#91: Embracing Creativity and Sharing Our Work
How generating and sharing ideas furthers opportunity and growth
Hello, and Welcome to This Week’s Edition of the Work in Progress Newsletter. If you’re new here, drop me a line and tell me who you are and what you are excited about that you’re working on right now!
Here is what’s on tap for this week’s newsletter
Embracing Creativity and Sharing our Work
What I’m Watching
My Latest Work
🎨1.Embracing Creativity and Sharing Our Work 🎨
As some of you may know, as part of the Linkedin Creator Accelerator Program I’m sharing stories and posts on the ideas and innovators behind the future of work, who are shaping and creating better ways of working for all of us. During this time, I’m also going to talk about my journey as a creator, why I create, and how I have used creating to fuel opportunities in my life and career.
Let me start by giving some context
I’ve worked as a management consultant, product marketer and now consultant/speaker/entrepreneur.
This means that I’ve always worked in jobs that required ideation and insights that could be used to generate some kind of deliverable or outcome – this could be a powerpoint deck, a new project or initiative, or a collaboration or partnership working with other people.
But the fundamental starting point of that was some kind of idea or insight. In this case, some of my own limiting beliefs actually came to my advantage. I have always associated being “Creative” with being artistic or being able to to design things beautifully (which I can do neither of) as a result, I often relied on reading, finding other ideas, and talking to people outside of my company to sense what was going on, and to gain insights that I could then use to strengthen my own ideas.
The good news was, I also took it a step further, I would come up with my own point of view on that topic, and then share it more broadly with others.
I knew I was onto something when in my first job, I began tracking a bunch of data on what our competitors were doing on social media and how they were using it to build their brand. I built a deck that summarized my findings and shared it with a few people and the next thing I knew there was an e-mail in my inbox from our Chief Innovation Officer asking me what I thought we needed to do in order to improve our brand in the marketplace by investing in social media.
That led to a project where I trained over 400+ executives on how to use social media to build your brand, and being seen in the company as the go-to expert for leaders who want to communicate their brand externally. Many of these people were also the ones who vouched for me in performance reviews, and anytime I ever wanted something, I got it.
Later on, as an MBA student, one thing that bothered me was that after going through my first year of business school which was really challenging, I talked to a whole bunch of people (older) who had made similar mistakes and gave me good advice. I wondered why I couldn’t have learned this sooner, especially seeing I had made virtually the same mistakes, and had very similar challenges.
Anyone who knows anything about the MBA space knows that there are more or less two ways to learn about the MBA. One is Poets and Quants, and the second are online forums.
Neither of these talked about any of these issues, so I decided to create my own space, and that is how MBASchooled was born.
This experience taught me something else, it’s great to bring people on the journey with you when you create, so that you can build the strength of your ideas, and also amplify the voices of one another. Early on into MBASchooled I realized I was running out of topics to write about and didn’t have enough time to write. I began to ask myself, “would there be anyone else who would want to share their story?”
Turns out, MBAs do in fact want to share their story, and I started by having a few of my classmates and friends in business school talk about their own unique experience in business school. It caught on so nicely that I decided to make it a focal point of the website.
one of my first speaking gigs
To date, I’ve featured over 500+ MBA students and alum on the blog who all are talking about their MBA experience, how an MBA helps them achieve their career goals, and their own lessons and learnings in leadership and individual success. This is also what inspired me to write MBA Insider: How to The Most of Your MBA Experience, which led to the MBA Insider Podcast.
Finally, sharing your ideas more broadly also allows you to increase your surface area for serendipitous opportunities.
In my time at Salesforce, people regularly shared ideas and information in internal collaboration tools as well as through internal decks and insights. One thing I started doing in my role was tracking our competitor landscape and coming up with insights on the external marketplace. I shared this internally with my teammates and other people in the organization who I knew loved getting ideas and insights that they could use with their teams and clients, which helped me build credibility within my own organization.
One day, I was sharing the most recent version with my manager, when she told me to ping it to her boss who had just asked about the latest we knew about our competitors. Once my skip level boss saw it, they told me they just got asked why our organization wasn’t doing more in competitive intelligence, and told me to put together a proposal for a Competitive Intelligence team. A few months later, that was a fully staffed team in our organization structured off of the proposal I had built, and that ad-hoc project I was doing helped me get promoted that year.
Whether you identify as a creator or not, I think that finding ways to incorporate creativity or to be creative are helpful things for any employee who wishes to use their ideas and insights to stand out in the workplace, or to gradually grow into becoming a creator.
Execution matters, full stop, but the world needs good ideas, and in a world of business that is changing and quite frankly, could use new ideas and insights to execute on. There are only so many formal leaders in an organization, but being a creator and coming up with creative ideas and insights that turn into programs or projects can be done by anyone who is willing to lead.
