HubSpot Academy hosted a live AMA with author of CREATIVE TRESPASSING, Tania Katan. Join us to learn how to boost creativity in your work and life. Check out the full event recording below.
In this session you’ll discover five of Tania’s Creative Trespassing rules to help you transform your work and life. Whether you’re an entrepreneur seeking new ways to innovate, a newbie trying to spice up routine entry-level work, a free spirit with a rich creative life outside the office looking to bring more of that magic into your job, or just someone who occasionally feels the urge to scream, “Why does it say paper jam when there is no paper jam?!!” Tania Katan will show you how to transform monotony into novelty and get your freakin’ spark back between the hours of nine and five.
I’m a creative at my core. I also recognize that having an analytical mind is critical in marketing and business. How can I lean into that side of me I’m not comfortable with, strengthen my skills, and not lose my creative spirit? Can I walk in both worlds?
Hi @danmoyle! Thanks for joining us today. I’m working with Tania on tracking down some additional answers for us here in the forum, but I thought I would share my thoughts on this, because it’s something I also struggle with.
You said you are “creative at my core.” I think that answers your question about not losing your creative spirit. I find that creative people are, for the most part, unable to completely shut that off, and actually MUST walk in both worlds. If you don’t, you won’t be happier in either one.
I’m not the most analytical, but it is a skill and a requirement that many of my superiors have valued in their employees. I’ve learned to ask questions, determine what exactly is needed and to, as you said, lean in to help satisfy those requirements. But businesses generally do want creative spirits and ideas…it’s all about framing them in the right way. HubSpot is inherently a company of experimentation, but in general, I have found that proposing small experiments to prove ideas is something that managers have been, for the most part, receptive to. And if they weren’t, then I knew the role wasn’t right for me and I should consider moving on.
If you do feel like you are falling into the blander side of business and want to recharge, there are a slew of simple things that may help:
Regular walks and/or meditation
Planning what creative actions you might be able to take each day
Start a side hustle (I’m a novelist on the side!) to keep the creative juices flowing
Grab a notebook and start doing some stream-of-consciousness writing on what you could be doing differently, or what you want to be doing instead
Make time to meet or learn from inspiring people (The TED talk YouTube channel is full of amazing ideas!)
I’m checking in with Tania to see if she has any additional feedback, but I have a few thoughts on this topic.
The trick to keeping creativity flowing is to always be looking for the unique, the unusual, the edge of something not quite normal. And if you are in a role where you have to be developing creative material all the time, it can be hard to keep that going. In the session today, Tania talked about how she was on a walk (which helps with creativity!) she created #ItWasNeverADress by noticing the silhouette of a woman on a bathroom door. She decided it was important to solving her problem of needing a creative idea to get more women in tech. She looked for something new, realizing that what if it isn’t a dress, but it is a cape? She essentially took an everyday symbol, something so mundane we hardly notice it, and turned it into a viral campaign with millions of engaged viewers.
Essentially, keep on the lookout for something new in the mundane. Change the way you are looking at things (physically or metaphorically). Engage in regular brainstorming and perhaps not just with teammates, but people from other departments, or even customers. Take a look at what’s out there and resonating and think about how you can make a great idea better or if you can change it to make it different and more interesting.
And above all, find ways to make this exploration of new ideas fun! When it is fun, you can focus on more than just making sure it’s out on schedule.
I’m checking in with Tania to see if she has any additional feedback, but I think there are a few simple solutions you could probably look to employ.
First, you could find ways to reward new creative ideas. Or create challenges that can get your team excited to deliver something new. Regular brainstorming exercises with the team on challenges at hand can help people feel involved and get their creative juices flowing.
On one of the teams I’ve worked on at HubSpot, each team member had an experiment that we were in charge of. We had to come up with an idea that could solve a business problem or make something better. It ranged from experimenting with new approaches to SEO, or doing studies on what affects NPS, or how a blog post strategy can make an impact. It challenged us to all stay creative, to experiment and to learn from our mistakes, and to own something that no one else does. As a result, we were all encouraged to be creative, productive, and analytical at the same time. Maybe something like this could be interesting for your team?
There’s often a disconnect between agency and client when it comes to creativity. It’s not always the agency people being super creative and the client just not getting it. It might also be the other way around in which the agency team can’t bring creativity to the client’s vision because they are disconnected. How do you recommend agencies and clients align on this topic so that the client can achieve the best possible outcome and the agency is also happy with the deliverable?
