CHAPTER 14
The Four Ps You Need for Growth
I HAVE TWO FRIENDS who ran a small business. It was an independent automotive repair facility in Los Angeles. They catered to a particular brand of very high-end cars and did great work.
They were also creative.
It seemed that they were doing everything right, as if they were employing The Creator Mindset, and their business thrived for a while.
But then they got stuck.
Like the owners of most businesses, they figured out and catered to a need that was underserved in some way. But soon they wanted to grow. They wanted to diversify. They wanted to hire more staff and start another shop on the other side of town. They wanted to build upon their footprint and perhaps even franchise their model. Their hopes and aspirations were grand and unbounded. Yet they were not able to make any of that a reality.
Why?
Because they tended to use one or two elements of The Creator Mindset that they were particularly drawn to, one or two of the principles described in these pages that they were good at and that they liked. Then they took it further: they got very good at one or two elements and thought they had used the full potential of The Creator Mindset! There was no need to go any further. As humans, we love to do what we are good at. Any step outside of this comfort zone is tough. It is wrought with anxiety and fear. Thus, we tend to do what we are good at and sometimes excel at a few elements, but then we don’t do much more. That’s why my friends got stuck and did not continue to grow.
To be truly creative, we need to do more. It’s not good enough simply to embrace one or two principles of The Creator Mindset and then stop. We need a device—four tools for creative growth—that will force us to ask ourselves some tough questions along our path to becoming fully immersed in The Creator Mindset. Those tough questions will act as checks and balances along the path to creative mastery. You can excel at any of the principles in this book individually much as my friends at the auto repair shop did. However, unless you can combine all The Creator Mindset principles into a growth path for your business or career, you are touching on only a fraction of your creative potential. It’s time for the four Ps you need for growth:
1. People
2. Process
3. Product
4. Profit
I’m aware that there are a bunch of folks out there with their own Ps of business, but just to be clear, my four Ps are all about infusing each step with creativity. Each of my Ps is about learning how to use creativity in harmony with the analytics so that your potential for success becomes incrementally greater. Let’s dive in.
1. PEOPLE
The first P deals with people. The reason people are first in The Creator Mindset is that people are the most valuable commodity that your business has and the people in your career network are the strongest connections you have. It is after all people who generate creativity, not machines, not efficacies, not tools. You are nothing creatively without people, and you have no identity without the people you choose to surround yourself with.
If you are a business, it all starts with hiring slow and firing fast. On the hiring side, find the best people you can and let them do what God gifted them with. Stay out of their way. For firing, get rid of the cancer ASAP. You are only as strong as your weakest link. When I am out consulting, most companies understand the firing part but think that the hiring part is all about finding someone with the exactly perfect rèsumè or experience who is laser-focused on the open position. This candidate has a long history of this job or that job that is within your field and has had a linear trajectory of experience. This is categorically wrong and an antiquated inheritance from the analytical approach to business. Creatively, to hire the best people you must look beyond the résumé. For example, to find people with leadership experience, my favorite technique is to hire folks from the military. It’s quite likely that their experience is not in your field, but military hires tend to be amazing because of the methodical experience and discipline they have had in the service. Hire on the person, not the résumé.
In any career, the people you choose to surround yourself with will be your strongest connections at this job and the next. Simply put, people—and your investment in how you treat them—are one of the strongest determinants of how successful you will be. It doesn’t matter if they are coworkers or vendors who are used to augment the staff or even customers. If you help, you will be helped. If you encourage, you will be encouraged. If you support, you will be supported. This may not happen instantly, but it will happen eventually.
My friends with the small business described in the opening of this chapter hired mostly the right people. Again—and this is important—you can hire mostly the right people but still not achieve the full potential of your Creator Mindset because getting one or two things right means that you are touching on only a fraction of your available creative potential. It turns out that there was one nepotism hire, a brother or a cousin, and that one rotten hire ended up doing not all that much. That led others to feel resentment. The staff pointed him out and said that if he didn’t work hard, why should they?
