Creativity // Excellence

I met a team in NYC last week. They are writing a musical that is (hopefully) headed off-broadway. I have the opportunity to write their music for them. I’d love to take this job, but I have to write a test song from their musical. And, of course, there are four other composers vying for the same position.
I sat down last night and took a good look at the lyrics to this song. I generally like to do this while sitting at the piano. Sometimes the right melody and feel just jumps right off the page. I try to catch everything I can before I lose something great. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen this time.
No problem. This one will take a bit more work. After spending a little time on my first pass at it, I realized that was a great way to NOT write that song. So I started on my second pass. A lot more promising. Once I developed a good feel for the song, I decided to sleep on it. More often than not, creating some space between writing sessions, even if it’s just a half day, can help keep you from settling for a good idea when you’re so close to a great one.
Creativity is funny that way. It almost never takes the same path twice (that would be engineering). Be sensitive to your creative flow and pace. Let your good ideas breathe so they can have the potential of being great.
Will I get that job in NYC? Stay tuned…

I was getting pizza this past weekend. Normally, we go with the cheapest pizza we can find, and in our area, that pizza is Little Caesar’s. However, every once in a while, I want pizza that’s a little bit better tasting, so for our family, Papa Johns pizza wins that award. Something occurred to me as I was picking up our pizza that night, I was paying $10 more for the same amount of pizza. What was I thinking?
What I was thinking was that I wanted a better meal, and I was willing to pay a bit more to get it. Examples of paying for excellence are everywhere and we already instinctively know this. We will pay a bit more for better service. I take my cars for oil changes at a nearby Jiffy Lube because they treat me so well. Sure, there are cheaper places in town, but I can’t even imagine going anywhere else. People pay more for experience. Every few years, our family takes a trip to Disney. Not the cheapest way to spend a week to be sure, but it is certainly among the most memorable. People pay more for quality. Walk down the aisle at Home Depot where they sell kitchen faucets. Guaranteed, water will come out of all of them, but we will pay for the quality and excellence that we desire even though, technically, all of them are good enough.
As individuals, we are willing to pay more for better quality, service, experience, and a host of other things. But for some reason, we are not always willing to do this in our companies. Doing more with less continues to be the mantra I hear in business circles. We want Papa Johns quality with a little Caesar’s budget. Excellence is expensive. Unusual creativity costs something. Don’t be afraid to open the purse strings a little to enhance your excellence. But also be careful to match your expectations of a team with the resources that you gave them. More often than not, when you pay for Little Caesar’s you’re not going to get Papa Johns.

I had a great opportunity to witness excellence with my ears last week. I am starting to teach piano lessons out of my house, so that required me to give my Wurlitzer a reset. Four broken keys and strings that hadn’t seen a tuner in years.
I have a friend who does this kind of work. So I had a great opportunity to watch excellence in action.
First, four keys weren’t working at all. 84 out of 88 might be great odds in sports, but it’s pretty debilitating on a piano. The first three keys were repaired quickly. The fourth required a lot more effort. Apparently, the hammer inside had broken completely off. My friend worked at least thirty minutes on that one key. He brought out tools and rebuilt the entire mechanism. He kept at it until it was perfect.
Once all the keys were repaired, he started tuning. If you’ve ever opened up a piano, you’ll notice that the lowest notes have only one string each, the middle keys have two strings per note, and the highest notes have three. It varies with different models, but pianos with 88 keys have anywhere from 216 to 242 strings and every single one of them must be exactly in tune. If even one string is off, the entire piano is considered out of tune. I was in the other room and listened to a master at work.
After he was done, he played something of Persian style, and my piano never sounded so good.
It reminded me that excellence can be found anywhere and in any profession. Incidentally, pianos that are that far out of tune usually need a second tuning shortly after the first. So I’ll get a double feature of excellence very soon.

As I was thinking about the week ahead, I find my mind drifting toward the number of hours that will be required to produce an excellent product.
I’m not much of a clock-watcher. I generally go home when the job is finished, not when the clock says to. But I find myself struggling between two sides. On the one hand, I pretty much would love to leave at 4:30 and go home to my family. On the other hand, producing something excellent at work won’t allow that this week.

So what do I choose? Excellence rarely clocks out. But where are my priorities? Is it ok to cheat my family to produce something great at work? Maybe I’m tempted to make this choice because my family will be more understanding. I’ll admit, most of my life I have made this choice. What if I choose to be an excellent father and husband this week instead?

I am learning that you should always give yourself three options, not just two (thank you Dave Ramsey!) Three options keeps you out of an either-or scenario. So I am going to explore being excellent enough at work without clocking out on my family. My son’s birthday is this Thursday. It’s time I clock in for that.

