One of the best parts about working in the content marketing space is the level of creativity coming from every member of the team. Writers and designers working together can be an exciting experience, especially once those juices and ideas really get flowing. If you’re managing creative professionals, the last thing you want do is jeopardize that artistic sensibility. Instead, you should be channeling that energy into the development of your own company culture.

Creativity and Culture: The Connection

A company’s sense of culture is born internally. It’s not the kind of thing that can be imported or created by some third-party provider. Rather, it is a product of the business’ most important resource: its people. These individuals are the ones making projects work and hitting deadlines without sacrificing quality work. Simply put, no company would survive without its talented team. In turn, the culture they see should reflect their own personalities, needs, and lifestyles.

Creativity is one of the most highly sought-after skills in the workplace. In fact, creativity feels less like a skill and more like an attribute or 6th sense. When you’ve got a creative team, you have a group of problem-solvers and outside-the-box thinkers. Innovation is an often-repeated value of many tech companies, and achieving that culture comes directly from ingenious and imaginative team members.

Creative minds fit in naturally with vibrant company culture because of its exciting and collaborative feel. When you promote creativity and allow these folks to dream big and still feel supported, you’re expressing to everyone that great ideas always win out. Even more, by celebrating the efforts of creativity and involving stimulating group brainstorm activities the office sees that this truly is a value held dear by executives. Even leadership reaps its reward by having a direct line to game changing ideas. Keep in mind that this requires open-mindedness and flexibility from management; creative ideas mean nothing if a boss is too worried to follow them through.

Managing Creativity Without Stifling It

Despite the obvious benefit of a creatively focused team, this style of work still requires some structure in order to get things done. It’s an age-old trope, the excessively inventive artist who just won’t do things by the rules. While your creative professionals aren’t necessarily at some Dali level of irreverence, the fact is that these idea-driven folks are, by nature, unique and independent. This may come in handy during a design or brainstorm session, but project management is also about hard numbers and even harder deadlines.

While you certainly don’t want any sort of structure to inhibit employee creativity, you can still use it to reign in these free thinkers. The artistic types likely know the terror of a due date. As a manager of creative employees, it’s helpful to stay up-to-date and transparent about project benchmarks and progress. Status updates may not be the most exciting thing in the world, but when you’re confident that things are getting done, it’s easier to let creativity and culture run wild.

Once you’ve established an open sense of creativity in your culture, this approach can actually help you grow your team in a more appropriate way. Companies are not afraid to choose creativity over experience these days, and a big reason is because of these applicants’ willingness to try new things. For more-senior employees, it may be a bit of a stretch to change the way things have been done simply because of cool idea. If creativity is actually influencing your team’s workstyle, be sure to sit down with senior team members to make sure they’re comfortable with any new changes.

Creativity may be tough to harness, but once you have it your team just gets stronger. Injecting free thinking into your company culture is an excellent investment. Not only do you get a staff dedicated to the best idea, but you also have an invigorated workforce who supports and sees one another through creative eyes.