If this resonates with you but if you aren’t sure how you can be a creator within your organization here are a few parting thoughts to get you started:
First, just because you don’t identify as a creator doesn’t mean you can’t create or be creative. If you’re working in a knowledge-based job, you’re actually creating all day each day whether you realize it or not. This is a great first step to taking more ownership of how you choose to use that creativity. That deck your building isn’t just a deliverable for your boss, it’s a bunch of ideas that belong to you and that you can use to further your own development and growth, in your role, and outside of it.
Second, sharing your ideas requires you to clarify what they are and to write them down. At first, my own limiting beliefs actually helped with this. I truthfully have always struggled with being insecure and didn’t think my ideas mattered and was always afraid they’d be criticized. As a result, early on, I spent a lot of time talking with other people who had ideas, which I then used to strengthen my own, regardless of whether I agreed or disagreed. Going out and seeing the world is a super helpful exercise to clarify your own ideas. Just make sure you own them and write them down! Being effective in your role in a knowledge-working job is not just about executing and doing things, but it's also about thinking, communicating and generating ideas that resonate within the market and in your organization.
Finally, sharing your creations and your ideas helps you get noticed while helping other people. Very much how I used to turn to other people for ideas, other people may benefit from hearing what you want to share. But they can only do that when you put it out there.
My thoughts on the competitive landscape were just as valuable to sellers thinking about how to manage competitors in deals as they were to me in my efforts to keep an eye on the market. Many of those sellers who read my content also gave me insights that strengthened my own ideas. There’s absolutely some bravery and courage that comes with that, but the first step is in fact, taking the first step.
👀2.What I’m Watching 👀
Article: Moving L&D to systemic and strategic impact: the technology infrastructure needed
Some good research was put together by Emerge Education, Donald Taylor and Coursera about what L&D teams and practitioners need to pay attention to. I’m still digesting this, but my first insight is: 815 of practitioners believe L&D is strategic to the organization, but about half feel they have KPIs that show the impact on the business.
Article: Toxic Workplaces Are Bad for Mental and Physical Health, Surgeon General Says (WSJ)
Dr Vivek Murphy, the US Surgeon General released a report & framework this week about employee well-being and the toll that toxic workplaces and workers have on our mental health. If you’re reading this newsletter I don’t think you have a hard time believing this to be true, but interesting to see a formal report and framework being released.
Article: The Great Creator Arbitrage Opportunity (Paul Millerd) - I enjoy Paul’s work and have found it immensely helpful as I’ve evolved my own relationship with my work over the past few years. Paul wrote a great piece about the opportunity that presents itself for anyone who is willing to embrace their creativity and contribute it in a public setting.
Article: How the Pandemic Made Caregiver The Newest Workplace Identity (Charter Works - Back in 2017, I remember my old company (Deloitte) rolled out a policy that gave leave to any full-time employee who needed to care for a family member. I remember thinking to myself at the time that this was sorely needed but also incredibly progressive. Fast forward 5 years later, and the issues around care-giving have become even more front and center. This article does a good job shining a light on a growing identity for workers, and what’s currently being done (and what else needs to be done)
Article: Has Your Boss Fallen Prey to The New Consulting Scam? (Business Insider, Paywall) - I highly encourage you to check out Ed’s work if you haven’t seen me post it already but Ed does a great job of breaking down the “work industrial complex” which is in his mind is a joint collaboration between bad bosses and leaders, legacy media outlets, and companies who stand to make money off of people being in the office. While Ed’s positions are often admittedly a bit extreme for me, I appreciate his perspective as both a business owner, PR & media expert, and student of workplace trends.
🔨3.My Latest 🔨
Creator Conversations: Learning to Lead (Thursday, October 27th, 9AM Pacific Time) - This thursday, I’ll be joining Best-Selling Author Minda Harts on LinkedIn Live’s TV show Creator Conversations. I’m going to be talking with Mind about leadership skills in the new world of work. Make sure to tune in to see me live!
My Conversation on Talent with Whitnie Narccise - This week, I had my friend and fellow BC and UNC Alum Whitnie Narcisse on the Edge of Work Podcast to talk about all things related to talent. Whitnie is doing some interesting things in the Venture Capital space, listen in and let me know what you think!
How Managers Can Teach Employees to Proactively Learn and Grow - I published my first article in Fast Company last week. I’ll be honest, I didn’t love the title of the article so I am sharing my own, but this article stems from a lot of the work I’ve been doing with new managers and people leaders over the past year on the role they play in empowering their employees to own their careers and drive their own personalized career growth.
Before You Go: Check Out The Career Clarity Kickstarter
My Good friend Jenni Fink, the Owner and Founder of Fink Development created a 6 week course for professionals who want get clear on their career goals to make their next move. If you have a feeling you want to make a career move but aren’t sure how to get started or what to do next I would encourage you to check out Jenni’s course. Jenni was my career coach when Iw as an MBA student, and cannot recommend her enough. Check out here course here, and follow her on LinkedIn to get a feel for what she is like.