Working with Creative Teams is the Ultimate Challenge

Most of the the personality clashes in this industry are prompted by creative differences. This prompts many to ask...

"How do you handle it?"

or worse...

"Are you sure Command and Control would not be a better way?"

Real teams "handle" themselves, and "Command and Control" is never the better way. Real teams can accomplish more than any group of individual talents. Instead of being thrown together, they should be allowed to mesh—to weigh individual ideas against others to ensure that the most-productive and longer-lasting ideas prevail.

A team should adapt like any good process, constantly tweaking and refining itself, perpetually evolving into something better.

Last Friday night, I watched a team in action that has been evolving in such a way for over 40 years—40 years of the same team with essentially the same team members.

This team is known for being more creative than any in their business and for constantly thinking outside the box. They've reinvented their product several times in four decades by constantly improving and adapting to their market.

At the same time, their team members are known for their disagreements—and for their bad behavior.

In addition to regularly infighting over their creative differences, the team endured health problems and problems with marriages—and a few other dangerous dependencies—both their own and those of their teammates.

Throughout it all, they remained a team by never losing sight of the team's goals.

In 1969, following the death of one of the team's founding members, two other members found themselves in a drunk tank six hours before their next product delivery.

"I give up," said Keith. "I just can't do this anymore."

"This is not about you," answered Mick. "It's about us."

"If you quit now, we all fail."

In 2005, this team delivered a single product that earned them $558,255,524.

The Bigger Bang Tour, was the largest grossing concert tour in the history of the entertainment industry, and the team—the Rolling Stones—are working as I write this to deliver a better product this year.