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Business Rule #34:
Give Your Team Room to be Creative
October 14, 2005
by Caroline Pfouts
Is it better to give your team members free creative rein or have the group rally behind one person’s unique vision? This week, the two teams took the exact opposite approach from one another for the Dairy Queen challenge.
The Project Manager for Capital Edge this time out, Felisha Mason, welcomed all points of view. Well, almost all. Toral Mehta was treated like a pariah by everyone in her group except Rebecca Jarvis. Otherwise though, Felisha was pretty much open to whatever ideas her group presented.
When coming up with ideas for their original brand character for the Dairy Queen Blizzard, one teammate suggested big eyes, and that got incorporated. When another gal said that they should give him a backpack full of ingredients that go into making Blizzards, guess what? That got incorporated too.
Sadly enough, the one concept that didn’t make it off the drawing board was the suggestion that the Dairy Queen logo appear somewhere on their brand mascot, named “Zip.” Without it, there wasn’t anything immediately discernible to connect Zip with Dairy Queen or a Blizzard—or even ice cream for that matter.
Frankly, I thought that Zip was more at home in a Crest commercial. Zip looked just like a giant tooth, while the long, plastic spoon he was holding looked like a giant toothbrush. What they ought to do is send Zip off to fight tooth decay as a spokes-cartoon for the American Dental Association.
The women simply didn’t have a clear vision of what they wanted to do—a responsibility that fell squarely on Felisha’s shoulders.
Clay Lee, the Project Manager for Excel Corp., on the other hand, was quite the dictator. Before he would even agree to take on the job, he made everyone on the team swear to do exactly as he demanded. Clay even went so far as to warn them that they had better not whine about being hungry. After that talking to, I wouldn’t be surprised if they asked for permission to sneeze.
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Needless to say, Clay’s team resented his managerial style. Marcus Garrison caught his ire almost immediately for not scheduling a meeting at the very first available moment. When Clay wanted a meeting scheduled, he wanted it NOW, not an hour from now, and who was Marcus to dare think about what time would work best for the project?
Luckily for Excel though, Clay did have a clear concept of a character, envisioning “Ginny,” the Blizzard Genie. By itself, it might not sound like much. Clay though had more in mind, asking for Ginny to look “almost edible,” leading eventually to his team giving her soft-serve hair, recognizable as the sponsor’s ice cream. Now that’s a smart way to identify with the product.
What’s more, Excel didn’t hesitate to put a large “DQ” logo on Ginny’s belt buckle and fashion her costume in Dairy Queen’s trademark red and blue. The character brought to mind not only the product that they were selling, ice cream, but also the “Dairy Queen” brand.
Sometimes, depending on the artistry and communication skills of the person in question, it’s better to have the team execute the vision of a single individual. Implementing every suggestion submitted can very well lead to disaster. After all, “A camel is a horse designed by committee.”
On the other hand, shutting yourself off from new ideas is also a losing proposition. So what’s the best thing to do? Give your team room enough to be creative and be flexible enough to accept their input, but don’t go so far as to lose sight of your vision.
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Implementing every suggestion submitted can very well lead to disaster.
