Stop Renting Your Creative Process

Hey everyone, it's Todd Henry. If you're like most creative pros and leaders that I work with, you don't need more ideas. You need the courage to act on the ones that matter. That's why I wrote "The Brave Habit." It's not a pep talk. It's a daily practice for choosing bravery when it counts most, especially when it's uncomfortable in the face of uncertainty. If fear has been running the show, it's time to take back the mic. Pick up the Brave Habit wherever books are sold, and start showing up like it matters because it does. We are in the middle of a revolution. I mean, it's pretty obvious, and we've been seeing it coming for a while, but it is absolutely transforming the way that we see our responsibility as leaders and as creative professionals. We all have access to these powerful tools that can write, that can design, that can code, that can strategize, and look, I think it's fantastic. I am certainly not anti-AI. I'm using AI now every day to offload parts of my work. I use these tools pretty consistently, but here's what I'm seeing. The temptation that a lot of creative pros are starting to experience is that they want to, or they don't want to, but they do offload. Not just the grunt work, not just the infrastructure, not just the supporting work, but the thinking itself. We are outsourcing the very thing that makes our work ours. We're abdicating ownership of our creative process. Now, before you think that I'm about to go into some Luddite rant, hear me out. I am not a Luddite. I'm a technology enthusiast. I always have been. This isn't about whether this technology is good or bad. It's not. It's actually neutral, I think. It's about something much more fundamental to our creative life, to our drive, to our ability to perform, and to grow, and to experience all of the ups and downs, the rhythms of what it means to do creative work for a living. It's about who's making the decisions. It's about who owns the emotional logic behind the work that we do. Now, let me tell you what I mean by emotional logic. When we're creating something, whether it's a campaign, a presentation, a product, a piece of writing, whatever it is, we're making hundreds of tiny decisions. Some of them are subconscious. Why this word, not that word, why does this layout feel right and that one feels wrong? Why does this angle resonate while another one falls flat? And most of these decisions aren't rational. We can't necessarily even explain why we're making them in the moment. They're not based on data or formulas. They're based on our accumulated experience, our intuition, our sense of what fits. They're based on something that we feel even if we can't always articulate it. That's our emotional logic. It's the through line that makes our work ours. It's what makes our work uniquely an expression of our perception, of our identity, of our sense of who we are in the world and what we want to see in the world. It's what people recognize as your voice, as your perspective, as your unique contribution, which I wrote about in my book, "Lowder than Words." But here's the problem. When you hand off too much of the creative process to machines, you're not just saving time, you're silencing that emotional logic. You're letting the algorithm make those hundreds of tiny decisions for you and over time, you begin to lose touch with why you make the choices you make. You become a curator of machine outputs instead of a creator with a distinct voice. This is the part of this that we're not really talking about, the ownership piece. When we're merely curating outputs, but we're not really making those decisions, we're not staying attuned to our emotional logic. At the time, we begin to lose a sense of what we deem to be good, what we deem to be bad. That emotional logic has to be practiced. I had a conversation a few weeks ago with a designer who told me she hadn't opened up blank canvas in months. She starts with, "Hey, I generated mockups. It's just more efficient. And I get it. I do." But when I asked how she felt about the work, she was producing, "There was a long pause," and she said, "You know, it kind of honestly, it doesn't feel the same." And I think that's the trap, right? It doesn't feel the same. You see, the promise of these tools is that they're going to free us up to do more of the important work. And that's great. And they can, for sure. But only if we're intentional about what we're offloading. If we offload the drudgery, the repetitive tasks, the grunt work, the summarization, all of the stuff that doesn't really require our unique perspective, it's really just kind of like grunt work that we have to do. The infrastructure of our work, that's one thing. That's totally great. That's, I think, very admirable. I think it's going to be very useful. But if we offload the decision-making, if we offload the sense-making, the parts of our process where judgment and intuition live, we're not freeing ourselves up, we're hollowing ourselves out. And that's a concept that I wrote about in my book, "Diamity." I talked about the three modes of work, mapping, making, and meshing. Mapping is the strategic work. It's figuring out what you're going to do. Meshing is the collaborative work. It's working with others. It's doing all the work in between. And then making is the execution, actually creating the thing. And AI can be incredible at making. It can execute fast. It can produce variations, handle technical