Making creative and business sit together with less conflict

One of the big questions raised time and time again by those involved in supporting and developing creative businesses is why it is that creative people are so good (and prolific) at starting businesses but not so good at sustaining and growing them?

Many more businesses are started by creative practitioners than those from a business background. Creative businesses are responsible for more new job creation than any other area of economic activity in the UK. London is a world powerhouse of creative business and yet despite this the failure rate of creative businesses is very high and of those that make it past the 3 year mark, many never grow beyond a dozen or so employees.

While there are a multitude of reasons given for this, such as the unwillingness of those that run such businesses to break through the 'lifestyle' barrier needed to grow or sustain a business to the difficulty in accessing investment, there is an important factor that is common to most, if not all, such businesses. This is the conflict between creative process and business process. It is not an untruth to reflect that these two areas of discipline are simply very different and require different attitudes, skills and knowledge but to end the consideration here is also neglectful.

One way to consider the root of the creative and business conflict is to look at the way that the processes that traditionally underpin creative and business activity are shaped. Business planning and execution is understood as linear. To attract investment or secure borrowing in order to build a business so that it can be sold or can realise the long term exploitation of IP is understood to require 3 year projections that provide a month by month picture and use language that suggests risk reduction achieved through careful long term planning. Here change is to be managed rather than embraced.

Creative people are at their strongest and happiest when thinking and working cyclically, embracing risk and dealing with constant change. This is true of those engaged in the creative application of science and art. Such people make hypothesis, explore and test such hypothesis, review the results of this activity and then adjust their hypothesis accordingly. It also true that business planning should be constantly reviewed and updated in light of progress made and lessons learned. Therefore cyclical activity is also common to the ongoing delivery of such plans even if it does not make the initial research and preparation of such plans any more palatable to the creative person. It does however give us a very important pointer to finding new ways of addressing this challenge.

Clearly we need to continue developing new processes and practices for engaging business heads with creative practitioners in ways that allow them to develop long term sustainable relationships. One such process I will refer to as Agile Business Planning. By using Agile process as the basis for business planning and development delivery we allow the creative practitioner to use processes that are familiar as they are cyclical, embrace change and risk continually and yet deliver continual and visible outcome. Such process is also SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time managed) and can dovetail with the long term visioning and projection orientated nature of established business planning practice. It is simply delivered week by week, month by month, using a set of tools that are owned and understood equally well by the business head and the creative head and therefore reduce conflict allowing the creative business to grow and become sustained.

What can Agile do for school management?

Having spent many years working on co-design and partnership projects with schools, I have become aware of the fact that schools in the UK, and particularly secondary schools, are in a constant state of flux. Even the best performing schools are continually managing change as handed down to them by government or because they get specialist status, being rebuilt or trying to become more outward facing through working in partnership with industry, cultural organisations, HE and FE. Then there are those schools that get entirely new management teams as they become academies or are working to get themselves out of special measures. These schools have to deal with change upon change and at times will feel like they are in constant crisis mode.

As Agile methodologies begin to be applied in new environments, it seems that schools are an obvious candidate as organisations that could really benefit from Agile. Some of the reasons for this are as follows:

• Constant change - as mentioned above, schools are continually working in an environment of constant flux and Agile is all about constant change.
  
• Lightweight processes - teachers are overworked and are resistant to anything that feels like additional management, administration or responsibility - Agile is simple and does not require reams of additional paperwork.
• Minimum iteration - in schools resources, particularly time, are scarce. Teachers will buy into a process and a project if they can see that it is delivering for them. Agile delivers results quickly and requires visible success criteria.
• Needs orientated process - the Agile use of 'stories' as a key concept used for defining goals and considering prioritisation is very useful for schools. Teachers often think in terms of 'need' and 'limitation' and both these are core elements of 'stories'.

Schools are expected to work in terms of projects more and more. Teachers need to be able to work together and with external organisations on project development and delivery in order to respond to the constant change that they are faced with. Agile is much more suited to the school environment than traditional project management approaches. It is flexible, easy to understand, lightweight and quick to implement, delivers visible outcomes quickly and responds effectively to constant change.