Creative Atmosphere

I want to share one of my favorite videos with you. It’s from Ben Chestnut, founder of the email service provider, Mailchimp. You may know who they are or have noticed the little monkey (his name is Freddie) at the bottom of the Whatupdate (You do subscribe to the Whatupdate don’t you?)

If you don’t have time right now, set a reminder and take 40min and listen to Ben’s story of building a company.

One of my favorite takeaways from his talk was his belief that companies aren’t creative. It’s the people in the company that are creative. Remember this next time someone labels a business creative. It is the bodies inside the business that create.

Another great point Ben makes is the idea that innovation and productivity come from chaos. He be lives his role is to keep the balance between order and disruption.

I worked at a bank after my short professional golf career, and it was all about order. There were a lot of people with manager mentality and thus the status quo was never challenged. The result was average service and products that few people cared about.

By contrast, another place of my past employment had a free-for-all mindset and was full of industry changing ideas. The problem was that nothing ever got done. We were all talk and no action. How sad that the world would never benefit from a place with so much potential.

Let me know what you think of Ben’s story. How are you creating the right atmosphere in your organization?

Here is the embed of his talk:

2011/12 Creative Mornings with Ben Chestnut from CreativeMornings/Atlanta on Vimeo.