Manage-Wise

People and project management

Walt Disney not only mastered his own creative craft, he also inspired extraordinary and wide-ranging creativity throughout his far-flung enterprise. In 1952, when Disney envisioned a family theme park based on his forte, storytelling and animation, he began by recruiting a hand-picked team of some of his studio’s best writers, directors, and artists—the creative force that had helped make the Disney name a household world. With that small core group under his inspiring leadership, Walt Disney designed, engineered, built, and marketed Disneyland. His dream of a magical kingdom came true.

Inspiring and leading the workforce

Today, that original team has evolved into the Disney Company’s creative think-tank and development subsidiary, Walt Disney Imagineering. Appropriately, the company’s name combines the two elements—imagination and engineering—that Walt Disney knew he needed to realize his product creation vision. Today, Walt Disney Imagineering employs more than 1000 “cast members” from more than 140 disciplines including model makers, software developers, artists, sculptors, writers, engineers, architects, music experts, special effects designers, project managers, film makers, scientists, animators, and landscapers to name only a few.

Unlike Walt Disney, few executives today can claim to have mastered the creative disciplines they must manage. Rather than leading purely by personal example, most executives must focus on building and nurturing the appropriate product must focus on building and nurturing the appropriate product creation culture. Don Goodman, current president of Disney Imagineering, for example, is a former certified public accountant—a profession that traditionally has not always viewed creativity as a virtue.

If Walt Disney could be characterized as the conductor of a great symphonic orchestra, Don Goodman would liken his own current role to that of the orchestra’s business manager. The business manager must recognize that the performers simply want to make great music. Even though they care less about business details than their art, the musicians also understand that the symphony must attract an audience and make money to survive. The business manager therefore must instill the proper discipline within the group to ensure the right end result and at the same time nurture the artistic spirit that makes the product great.

Create the right culture

Leading the people involved in corporate product creation can be extraordinarily difficult. It can also prove extremely rewarding. The people who gravitate toward innovation activities tend to be very smart, highly creative, and more motivated by recognition and the freedom to create than by the money they make. To lead and inspire such a workforce, senior management must find a delicate balance between seemingly contradictory forces: top-down direction versus individual empowerment; experienced judgement versus creative license; pressure to perform to expectation versus willingness to challenge convention; and by-the-book execution versus pragmatic adaptation. Achieving the right balance among such forces can give a company a true competitive advantage.

Attract the best

The intangible value of a strong product creation capability comes not from the manuals or processes, but from the embedded knowledge and experience of those responsible for making it happen. The most brilliant scientists, engineers, and researchers often prefer to work alone, doggedly pursuing a personal passion. Ironically, most research projects, and certainly all product creation projects, require teams of individuals with diverse skills working together toward a common goal.

Disney Imagineering, for example, employs story tellers, artists, engineers, set designers, and robotics experts to make its “magic”. Whirlpool integrates marketing, engineering, procurement, manufacturing, finance, customer service, and software experts to maintain its global leadership position.

The interaction of individuals with diverse backgrounds expands the perspective of the organization and therefore its output. Senior management needs to find and recruit intelligent, creative people—experts in their specialty who also have the temperament to work collaboratively and cooperatively. In addition to their demonstrated intelligence and creativity, these individuals must also be open to ideas that are not their own. Finally, they should be self-motivated and comfortable with ambiguity. Brilliant individuals who think they have all the answers all the time ultimately stifle the organization, even if they are “right” all the time.

Andrew Hargadon from University of California Davis asserts that an individual’s “social capital” could prove as valuable as their “intellectual capital.” His research shows the fallacy of the “lone genius” inventor. Hargadon notes that even the prolific Thomas Edison had a key technical partner in Charles Batchelor, an Englishman “whose training as both a mechanic and a draftsman complemented (and grounded) Edison’s more flighty visions.”

Allow freedom in context

Intelligent, self-motivated people generally desire—and deserve considerable freedom to deliver their best work. This proves particularly true for the creative individuals drawn to research. 3M pioneered an explicit policy that allows its staff members to devote up to 15 percent of their time to discretionary projects of their own choosing.

The policy encourages freedom, but puts it in context: 85 percent of a person’s time will be explicitly aligned with corporate objectives, underscoring the company’s understanding of the need to find the appropriate balance between creative freedom and project discipline.

Senior management should make sure that researchers and product creation staff participate in activities that connect them to the real world to help balance their instinctual aspiration for complete creative freedom and to ensure that their creativity is channeled into productive efforts. To stay grounded, researchers should regularly spend time on the more pragmatic, application activities of a product creation team.

Excerpt from ‘Strategic Product Creation’ by Ronald L Kerber and Timothy M Laseter. Reproduced with permission © 2007, Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Limited. Price: Rs 395. E-mail: Vishwanath_Ghanekar@mcgraw-hill.com