LP762-L2- week 4

The lone genius, or leaders who tyrannize their creative teams: An alternative to the ‘‘mothering’’ model of leadership and creativity

Jean-Francois Coget, Abraham B. (Rami) Shani, Luca Solari

Organizational Dynamics (2014) 43, 105—113

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

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Is there really a need to make the case for creativity and innovation in organizations? In today’s context of globalized competition, shortened product cycles, sustained scientific and technological progress, and entrepreneurial venturing, the capacity for creativity and innovation has become a key strategic competitive advantage. It is therefore essential for organizational leaders to understand how to hone and main- tain this skill in their employees.

While there has been considerable research on creativity at the individual level of analysis, research on leadership and creativity is more limited. Yet, the literature on the topic seems to offer a consensus on how leaders should handle creative people.

THE ‘‘MOTHERING MODEL’’ OF LEADERSHIP AND CREATIVITY

The prescriptive model offered, closely resembles the way innovative heavyweights such as Google or product develop- ment firm IDEO function. The key seems to be to adopt an open and tolerant culture, one that might be deemed fem- inine and motherly, where creative individuals are encour- aged and coddled. Indeed, research shows that individual creativity is enhanced by positive evaluation, intrinsic moti- vation, positive moods, freedom, good project management, sufficient resources, encouragement, recognition, time and challenge. Furthermore, team creativity has been found to be enhanced by diversity in the composition of the team and such positive team dynamics as collaboration, communica- tion, trust and psychological safety, backup and support, productive conflict (task vs. interpersonal), cohesion, team

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.orgdyn.2014.03.004 0090-2616/# 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

efficacy, help seeking, help giving, reflective reframing, and reinforcing. Following are two examples of what we label ‘‘the mothering model of leadership and creativity.’’

Leadership and Creativity at Google

At Google, employees are required to spend 20 percent of their time on pet projects. Many of Google’s most successful products, such as Gmail, came out of this program. Employ- ees are encouraged to informally enroll their colleagues to work on their pet projects and to be part of multiple teams. Google’s headquarter, the Googleplex, has been designed to facilitate informal collaboration, with such social places as coffee shops, communal kitchens, and play areas. Employees are coddled with outstanding perks such as volleyball courts, foosball tables, lap pools, gyms, free bicycles, and free food. Mistakes are encouraged. For instance, when Vice President Sheryl Sandberg committed an error that cost the company several million dollars and reported it to co-founder Larry Page, he said: ‘‘I’m so glad you made this mistake, because I want to run a company where we are moving too quickly and doing too much, not being too cautious and doing too little. If we don’t have any of these mistakes, we’re just not taking enough risk.’’ Co-founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin set the tone from the beginning. Their philosophy was to hire very smart people and let them do what they wanted. They believe in informality (reflected in the dress code) and democratic dialogue (reflected in the all-hands weekly TGIF meeting where any employee is welcome to voice concerns, ideas, or ask questions to the leaders). They embody and practice the ‘‘mothering model.’’

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Leadership and Creativity at IDEO

Another successful example of the mothering model is Dave Kelley at product development firm IDEO. Dave Kelley is approachable, quirky, and funny. He doesn’t take himself seriously. He encourages his employees to disagree with him and is proud that employees do not ask for permission to try initiatives, but rather forgiveness if they fail. At the heart of IDEO’s creativity formula is what they call ‘‘The deep dive.’’ When asked to design a new product, IDEO assembles a team of diverse individuals (such as psychologists, medical school students, engineers, anthropologists, marketing experts) who work as a brainstorming team. There is no hierarchy in the team, except for a facilitator who manages the team process. Team members gather data in the field, like anthro- pologists, from lay-experts and users. IDEO believes in the wisdom of crowds, as interpreted by its employees. A number of mottoes capture IDEO’s culture, such as ‘‘One idea at a time,’’ ‘‘focused chaos,’’ and ‘‘enlightened trial and error by the team succeeds over the insight of the lone genius.’’ Both IDEO and Google have been recognized by Forbes as among the most desirable places to work, reflecting the emphasis both companies place on their employees’ wellbeing as a value in itself, but also as a means to enhance creativity.

AN ALTERNATIVE: ‘‘THE LONE GENIUS MODEL’’ OF LEADERSHIP AND CREATIVITY

Despite apparent unanimity in the literature, supported by the powerful examples of Google and IDEO, we have noted the existence of leaders whose behavior flies in the face of all apparent wisdom. They are the likes of CEOs and inventors Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Howard Hughes; chefs Ferran Adria (from El Bulli), Jiro, Marco-Pierre White, and Gordon Ramsay; classical music conductors Riccardo Muti and Herbert von Karajan; or movie directors Alfred Hitchcock, Lars Von Triers, and Oliver Stone. We might call them creative tyrants, gurus, or geniuses. What characterizes them is that they do not coddle or encourage their creative teams. They do not give them freedom and positive evaluations. They have big egos. They are difficult, irascible, moody, critical, demanding, and inconsistent. Their collaborators often com- ment on how difficult it is to work with them and please them. They apparently fit the description of lone geniuses, whose intelligence is commensurate with their annoying antics.