Getting the people part of the four Ps right is essential. That is why it is listed first. Any shortcoming in the people part of the four Ps will have echoes for years that will stunt all kinds of company initiatives and career growth. As with a bug in the software of your business or career, you will forever be looking in every nook and cranny to find the problem when it could have been caught right at the start. Focus on the people part. Hire right and invest in your network.
2. PROCESS
The second P deals with process. Process is all about achieving little victories and capitalizing on all those little victories on your journey to the big win. It’s about setting goals and taking clear and precise steps along the way to achieve those goals. It is step 2 in my cohesion plan. No matter how much creativity you embed in an organization or career, if there is no process to organize it, it will not lead to any meaningful goal or target. Instead it will lead to confusion and chaos.
If you are a company and you come up with a creative idea such as a new offering, without a process it will not be executed to its full potential if it is executed at all. It will instead lead you to fall backward to people issues. The staff will greet this new creative initiative with fear of change or a myriad of other resistances to innovation, and that will kill its potential. We learned in Chapter 2 that change is a very difficult thing to deal with at the workplace and in life. Instead, infuse process with creativity. Show the staff how this initiative can become interesting instead of threatening in a road map of little victories. Engage the operational elements and get the staff to buy into the idea. Encourage ownership of the idea across the organization so that it has a chance to materialize. Process enables communication to ring clearly across all the parts of an organization. It will allow you to begin to organize your initiative so that creativity gets to blossom into a real and actionable momentum instead of being just a creative thought someone has that quickly vanishes away.
Sometimes you do not have the authority to implement a companywide process, and that can be frustrating and lead to burnout. That’s okay. Instead, focus on the things into which you can embed process. After all, there are some process items in your control no matter what it is that you do, things such as how you spend your time and what you prioritize or things such as how you execute a particular job and how and when you follow up. No matter what it is that you do, creating process will enable you to establish a rhythm in which creativity can shine.
My small business friends from earlier in this chapter had a rudimentary basic process. Again, you can have a decent process but still not achieve the full potential of your Creator Mindset because getting one or two things right is still touching on only a fraction of your available creative potential. In this case, their rudimentary process was fine while they were still small but could not keep up with the demands of growth. Intake paperwork had to be hand typed into a computer each time a customer pulled in even if it was a returning customer. Also, standard service items such as brakes and oil changes were performed differently by each mechanic, with no consistency. There was no standard process, no rhythm. Consistency is key to enabling the customer experience process to be predictable and helps build the identity of who you are and why it is you are worth doing business with.
3. PRODUCT
The third P deals with product: what it is that you really execute. Like most things in this book, it may seem obvious at first. However, it’s counterintuitive because after so much time and immersion in the analytical world, we often have knee-jerk reactions to what we think we get paid for. We are blind to what our product or service really does in its entirety. Without looking at it with The Creator Mindset, we are seeing only half of what we do. Can you imagine driving a car while seeing only half the road or playing chess with only half the pieces? That is exactly what you are doing with your business if you don’t look at the entire picture of your product or service with creativity.
For example, if you are in the manufacturing business and make parts with tolerances that are military-grade, are you a parts manufacturer? At first it may seem so, but that is the analytical view only. When this view is combined with the creative side of the brain, what you really do is provide a trusted and vetted part to someone who is in need of a highly specialized component. Sure, you make parts, but in a way you are in the trust business. Trust is your product, not manufacturing. Think back to the Trinity of Creativity to really capture your product.
If your career calls you to be a nurse, you may think that your duties are to take temperatures and make sure the charts are updated with intake paperwork and the like. It may be easy to see your role as a series of care-based executions that you perform. At first, it may seem that indeed that is what you do. But that is the analytical only view. When you look at it creatively, a whole new world begins to emerge that drives meaning into the product of your career. I would argue that most nurses are in the business of communication, being able to talk to patients so that they understand what is going on and being the glue of the patients’ journey. Sure, you may take temperatures or engage in some care, but in a way you are really in the communication business. Viewed creatively, communication is your career product as a nurse, not taking temperatures or updating charts.
