How to Manage Creative People

As I was looking for research and background information on my topic I came across a list of papers by a man named Charles Warner.  Many of his papers may be very helpful for my paper.  I have only read one of his many papers at this time.  The one I read is titled How to Manage Creative People.
This paper was very informative on my topic and it gave me something very important for my paper.  That being a way to define creativity.  Another great thing about this article was the way in which Warner breaks the paper up into three sections.  It also helps having a great example at the end of the paper.  One thing that I really agree with is that to manage creative people they must be given a lot of leeway and freedom to make mistakes and learn from them.  I wish that I held more of the characteristics of a creative person.  I must admit that the two biggest things that I do not posses are the high tolerance of ambiguity and the unusual ability to concentrate.  Especially with this view:

They are numbers 17 and 20 on the list of characteristics truly creative people have.
The best way to sum up the second point of the article is to say that creative people need space.  For creatives to work well they need to be able to go where they need to go and do what they need to do.  Something thing that was not touched on until the 3M example was the need for communication. By this I mean that for me to attempt being creative I work the best when I have 1-2 other people like myself to bounce ideas and get insight from.  The closest I saw to this was that employees of 3M are able to call anyone in the company to get expertise on any specific topic. I found this paper to be very useful and I look forward to reading his other papers.

Managing Creativity

As I have mentioned before I am interested in creativity and advertising.  I am looking for a topic to do my research paper on in Org Theory and started to look through our text book.  Chapter twelve is about managing creativity.  Managing creativity sparked my interest so I started to do some preliminary research to see if I could get enough information about this topic.  Some of the things that I found included a dissertation on the topic and then I found Ten Tips for Managing Creative People. 

I found this article to be very interesting.  It seems as though my boss has read a few of these because it relates back to some of the changes that have been made in the office this semester.  Specifically the tenth tip.  At the office we filled out papers for our personal development.  I think that this is a tactic that should definitely be implemented in more offices.  It relates back to the idea that happy employees do better work.  Some of the tips seem more like common sense in a way but at the same time they are things that seem to get overlooked or ignored. 

Number seven on the list seems to be a topic of debate a lot.  As I recall we even talked about it on our first night of class.  I believe that getting recognition and praise for good work is a great thing to have.  You don't need to be told your doing a good job all of the time because after all it is your job.  But on the other hand its such a small thing to be told your doing a good job and every now and then it is such a morale booster.  It is that little sense of encouragement that can spark that extra bit of creativity to make a good job a great one.

A little bit about me

My name is Justin McCurdy.  I am a first year grad student.  I am also a graduate assistant at the Kutztown University Small Business Development Center.  I received my undergrad degree from Kutztown last May.  I majored in Marketing with a certificate in Advertising.  My favorite sport to play is Ultimate although I will play almost any sport.  If you don’t know, Ultimate refers to Ultimate Frisbee.  I also love to just toss the Frisbee around so if anyone is interested just let me know.  My blog name refers to Don Draper of Mad Men.  If I could work for him at Sterling Cooper Draper and Price I definitely would.  If you have never seen the show I definitely recommend it.  If you couldn’t tell I am interested in advertising and hope to be a creative director some day.  That is sort of why I am in the MBA program.  I think that having an MBA will give me the ability to be well rounded and also give me the edge. 

When I was in high school my dad helped me work on and restore my first car.  It took about two years to fully restore a 1968 Ford Mustang Fastback.  It is one of my biggest accomplishments.  It is painted a dark metallic green with white racing stripes.  Unfortunately I don’t get to drive it much since I am here at Kutztown.  If you have any questions about it just ask.  This leads me to say that I am from New Jersey.  Please don’t hold it against me.  I’ve endured four years of it already.