complex. So the all of these things that would take humans infinitely longer to do. But here's what it can't do. It can't know what you uniquely believe. It can't draw on your lived experience. It can't make decisions based on your values and vision. And here's the thing. It can't synthesize. It can't abstract from those kind of ineffable qualities, those characteristics that you carry with you. And it can't enter into the process and help you feel attachment to the work that you're doing. That's really meshing territory. That's where emotional logic lives. And if you abdicate that, you might be productive, but you won't necessarily be brilliant. You'll be putting out work, but that work won't really be reflective of what you are capable of. You won't be doing work that matters in the way that you want it to matters. So here's the question I want you to sit with. Where are you still in your process and where have you checked out? Where are you abdicating your emotional logic? Instead of leveraging that skill that you've developed over time, the intuition that you've developed over time to produce work that you are uniquely capable of. Listen, AI is fantastic at exploring the edges. It's fantastic at pushing us into places we wouldn't have otherwise gone. But when we supplant our emotional logic, that's when I think we're in a danger zone as creative pros. So are you making the hard creative decisions? Are you just selecting from the options that a machine is generated for you? Are you still connected to the why behind your choices? Or are you optimizing for speed and convenience? Because what you optimize for is what really at the end of the day is what speaks loudly about your priorities. Here's what I know from more than two decades of working with creative pros. The struggle is the work. The creative work that costs nothing means nothing. It doesn't matter. The moments when you're stuck when you don't know what to do next when you're wrestling with a problem, that's not wasted time. That's where insights come from. That's where you discover what you actually think. And that friction that we're trying so hard to remove is what makes the work valuable. That's where your voice develops. If you never give yourself the space to wrestle, you'd never discover what you're capable of. You never build the judgment that makes you valuable. You become really good at prompting machines. That's fine. That's fine. But I'm saying we have to be ruthlessly intentional about ensuring that we're not abdicating our emotional logic that we're not replacing ourselves with something that could never replicate ourselves. Don't let efficiency become an excuse for abdication. Don't release ownership of your intuition. Because here's the thing. I'll make you faster. These tools that they can't make you you. They can produce outputs, but they can't produce meaning. They can mimic your style, but they can't replace your substance. Your emotional logic, your lived experience, your values, your perspective, your accumulated wisdom. That's irreplaceable. That's the thing that makes your work resonate. And it's the one thing that creates connection with other human beings. And frankly, it's the one thing that creates connection with your work. It's the thing that keeps you rooted in why what you do matters. So that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about what it means to own our work. Whether that's our leadership, whether that means our relationships with others in the organization, or whether that means the work that's really right in front of us, we're going to talk about what it means to have ownership over our process over the output over our relationships over our leadership and ultimately over the body of work that we're putting into the world. This is Daily Creative. Since 2005, we've served up weekly tips to help you be brave, focused and brilliant every day. My name is Todd Henry. Welcome to the show. Well, with the, particularly in the creative field, you know, my shorthand for it is owners bring their heart, head and hands, renters bring their hands, vandals bring division and strife and destruction and all of that. That's Greg Hawks, author of a new book called Act Like An Owner. And so, you know, most people, most people, being half of the workforce, whether in the creative industries or in any. They just show up with their hands. They have a skill, they have an ability, they do a good job. In the media and even in work conversations, they kind of get a bad rap, like, "Ooh, the disengaged, we need to get them engaged." But they're literally every other person in the workforce. And they show up on time, they do a good job. But what they have found, these renters, is it's just not worth owning. It's not worth bringing their minds and bringing their hearts. And that's where creativity thrives, right? Like, you can't show up and if you've lost passion for what you're doing, or you're, you're, you're stop using your creative imagination, or your critical thinking, or you just stop caring. You're just like, "I have a job to do, I'm going to show up and do it." And so, from a leadership perspective, you know, we all want people bringing heart to head in hands. But I have found that, the perversive organizations, is they say, "We want people to buy in. We want people to own their role." And yet, when they start doing that, like, when new people show up and they're like, willing to contribute and have all this energy