Who said that creativity and efficiency cannot co-exist?
Over my almost two decades in the architecture industry, I have often had the perception that many people thought:
If you “cover” the role of the “creative”, you don’t need to be the efficient: somebody else will make it work, probably at the very last minute, for you ….
If you’re efficient, your role is to make it work. You’ll just be on the way of “creative” people …
Creativity and designing should not be limited by time barriers … If this means crazy extra house / weekend and giving up your personal life … well “That’s what architects do…” – literally what I have been told once …
If you’re efficient, you can’t understand the “genius” of a creative …
Now that I have created my own company – AFLOW architecture and I work according to my own rules, all the above makes me almost laugh. I remember those moments when I was hearing phrases along those lines and feel sorry for who said that.
The truth is that, when those people were some of the superiors I met along my career (I had also some great ones, but I’d like to write about good leadership another time), I was not laughing at all.
Luckily for me, it did happen just few times …. two times to be precise, the two times that I decided to give up what I was doing and change.
The first time, change for another office … where, after few years, I ended having to work with another “genius of the lamp”, which made me temporally quit architecture: I thought that if my superior believed and said “that’s what architects do” …. Well, maybe I was not supposed to be an architect.
And I thought it for quite a long time. Unfortunately, this is what I’m seeing many young architects think too these days. I find this extremely sad: great young professionals giving up what they wanted to do originally because of a misconception, generated by an unhealthy culture, of what the reality is. Very sad.
I, You, can’t change the unhealthy working culture, but we can surely work on ourselves to improve the way we work, the way we manage and, in some way, giving our small contribution.
Now, on the positive side. I am extremely efficient, and I am creative. I don’t consider myself an artist, but an architect and, as a professional - not the “genius of the lamp”, I apply my creative skills in a professional world which requires efficiency (whichever clients required by a certain date and according to certain constraints, whether our “genius” likes it or not).
If it’s true that we can be more on the creative side or on the efficiency side, as well as we can prefer roles requiring more one or the other, I find the two qualities interconnected and necessary to each other.
Being too much on the creative side, makes you lose sight of the reality - you’re supposed to design something real, whether it must be built, cooked, sewn, ….
On the other end, being too much on the efficiency and pragmatism side make you compromise on the flexibility which allows imagination to identify various scenarios / options.
Creative roles could benefit from some efficiency in the planning of the deliveries they promise to their client, as well as in the way the organize their team workload in view of a deadline, putting together storyboards, .... On the other hand, managing roles focused on planning and efficiency could benefit from some creativity in exploring options for the team, generate new scenarios, create new tools.
So, what if you feel lacking on one of the two qualities? The good news is that either can be trained and improved.
Creativity does not mean only take a pen and start sketching beautiful drawings – that’s a drawing skill and it does not require to be creative. Creativity means to have a vision, to dream – we have all been kids and had crazy ideas at one point or another. Someone is more used to use creativity and is more comfortable continuing doing it also in an adult age, other less. However, it does not mean that it can’t be rediscovered or revealed if hidden somewhere.
In the same way, efficiency does not require to have an Excel spreadsheet instead of the brain. It requires learning some tools, skills and have them embedded in you so much that they become natural, at the point that you would not even realize that you’re putting them into practice.
Nowadays finding tools to improve skills is easy – the web is not hiding much.
You can look for them and try them: they might even work, especially in simple cases.
However, the difficulty is not in goggling “tools to improve efficiency”, but:
To find the right one for you according to your personality and current habits
To find the time and motivation to engage with them for a sufficient long time.
To continue to use them even in the most stressful times and when facing obstacles (trust me, new habits and tools are the first thing to go in those times).
Have a go and get in touch if you would like to exchange about what you have found or tried but have not worked or to find out how coaching could help you improve your creativity and / or efficiency, either by learning new tools, reapplying those you already use or rediscovering what you already have in you.
Giada
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