Last week I mentioned that Andrew Dubber’s e-book 20 Things You Must Know About Music Online is available as a free printed booklet and pop-up desk thingamy. Mine arrived this week and very nice they are too. The kind people at Digital Central also included another booklet, Making Money Out of Music.

Both booklets are excellent, full of practical advice for musicians seeking fame and fortune in the new musical landscape. They’re also free, so if you’re in a band and wondering how to make some money from your music, you’d be mad not to send an e-mail to Digital Central and ask them to send you a copy. More details here.

My last post looked at How Not to Give Feedback on Creative Work, with an example of breathtaking clumsiness from the Emperor in Amadeus. To recap, this is how the Emperor made a pig’s ear of critiquing Mozart’s opera Il Seraglio:

1. He offered a second-hand opinion
2. He pretended to be an expert when he wasn’t
3. He failed to provide any meaningful criteria for judgment
4. He was tactless
5. He was patronising

Let’s see what we can learn by reversing the Emperor’s mistakes.

1. Give your own opinion

The only person on this planet who sees things your way is you. Even if you are a novice surrounded by experts, there is still the possibility that you will have spotted something ‘obvious’ that no-one else has noticed. Don’t try to second-guess others’ opinions or be something you’re not.

If you’re not sure how your view will be received you could start with “This may sound silly but…” - it’s amazing how many times I’ve said that and found people nodding and agreeing.

2. Make your own role clear

If you are an expert in the medium, you are in a position to give a different kind of feedback than if you are not. Not necessarily better, just different. You will only irritate a professional if you try to intrude on their territory. But even if you are ‘only’ the manager, you are perfectly entitled to give feedback based on your knowledge of the client, the audience, the market and so on - as long as you make it clear in what capacity you are speaking.

I mentioned in my previous post that I know very little about graphic design, but am happy to give a ‘layman’s view’ of how a piece of design strikes me. If I’m asked to give my opinion on a poem however, it’s a completely different matter. This is a task I approach with relish and a completely different perspective - one of the reasons I enjoy writing poetry reviews. But this doesn’t guarantee that in any given situation my views on poetry will be more helpful than my views on design.

3. Be explicit about your criteria

Your criteria may be subjective, but at least you are providing a reference point for your judgment. Others are then free to challenge your judgment on its own terms or propose alternative criteria.

In his book Purple Cow Seth Godin tells the story of the adult focus groups who hated South Park because they found it offensive. In terms of their criterion (offensiveness) they were absolutely right - but fortunately the broadcasters realised that offensiveness was a key part of the programme’s appeal to its target audience - teenage boys.

Valid criteria can include: your own knowledge as a practitioner; the audience’s response; the client’s response; the brief; the market; the competition; money; time; practical issues.

4. Be honest, but not brutally honest

There’s no point fudging the issue if you really don’t like a piece of work or think it doesn’t meet the brief. But you don’t need to be brutally honest, especially if you will be working with them again and want them to do better next time.

Unless you’re a sadist, of course.

5. Support the person even if you can’t approve the work

Creativity is risky, so no-one can churn out a masterpiece every time. Wordsworth wrote reams of turgid poetry, Dylan and Bowie have made plenty of duff albums - but we forgive them because of the good stuff.

Remember, creative people identify very strongly with their work, so they are liable to take criticism personally. One of the most valuable things you can do for them is to give them your support and encouragement at a time of ‘failure’ - they will (usually) remember and try to repay your faith.

Well, there it is. I’ll write another post shortly on how to receive feedback on creative work.

Over to you…

What tips would you add to this list?

Giving feedback on creative work is a tricky challenge, for two main reasons:

1. Artists and creatives identify very closely with their work
   When a creative worker puts a piece of work in front of you, it is as though they were putting a piece of themselves there to be judged - because of this, it is almost inevitable that they take criticism personally.
2. The value of creative work is largely subjective
   We all know this from arguments with friends about music and films - one person’s masterpiece is utter rubbish to someone else. Shakespeare, Welles and Picasso are only ‘great’ because there is a current consensus of opinion that makes them so, and fashions can change. So it’s very difficult to make a final judgement with absolute certainty, no matter how strongly you feel about it.

But feedback is vital to producing outstanding work. Without some sense of how one’s work appears to others, it’s very hard to decide how to develop it. For Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, feedback is an essential ingredient in the experience of creative flow - when we sense that we are creating something valuable, it increases our pleasure and absorption in the work.

So feedback is essential, but how should we approach it? Specifically:

• How can we give genuinely constructive feedback on a piece of creative work, even if we aren’t experts in the medium?
• When we’re on the receiving end, how can we make the most of the feedback we receive from others - or at least develop a thicker skin?

‘Too many notes’ - the Emperor from ‘Amadeus’ shows us how not to do it

My favourite example of how not to give feedback on creative work is the Emperor Josef II of Austria, as he appears in Amadeus - a film I’ve previously written about as a parable of creativity.

The Emperor is not stupid, nor is he a philistine. He comes across as an intelligent and honest man trying to do his best for his subjects. And he aspires to culture, as an amateur musician and a lover and patron of music. The ‘musical King’ surrounds himself with composers and music scholars, patronises the opera, concert halls and music schools, and commissions exciting new works from established composers and rising stars.

And yet, as Salieri points out, “actually the man had no ear at all”. This is partly a deficiency of talent - regardless of the approach he took to musical studies, the Emperor would never be in danger of rivaling Mozart or Salieri. But it is also a deficiency of circumstance. Because of his position, the assembled musical experts around him are afraid to tell him where he’s going wrong, or even how bad his playing is. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve discovered an excellent blog called New Music Strategies, which has a lively and well-argued point of view on the new realities of the music business. A good introduction is author Andrew Dubber’s e-book 20 Things You Must Know About Music Online, which is also available as a free printed booklet.

