Zen10 — Building a culture of creativity within organizations
Many organizations treat the concept of creativity (or, innovation, out-of-the-box thinking, ideation, etc.) as if it were a genie in a bottle. When there are moments of real need, we grab the bottle from the supply closet, pack into the conference room, rub it carefully, and eagerly await the resulting brilliance. Sometimes the genie comes, but oftentimes it doesn’t. And for as much as it doesn’t, you’d think we’d try other strategies like leaving it in the break room to see what happens— just watch out for evil parrots…
Though these creative sessions can be fun and productive, they’re often neither, and even when they’re both, that alone isn’t enough to create a culture of creativity within an organization. My guess is that this “genie in a bottle” approach might stem from the strong ethos in society around inspiration — that of a brilliant spark that once captured, “just needs to be built.” Whereas in my experience, the most creative output comes from a much tighter connection between ideation and execution. As you start building and the “thing” begins taking shape, it inspires, it frustrates, it demands creative adjustments.
I’ve been a part of various experiments towards improving the culture of creativity within organizations, some successful and some not, but one that worked very well was something we called zen10, a variation on the almost mythical twenty percent time concept from Google. For the unaware, the idea was any Google employee could spend twenty percent of their working time on “whatever they wanted.” Sadly for Google (and perhaps the rest of us), the idea doesn’t appear to have stuck:
“I’ve got to tell you the dirty little secret of Google’s 20% time. It’s really 120% time.” — Marissa Mayer (an early Google employee & longtime VP)
This sentiment mirrors stories from many folks, at Google and other places that have tried it: because there is no explicit time set aside for this program, the onslaught of “real work” quickly eats away at this “optional work” time.
The term zen10, coined by my friend and colleague Stephen Swensen, speaks directly to how the concept is different from 20 percent time: zen — a state of calm attentiveness in which one’s actions are guided by intuition rather than by conscious effort, and 10 —as in, ten percent of a person’s work time. In short — less, but more spacious, time allotted.
For each member of our team, every other Thursday was their zen10 day, when they would spend the full day completely disconnected from the realities of work life — no “assigned” work, no meetings, no expectation to be available via chat or on-call. That time was set aside for them to learn new things, scratch itches, experiment, and dream. The only two rules were that they had to:
- Work on something loosely related to the business
- Share whatever they did the next day at our team sharing meeting
The result was a resounding, and sustained, success. As a manager, I had stumbled upon a way to create legitimate time and space for team members to get into a flow in order to express themselves and grow, and in a way that was predictable and easy to plan around. And the team repaid me in spades by creating and sharing wonderful things.
Zen10 projects were numerous and diverse. Some focused on personal growth, learning, and researching. Some involved scratching longstanding itches by fixing a bug, or investing in infrastructure improvements. And a surprising number of them significantly pushed the envelope of our thinking on what our business could become. Though it was clear that people shouldn’t expect their projects to become part of the roadmap, a decent number of them ultimately did.
All in all, not only had the zen10 process created a framework for encouraging ongoing creativity and growth, it somewhat paradoxically helped the team become more productive than before (i.e. more was getting done in their 90% time than previously in their 100% time), in part because of the output of the 10% time itself, and in part because the team seemed happier and more engaged. Some tactical things we learned that made it work:
- A full uninterrupted day was important to allow for zen-like workflow
- The cadence was staggered — half the team this week, the other half the next, and so on —keeping momentum high for zen10 and “regular” work
- The team was split into two groups deliberately in order to ensure no gaps in coverage for project work, on-call schedules, important meetings, etc.
- Having it on the same day each week made it much easier to plan around
- Multiple people doing it at the same time encouraged collaboration
- Keeping it “loosely related” to the biz kept it productive but not stifling
- The expectation of demoing *something* helped encourage iterative work
- 10% was just right — fits into existing project schedule and allows for zen
- Coupling it with a #zen10 slack channel allowed people to post quick ideas, share results, and gather feedback during their 90% time
We iterated quite a bit to make it work for our particular team and situation, but as with all ideas about process and people, your mileage may vary. Either way, setting aside the specifics of the zen10 concept, I think that the broader lesson I’ve learned is widely applicable: a culture of creativity requires continual nurturing. Furthermore, as project deadlines get tight, products flounder, and the competition breathes down our neck, the natural inclination is to tighten our grip on the proverbial wheel by forcing more rigidity and tighter controls on creative endeavors. In my experience, it’s often these times when it’s most important to relax our grip because it’s when we need our team to be at their healthiest, and their work to be at its most creative.