and zest, and they're like, "I got ideas, I've been listening to podcasts, and I've been reading some books." And I got all these things, and they're just like, "Dude, call down." You know, like, stand down, we're going to crush your spirit to, like, we're just trying to get through a meeting. And so, this weird, we want you to buy in, but then when people show up with that ownership mindset, they crush it out of them and turn them into renters. And so, I'm pretty passionate about helping leaders say it's not just about an individual, but it's about this environment we're creating where people can own it and find grateful filmin' in it. So, I want to talk about one group first, or one mindset, and then I want to move in, do talk about renters and owners. Because I really feel like that's where the value is for most of the people listening is, you know, how do we, a, personally, go from a renter mindset to an owner mindset, or b, how do we lead people from becoming a renter, you know, to becoming more of an owner? But I want to talk about the vandals, because, you know, I think this is a, nobody thinks they're a vandal, but yeah, we might be vandalizing. So, what are some signs or what are some behaviors of people who might be organizational vandals? Well, can I just step back and I don't, I'm not going to be politic, I don't want to like answer your question. But, you know, the first question I always get is, why would any company let a vandal even live in their home? Right? Why do we even let vandals exist? Because statistically they're like one out of five. And I have found that there's four reasons vandals even exist. So, I'll just give you those quick. First and foremost, the revenue generators, they're people who produce, because you think, why would you let somebody in here who's toxic and isn't a team player and other people are, are other people become renters because of what they get away with? Number one reason is the revenue generation you work with companies and you know, from a leadership perspective, it's not as easy to go, oh, what does get rid of toxic people? Because they could be paying for whole departments, the whole departments that aren't happy with that person, they're also generating the revenue that is paying for them. So it's not a simple like, hey, just get rid of all the bad people. It's like, they're producing, but they're just not, and they may know it, they're just not team players or creating a culture that they're just, you know, self-centered. Right. Or they just care about themselves. And so, so revenue generators, they've been there a long time. And here's what I found, people have been in a place a really long time. Leadership can be like, well, we're just going to hold out and wait for them to read. They've only got one or two more years. Let's just hope they don't say or do something that gets us a lawsuit or, you know, scares too many people away. So they've been there a long time and have issues, haven't been addressed. They're like, hey, we don't talk like that anymore. We don't say those things anymore. We, you know, like those things aren't acceptable. And yet, and so they create a lot of division amongst younger leaders, next-gen leaders, the third is the fantastic benefit of nepotism. Listen, I like family. And I think there's some benefit to families. There's that, but also there can be, you know, a shield like they're an ambassador from another country. They're like, nothing can happen to me because, and so sometimes that is now none of these are definitely just because they are those make-em-vandals. I'm just saying typically vandals, that's where they come from. And then last, ironically, they're the owner of the company. They've been around so long they're like, listen, I built it. I would, I did this before you were here. I'll do this after. And you've probably experienced this, especially with small businesses or family businesses or generational businesses, that they just will say and do things and not really recognize how powerful the words can impact those they're leading. And so a lot of the behavior center around really self-centeredness, like I just think of me, I don't think of the team, I don't think of the impact I'm having on the team, I just really care mostly about what I'm doing. So that's one of the things that sets vandals off the most. Second, they silently sabotage. I call them silence type of tours where like when you've worked with folks that are like, here's what we're going to do. And you know, here's what we're doing next year and they'll say, that's not ever going to happen. I've been here. That's not going to happen. And so instead of them like actively protesting, they just pull back and they just go, nah, that's not going to happen. So I'm not going to do it. They're the kinds of people who six months after something doesn't work because not everything does, especially creative. They're the ones who say, I knew that wasn't going to happen. I knew we'd never pull that off. And you just want to be like, oh, because it just means they haven't contributed to trying to go there because they've already self-selected out. And then once they start trickling down some of that attitude and that belief into others, they're so divisive and so harmful organizations because of that kind of attitude behavior. Of course they gossip those kind of things. The things that create division amongst people. And so I'll just stop there. I can get talking