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The traditional managerial mind-set is an analytical mind-set. It is about creating accountability and defining responsibilities.

John Kao

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John Kao
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: January 1
Author
Writer
Mind
Managerial
Analytical
Responsibilities
Accountability
Defining
Traditional
Creating
Responsibility

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Creativity, my students learn, is as natural a function of the mind as breathing or digestion are natural functions of the body.
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If you come up with a new product, you can very easily track its contribution to the bottom line. But often the challenge can be both large and subtle.
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The conventional asset-allocation method is like sheet music. It is prescribed, it has right answers and wrong answers and it sounds about the same every time. But jamming is different. Jamming is when you make the music. When you improvise and adapt to conditions. When you are creative.
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Instead of command and control, managing the creative process is about facilitating and permitting.
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The impresario's job is to pick the right people who can pick the right people. He picks the people who can pick artists and relate to them. People who know what the market craves.
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The C.E.O.'s job in a creativity-driven company is to be an impresario, not a manager.
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People must get respect for their new ideas.
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You are able to create an environment so that the creative process can take place and that you can get people to perform at their highest levels.
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The impresario functions as a bridge and a translator. He or she is a bridge between the creative point of view - which is often very focused on the creative task itself - and the resource-allocation process. The impresario has to make certain the funds and people required to get that task completed are available.
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Communication is the essential medium of a creative culture: the communal sea in which we all swim. A company that can't communicate is like a jazz band without instruments: Music just isn't going to happen.
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Companies have to take risks to get new knowledge, in a manner similar to how jazz musicians take risks when they go after a new approach to a tune or a performance.
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The head of a record label sets up structures, but he also defines the sound of the label, which is to describe what is desirable, what fits and what is quality for that label and then to create an environment where that sound can thrive.
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In the end it is the musician who actually plays the notes. The impresario - or the project leader - is only there to make sure that happens. That is a very different type of management mind-set.
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The mark of the developed intellect is that it could accommodate two contradictory ideas at the same time.
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