Hi friend – Rob here.

Today on Salmon Theory+: a summary of 'Creativity Inc.', by Ed Catmull.

I gotta level with ya: i struggled with this edition.

There's just so many good ideas on what i'd call the dance between:

• The business of creativity
• The creativity of business

But i managed to get down to my seven favourite ones.

Bring your best Pixar movie references, and let's do it.

Let's get into it.

📝 TL;DR:

1. Measure your team's success by how they respond to screw ups.
2. Treat craft as a collective mission
3. Long-term stamina is more important than short-term smarts
4. Get wrong quickly so you can get better faster
5. Hunt for what's right, before spotting what's wrong
6. It doesn't matter that we 'win' if the audience loses
7. Clear problems make chaotic solutions more bearable

1. Measure your team's success by how they respond to screw ups

We don't talk enough about trust in strategy.

If you're briefing a piece of work, you're now helping manage a team whether you like it or not.

And for that, you need a decent level of trust, which is often born out of a fair degree of self-confidence.

I've heard horror stories of people who respond badly to screwups, but that says more about them than it does of who screwed up.

Instead, flip it: the measure of your abilities is not how many screw ups you've prevented, but how healthily you responded to them.

And, crucially, how you get the folks in your team to do the same.

Because screw ups will happen – the real question is 'what then'.

2. Treat craft as a collective mission

Everything we do is craft.

Emails, strategic presentations, briefs, debriefs, and of course the ideas themselves.

It's all craft, because it's all communication, and you want it to be as clear and compelling as possible.

Specifically around ideas, we assume only creatives are in charge of 'crafting them'.

And of course, it's their responsibility that the craft is there.

But if we all think of ourselves as a team of creative product managers, then craft becomes something we're all responsible for.

Craft can be born out of:

• Pointing specific aesthetic details this audience will love (strategy)
• Budget restrictions which lead to a smarter solution (production)
• Time constraints which force you to brutally simplify (client services)

And that's just the tip of the iceberg, but the lesson is clear.

A well crafted idea is the result of loads of collective craft decisions made along the way.

Assuming anything less is just plain ego trippin'.

3. Long-term stamina is more important than short-term smarts

I used to think coffee was a strategist's best friend.

Now i see it as a bit of a sworn enemy, at least for my particular process (and, er, mid-30s physical limitations).

You see, coffee gets you on a rush mode and you feel like nothing's gonna stop you now.

The problem is, lots of impactful projects tend to take a bloody long time to come to fruition.

And coffee, like crypto, keeps getting you up and up but inevitably it crashes as a bit of market correction.

So, to have a decent go at this game, you don't need short term coffee hits that promise an elusive moment of genius.

You need a protein-packed pump that can sustain you for the long haul.

4. Get wrong quickly so you can get better faster

Strategists like to over-labour a point at the mercy of 'solving the right problem', but that can be counter-productive.

Especially in a value for money driven economy, clients look for strategy but only so long as it helps guide what needs doing.

It's so easy to forget that strategy is not an end in itself, it's a way to guide the stuff that then gets made.

A healthy starting point is assuming we will all be wrong, it's just a question of how quickly we can get there to course correct.

This is the definition of emergent strategy: try things, see what works (and not), course correct, try better informed things.

Therefore, the role of strategy shouldn't be to perfectly capture the problem and feel brilliant about having done so.

It should be to identify a problem, sure, but very quickly generate momentum around working out how to solve it.

To be clear, i'm not advocating for doing stuff without thinking it through.

What i am saying is, we sometimes focus too much on the philosophy of a problem vs the practicalities of it.​

5. Hunt for what's right, before spotting what's wrong

I read this before being a parent, but now that i am a parent it hits even harder.

Treating ideas as babies is an excellent analogy.

It primes you think about positive reinforcement instead of just error correction.

You see, highlighting what is wrong with an idea is easy enough – even non seasoned folks can do it.

But finding the gem hidden inside, and finding ways to rebuild based on that piece – now that's where the real pros live.

The best creative and strategy directors i've seen in action share one thing in common: they start with what works.

Because they know this is how you keep the team motivated, instead of just bashing the work in the hope they do better.

They guide ideas out of hope and trust, not out of fear and humilliation.

We thrive by helping our young baby ideas have the conditions to thrive.

And by extension, the conditions we give our people to develop those ideas.

6. It doesn't matter that we 'win' if the audience loses

Let me alienate half of you right now: compromise is not a dirty word.

I said it, i meant it, and we need to talk more about it.

Look, some things about strategy are definitely true:

• Its essence is sacrifice
• Single-mindedness cuts through
• Do the right things, don't just do things right

However, an even bigger truth is undeniable: strategy that doesn't pass the political machine doesn't happen.

Therefore it's naive to think our job is not to understand politics, in fact strategy in many case is politics!

With this, comes a massive caveat: i'm not saying let's just make decisions by committees.

But assuming we all will need to make compromises is important and healthy.

The one compromise that is not negotiable: whether this serves the customer.

And that's where navigating the politics without becoming a politiker becomes hard and interesting.

How do you ensure everyone 'wins enough' to sign off the work, while still serving your audience as best as you can?

If it were easy, more outstanding work would be out there.

But that's the gig.

7. Clear problems make chaotic solutions more bearable

I'm a recovering control freak, so unpredictability is a bit of a frenemy of mine.

However, over the years, i've found a way to effectively come to terms with it.

It's very simple: you can't predict solutions, but you can pin down problems.

I once pitched on something 4x times, a massive burnout experience for all of us.

We didn't win, partly because there was no budget (lols), but partly because we didn't know what the problem was.

We had a solution looking for a problem, so we tried to flog it only to realise we were trying to hit a moving target.

In hindsight, my issue wasn't the chaos in the creative development, it was the chaos in why we were doing it.

In contrast, some of my most satisfying work had some chaos on the solution, but total clarity on the problem.

It gives you something to go back to when shit gets rough, and like we've established in a previous edition:

So when chaos sets in, remember that as long as you know what you're solving for, it will probably be ok.

📝 TL;DR:

1. Measure your team's success by how they respond to screw ups
2. Treat craft as a collective mission
3. Long-term stamina is more important than short-term smarts
4. Get wrong quickly so you can get better faster
5. Hunt for what's right, before spotting what's wrong
6. It doesn't matter that we 'win' if the audience loses
7. Clear problems make chaotic solutions more bearable