The existence of such leaders presents a conundrum for research on leadership and creativity. Despite doing every- thing wrong according to the literature, these leaders none- theless obtain extraordinary results. At the end of his life, Steve Jobs was hailed as the ‘‘rockstar CEO,’’ and the Thomas Edison of the 21st century. Chef Ferran Adria’s restaurant, El Bulli, was dubbed the best restaurant in the world, anointed with three Michelin stars, and would fill up its reservation schedule for an entire season in just one day. What exactly is going on? What are these leaders doing? Why does it work? Are there any negative consequences? How does their leadership compare to the prescriptive approach advocated in the creativity literature and practiced at Google and IDEO? Should their examples change the way we address leadership in creative endeavors? We tackle these questions in this

article and offer an alternative to the ‘‘mothering’’ model of leadership and creativity. We do so through an in-depth analysis of two examples: Steve Jobs at Apple, and chef Ferran Adria at El Bulli. These examples describe different industries, different production processes, different con- texts (USA and Europe), but they both provide evidence of a non-traditional leadership style in use in creativity pro- cesses.

STEVE JOBS AT APPLE

Apple has been viewed by many as a major pacesetter in the computer and electronic devices industry. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the company’s co-founders, triggered a radi- cal revolution that continues to transform the nature of human-computer interaction to this day. Steve Jobs’ work at Apple, the complex relationships he had with his various partners (starting with Steve Wozniak) and design teams (in particular, the Macintosh team, which sealed Apple’s earlier success) serve as the bases for our exploration of leadership and creativity at Apple.

Background

Steve Jobs was a highly intelligent visionary who saw and understood the potential of the computer industry before many others did. He grew up in Palo Alto in the 1960s at a time when Hewlett Packard and other pioneering high-tech firm were the main employers. Steve Jobs was a geek and highly interested in technology at an early age. He was also deeply influenced by the counter-cultural movements that rocked Northern California in the 1960s. While studying briefly at Reeds College (before dropping out), he experi- mented with psychedelics, joined communes, and furthered his understanding of how to dazzle people by observing commune leader and mentor Robert Friedland and imitating his ‘‘guru stare.’’ Steve Jobs was also spiritual. He often stated that he wanted to ‘‘put a dent in the universe.’’ He was interested in Zen Buddhism, and considered at one point becoming a monk. The combination of Jobs’ interest in computers and counter-cultural beliefs led him to become part of the emergent ‘‘hacker’’ culture. He wanted to use technology to empower himself, and the people, to resist ‘‘the man.’’ One of his and Wozniak’s earliest tech- nological feats was to invent a device that allowed users to make free long-distance calls from pay-phones by hacking into AT&T’s frequency tones. Jobs enjoyed being irreverent and, even at the peak of his success, often saw himself as the underdog.

Jobs had a big ‘‘ego.’’ He liked to be in control, felt smarter than most other people, and had little patience. This led him to behave in a very abrasive manner with his collaborators or competitors. On the one hand, he admired intelligence and skill and would adulate collaborators who could dazzle him with their creativity or technical ability. On the other hand, he could be quick to criticize them when he disagreed with them, didn’t understand their work, or had a different point of view. He furthermore often swung his judgment on the same person, alternatively praising them lavishly or insulting them, thus bullying them with his unpre- dictability.

The lone genius, or leaders who tyrannize their creative teams 107

While Jobs was highly intelligent, he was not the technical genius that Steve Wozniak or other people in the Macintosh team were. His intelligence and talent were more focused on the big picture (e.g., understanding the computer industry), an understanding of aesthetics and user-interface issues, sales and marketing, and leadership. He thus realized early on that he needed to work with technical geniuses. The first meaningful encounter in that regard was with Wozniak. They complemented each other perfectly. Both were enthusiastic technical geeks. Both were part of a sub-culture group of home-based technical explorers/enthusiasts. They were also both influenced by counter-cultural ideals. However, while Wozniak was introverted and the real technical genius, Jobs was extraverted and had a business sense. Furthermore, Jobs had a great ability to influence people, strike deals, and make things happen. He was high energy and willing to take risks.

Later, after Apple had become an established company, and Jobs had relinquished his job as chief executive officer, he would shine with the Macintosh, which he built as a special project, with a rogue team of engineers working on the sidelines, against the main project of Apple at the time, Lisa. Macintosh would prove to be much more successful than Lisa. While Steve Jobs enraged a great many people due to his irreverent, rebellious, abrasive style, he also enchanted others with his visions, his idealism, and the quality of the products he led into being.

