R&R Partners: Moving Minds

First off, can it be done? At R&R Partners, we’ve spent a lot of time, energy and money creating an environment conducive to creativity and collaboration. We have open spaces inside and out. We have open cubicles to keep us from creating silos. We have wall murals, inspirational wall quotes, graffiti, an oversized grenade, camo wallscapes, Ping-Pong, billiards, bouncy chairs, Carl the mannequin and Pops (our mascot). We have an IT department that gets us the best equipment like my app-filled iPhone and my Mac PowerBook. Agencies have everything from rockets to banners with Grady from Sanford and Son to inspire their people. Here’s a photo of my personal creative environment – messy.

As creative as it all seems, most of my staff likes to walk across the street to the Coffee Bean to work. I’ve come to believe it isn’t the office; it’s what happens in the office. Why? There was recently an article in Wired – “Why an idling mind is the mother of invention.” It talks a lot about the power of daydreaming.

Wired – “Daydreaming isn’t just the mind’s way of processing information, though. Other scans have found that the wandering mind also utilizes the prefrontal cortex, the part of our brain that’s involved in problem-solving. The upshot, says Jonathan Schooler, a professor of psychology at UC Santa Barbara who is studying this area, is that your idling mind is likely doing deeply creative work…”

The work environment involves so much more than the books, pictures, sculptures and art, it also encloses the people in the constant act of business. And that alone can interfere with the mind’s struggle to escape. The work order that lands on your desk, the “how’s that project coming” from your coworker or the looming meeting at 2 o’clock, are all factors. Even the people milling around you and the sense that they are hard at work contribute to the lack of creativity. The structure of work appears in the office environment no matter what we do. And that structure is notably absent at the Coffee Bean.

Stefan Sagmeister, the wildly creative designer (coincidentally speaking at BOARDS SUMMIT this week), has probably the most creative environment one can have to work in. Yet he takes a yearlong sabbatical every seven years to rejuvenate and refresh his creative outlook. And he shuts down his shop to do it.

Obviously we can’t shut down R&R Partners for years at a time or offer our very talented staff yearlong paid sabbaticals as much as we would like to. According to Wired, mini-sabbaticals are going on every day while we are on the computer – “If your boss is trying to force you to focus on PowerPoint and Word documents, you might gravitate to mentally discursive, floaty experiences – the idle surfing of Facebook updates, Wikipedia entries, YouTube videos, casual games like Bejeweled.”

We try to give our creatives the free time they need to create and a perfect environment to do it in. What they really need are moments of freedom throughout the day – or at least – what seems like freedom.

I’ve always believed that this job has to be lived. It’s not something you can turn on and off. The best creatives keep their projects in the back of their mind at all times. And when they come across those moments that are the most conducive to innovative thinking, they will hit on the things they are working on, whether it’s in the shower, on a Jet Ski, watching the football game, whatever. That’s why it’s so hard for them to do time sheets. Well, that and they don’t want to.

Of course there are others who can just turn the job off at the end of the day and who knows whether they think about anything past the syndicated Seinfeld episode they’ve watched a million times by now.

For me, the most creative environments are the modern art museum and the shower. I have my work projects in the back of my mind as walk the halls. How can you not be inspired by these Polish posters at the MOMA  or the pavilions themselves at La Biennale in Venice? La Bienalle is like the World’s Fair of Modern Art.  Some ads are pretty much modern art exhibits. Of course, I live in Vegas where we don’t have a big modern art museum. So when I can’t get to an exhibit, I find art in books and the Internet. Then there is the Las Vegas Strip – inspiration of a different sort.

I wonder how we can train minds to work on certain problems as they drift without covering the world with post-it notes. After all, creatives are usually taking new ideas, jokes and styles they witness as they walk through life and morphing them to solve complex problems. Notebooks full of everything they encounter or think about helps the process, but how can we give that little extra push to make sure these ideas, styles, encounters and fits of whimsy are all coming together at a time where they can form that new and wonderful vision? I’m thinking about asking those folks at the Coffee Bean while I drink my large 2 percent iced latte.