Creativity, Business, and the Paradox of Planning

Understanding the tensions between modern management and the demands of contemporary creative work

The business management ideas that have been developed, codified, and embraced since the middle of the 20th Century still serve as tools for how large organizations approach growth, efficiency, employees, and optimization to increase the bottom line. Having interacted with business leaders across a variety of industries, there seems to be a growing friction between the thinking of the C-Suite and the realities of modern work. In this article we take a look at the origins of contemporary ideas of orchestration and management, how new tools, technologies and work behaviors add to the chaos, and solutions around project planning that can reconcile these deltas.

Having built and grown the independent creative agency Athletics for a handful decades working with organizations of every scale, along the way I have experienced the many pain points that modern business puts in the way of making great ideas into great work. These are largely issues around:

• A lack of clear project process and concrete deliverables
• The specialized knowledge needed to do the work becomes blocked or derailed by management
• A difficulty in gaining clarity and consensus as the scale of a…