The Care and Feeding of the Creative Class

If you're managing a throng of data-entry processors, turn the page. This isn't for you. Are we creatives alone now? Good. Running a creative team, though, can be the leadership equivalent of being Siegfried and Roy. Allow too much freedom, and you risk chaos. Apply too heavy a hand, and you court insurrection. Still, if handled deftly, leading a creative shop can be the most fun a manager can have and still call it work.

We talked to managers from three creative enterprises -- a design firm, a branding consultancy, and a team of computer programmers -- and got their secrets for fielding teams that are passionate, playful, and high performance.

1. Recruit for diversity, hire for philosophy

Leading a successful group starts with hiring the right people. If creativity is all about seeing things differently, says Bob Brunner, a partner at the San Francisco office of the design studio Pentagram (projects have included the stowaway keyboard for PDAs and Callaway's golf-ball packaging), then assembling a group of people who have a mix of nationalities and cultures can spark ideas and generate energy. But Brunner says that polyglot ferment can turn toxic if workers aren't on the same page philosophically. "In hiring, it's important to learn what they really believe about design and what drives their work," he says. "Make sure it's in alignment with where you want to go."

2. Rehab the neighborhood

Even if you're working in a buttoned-up corporate environment, find a way to make the creative workers' space appealing. This is the wrong place to enforce rigid, bureaucratic aesthetic standards unless you want rigid, bureaucratic products. Light, space, wall art, and goofy toys are critical to the alchemy of the creative process. When Brunner came to Apple in 1989, the design team was stuck in cubicles (just like everybody else) in the corner of the engineering building. He immediately hustled his group to another building where they took standard-issue Apple furniture and rearranged it in a slightly off-kilter pattern. Everything was at 45-degree angles, and half the partitions were left out. "It set up the idea that there are different ways to do things," Brunner says.

"Creativity is not like an assembly line," says Simon Williams, CEO of the Sterling Group. "It's very stop-start. These are human machines, and they break down, get angry, get drunk."

3. Within limits, let them make the rules

The best managers of creatives are those folks who have been creatives themselves. (All of the people here are doers and not just managers. Brunner, for example, designed the original Apple PowerBook and Nike's Typhoon watch.) They understand that the creative process is not linear and that treating creative employees like workers in a widget factory may backfire. "Creativity is not like an assembly line," says Simon Williams, CEO and president of the New York-based brand-strategy firm the Sterling Group. "It's very stop-start. Managers must realize these are human machines, and they break down, get angry, get drunk." To address this issue, Avery Pennarun, chief scientist at the Canadian software company Net Integration Technologies and overseer of 45 developers, lets his team help set their deadlines. The person who's best able to decide how long something is going to take, he reasons, is the person who has to do it. "A businessperson couldn't just say, 'Do it in a weekend.' They'll respond, 'You're an idiot.' " But, as Brunner notes, that goes only so far, and you ultimately have to lay down the law. He tells his people, "If you want to have the ability to do cool things, you also have to have the ability to deliver."

4. Keep their eyes on the prize

Because even the most innovative product is generally 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration, getting creatives to focus on the perspiration after the inspiration is done is often the hardest part. "Programmers love to figure out how to solve problems," Pennarun says. "But once they've done the hard part, they get bored and want to move on to something else." That meant the department was littered with projects suffering from designus interruptus -- sparks of genius that never reached fruition.

After a failed experiment of dividing the team into two groups -- creators and finishers -- Pennarun laid down a new rule: Everybody was responsible for getting his project to the finish line. Now each programmer gets to do some of the fun stuff but also has to slog through the boring stuff that's part of every project.