Intimate and Total Involvement

How do autocratic leaders interact with their creative teams? Steve Jobs was intimately involved in all aspects of every product he helped design, from the circuit boards, compo- nents, displays, keyboards, software, to the look, esthetics, external enclosure, choice of material, colors, and fonts. Jobs was not just a leader of creative people. He, himself, was a creative worker. His role might be better understood as that of ‘‘creative lead’’ rather than ‘‘leader of creative people.’’ Jobs was exacting and cared enormously about details that no one else emphasized at first, or that others believed could not be changed, such as reducing the time to boot up a computer, having icons with round edges, reducing the size of electronic devices beyond what was thought feasible, choice of particular plastics and colors. Many of these details would arguably contribute to the success of the products. While Steve Jobs did not program, for instance, or design a motherboard, he nonetheless had enough expertise to understand the variables involved in the design, and the ability to appreciate technical difficulties and feats. He would be in constant dialogue with his creative teams, extolling them to do better, and giving them extreme stretch goals.

Motivating the Creative Team

Steve Jobs was extremely good at motivating some of his creative employees. We write ‘‘some’’ because his style was too damaging for others, who would quit or be de-motivated instead. Jobs’ abrasive style acted as a filter. He was so critical that those who did not like being treated as harshly as Jobs did would quit. Jobs understood this, and justified his style as weeding out those who were not good enough. In his

mind, only the most technically competent would stay because he criticized them less, and because they also cared about the quality of the product more than having a comfor- table work-life. Jobs was an avid worker himself. He walked the talk. He expected his employees to give their best and devote their life to the product they were working on. Family life, and health were sacrificed in the name of ‘‘putting a dent in the universe,’’ a sentence he liked to use when recruiting talented people in Silicon Valley. He would also pay them well, but most of all, he would convince them to buy into his grand vision. Many of them stayed only because of that. They had a sense that they were making history.

Believing in the Creative Team’s Product

Jobs never emphasized financial success. He also scorned marketing studies. Like an artist or a chef, he felt that it was not the consumers’ job to tell him which design worked best, but rather his job to figure out what they didn’t even know they needed. His powers of observation, possibly honed by his Zen Buddhist practice, allowed him to notice details that greatly improved esthetics or usability, and that few others, let alone consumers in focus groups, would notice.

Pushing the Boundaries on Every Front

While Jobs could be very rude to engineers who did not deliver at the quality or speed he expected, he would also respond well to those who stuck to their guns and confronted him with aplomb, as long as they could articulate their reasoning sufficiently well to convince him of the validity of their views.

Jobs had nonetheless a habit that annoyed many of his collaborators: after having shot down an idea, he would often come around a week later and present the same idea as his own, forgetting to give credit or apologize for having shot the idea down earlier. Jobs felt he did not have time for that. Maybe his ego was also so great that he could not apologize.

Telling the Story

Jobs developed a talent for dramatic new product unveilings, which contributed to the mystique of Apple. At those Apple events, Jobs used his talent for theater, storytelling, and charismatic leadership. His liberal arts training was put to the use, at the service of extolling the virtues of his other passion: technology. Part of the collective storytelling that was purveyed to the customers was Steve Jobs as the sole technical genius. The myth of the creative genius is persis- tent and easier to understand than the complexities of a creative team. Chefs, lead singers, orchestra conductors, movie directors, installation artists, and other known crea- tive figures often act as the face of a team of creative people. They embody that team and receive the glory that should in fact be owed to the whole team. In that way, the myth of the creative genius works similarly to the myth of leadership, as described by Jeffrey Pfeffer in the Attribution theory of leadership. While unfair, Steve Jobs’ ability to embody his products and be considered a creative genius helped Apple by providing a narrative that was more appealing and more easily understood by customers. (Maybe this advantage

108 J.-F. Coget et al.

would become a liability after Jobs’ death.) Apparently, it did not overly de-motivate his team. But it probably did some damage.

Triggering Team Creativity

One open question that we cannot answer with the sources of data we have is Jobs’ effect on team creativity dynamics. The same way that Steve Jobs didn’t believe in the wisdom of focus groups, he seemed to prefer one-on-one interactions with key creative members of his team rather than a dialogue with the whole team. When he addressed his team, he would often do so by offering a charismatic speech that conveyed his vision, rather than facilitating a democratic dialogue. He would, however, be open to challenging questions or points of views from courageous members of the audience. If he liked what they had to say, they might be promoted to his inner circle of key collaborators.

Given Jobs’ mode of operation with teams, we might expect that he lost the power of having a diversity of opinions. In many ways he violated the principles that are at the heart of other companies hailed for their creative success such as HP, Google and IDEO. To this day, Apple is criticized for being too controlling, and not allowing enough freedom to users to customize their experience, or for developers to push the limits of what can be done with Apple devices. This aspect of Apple’s culture reflects Steve Jobs’ beliefs in controlling the vision.

One other way to understand Jobs’ role in the creative process is to view his interventions as focusing more on the selection side of the process (judging and selecting ideas and people) and less on the creation side. It therefore makes sense that his highly critical style was useful in discriminating among ideas. What is certain is that Jobs’ approach to collective creativity is different from Google’s or IDEO’s or the one suggested by the mainstream approach on leadership and creativity, and it works as well, with certain advantages and certain costs.

