MBA2008 Guest Teacher – Jarod Latch – How to Ensure That Creativity Works During Challenging Times

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For many businesses today, it's a challenging time. Covid has taken its toll on businesses. Inflation being at a record high and now war is not helping things either. Many of us are under a lot of pressure, are living month to month, week to week, even day to day. And under that pressure, it's hard for you and your team to be creative and come up with creative solutions. So today, Jared Latch from Spherical Media is going to be teaching you how to do just that. How to set up structures, practices, routines, spaces in your business to be more creative despite all the pressure. I'm going to pass it on to Jared, but I'll be back to wrap up today's episode and give my takeaways. But for now, take it away. Jared.

Hello there entrepreneurs and others tuning into this lesson. I'm Jared Latch, co founder and chief operating officer at Spherical Media, coming at you from Charlotte, North Carolina. Thank you so much for joining me. In today's lesson, I'm going to cover the idea of creativity. In particular, how we continue to ensure that creativity continues to work during challenging times. We have all been challenged in different ways as leaders, managers, business owners, and simply as humans. Over the last couple of years with the pandemic, it has thrown us into some interesting scenarios and taking care of people has risen to the top where it should have always been. The big question how do you continue to function and thrive as a business? That question has drummed up plenty of conversation and for some of you, has led to sleepless nights. Because when you make the decision to move forward with your business, yes, survival is number one. But what you do in the midst of that is imperative. How are you surviving? Are you putting things in place to better the business in the future? Are you continuing to learn from wins and losses? And creativity within your team and business is an essential part of that game plan and should be at the forefront of your thoughts when it comes to team dynamics and execution. What do I mean by creativity? I'm going to define that in a moment, but let's start with what the word triggers in your mind. Maybe when you or I initially think creativity, we you consider artists, musicians, photographers, graphic, web and product designers, experiential marketers. These are all accurate manifestations of creativity because there is a distinct set of skills needed to excel at a high level, and we would say that product or that visual is very creative. On the flip side, some roles are tasks that we wouldn't necessarily associate with creative the office assistant that juggles meeting schedules, the sales or marketer that builds and delivers an effective presentation, the individual that self manages their schedule to a T, and the operator that facilitates productive meetings. These roles are creative as well, and I think that creativity is often overlooked. Remember, to excel at something, you likely need discipline sprinkled with some creativity. With that said, back to the definition of creativity is defined by journalist Robert E. Franken in his book Human Motivation. He said that creativity is the tendency to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves and others. Let me state that again. Creativity is the tendency to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves and others. See, this includes a lot more than what we would traditionally put in the creative category. So the heart of our lesson is how do you make sure that teams remain creative during challenging circumstances? And then I'll briefly tie that to its direct impact on culture. Because these two work together hand in hand, I want to present three different scenarios to work through all three Present challenges to creativity or at least serve as a disruption to what level depends on how you manage or lead through it, and that's our responsibility as leaders, managers and entrepreneurs. It comes with the territory, and it's time to recognize that to the fullest extent. The first scenario is the arrival of new team members. We all know that the onboarding process can be taxing and sometimes disjointed because of the fact that you are most likely bringing someone into a functioning environment and that's a good thing. The business is alive, but we don't want this new hire to feel like they are on an island. If that becomes the case, they will struggle to establish the confidence to contribute in the creative capacity, or at least right away within your organization. So what do we do to ensure that doesn't happen? The first logical step is to have someone run point and establish a framework of activities. What departments need to be involved and how does key information get communicated? You're probably thinking, thanks, Captain Obvious. Well, sadly, a number of onboarding experiences are marred by miscommunication, lack of technology setup and an absence of a formal schedule. Or at least that framework that I just mentioned. We often have the desire to throw people into the fire and expect results right away. Some entrepreneurs might thrive in that situation. I have personally been baptized by fire on a number of occasions and that experience, while painful for a moment or a few moments, was productive in the end. But a lot of individuals don't work well in that environment. They need some time to breathe. I'm not saying that we draw this process out over three months. However, I am asking for two weeks of a more formal structure. Put them in positions to observe, learn and connect with their teammates. Those are three key goals for onboarding. Observe, learn and connect. One area that we have found great value is sponsoring a number of team lunches. These provide a great opportunity to connect outside the office, which is a game changer. It naturally builds immediate rapport from a personal standpoint and it's a healthy way to develop relationships. And ultimately, the comfort that comes with this connection lends itself to the new hire feeling good and well fed. As a result, they are confident and prone to bring value to a discussion or discussions much earlier. You have empowered them to speak up and feel comfortable. Don't let the onboarding process stifle creativity for a new team