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What Creative Entrepreneurs Tell Us About Leadership
Leadership in the creative industries presents unique challenges. The process of making any creative work is unpredictable enough. But leading a creative business or not-for-profit (NFP) organisation is about corralling multiple creative jobs, projects and tasks – all at different stages of development and presenting different challenges – into a sustainable body of work. Not to mention finding and coordinating the people to undertake that work.
As part of my PhD research, I interviewed 18 creative industries entrepreneurs, and I recently revisited those interviews to see what they had to say about leadership. Here are four things they noted:
- You’ve got to know what you’re trying to achieve
The thing that those entrepreneurs emphasised the most was the importance of a clear vision. This vision can be the inspiration for starting a creative enterprise, but more often, it emerges gradually as the business or NFP organisation develops.
That vision is often tied closely to the founder’s own identity. As one graphic designer told me, a creative enterprise starts with a deeply personal drive and an “inspiration, spark, and a real self-investment”. One creative agency owner said that his business was an “output of me, feeding off my curiosity”, highlighting how the leader’s interests and values are central to the organisation’s direction.
The desire to create something of value to both the entrepreneur and the world at large is another factor in setting a compelling vision around which a creative leader can galvanise their team. The aforementioned creative agency owner described how, over time, he became less enthused by running his business. So he adapted his vision to be less inwardly focused and more compelling for him and his staff. He landed on:
…delivering great work that’s really driving positive impact in the world. That’s the vision that I put forward…to be the most impactful, independent agency in a world we’re helping to make better.
His staff got behind him because they shared that vision. More importantly, it renewed his drive to lead his company.
- You’re always balancing the creative and the commercial
Creative entrepreneurs often mention the challenge of balancing their creative identity with the demands of running a business. Those interviewed felt that being a creative practitioner requires a different skillset from being a CEO, which involves business management and strategic leadership.
The practical effect of this for creative leaders was stepping back from day-to-day creative delivery to focus on the company’s strategic growth. For some, something is lost in this transition. Business owners from non-creative professions may not regret swapping their trade for leadership responsibilities. But creative professions are driven by passion, and some interviewees missed “being on the tools”. As one jewellery designer told me:
I’m handing a lot more over to [my lead designer], somehow, because there’s so much more taking over with the administration and operation of the business. Which I don’t like… so much. I find it a little bit lopsided now, because you’re not getting as much of the creativity into it.
Others didn’t relish having to choose between the commercial and creative outcomes but found ways of reconciling them. A TV producer told me about a moment that highlighted the differences between her creative and commercial instincts.
And at one point…I’m going … maybe we should have a documentary arm. And then I looked at the financial modelling and I went, I don’t think that’s such a good idea! (laughs) Why would you do that (instead of) that 13-part series (where) we get fees? But in the end… there’s got to be an alignment between (creative desires) and opportunities.
- You’ve got to love leading a team, because of what it can achieve
Creative industries leadership isn’t just about the individual founder; it’s fundamentally about leading a group of people and inspiring others to produce fantastic work.
A common theme from creative entrepreneurs was the importance of their team members and their enterprise’s reliance on them. They saw the success of an enterprise as intrinsically linked to the individuals involved. As a circus producer told me:
The company isn’t just a name. It’s actually the individuals and the people that put in their lives and energies into creating it.
So far, so management 101: great teams produce great results. But we can go further than that – creative leaders recognise that leading a team can unlock opportunities that wouldn’t be possible alone. They get a kick out of leading because they like what leading a team can generate. As one web agency owner said:
…leading the team… I can promote these amazing people and pull all these incredible people together to do great work … I feel like that’s a great privilege that I get (from) running a business that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.
Linger on that last sentence for a moment: this creative leader feels like it’s a great privilege to lead a team. Creative industries leadership means not just recognising that the business is a direct output of your team, but also relishing the process of working with people to achieve an outcome.
- Tough decision-making is critical, and it can mean killing your darlings
The entrepreneurs I interviewed felt the burdens of leadership as much as the benefits. A common theme was the challenges of making difficult decisions. As a visual arts educator told me, “being the boss is sometimes hard and making the hard calls sometimes … the buck stops with you, you know.”
But that’s a common refrain for leaders from many industries, so what decision-making challenges are faced by creative bosses? For a start, there’s the old problem of matching people to work coming in. A games developer highlighted the difficulty of maintaining the right staffing levels in order to maintain profitability:
I was the CEO and having to make all these decisions… like, do we fire someone now, because it looks like we don’t have enough contracts in three or four months. But if we get those contracts, then we won’t have enough people. [That got] harder to juggle with more and more people.
Others, particularly those in the screen industry, mentioned the difficulty of choosing which creative projects to pursue, as so much of the business’s success depended on correctly picking those with the most potential. And the old tension between balancing creative and commercial work was never far from these entrepreneurs’ minds. One filmmaker described his work as “the bastard son of art and commerce,” noting that commerce is “always gonna win” when managing compromises on creative vision to get a film made within budget. And another said making tough choices about projects was critical to her being a CEO, not just a producer:
I’m a filmmaker at heart and a producer. It took me a while to understand what being a CEO was. And actually going, am I ever actually going to succeed in the business if I keep doing (passion projects), but in fact, what the business needs is (work that can get financed).
Tough decisions about managing resources is one thing. Making compromises to get your work maid is another. But strategically killing your darlings in order to build a viable business is next-level creative leadership.
Creative Industries leadership: challenges and rewards
If you’re a leader in the creative industries, you deal with things that other leaders don’t have to. You’re constantly balancing commercial and creative imperatives to get your product to market or to produce work of your not-for-profit organisation. And while you do so, you’re constantly reconciling your creative and entrepreneurial identities.
How to get it right? Have a clear vision, probably one that combines your personal goals with creative and/or societal ones. Love running a team, but creatives respect other creatives, so you’ve got to be one at heart and understand the work. Make tough decisions, knowing they’re likely to be between creative and commercial imperatives.
Leadership exists in that “same but different” space that so much about the creative industries resides in. But if you nail it, you’ll achieve things no-one else can. In that spirit, the final word can go to this design entrepreneur:
If you have that consistency and effort and you… show that leadership and you try to do that in a way that people come along their journey with you then great things will happen. You know, you’ll have happy clients, you’ll have opportunities and even through times of… total uncertainty like last year, you’ll find that… you’ll have a hopefully a strong team with you and that is reward in itself.
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