Three Ingredients for Keeping Top Creative Talent

By Peter Lloyd

Ordinary, hard-working people drive the growth and vitality of most organizations. But the best creative thinkers and problem solvers, innovators and inventors create the breakthroughs that propel organizations out of the pack and into the lead. Unfortunately top creative talent can be difficult to find, recruit, and keep on board. Some organizations attract and keep them, others can’t seem to lure or hold onto them. What’s the difference?

I don’t know. But I do understand a few things about the nature of creative people. Understanding these things holds the key to attracting, exciting, and retaining top talent. I’ve identified three qualities that all creative people possess. Common sense argues that nurturing these qualities and creating an environment where they can thrive should be part of any attempt to attract and retain top creative talent.

1. Passion
Creative people define passion. Once they start a project, they don’t stop till it’s complete. Give them a problem, they don’t stop working until it’s solved. Deep and perplexing challenges excite rather than frighten great innovators, inventors, and artists. Their passionate interest in their chosen pursuits drives their need to come up with invention, innovation, and stunning creative breakthroughs. Obviously, to keep these kind of people on your team, you have to allow, encourage, and cultivate their creative passion.

2. Vision
Creative people see what others fail to see. Their vision of what can be urges them toward where no one else has ventured. For this reason, top innovators and inventors evaluate the direction in which your organization is headed and decide whether or not to join—once on board, how long and whether or not to stay. They want to work under inspired direction and with management they believe will hold a true course. Pointless and capricious navigation by leadership will make your best creatives jump ship or mutiny.

3. Freedom
Intuitively tuned to what’s next, creative artists, inventors, and innovators understand their purpose as finding new and better ways and implementing them first. They come with built-in nonsense detectors. No matter what you offer them in the way of procedure, they will instinctively look for and often find better ways. Don’t get in their way. Never hold them back with rules that make no sense to them or with yesterday’s ways of doing things, often expressed as “the way we’ve always done it.” Let them make the rules.

The Value of Creative People
Replacing anyone in an organization costs thousands of dollars. Replacing top creative talent costs much more. So if you don’t feel comfortable doing what it takes to keep top creative talent, don’t try. Solid workforces of good, hard-working individuals populate and drive most successful companies. These people possess plenty of creativity, which smart managers know how to coax into modest-to-excellent creative work.

But when you’re ready to break out of the pack, make sure you’re also ready to do what it takes to run with a winning team of talent.

See also:

Top Ten Reasons Why Large Companies Fail To Keep Their Best Talent by Eric Jackson, Forbes
5 Tips To Retaining Star Gen Y Talent by Lauren Maillian Bias, Fast Company
5 Tips to Attract, Keep and Motivate Your Employees by Greg Smith, Business Know-how
7 Ways to Attract and Retain Talent Oygininc

Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.

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