Creative people in a corporate setting face a constant challenge to stay creative and be visionaries when the corporate bean counters and “compliance” types feel the need to sit on you, so as to defend their own existence. The bean counters and compliance people like to frame it a tad differently , they like to think their function is to protect the corporate entity from lawsuits (no matter how remote the possibility) and bankruptcy and that the creative types need adult supervision. Pinheads don’t think a corporation’s mission is to coddle the creative people, don’t think that they should be in the business of creativity and think they are the saviors of the corporate shareholders. They make us crazy. They are after all, only “enforcing policy”, just like the clerks at motor vehicle. Good judgement is not part of their job, after all.
The challenge for the corporate creative is to keep the pin heads in perspective, to not let them stifle your creativity and to not let the bastards get you down. After all, if your company had no new ideas, no new products and if you said nothing at all, your company would face a lot less of a chance of getting sued. And, if you spent NO money on new products and ventures, you’d never need to justify a new budget would you? In fact, entrepreneurs are creative by nature and there will ALWAYS be a conflict between the pinheads and the idea people, that seems to be the nature of all organizations, doesn’t it?
In fact, we probably do need a little adult supervision sometimes, probably we tend to trust our instincts too much, so it is better to see the pinheads as guardrails, as someone to define the border, but remember, we have enough pinheads, we don’t have enough creative people. It is management’s job to set the balance, to provide an atmosphere where the pinheads don’t interfere with effective communications, don’t prevent good sales efforts and don’t destroy moral and foster the free flow of ideas and allow growth.
How do you deal with it? What do you do to survive the bean counters?
