Staying Motivated in the Workplace

Hi brandicmc - what a great post. I've been working with the same challenge with my creative team.

We hold monthly meetings, and I spend a great deal of time before each meeting trying to come up with motivational and fun exercises to give to the artists to hopefully inspire them and assist with their creativity.

Lately I've been picking out online tutorials covering interesting design effects and trends and assigning the tutorials to the artists each month to complete. I also assign a sort of artwork or ad design to them that goes in conjunction with the tutorials that they are to complete before the next meeting. It is always emphasized to the artists that they get creative free reign on these projects, so they are allowed to express themselves creatively without having to worry about pleasing clients or ad reps. I also emphasize that they are to do this project on company time, letting them know they're getting paid to have some fun.

The project that went over the best was when I had them do a tutorial learning how to create photoshop scatter brushes, and then I told them to use the scatter brush in creating a forest scene. They all really enjoyed it.

The biggest hurdle I've been starting to see, though, with our recent projects is that they're still not taking time out of their day to do the creative project. They all do the project at the very last minute - they keep their paying ad designs at the top of their list, THEN they do the typical goof off surf the net or socialize stuff, and then if they're getting bored with that, they'll MAYBE take on the project. Definitely NOT what I want. Taking care of paying customers is important, but the creative exercises need to come before their "goof off" time (I know... perfect world, they wouldn't be goofing off at all, but I'm just being realistic here when I note that they do this.)

So, I'm making rough plans to come up with short weekly projects instead of giving them an entire month to do them. My team is very deadline-driven, so I think this may help.

I've also got in contact with our corporate offices and have asked them if sometime after the beginning of next year they could make plans to do some sort of motivational training webinar for us. We don't have the money to be flying them out, but with the way technology is nowadays, there's no reason they can't do a web presentation for us.

I'll also be interested in hearing more ideas. I'm always looking for something fun to do for my team to keep up their motivation. I'm starting to feel our monthly meetings are getting a bit stale and need a change.

Thanks for posting this!

If I was in an environment thriving with other creatives, I'd invite and endorse the services of a life drawing model. Break out the contés and manilla. The gravy train has pulled in!

"Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible."
— Frank Zappa

I find that the biggest motivator of any team, creative or otherwise, is knowing that management supports them and is communicative. Nothing kills a creative vibe more than being constantly worried about your job.

Creative exercises are great, but I usually find them uninteresting compared to creating work that could potentially go into my portfolio. A deadline oriented, portfolio stuffing project would fit the bill much better than a pumpkin design contest. :)

That being said, I wish I had you as a Creative Director! Great ideas.

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Natobasso
dirtandrust.com
"Powerpoint is not a design application"

During the economic crisis it is possible that the team will not have much work to do. This is a great time to finally work on the company's own brand. Redoing the logo, the website, any other material. Maybe come up with a viral idea.

Also, it's a great time to do scam ads and designs to be submitted to award shows.

I have observed that thje best motivator is CASH in large doses!

http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

We actually did a team building thing last week. Well, the beginning part of the team building. Meyers Briggs personality thing. It will help us solve problems later by getting with someone who is on the opposite spectrum as us. Pretty interesting.

Thanks for all the great feedback! I love the idea of a fine arts project - i.e. life drawing. I find that fun and simple weekly projects that take everyone away from their machines and "typical work" have inspired the most energy...
Interesting and coincidental comment about updating the company image - more to come on that (=

i had to set up a "fun" exercise for our marketing department last spring.

since a big part of what we do is proposals, and some of them highly customized to the client and project (to the extent of creative packaging, even), i set up a fake client and project (something silly) with instructions. then gave people piles of completely random stuff to build it from. everyone had different paper, different magazines to cut out of, and piles of random things like brads, hole punches, colored tape, crayons, yarn, buttons, whatever we could pull together. then we gave them (groups of 7 or so) 90 minutes to build the proposal and get ready to present it to the group.

it ended up being a lot of fun and they came up w/some pretty funny stuff.

The link below is to illustrate another conceptual FUN exercise you could try. I would have your designers scribble and then pass their scribble onto another person who would then have the challenge of creating an illustration from this base scribbled beginning.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/816692/scribble_magic/

"Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible."
— Frank Zappa

Hey guys,

it is great to know, that there really are agencies that do care about their employees. I feel that in my country the word motivation is more like a swear word, than some sort of objective of the leadership. Boses do care mostly about their own wallets, almost nobody is interested in the overall profit. A tough way to go, but still a way...

Great post btw!