Daniel Schutzsmith has a new issue of Graphic Define online, with a great selection of guest authors writing about ‘the business of running a design studio’ (most of which will apply to any creative business). On a similar theme the Creative Review blog has a great piece called Running A Design Studio: The Boring Stuff, by Build partner Nicky Place.

I’m finding The Ideafeed an excellent source of new stories and publications about the creative industries. Maybe you will too.

Andrew at Northern Planner shares some tips on Using research and information to write a great creative brief - worth reading for anyone on the giving or receiving end of a creative brief.

Steve Roesler has an insightful series on Fear of Success, which in my experience is surprisingly common among creative professionals (and also applies to Organizations).

If you’re wondering what could possibly be scary about success, have a read of Marcus Brown’s unforgettable post The Show Off. I’m pleased to say Marcus retains his creative enthusiasm, in a mind-boggling new project The Ides of March. If you have a business problem, send it to Marcus and he’ll come up with an idea to help you solve it - if you like the idea, you pay what you think it’s worth (yes, really), if not he posts it on the Ides of March. I had the pleasure of meeting Marcus at the Interesting conference in June - he’s charming and obviously very bright, so I’m looking forward to following his creative thinking high wire act.

Juliana Frasson Xavier is a Brazilian planner who’s been making the most of her time in London by interviewing some of the luminaries of the UK advertising scene and posting her findings on John Grant’s Brand Tarot blog. She asked her interviewees about the thought processes they use to approach creative and business challenges - a fascinating topic, especially considering her interviewees include Phil Teer, Creative Director of St Luke’s, Richard Huntingdon of Adliterate, and Russell Davies of Russell Davies.

Finally thanks to Steve at Creative Generalist for this sighting of the rare species of Poet Managers:

Poetry speaks to many C.E.O.’s. “I used to tell my senior staff to get me poets as managers,” says Sidney Harman, founder of Harman Industries, a $3 billion producer of sound systems for luxury cars, theaters and airports. Mr. Harman maintains a library in each of his three homes, in Washington, Los Angeles and Aspen, Colo. “Poets are our original systems thinkers,” he said. “They look at our most complex environments and they reduce the complexity to something they begin to understand.”

Thanks to D’log for highlighting Demos’ publication of a free PDF of The Independents by Charles Leadbeater and Kate Oakley. I read the printed version a while ago and was impressed by the way it captures both the spirit of creative freelancers and microbusinesses and their larger economic significance within the UK creative industries.

As D’log points out the book came out in 1999 so it’s a little dated, but still well worth reading for anyone with an interest in the creative industries. It also makes a good companion to the recent pamphlet (also from Demos) So What Do You Do? which I blogged about last month.

Following on from Key Coaching Skills in the Introduction to Business Coaching series is the GROW model. Devised by Sir John Whitmore and described in his book Coaching For Performance, it is probably the most common coaching model used in business, at least in the UK. It offers a way of structuring coaching sessions to facilitate a balanced discussion:

• GOAL - defining what you want to achieve
• REALITY - exploring the current situation, relevant history and future trends
• OPTIONS - coming up with new ideas for reaching the goal
• WHAT/WHO/WHEN - deciding on a concrete plan of action

In practice, since most coaching is driven by questions, this means that different types of question are used at each stage:

• GOAL - questions to define the goal as clearly as possible and also to evoke an emotional response
  [What do you want to achieve? What will be different when you achieve it? What's important about this for you?]
• REALITY - questions to elicit specific details of the situation and context
  [What is happening now? Who is involved? What is their outcome? What is likely to happen in future?]
• OPTIONS - open-ended questions to facilitate creative thinking
  [What could you do? What ideas can you bring in from past successes? What haven't you tried yet?]
• WHAT - focused questions to get an agreement to specific actions and criteria for success
  [What will you do? When will you do it? Who do you need to involve? When should you see results?]

Used judiciously, the GROW model offers an excellent framework for structuring a coaching session. It is particularly useful for beginners, helping them to see the wood for the trees and keep the session on track. However, Whitmore is at pains to emphasise that models and structures are not the heart of coaching:

GROW, without the context of AWARENESS and RESPONSIBILITY, and the skill of questioning to generate them, has little value.

I prefer to think of the GROW model as a compass for orientation rather than a rigid sequence of steps to be followed. I don’t think I’ve ever taken part in a coaching session that began with Goals, then progressed smoothly through an analysis of Reality, then brainstormed Options before settling on the What?/When?/Who? and How? of an action plan.

Coaching can begin at any of the four stages of the GROW model. A coachee might begin by telling you about something she wants to achieve (Goal), a current problem (Reality), a new idea for improving things (Options) or by outlining an action plan (What). As a coach, it’s usually a good idea to follow the coachee’s lead initially by asking a few questions to elicit more detail, then move onto the other steps.

Personally, I always start a coaching conversation by asking a goal-focused question (e.g. “So what do you want to achieve?”) as a way of setting the tone for the discussion. Sometimes the coachee replies with a description of a problem (Reality) which is fine - I’ll listen, probe for a few details then as soon as possible return to Goals, to keep the conversation focused. On the other hand, if someone comes to me full of ideas and enthusiasm (Goals, Options), I’ll do my best to help them maintain this while taking account of hard facts (Reality) and getting a commitment to specific action (What). As so often with coaching, the important principle is balance.

Next in this series - Formal and Informal Coaching.