Defining your product, whether it’s what you do as a career or what your business provides, opens up a universe of creative potential. It allows you to come up with a creative definition of what it is you do, and in that creative definition you open up a world of possibility. In a career, that may manifest as a raise or a promotion or the redefinition of your role as something exciting, new, or different. It will allow you to uncover new truths that have been unseen and make you a valuable asset to any organization. In a business, this creative product definition will enable shocking growth as you energize the direct core of the meaning of your product or service with the audience that consumes it.
To continue with the example from the opening of this chapter, the small business didn’t fully understand its product. They understood some parts of it and did very well with a few parts of it but didn’t understand their business as a whole, leading them to achieve only a fraction of their creative potential. They especially didn’t fully understand their creative meaning. Was it fixing cars? Doing scheduled maintenance on parts subject to wear and tear? Putting extra air in the tires? Looking at it creatively, I’d say no. This business catered to people who wanted to own fancy cars at a reasonable cost. They were in the business of enabling the dream of supercar ownership without expensive maintenance for people who couldn’t otherwise afford to own and maintain a fancy car. Sure, they fixed cars, but their product was enabling dream car ownership for people who otherwise could not afford it.
4. PROFIT
Finally, we have the fourth P, which deals with profit. A true derivative of getting the other three Ps right, it is the last milestone toward realizing the fruits of your labor. No matter how much creativity you embed in an organization or career, if there is no profit left over at the end of the day, you have not created a meaningful goal.
It’s important to pause here and talk a little about profit and how it is analytically perceived in general. It is sometimes a difficult topic because profit is seen as greed and therefore something that is not worth our effort. But when we look at it creatively, all this talk about greed begins to unravel.
When one looks at profit creatively, an altruistic view begins to emerge. Profit allows you, whether in a business or in a career, to spend money on something you deem important. I delivered a keynote at an annual sales gathering of a company that donated 10 percent of its profits to employee-chosen charities. How awesome is that? I met a Fortune 100 company executive who gave roughly half his salary to cancer research. How amazing! Would you qualify that as being greedy or doing something that is not worth pursuing? I doubt it. Being able to do these things is a worthwhile and important matter that has its roots in profit. After all, if there is no money left over to do things with (charity, buying something, etc.), our contribution to society at large has been cut short. Far too often, profit gets bogged down with antiquated analytical views of it as a greedy or avaricious goal, but when looked at creatively, profit changes into a positive element for all.
It is time we began to get comfortable with profits and what they mean not only to our business or career but to the community at large. We can start doing this today. In a way, thinking creatively about profit allows you to work toward a goal that touches many lives in ways you cannot begin to imagine or comprehend, because everything you buy and spend money on affects other people’s ability to create their own meaningful goals. This is true no matter what you spend profit on: a fancy car or a new wardrobe or a donation to charity.
For my small business friends, profit was something that was not fully realized. Although revenue was strong, waste was created at every step of the spectrum across people, process, and product. Again, you can excel at any of the principles of this book one by one, but unless you can combine them all into a path for your business or career, you are touching on only a fraction of your creative potential. Therefore, my friends realized only a fraction of their potential profit and did not realize the hard-fought equity they were lacking to expand, franchise, and realize their dream of continued and sustainable growth.
THE CREATOR MINDSET DEPENDS on viewing profit creatively and positively to allow the fruits of your labor to affect others for good. This is the fundamental shift in mentality that is required to fully grasp all the four Ps in a way that leads to growth and innovation in sustainable ways. At the end of the day, you must think that profit is a worthwhile goal and its pursuit a valuable, meaningful, and important task. At the end of the day:
If you don’t have the right people around you who are empowered to achieve creative greatness, the right process in place to allow creative ideas to become commonplace and the new normal, and if a product or service that is meaningfully understood by those who consume it, you will never get to a place where profits can benefit you and your community at large.
Following the four Ps of The Creator Mindset will open up a path for you that is repeatable and enduring. It will let you weather all kinds of storms that could derail you from innovation and sustainability. At the end of the day, my four Ps will allow you to fulfill your dreams with the power of creativity.