FERRAN ADRIA AT EL BULLI

Ferran Adria has been dubbed the most creative chef of his time, and his restaurant, El Bulli, the best restaurant in the world. He has pioneered a new style of haute cuisine called ‘‘molecular gastronomy’’ and inspired many young chefs to follow suite. Despite having closed El Bulli in 2010, he con- tinues to work in the field of creativity and food and plans to reopen El Bulli as a center for innovation and design that will serve food on special occasions.

Background

Ferran Adria was born in 1962, in the Catalonia region of Spain that also gave birth to painters Salvador Dali and Joan Miro, and architect Antoni Gaudi. While being one of today’s most celebrated chefs in the world, Adria did not set out to become a chef. He first started out in the restaurant industry at 18 years old as a dishwasher to make money for a planned trip to Ibiza, after dropping out from his business studies, which bored him. He nonetheless learned the basics of Spanish cuisine from the chef de cuisine at his first job,

and subsequently further honed his skills as a cook during his military service. During this time, he became the head chef of the admiral in charge of Cartagena’s naval base, and even reportedly cooked for the King of Spain.

Despite his early success and talent in the restaurant industry, he was still not set on making a career out of it. Yet, after his military service, at 22, he got a job at El Bulli, the restaurant that would later house his fame. The restau- rant was already successful, anointed with two Michelin stars, one of only two such restaurants in Spain at the time. While he started as a kitchen staff, he quickly rose through the ranks, becoming chef de cuisine only 18 months later, and head chef in 1987.

During this time, he voraciously read about Nouvelle Cuisine and self-educated himself about haute cuisine. Two of the final educational events that completed his ascension were a month-long apprenticeship with head chef Georges Blanc, of the Pic restaurant, in 1985, and a seminar with chef Jacques Maximin, in 1986, during which he was struck by Maximin’s answer to the question, ‘‘What is crea- tivity?’’ to which the latter answered ‘‘Creativity is not copying.’’ This insight liberated Adria from the tyranny of tradition, and from having to copy traditional Spanish or French dishes. Adria describes this moment as a change of identity from being a technician to being a creator.

Adria describes his culinary philosophy as deconstruction- ist, and food critics have called it ‘‘molecular,’’ in reference to his signature foam dishes, and his hi-tech equipment inspired from science. Adria defines culinary deconstruction in his ‘‘El Bulli 1994—1997’’ tome as: ‘‘Taking a dish that is well known and transforming all its ingredients, or part of them; then modifying the dish’s texture, form and/or its temperature. Deconstructed, such a dish will preserve its essence . . . but its appearance will be radically different from the original’s.’’

Creating and Performing

El Bulli eventually obtained three-Michelin stars under Adria’s leadership, and earned the title of best restaurant in the world from Restaurant magazine’s top 50 list in 2002, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009, after which it closed. At the height of its fame, El Bulli received over 800,000 reservations requests per year, or 400 requests for each availability. It was only open from April to September. From October to March, Adria and his team, right-hand man Oriol Castro, his younger brother Albert Adria, Marc Cuspinera, and Eduard Bosch would completely redesign El Bulli’s menu. They would work out of a laboratory called ‘‘El Taller,’’ set up in Barcelona. Adria would pick a theme, like ‘‘water’’ in 2009, and the team would try different recipes around that theme. A typical menu would consist of about 30 to 50 small dishes, served in carefully selected dishware, in minute order, over 3.5 hours. Each dish was like a piece of art, an experience that would summon the diner’s experience of classic dishes, and challenge their expectations, dazzling and thrilling them. Coming to El Bulli, according to Adria, was like going to a night out at the theater.

Routinizing Teamwork

When El Bulli was open for the season, the kitchen would work like clockwork, following a military-style iron discipline

The lone genius, or leaders who tyrannize their creative teams 109

typical of haute-cuisine kitchens. The kitchen was transpar- ent and within view of the diners. Watching the kitchen work was part of the spectacle. Not a peep could be heard from the staff, who worked diligently, in silence. The staff and the kitchen were maintained in impeccable cleanliness. The rhythm was sustained. The logistics involved orchestrating a 40-courses dinner for 40 guests over a 3.5 hours seating, which required order and precision. Prior to opening, the staff was rigorously trained about how to perform the various operations needed to make the different dishes. A classic Brigade de Cuisine division of labor between chef, sous- chefs, line chefs, and the like was adopted to run the kitchen. Ferran Adria’s role in this organization was that of ultimate quality controller. He was the first client of the kitchen, tasting almost each dish to verify that they had been done correctly. His attitude was stern, and he would never hesitate to criticize a dish that was not up to par. He, himself, did not cook. He was solely dedicated to quality control.