Todd. So I'll. I think it's really helpful because I think people like most vandals don't think they're vandals. They're not going into it thinking, oh, I want to destroy this place, right? Often they think, oh, well, there's an asumpiveness or kind of a self-centeredness. Like you said, in the world that I come from in the creative space, we call, they're divas. These sort of like genius with a thousand hands who kind of sit at the center and it's like, well, because I'm the creative talent, I can get away with anything. And so I just basically abuse people and treat them poorly and fire people and whatever because you know, I'm the genius. And I have a phrase I introduce called norm. Well, it's a phrase I borrowed from research into the space shuttle disasters ironically. Normalization of deviance, which is when we normalize deviant behavior, we normalize behavior that we know is wrong. But our tacit normalization of it makes it basically organizationally acceptable. So then everybody else thinks, well, if I want to get ahead around here, I have to also be the diva. I have to also, you know, leave with my ego or whatever. And to your point, you know, I think often these behaviors because they're tacitly either reinforced or they're just, they're not called out specifically. I think people get the clue that like this is, this is how you get a hint around here is how you get ahead. Or to your, you know, they're not. It's the owner or somebody who isn't trying to destroy the business. Obviously, they're just, you know, like being themselves, but they're not giving other people the opportunity to step up into own as well. But it's so interesting. Like so, because you know, in this work, and I'm sure you've read a bunch of Malcolm Gladwell stuff, you know, the revenge of the tipping point came out this past year. I was like, Oh, you know, that book. I loved it 25 25 years ago. And, and you know, he's kind of expanded on it. But one of the stories in there is just about how, how significant one or two percent. I mean, the whole premise of the tipping point is, you know, there's a certain point where things go and talking about a community and we're suicide rates and kids in this sort of thing. And it just tipped over. And what happens with like the vandals is what, you know, when you let, you know, statistically 17 to 20% of those exist. It causes people who really do care, who really do want to contribute, who really do want to bring this ownership to go, what's the point? Like they let they just tolerate so much to do. And so you have these really great people who just go, I'm just going to kind of phone it in. I'm just going to, like it doesn't matter what I do because they, they do value this kind of toxicity of self centeredness or this the diva spirit. If like, if that's what it is. And I'm really not that I like a team player. I like caring about other people. I like being thoughtful about collaboration. You know, so they just shift into that renters. You know, so that's what happens is like so many times organizations like how do we get renters to be owners and they focus on the renter and it's like listen, what you need to do is reduce your vandal numbers. And that's a big risk and it's hard to do because they generally are significant players. But when she start recalling out some of those folks, the whole middle section of your organization of people who are just showing up doing their job and then going home, man, they start having the opportunity to buy back in because it's worth it because you shape this environment where that kind of thing is valued. And it's not it's not easy again, you know, from leadership perspective, it's not easy. But it's one of those things like how do we get the disengaged engage is all just focus on disengaged is like the vandals man. If you'll just reduce some of your percentage of you'll be shocked at how many people that will show up and own the role. It is significant level that will surpass what the vandals, but it's just that it's kind of an act of faith. You know what I mean? Where you're just like I got to believe if I take some of these people out that are big revenue generators, but are just creating so much factions within our organization if I remove them will people step up and answers yes takes a little bit time and definite intentionality for it. And so you know that's the that's the struggles leaders have when you have that is like the trade off of the risk I take from removing somebody who may not be a team. player, but listen, those divas, they're producing. I'll talk about it in terms of like, everybody thinks they're prince. You know, I up here in Minneapolis now, and it's like, we won't everybody be given guitar lessons. The prince ain't given guitar lessons. He is demonstrating what it looks like to play the guitar. And it's cool. If you have that ability, you know what? There's a special place for you. You don't have to give a guitar lessons. But you think your prince, but you're not. And most people are like that. And it's like, we just need you down here work with some people and showing what excellence looks like and progressing that way. And too many people think they are prince when they're not. And then they're like, I don't give guitar lessons. I just shred on stage and demonstrate what it looks like. So we need you to give some guitar lessons, man. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. That's exactly right. And I love that line. You were not prince. I think that's a good. I'm going to quote you on that because I do think like you're right. I think some of that is insecurity. I think people pretend like they think they're prince, but really deep down they know, okay, I'm really not. But I think there's some insecurity involved, which is where some of this vandalism comes from. Right? It's like, Oh, well, okay, you're not going to listen to me. You're not going to value my idea. Great. Well, then I'm going to go hide in the corner and I'm going to, you know, when I'm going to take my marbles and go home, there's to some extent, it's sort of a self protection. Maybe what about for the renters? Maybe people are listening and are thinking, you know what? Really, I kind of, I've kind of am a renter right now. I'm not really acting like an owner. I want to be more of an owner in terms of my mindset. What would be some things that people can do to act more like an owner? Well, one of the things, you know, I have these five unlocks. We won't unpack the whole book. But the idea, and you'll know this from a creative is there's all there has to be return on the investment. Like the reason I bought investment properties is I, I did it for a long term return. I'm a buying hold guy. And when I found with people, it any line of work, they want to return on their investment. And so if you're in a place where you're renting right now, what you've determined is it's not worth me going the extra, which is heart and mind because what I get back from it. So first for that person, recognizing what it, what do I really want from this place? So I've created like a little e-frog, I call it because it hops all over the place, but it's emotional, financial, relational opportunities and growth. All those are returns people get from kind of going the extra mile, giving of their heart, giving of their mind. Some people see themselves taught like go to people. And so they, they like the idea of like when a situation or a crisis happens, you call on them and they're, you know, there are the kinds of people you're like, it's all places falling apart. Call so and so it's not their department. It's not their responsibility. But they always find a way to figure things out and make things happen. Like they're the go to person. That's an emotional hit that people get. They're like seeing themselves that way, like being treated that way. And so for a person to know that about themselves and go, am I having opportunities to get the return I need? Some people will just want growth. Some people will just want opportunities to be around other people that is like, Hey, I want, I want to feel like, you know, I've got, like we talked about, we have, you know, young, our kids are college age, a little bit older and they're young leaders and they are all about just career growth. Like right now, like Gen Z, you know, they're just like, how do I, how do I get to the next phase as quick as possible and be recognized for that kind of thing? So, you know, how are we, how are organizations, leadership teams and even then that's what I love about Gen Z is at least with my son and understand, you know, his kind of world is fine looking for those ways to keep making progress that serves kind of their dream and serves the organization that they're in. So as a renter, it's like, first I know what really creates return that I'm, that I say, it's worth me investing in. Second have articulated that because typically once people get the directing and they kind of disengage some, sometimes they pull back from sharing their ideas or expressing themselves because maybe it's not a safe environment. Maybe they feel like when they've shared that before, they got shot down in a certain way. And so they're pretty refrained or, you know, they don't trust kind of what, what will come from them articulating. This matters to me. I would like to contribute in this way. What opportunities do I have there or what could I do or that's what I think. So a little bit of courage, a little bit of bravery, maybe a little bit of team coaching, a support system somewhere that's like, hey, be really thoughtful about what it is you want to do because what I find, Todd, there are so many people who have opted out of owning their life and they're living victim minded, they're living blame oriented. It's also, and it's a very dissatisfying way to live. You're not fulfilled. You don't have a sense of agency and autonomy for your own destiny and own purpose. And so this idea of like, how can you be really thoughtful about recognizing what it is that is a return that you want from the investment of your life and then going about doing that and not blaming others for not engaging that way and taking some initiative in that direction. Whatever you walk away from this episode with, I hope that somehow it centers in on the importance of taking ownership, taking ownership of your process, taking ownership of your relationship, taking ownership of your leadership. At the end of the day, your body of work will stand as a testament to what you truly believe. Are you building a body of work that's reflective of what you really care about? Are you abdicating that body of work to others? Think and act like an owner because you do own your body of work. Thanks again for listening. You can find my work, my books, my speaking events and more at ToddHenry.com. Until next time, baby brave, focused, and brilliant. We'll see you then. [Music]