member because that impacts not only the individual, but but the rest of the team. Create opportunities for the newest addition or additions to observe, learn and connect immediately. That way they can contribute to the creative areas of their role and the business. The second point I want to cover is busyness. Another challenge to creativity. The mere mention of that word can cause anxiety, play games with your mind and can diminish our ability to work creatively as individuals and and as a collective group. A lot of the world, and especially the United States, seems to suffer from the busyness syndrome. We're all busy all the time. If not at work with life. The phrase I don't have time or I'm not sure I have time is dangerous. It's often a reflection of our self induced busyness. We make time for priorities. So should we rather state it as it's not a priority rather than I don't have time? That can actually be freeing. When we get stuck in this busyness mindset, it strains the system. We need to continually monitor our team members to make sure they are not getting into this habit that locks up the ability to be creative. You need to ask the question, is this busyness real? Can it be managed better? Or are we dealing with too much work and the system just can't handle it? Well, we don't have the technology or the people. Maybe we need to fine tune our processes. If the reality is that you have too much work, you need to hit reset. Because if you don't, whether providing a service or creating a product, quality and experience become compromised. One mistake can have a big impact on on your business. This is a great opportunity to make sure your culture encourages individuals to reach out to one another. When they are feeling this overwhelming sense of busyness, encourage them to lean on their teammates. If you're a leader, lean on your leadership team. Personally, I have often fallen victim to the busyness mindset. It's natural and habitual to do so. Everything is urgent in this scenario and mental chaos ensues. At some level you have lack of clarity. My leadership team and especially my business partner have been of great value helping me prioritize so that I can recover a more fine tuned focus. Help your team through the same. Combating the busyness syndrome takes a collective effort. You must facilitate and put yourself in a position to recognize this exists and then coach them through it. Eventually, reaching out to teammates becomes a regular and accepted part of how you operate. Now that we have talked about the creative challenges that come along with adding new team members, as well as the impacts perceived or real from busyness. Let's dive into our third topic where creativity can suffer or or is challenged. Remote environments. At this point we are all pretty much video called out. Unless you're in the silent majority that relishes the opportunity to sit in front of a screen, deal with mute and unmute issues, feel disconnected and exhausted at the end of it, then more power to you. But for most of us, me included, it is a challenge. For the first few months of the pandemic, we moved to a remote working environment. I'm sure many of you are still there, or at least working in a hybrid capacity. Since we work in the world of video storytelling, production and film, our teams were craving a return to a collaborative environment where they could brainstorm and feed off of each other. And there are a few things that came out of our time away and a few important steps that you can take to help drive collaboration and creative across the company. Start with implementing some form of daily huddle and it can be simple. Individuals provide a few highlights concerning what they have been coming up with over the next 24 hours or dealing with. Maybe there are key metrics shared once or twice a week and then open it up for shoutouts or concerns. Did someone live out a core value? Maybe you need help or have an idea? This these meetings can be very important and they take a matter of minutes. It's up to you to decide whether these should include the entire company or select divisions. Overall, frequent communication is the golden ticket. We often fight that saying we don't have time to add something else to the calendar. Actually, by adding an effective touch point like a daily huddle makes everything else much more efficient. You can't afford not to spend the time, but make sure it is efficient and orderly. Because yes, time is valuable. If you have remote employees, put together an expectation one pager when joining a video call, you must turn your video on unless some special circumstance prohibits you from doing so. If you are a remote workforce across the board, schedule key times and meetings where teams can come together. Meet outside of the office or home environment. At this point, remote must be an option in some capacity. If daycare or school is closed, if someone is ill, it's best to stay at home. If you can work from there, which for most people is definitely doable. Remember, in all these remote or hybrid situations over communicate, set up a healthy rhythm of connection and don't neglect your remote workers, especially if you only have a few Humans crave connectivity. It is our job as leaders to facilitate and drive this connection even when team members are not in the office. This will help make sure that the fuel for creativity is present for overall team success. And how does this all tie to culture? Well, it's directly connected and supports it 100%. If you are aware of some of the potential pitfalls when it comes to creativity during challenging times, you have the ability to put measures in place that trigger positive results. Results build upon collaboration, relationships, communication, and ultimately the creativity that you are allowing to continue and flourish on both the team and individual level. Keep in mind creativity comes in all shapes, sizes and forms. Maintaining a creative environment where people can naturally collaborate and feed off of one another is critical for any successful venture. If you want to continue the conversation or have any feedback, I'd love to hear it. You can reach me at Jared J A r o d spiricalbuzz.com and if you want to check out our company, visit spirical media.com thanks so much for joining us. I sincerely appreciate your time because it's so valuable. Omar sending it back to you.