Triggering the Creative Process

In El Taller workshop, during the creative phase of El Bulli’s season, the organization was vastly different. Only Adria’s five-person dream team was present. Ferran himself was often not present during the day, but would show up at the end of the day to sample his team’s creations. During the day, they would experiment with a dazzling number of dishes, discussing their ideas with each other, and sampling each other’s creations. Key in their mind was what Adria’s reaction would likely be. ‘‘Do you think Ferran will like this?’’ Team-members seemed constantly preoccupied by this worry. Indeed, when Adria would show up, at the end of the day, he would sit down and solemnly taste the dishes. More often that not, he would dismiss the dish, making such demeaning comments as ‘‘Why do you serve me this?’’ as if his collaborators should be ashamed not to have guessed his mind and palate.

The team did not display excitement, playfulness, enthu- siasm, or confidence. They seemed worried and fearful of Adria’s judgment. They communicated a lot with each other, and documented all of their experiments, but they seemed to doubt their own taste. They seemed to believe that only Ferran Adria had the ability to truly judge a dish. At any rate, he always had the final word and his judgment fell like a knife. Like Steve Jobs, Adria had a very clear and well- defined judgment and expectation of what quality he looked for. He may not have known what a dish should be, but he could tell whether a dish presented to him had the ‘‘it’’ factor or not.

Adria also had an encyclopedic memory of what dishes had been tried at El Bulli in the past, and of savors, textures, taste. He also seemed to understand the haute cuisine industry like no other, which gave him a unique avant-garde hedge over competitors. In this way, he seems similar to Steve Jobs with respect to the computer industry. He was the face of El Bulli and received most of the acclaim. He also behaved autocratically and critically towards his team. Yet, he relied extensively on his team’s expertise and talent, and privately extolled their virtue.

Such was the success of Ferran Adria that he was and still is dubbed the most creative chef in the world. In 2007, he was invited to participate in the revered art show ‘‘documenta,’’

alongside world famous artists. He has been called the Salvador Dali of the kitchen and is considered to have ele- vated food to the level of art. Adria has extensively docu- mented his experimentations with food in various tomes of and encyclopedia of ‘‘El Bulli,’’ from 1983 to 2009. After closing El Bulli, he intends to reopen it as a center for creativity.

Leading the Creative Team

Ferran Adria’s autocratic style of leadership, and its accep- tance by his team, can be, at least in part, attributed to the culture and tradition of haute cuisine. Most ‘‘grands restau- rants’’ kitchens in Europe and the US are still organized according to the rigid ‘‘Brigade de cuisine’’ formalized by Georges Auguste Escoffier, in his reference book ‘‘Le guide Culinaire,’’ in 1903, and inspired from military hierarchy. Furthermore, Adria’s austere style may also be attributed to Spanish culture, which can be described as austere and macho, and ranks among the highest in the world for Hoft- stede’s dimension of uncertainty avoidance (which means that Spaniards are very uncomfortable with unstructured situations, and therefore find comfort in strict laws and rules), and is also relatively high on power distance (which means that Spaniards expect and are comfortable with strong levels of inequality between leaders and their subordinates).

Beyond these industry and national culture considera- tions, Adria’s style may stem from his power position, his quasi-cult status, and his skill and knowledge. Like Steve Jobs, Adria might be considered a self-made genius. Despite the fact that he had no university schooling, or maybe because of it, he has an insatiable curiosity and, it seems, an out-of-the-ordinary memory. In ‘‘El Bulli: Cooking in pro- gress,’’ it becomes evident that Adria’s team does not have the same memory of all of the dishes, nor possibly, the same ability to taste and recognize subtle variation of a dish’s experience. Beyond his own dishes, early in his career, Adria further demonstrated his exceptional memory skills by mem- orizing Spain’s foremost traditional cookbook treatise, El Pratico’’ and Escoffier’s 500-page Le Guide Culinaire.

Pushing the Boundaries at Every Front

In addition to this extraordinary memory and taste, Adria’s curiosity, enthusiasm, openness to new experiences, and high energy make him hard to follow and give him an ability to perceive aspects of food that other people don’t. Like Steve Jobs, Ferran Adria may be considered a genius in his field, and that gives him little patience for collaborators who are not able to move as fast as him, remember the details he remembers, recognize the nuances he perceives, or under- stand the grand visions and realizations he has. Like Steve Jobs, Adria never listens to his diners’ opinion. He very much trusts his judgment. This makes him autocratic, perhaps rightfully so, because he alone can form the visions that he has.