I was thinking about excellence this morning and what it takes to create a team committed to excellence.
Then it occurred to me that you really only have to hire excellent people who passionately live out their art.
When I think of the number of things I am actually an “expert” in, that number is really, really small.
But I am also surrounded by an insanely talented group of people who are experts in a variety of fields.
I don’t have to motivate them to be excellent at what they are already great at.
In fact, a director who tries to control their creative teams will create an environment that is poisoned to creativity and out-of-the box thinking.
In this environment, your experts will flee, and you’ll find it more and more difficult and expensive to create excellence.
Sure, you’ll control your team, but you just engineered the life and excellence right out the door.

I don’t know how to do everything. Even though I’ve been doing “this” for nearly 14 years, there’s a lot that I still don’t know. In fact, with technology improving at an ever-increasing pace and with life demanding more of my time, you could make a case that I will know even less five years from now.
In the Creative field, this means that the era of the generalist is over.
This has actually been true for a long time in creative fields. But with the explosion of affordable hardware and software over the last ten years, it’s become impractical that one person can be an expert on many different fields or platforms.
Enter the specialist.
A specialist is a creative expert in their field, someone who practically knows infinitely more than the manager in their particular niche. To excel in the creative world, you have to employ the best specialists you can find. But there is a problem: many creative directors can feel insecure allowing high-capacity experts onto their team. Why is this?
My experience over the years has been that the best creative managers don’t function out of ego or insecurity. They are comfortable not having all the answers. They frequently ask a lot of questions, and they regularly lean into their teams. Ultimately they know that if the team wins, everyone wins no matter where the best ideas come from.
Some of the worst manners I’ve had over the years would start off by saying “I don’t really know how to do your job.” Then they’d spend the next fifteen minutes telling me how to do my job with solutions that I already knew wouldn’t work.
So if you manage people, actively seek people better than you. Constantly ask questions. Let the experts on your team live in their expertise. You’ll be surprised what a fully engaged creative team can accomplish.

Yesterday, the creative team at Calvary Church met with Terry Sanderson to discuss our next series “Magnify.”  The series starts this weekend.  The creative team has spent most of this week working on this eight-week series including striking the previous stage design and working on the implementation of a new one.  One of the things that excites me about this upcoming series is that we’re relying on music to carry many of these services.  For a series that focuses on the character and attributes of God, it just seems to make sense.

A lot of churches put their service programming into auto-pilot for the summer thinking that the numbers will be down, better to pull out all the stops when the Fall season kicks off.  We don’t believe in that philosophy at all.  Just last week we had nearly 2600 people attend our services throughout our campuses.  And we had several families try out one of our services for the very first time.  I doubt God is packing it in until the Fall.  In fact, I believe that God has incredible things planned every weekend where His people gather.  What a great opportunity and privilege we have in serving Him!

If you are on one of our worship teams at Calvary Church, I challenge you toward excellence this summer.  Our church is relying on us to deliver inspirational, Christ-centered worship.  I know, with His help, we will do just that.  So what can we do to prepare?  Below, I’ve listed every new worship song and special that is planned through the entire “Magnify” series.  I encourage you to start listening to each song even on weeks you’re not scheduled.  You know how summer scheduling goes, you might just find yourself playing or singing after all!  In either case, it would be good for you to familiarize yourself with everything our team is being asked to accomplish.  As we get closer to the services, we’ll post the charts on Planning Center Online.  Don’t wait until Wednesday or Thursday to start preparing.  Our goal is to cover each of these songs as close to the original as possible.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.  Please don’t hesitate to drop me a line: alatina@calvaryonline.cc

1) Psalm 13 by Shane & Shane, follows a video of personal testimonies on the Faithfulness of God, June 27
2) Like A Lion by David Crowder, new worship song, July 11
3) Shine by David Crowder, message support, July 18
4) Everything Is Different Now by Stellarkart, message support, July18
5) With Everything by Hillsong, new worship song, July 25
6) The Beauty Of The Cross by Fee, communion song, July 25
7) Show Me Your Glory by Third Day, message support, August 1
Micah 6:8 by Charlie Hall, new worship song, August 8
9) Only Hope by Jon Foreman, message support, August 15
10) Faithful Over Us by Casey Darnell, new worship song, August 15

Aaron

To celebrate the Oscars picked up by the latest Pixar movie, “Up” Sunday night, I sat down and watched the movie for the second time tonight.  Throughout the film, I was moved by so many things that I’d waste time listing them all.  Once again, Pixar struck movie gold and took me on a ride that few stories have in a long time.  The Academy agreed, nominating “Up” for Best Motion Picture (in addition to Best Animated Film)-an honor given to only one other animated film ever, Beauty and the Beast.

