creativity, there needs to be a fundamental shift in ideas about what creativity is, what it can achieve and how it is valued. This is where creative leadership comes in.

What is creative leadership?

Creative leadership is not all about outputs, but it does need to focus on results.

Creative leadership is about embedding a creative mindset and culture across a business. This isn’t something that can be forced. It’s about creating the right conditions for a creative culture to flourish. It involves breaking down siloes and overcoming the fragmented nature of modern business. It means promoting co-creativity and collaboration, so that creativity becomes part of a daily routine and second nature.

What can it achieve?

A creative culture means better, more robust ideas, enhanced capabilities, greater innovation and being seen to be innovative.

Ultimately, creativity can be a business differentiator. If you set the conditions for a creative culture, your organisation will not only be more innovative but will be seen as innovative by external as well as internal stakeholders as well – which can be business-critical. Additionally, by introducing a collaborative ethos, you should increase cross-team capability and extend skillsets almost by default.

NASA provides a great example of creative leadership with an R&D methodology that involves consulting with a wide variety of stakeholders, including those from disciplines outside its own field of knowledge. According to NASA, ‘Lateral expertise is now a central point for their open innovation.’

How should it be valued?

Creativity tends to be valued in terms of what we do. Creative leaders need to shift business thinking so that creativity is valued in terms of why we do it, which is less to do with physical outputs and more about generating a positive culture, enhancing overall performance and reputation.

Many businesses don’t value creativity sufficiently well or the value it creates. This isn’t necessarily their fault. They are looking at it through the wrong lens. Creative leadership involves helping businesses to recalibrate their ‘value apparatus’ and to think about creativity in terms of not what we do, but why we do it and what this provides. It’s a matter of being results-focused and explicit not only about how taking a more holistic approach to creativity can increase the certainty of business success but also about how not choosing this approach increases the likelihood of failure. Crispin Manners espouses the virtue of this technique for positioning value in his book ‘How to Sell Value’.

To my mind, the fact that a creative culture can improve efficiency, productivity, wellbeing, reputation and the bottom line means it should be seen as business critical. It just takes creative leadership to help prove its case.

Mark Terry is Chief Vision Officer at NEO, the business creative agency

Let us put the magic into your brand story.

A version of this article was first published on the ‘Talking REAL.’ blog.

If you would like to book an ideation session, contact magic@neoposition.com.