Fame and cult status seem to favor the emergence of the tyrant in leaders. Adria’s El Bulli kitchen needed a tight, military style organization. It had to work with a Tayloristic clockwork to crank out dishes with precision and consistency. El Bulli’s laboratory, El Taller, was located in a different

110 J.-F. Coget et al.

space, creating a physical separation from the actual work, and releasing time constraints. This allowed the team to experiment more easily. Yet, Ferran Adria did not change his style at El Taller, and continued to be autocratic, although he also seemed to often leave the team to its own devices during most of the day, which might have allowed them to experi- ment more freely. The atmosphere at El Taller was very organized and studious. The same austere atmosphere found in the kitchen of El Bulli carried over to El Taller. It seemed that even when he was absent, the shadow of Ferran Adria was still present in the laboratory, preventing his staff from really exploring wild ideas on their own. They were always focused on his vision and his taste, often appearing clueless about what he would really think of a given experiment, and whether he would like it. They were very dependent on his judgment, and he often complained that they should know what he wanted, and that he had to always be the final judge. Ferran made himself indispensable, and this was his limit,

om ”gnirehtom“ ehT leade rship and creat

Exemplars: Google, I Style of leadersh ip Democratic an d servant /

by example Involvement of Leade r in the cr eat ive proce ss

Hand s-off / m otherin g

Source s of motivation for collaborators

- Fre edo m - Emula tion/ workin

other creative in di - Perks - Support

Division of labor / roles between leader and coll aborat ors

Collab orat ors work to get h team on design proje cts, w clear hier archy .

Leaders prov ide supp ort a enco urageme nt.

Mark et decides which pro win or ar e discarded.

Climate Relaxed, open, fe minine, emot ions, pati ence , non- ju

Team dynamics Collabor ati on, open ness to diversity, multiple forums colle ctive com munication exchange , fea r of conflic t.

Pac e of creati ve effort / Direction

Slow / Mu ltiple directions

Marketing / Outside percepti on

-Organizati on per ceived a open commu nity tha t in vi others in. -No clea r owner ship.

Results - Some very successful cr but also a lot of failures: a success ful pro duc ts fi nanc explor ation of less s ucc es routes - Org aniza tion al cult ure a process es deemed a mode to or ganize for cr eativity.

Exemplars Massimo Bott ura (Che f), Chailly (Music condu ctor Mic hel s (S occer co ach), S Spiel berg (Mov ie directo r

Figure 1 Leadership and Creativ

maybe like that of Steve Jobs. In this way, both Jobs and Adria can be thought of as Lead Creatives, assisted by a retinue, rather than Leaders of a creative team.

TWO CONTRASTING MODELS OF LEADERSHIP AND CREATIVITY: THE ‘‘LONE GENIUS’’ VERSUS THE ‘‘MOTHERING’’ MODEL

The two examples explored above point to the existence of an alternative to the prescribed ‘‘mothering’’ model of leadership and creativity, one that we call the ‘‘lone genius’’ model of leadership and creativity. In order to magnify the unique nature of the two perspectives, we compare and contrast the two models in Figure 1.

On the basis of our analysis and the comparison in the table, we are able to describe the key characteristics of the ‘‘lone genius’’ model.

fo led ivity .

DEO

The “lon e genius” model of leadersh ip and creativi ty.

Exemplars: App le, El Bu lli leading Autocrati c and charisma tic

Very i nvolve d / directi ve

g with viduals

- Cha rismati c appeal (buy ing into a vision)

- Rep uta tionPra ise fr om leader - Pr ess ure / challen ge

er, as a ith no

nd

du cts

Leader initiates vision, evaluates and filters idea s/creative products of team.

Collabor ators work on projec ts assig ned by lea der.

Leaders decide which products win or are disca rded.

positive dg ment

Stress ful, cl osed, masculine, negati ve emotions, impati ence , jud gment.

of an d

Competition among differ ent fact ions, und er-do g menta lity, ind ividua l communi cations with the lea der, ne ed for leade r’s approva l, openn ess to conflict .

Fast / Focused on a few directions

s an tes

- Organi zati on perce ived as clos ed to ou tsid ers and excl usive -Leade r pr esen ts himse lf/ herself as the sole creativ e gen ius . -Leader as the owner of the final product / vision

eations, few e the

sful

nd l of how

-Widely succe ssful crea tions. Less failures. -Very depen den t on leader’s genius. If leade r dies or disappears, the organiza tion is crippl ed.

Ricc ard o ), Rinus teven )

J Allar d (Tech nical lea der of the Xbox 360 projec t, Mic rosoft), Josè Mour inho (S occe r coac h), Akira Kurosawa (Mov ie direct or)

ity — Two Contrasting Models

The lone genius, or leaders who tyrannize their creative teams 111

Leaders Who Possess a Unique Gift

Our analysis has important implications on how to lead creative people in organizations. The examples of Steve Jobs at Apple and Ferran Adria at El Bulli provide ground for the marketing effectiveness of the ‘‘lone genius’’ model. When the single face of a genius can be attached to a product, like Steve Jobs’ to Apple products, or a fashion designer to haute-couture clothes, prospective customers more easily construct a story in their mind that guarantees the quality of the product. However, this requires that ‘‘creative geniuses’’ actually possess special skills and sen- sitivity that sets them apart: the chef or sommelier that have a particularly sensitive palate, the perfume maker’s nose, etc. Creative geniuses need to have special abilities and reach the highest level of mastery in their domain, which allows them to change the rules of the game, and not just play by the rules, because they understand the game so well. Only once they have achieved great recognition by playing by the rules do they earn the right to change the rules.