I’ve been thinking a lot about brand for the past few weeks.  Tonight I began to think quite a bit about the brand of Pixar.  Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Monster’s Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, WALL-E, and Up.  15 years, 22 Academy Awards, 6 Golden Globes and 3 Grammys.  There’s a certain level of expectation that I feel when I see Luxo Jr. jumping on top of the modest “PIXAR” logo and replacing the “I”.  No matter what the story, I know that I’m in for one of the best movies of the year–each and every year.  I have never been disappointed.

That, plain and simple, is brand.  A lot of people think that branding is the act of creating a cool logo and sticking on everything that goes out of the office.  A consistent look to everything and everyone else will know who you are and what you stand for.  But I believe that branding is so much more than that.

Every person has a brand, every department, every organization.  When people think of you, what comes to their mind?  Dependable or erratic? Hard-worker or lazy? Collaborator or lone ranger? Excellent or inferior?  Every day, with every decision you make, with every discussion you have, with every product you produce, you are building your personal brand–one that will stick whether you like it or not.  If you’re building a good brand, there are likely good opportunities on the horizon.  Build a bad brand and it’s difficult to overcome.  That’s why companies often find the need to “re-brand” because their current brand isn’t working like it used to.  But how do you re-brand yourself?  Most people move to get a “fresh start” assuming that their environment was the problem.  Unfortunately, after a while they learn that they carried themselves with them.

There are so many different options available to us these days that we don’t get very many opportunities to build or destroy our brand.  I will not buy another Dell because I’ve had such a terrible experience with my laptop even though I’ve only used one in my life.  I will never shop at a certain online music store again because the only representative I ever talked to on the phone gave me the run-around to preserve a sale.  But, I will spend good money to take my family to see a movie that I’ve never seen before simply because of one word– PIXAR.

Aaron

I have a weird habit.  In fact, I don’t even remember how it got started.  But if you’re like me where you have to be creative on a deadline, you can’t sit around and wait to feel creative.

Coming out of college, it was one of those ideas that no one ever really prepared me for.  But for my first job I realized early on that I had to be creative whether I felt like it or not.  People were depending on me to get the job done, and I couldn’t sit around and wait for that amazing idea to jump into my brain.

So what do you do if you can’t think of anything to write?  You start writing.  Then you write some more.  And in that process of writing, good ideas begin to emerge.  Not every single time.  But consider throw-away ideas the process of your brain making room for better ones.

But what happens when I get writer’s block?  My weird habit emerged somewhere along the way.  I get up out of my chair and walk around.  No particular direction or plan.  I just get up, grab a drink, walk a hallway.  Walk it again.  Talk to a friend.  I don’t usually move on to a new project because I’m not really stopping.  I think my brain just needs to fill up again.  The distraction works.  I sit back down after a couple of minutes and start writing again.

It’s not even a conscious thing for me anymore.  You can probably tell how much trouble I’m having with a project by how many times I get up and walk around.  Weird?  Maybe.  Does it work for me?  Definitely.

Have any creativity quirks you’d like to share?
No one will think you’re weird.  Promise.

Aaron

What is excellence? It’s been a hot word in creative circles for a long time. Many creators and producers quip that excellence is a personal core value. But what is excellence? Is it a word, like “awesome” that has been overused to such a degree that it has lost its meaning?

Dictionary.com defines excellence: “to surpass others or be superior in some respect or area; do extremely well” That doesn’t really help me that much.

In creative circles, I don’t completely agree with the concept that to be excellent means that you must be superior in some respect or area. That means that nothing that comes in second can, by definition, be excellent. Are the actors nominated for Oscars all excellent, or just the person who wins. Does my 11 year-old daughter have to be superior to all the other 1st-year violists to be excellent at her skill level and experience?

Instead of defining excellence in terms of how you compare with everyone else in the world, I believe that we should define excellence in a much more personal way. There are, in fact, degrees, of excellence. What rises to the level of excellence for me now is much higher than 5, 10, 15 years ago. Excellence is much more of a personal journey than it is a competition.

This post is called “10 Minutes of Excellence” because I am in the middle of a 10-minute project. We were three days away from our first rehearsal. Debbie Durso, our drama productions director and I had a discussion about this project. In the end, we both agreed that we should go back to the drawing board and have a scratch track recording ready for rehearsal. Now, in all honesty, our original concept was fine; it was good enough; no one in the seats would have known the difference. But I knew in my heart that it would not be excellent.

I spent the whole evening rearranging songs and rewriting lyrics. The next morning, I showed it to Debbie and we decided on a few edits. Then, I spent some hours recording a 10-minute rehearsal track in time for rehearsal. We made the deadline, but my work had just begun. The piano track would only cover for rehearsals, I had to go back to he beginning and produce a final orchestrated track for the performances. Again, I could technically throw something together and get close enough. How many people would truly know the difference?

Producing this performance track is time consuming. I estimate that it takes me about 2-3 hours for every 30 seconds of finished music. As I write this, I’m at time stamp 5:05 in the project. Why work this hard? One word: excellence.

Aaron