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Code sxM what a powerful lesson by Jared Latch. Check out his work@sphericalmedia.com and by the way, Jared practices what he preaches. They were named one of the top places to work for in Charlotte, North Carolina for four years straight. Now I want to touch on a few things that Jared mentioned as well as add a few things that I feel are relevant that have worked for us in our business. It can be very taxing and tiring on your team if you're always in crisis mode, if you're always just focusing on putting out fires and go, go, go and push, push, push and sell, sell, sell. That can be very, very taxing on your team members. And there's a space for that. There is a time for that. And it's okay if you're always doing that and kind of fixing things, improving things, pushing your team. But you need to also allocate time, even if it's 10, 20% of your team's time, on creating interesting things. People like creating and seeing their work out in the world. It can't just be about maintaining or fixing or improving all the time. You gotta put out new stuff. And I know this firsthand. Running a software company, you know, we can perfect the software as much as possible. We can fix bugs, we can prove things. But our team also needs to innovate, needs to work on new things, new features, new ideas, and see that work out in the world. That's incredibly motivating to them to just have an opportunity to be creative, even if it's Just one day a week, or even half a day a week. The point here is that half a day will furnish up enough creativity, enough positivity for them to feel like, hey, this place is good. I like working here. It fulfills me. Another thing we like to implement in our business is a policy. In our meetings when we're brainstorming ideas, there are no bad ideas. And in fact, we do this exercise in our meetings where we actually spend time in the beginning of the meeting where we throw out only bad ideas, just go and say as many bad ideas to solve a particular problem or improve a certain thing in our business. And it may sound like a joke or some sort of icebreaker, but it's actually quite useful because it gets people thinking creatively, even if they're trying to be funny, even if they're trying to come up with bad ideas. Being creative with bad ideas. And what happens is that you just kind of get all those ideas out there and sometimes those crazy, wacky, weird, quote unquote, bad ideas sometimes have something good in them. Sometimes it leads you to a good idea, but more importantly, it gets the creative juices flowing. You know, just idea generation. So that when you switch over to, okay, let's think of good ideas, we're already warmed up, right? It's like kind of a great way for us to flex the creativity muscle and it's easy to do it with bad ideas. That wraps up today's episode. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. If you love what you hear, hit, subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app and hit us up with a rating and review. Why don't you? We read every single review and it gives us a glimpse of what we're doing right and what you love about the show. Before I go, I want to leave you with this business is indeed a roller coaster. You're going to have ups, you're going to have downs. Your job as the leader of your company is to help your team through the downs and is to make sure you have strategies to keep things going, to keep things creative, to keep things positive, to keep things fulfilling for them. Because if you can keep your team happy and fulfilled at their jobs when things are down, they're going to love you and really love their job when things are up. That's the challenge of a business leader. That's it for me today, guys. But tomorrow we get into five FAQs, page hacks to help improve your sales, things you can do to change to improve in your FAQs that can convert more buyers. I'll see you tomorrow. But for now, take care.

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