We note that such creative geniuses often seem to be associated with a wider array of reference groups than most people, which allows them to develop a unique point of view and bridge gaps between different perspectives, elegantly integrating a wide array of point of views, thus appealing to a wide array of people. Such geniuses may also be more likely to feel like outcasts and rebels against a mainstream society that misses some of the subtlety they recognize and seek. They are seekers of beauty and perfection. This renders them abrasive, impatient, and apparently lacking in social gracefulness. They sacrifice politeness, social belonging, and relationships to their adoration of perfection and beauty. J Allard led the team that made Xbox 360 into a global success, thanks to his reputation as a venerated technical genius who was at the same time a gaming fanatic. At the same time he often rubbed people the wrong way like Steve Jobs at Apple.

Leaders Who Shape a New Reality

On the basis of the uniqueness of the skills and networks of these individuals, the lone genius model of leadership and creativity is consistent with Roberto Verganti’s model of innovation as changing the social meaning of a product, rather than mere technical prowess. Thanks to their cult reputation and status, recognized creative geniuses acquire the power to dictate or impose their taste to audiences and critics, and their diva-like antics to their collaborators. Such behavior would not be tolerated from other less special individuals. A product or idea is typically judged as creative by its audiences and critics. Therefore, once an individual has been recognized as a genius, it is very hard to disentangle whether their productions are creative because of their status or because of their intrin- sic value. This is a problem in the creativity field, where creativity is often judged based on the subjective evalua- tion of experts. Whether through intrinsic value or through a self-fulfilling prophecy, geniuses have the power to influence society and trigger the process of creating new meaning for products.

Leaders and Followers with a Mission

The two examples also illuminate the nature of the teams involved in these changes around the lone creative. Famous creative teams within organizations, such as the Mac team at Apple, or Skunk Works at Lockheed Martin adopt a rebellious, counter-cultural identity that places them at the fringes, in an underdog position that motivates them to perform beyond expectations, creates attractiveness and status for rebel- lious, weird, smart individuals, and offers the freedom to break the rules and access to special resources. Such teams may be more likely to produce disruptive, radical innova- tions. We can therefore hypothesize that, within the ‘‘lone genius’’ model, creative teams are motivated by competition with other teams within the organization that are viewed as inferior, average, and dull, and afferent negative emotions such as scorn, rage, and disgust.

Leaders on the Edge

There is a dark side to the lone genius model. Like charis- matic leaders, creative geniuses benefit from a cult-like status that motivates people around them to work really hard and buy into the myth, such that they perpetuate success in a self-fulfilling prophecy pattern. While this is a benefit of the lone genius model, it also creates vulnerability. Lone geniuses and the organizations they represent are vulnerable to loosing their ‘‘mojo.’’ A saying in Hollywood goes ‘‘You’re only as good as your last project.’’ If customers and collaborators stop believing in the myth, or if the lone genius dies, or leaves the organization, the self-fulfilling prophecy may collapse, and products that were formerly considered creative may then be shunned as uninspired. This might be what is happening currently to Apple after Steve Jobs’ death.

Some Implications of the ‘‘Lone Genius’’ Model

While we find evidence of the effectiveness of this quite unexpected model of leadership for creativity in the trajec- tory of some world-renowned companies and iconic leaders, research has given scant attention to it. Our research points to the need to deepen our knowledge on how these processes unfold. Specifically, our research points to a set of issues that may be fruitfully explored. First, the ‘‘mothering’’ model might be consistent with a feminine perspective, which emphasizes collaboration, shared credit, harmony, and the maintenance of a positive mood, whereas the ‘‘lone genius’’ model is more consistent with a masculine perspective, where competition, hierarchy, individual prowess, reputa- tion, conflict, and negative emotions are emphasized as necessary and energizing.

Second, the two models might reflect different types of innovations, whereby the mothering model favors a contin- uous type of innovation, whereas the lone genius model favors a discontinuous type of innovation. When facing dis- continuous innovation the team might require a stronger internal commitment, and therefore a more autocratic style.

Third, the cultures and practices of certain industries (e.g., Haute Cuisine; Hollywood), possibly male-dominated, may favor the lone genius model of leadership and creativity,

112 J.-F. Coget et al.

whereas other cultures and industries, or founders (e.g., Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, David Kelley, of IDEO) might favor the mothering model. For instance, the strict militaristic organization of a restaurant kitchen and its typi- cal rough/outcast/pirate culture favor the appearance of an irate, strong chef at the head, and such a style is accepted by the cooks.

