Q: What’s the best approach for leading creative people, and does it really differ from leading everyone else? Joe Burke, Los Angeles                 

A: In a word, yes.

Leading creative types, who often don’t think of themselves as employees of anyone or anything—let alone followers embedded in an organization consisting of levels, layers and moving parts—is about as far from Management 101 as you can get. In fact it’s an art, drawing on all sorts of soft skills like empathy, nurturing and ad-hoc psychological counseling. But what a mistake if you lead creative people from your heart and stop there.

Managing creative people also requires—it even demands—a measure of authority. Nothing heavy-handed, of course. You don’t want your resident “out-of-boxers” running for the exits. With their fresh ideas and unique perspectives, they can be, and often are, the reason for breakthrough products and new ways of working and even the impetus for whole new businesses.

Still, creative people must know that boundaries and values exist, and they have to respect them. If they don’t, creative people have a way of going off the rails—and taking the workaday core of the company with them.

Now, we realize that the “velvet hammer” part of the approach we recommend is somewhat counter to the conventional wisdom about managing creative types, which runs that you should leave alone writers, editors, artists, software designers, engineers, research scientists and even a few particularly inventive investment bankers. They’re different from you and me, the thinking goes—deeper, more mysteriously wired, more fragile. Treat them like worker bees and they sting. Treat them like hallowed Yodas and their wisdom flows.

We’d be tempted to blow off this view as nonsense, except that some of it is true. The most creative people can be intellectually complex and emotionally delicate; they often are. They can be odd or prickly. Some are quite antisocial. Many started hating the status quo in grade school and have never stopped. Who knows whether those traits are due to the way their brains work or the way most societies allow (and even encourage) artistic types to act.

Regardless, true creatives do seem to shut down when squeezed into normal strictures, and good managers need to be wary of that.

But businesses are not museums. They don’t exist to showcase creative output, but to capitalize on it. And for that to happen, something has to give—namely, the typical creative person’s underlying notion that he’s a free agent.

It is as one creative employee—a gifted writer who used to miss deadlines with abandon—once told one of us, “You’re not the boss of me.” Technically, he was flat wrong, but not in his own mind.

Now, many creative types do accept basic organizational principles and procedures. They push boundaries but do not cross them, and, as a result, their teams and organizations forge ahead.

But too often, companies also contain creative types who are so exquisitely talented that their “buck-the-system” behaviors get a pass: The brilliant scientist who treats his young associates like serfs. The award-winning art director who scoffs at corporate pleas for cost-cutting. The ingenious video-game designer who won’t talk to the marketing department.

Outrageous behaviors, yes. But when the creatives displaying them are good enough, many managers look away. Who wants to shoot the goose who lays the golden eggs? The problem, though, is that negative behaviors tend to be highly contagious among creatives.

After all, many of them are already acting against type in company settings. They’re conforming far more than they’d like. And so, any hint that they can “be real” is seized. The next thing you know, dysfunctional behaviors start to spread. People start working when and where they want, which usually means alone. They stop sharing ideas with mainstream “grunts.” Often, they start sniping at each other over, ironically, creative differences.

Such freedom may be a relief, if not a thrill, for the creative employees who are enjoying it. But it’s usually agony for the regular employees, who start to feel like disenfranchised outsiders.

“Why do the creatives get so much slack,” they wonder, “and we get none?” That’s a question conducive to only two kinds of environment: chaos or stalemate.

This leaves leaders in a unique, but not irresolvable, bind.

To win in the marketplace, leaders absolutely must respect the individuality of creative people. They are different. But if you want your organization to cohere and thrive, you must make sure they keep that difference within bounds.

Yes, some creatives might balk; some might even walk. But remember, you are indeed “the boss” of them—and everyone else. For the sake of the organization, you need to act that way.

Best practices Green Bag it

The bayong became relevant once more when SM and Unilever Philippines recently joined hands to introduce to the public a reusable shopping bag as part of their campaign to promote environmentalism in the country.

Winning: Creative employees need creative management

Q: What’s the best approach for leading creative people, and does it really differ from leading everyone else? Joe Burke, Los Angeles                 

A: In a word, yes.

Entrepreneur: The dish on Rai Rai Ken

Rai Rai Ken Ramen House and Sushi Bar has come a long way from its humble beginnings as a small and modest tea house in Makati City. It now boasts of 30 outlets all over the Philippines, and still growing. It takes pride in its tradition of serving authentic Japanese food, especially ramen or Japanese noodles, which is really its specialty.

SOS CHILDREN’S VILLAGES PHILIPPINES

Tommy was just a day old when he was found at the entrance of a town church in Batangas, wrapped in newspapers and placed in a box. His finder could tell he was newly born from the fresh umbilical cord dangling from his tiny body.

Confessions of a Sociopath

The author of the above quotation is either a physician who doesn’t want to be suspected of professional jealousy or a cynic who doesn’t want to be taken to a mental institution.

The grace of being Lean Alejandro

How does one write about a man whom one hardly knew beyond the official and professional? How does one tell his story especially to a generation 20 years removed from the time he walked this earth? How does one even venture to share what and how he thought of a world that changes so much and yet remains ever so the same? 

Block that defense: how to make sure your constructive criticism works

Why do top executives have difficulty receiving and responding to constructive criticism? Because so many high-fliers have received little criticism in their careers. As Chris Argyris, director emeritus of the Monitor Group (Cambridge, Massachusetts) and the James Bryant Conant Professor of Education and Organizational Behavior Emeritus at Harvard Business School, writes in “Teaching Smart People How to Learn,” a 1991 Harvard Business Review article, “Because they have rarely failed, they have never learned how to learn from failure.”

How they did it: charge what your products are worth

In a world with too many choices, aligning a product’s price with its perceived benefits is critical—but many companies seem to miss this simple point. A good question for any company to ask itself is “What would Goldilocks think?” Instead of offering too few benefits—or too many—for a stated price, they must perfectly align benefits and price across the product category and the brand portfolio, finding the combination that is “just right.”

Brain gain

(Last of five parts)

It’s easy for Filipinos to decide to leave the country to seek greener pastures. It’s much harder for these Filipinos, used to working abroad and earning sizeable sums, to come back.

Talent Search

(Fourth of five parts) 

Today’s companies face five critical business challenges: globalization, technology, the quest for profitability through growth, intellectual capital constraints and the exigencies of continuous change. Regardless of their industry, size or location, these challenges require these organizations to continuously build new capabilities—a responsibility which, University of Michigan School of Business professor Dave Ulrich writes, human resources (HR) should embrace for these organizations to last.

Civil Servants No More

(Third of five parts)

Jenny Balatbat left for the United States to teach kindergarten pupils, leaving behind her job as a teacher at the San Gabriel Elementary School in Bulacan.

Employee-Retention Strategies

(Second of five parts)

MANAGING talent has become more essential to the private sector than it used to be. Companies are now beginning to dig up insights into managing talent that should allow them to deal with brain drain in a more organized way. What is bold, they say, is to make lemonades when life gives you lemons.

THE WAR FOR TALENT

(First of five parts)

When the management of Fairchild Semiconductors, a global electronics firm, offered industrial engineer Manuel Villa, 32, a management job in Singapore three years ago, he didn’t hesitate to grab the offer.