Fourth, it could as well be that the idea of the ‘‘lone genius’’ is a myth, because there is a team behind the lone genius, and it nonetheless works for the same reasons that are advanced in the attribution theory of leadership. The masses need to believe in the inordinate agency of a select few ‘‘special’’ individuals (in this case, the creative genius), to simplify phenomena (in this case collective creative pro- cesses) that are too complex for them to understand. The people who emerge as geniuses may benefit from chance — being there at the right time, and right moment — as argued in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers. They also have great market- ing and acting skills. They primarily market themselves as the originators of an invention, not hesitating to steal other people’s work and forgetting to give credit for ideas that originated in the team. They carefully manage their image and create their own myth.

Last is the need to explore the role of the followers. One can understand this phenomenon by casting the blame more squarely on the followers than on the leader: it is our tendency to become ‘‘groupies’’ and to want to believe in creative genius that leads us to forget the team behind the genius rather than the manipulative actions that lead them to emerge as mythical figures. People are also likely to believe

in the myth of the sole genius because it is a common explanation advanced in Western culture. Ferran Adria, for instance, is very surprised by his success and trajectory. He purports that he did not set out to become the greatest chef in the world. It just happened to him. The same might be said about Steve Jobs: he did not anticipate his success, although he did seem to purposefully manipulate the myth in his later career.

CONCLUSION

In presenting an alternative to the mainstream model of how to lead creative individuals, we hope to have stimulated, and even provoked the readers to consider that creativity may be enhanced in teams through other means than what we labeled the ‘‘mothering’’ model. Indeed, practitioners already do practice this model. We are thus contributing to filling the gap between theory and practice. We are not arguing that the ‘‘lone genius’’ model is better than the ‘‘mothering’’ model, no more than we could argue that Akira Kurosawa (the ‘‘lone genius’’) is better than Steven Spielberg (the ‘‘mothering’’ model). The ‘‘lone genius’’ model has merits and weaknesses. Further studies are needed to deter- mine those with more precision and accuracy.

The lone genius, or leaders who tyrannize their creative teams 113

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Our knowledge about how Steve Jobs functioned within Apple is based on his biography — W. Isaacson, Steve Jobs (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011) — and a 1995 interview on documentary film — Paul Sen (director), and Robert X. Crin- gely (writer, actor), Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, 2012. Information about Ferran Adria at El Bulli was mainly gleaned from Gereon Wetzel’s documentary film, El Bulli: Cooking in Progress (2011); and F. Adrià, J. Soler, and A. Adria, A Day at El Bulli (London: Phaidon Press Inc., 2008).

For readings about collective and organizational creativ- ity, we recommend the following: A. B. Hargadon and B. A. Bechky, ‘‘When Collections of Creatives Become Creative Collectives: A Field Study of Problem Solving at Work,’’ Organization Science, 2006, 17(4), 484—500; and S. Cirella, M. Guerci, and A. R. Shani, ‘‘A Process Model of Collaborative Management Research: The Study of Collective Creativity in

the Luxury Industry,’’ Systemic Practice and Action Research, 2012, 25(3), 281—300; Michael D. Mumford, ed., Handbook of Organizational Creativity (San Diego: Academic Press, 2012). For an in-depth exploration of creating meaning through innovation, see Roberto Verganti, Design-Driven Innovation (Harvard Business Press, 2009).

For insightful findings about creativity and leadership, we recommend T. M. Amabile and M. Khaire, ‘‘Creativity and the Role of the Leader,’’ Harvard Business Review, 2008, 86(10), 100—109; C. Haag and J. F. Coget, ‘‘Leading Creative People: Lessons from Advertising Guru Jacques Séguéla,’’ European Management Journal, 2010, 28(4), 278—284; and M. D. Mumford, G. M. Scott, B. Gaddis, and J. M. Strange, ‘‘Leading Creative People: Orchestrating Expertise and Relationships,’’ The Leadership Quarterly, 2002, 13(6), 705—750.

Jean-Francois Coget is an associate professor of management at the Orfalea College of Business at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, and a visiting professor at Politecnico Di Milano, Italy. He earned his Ph.D. in management from the Anderson School at UCLA. His research interests include emotions, intuition, creativity and leadership. (Orfalea College of Business, California Polytechnic State University, 1 Grand Ave, San Luis Obispo, CA 93407, USA. Tel.: +1 805 550 7274; e-mail: [email protected]).

Abraham B. (Rami) Shani (Ph.D., Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH) is a professor of management at the Orfalea College of Business, California Polytechnic State University and a research professor at the Politecnico Di Milano, Milan Italy. He is the co-author or co-editor of Learning By Design, Organizing for Sustainable Effectiveness, Research in Organization Change and Development, Creating Sustainable Work Systems, Behavior in Organizations, and The Handbook of Collaborative Management Research (Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Via Lambruschini, 4B — Milano, Lombardy 20156, Italy. e-mail: [email protected]).

Luca Solari is a professor of management at the University of Milan in Italy and a visiting professor at the Orfalea College of Business, California Polytechnic State University. He earned his Ph.D. at Bocconi University in Milan. His research interests include person-organization relations and the evolution of management (Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Milan, via Conservatorio 7, 20122 Milano, Italy. e-mail: [email protected]).