Creative Company-- St Luke's is an advertising agency in London. When their parent company was bought out they decided to use a unique type of corporation where the company is owned by the employees. Their structure is very open where everyone knows how much everyone else makes and raises are based partially on how much employees feel their work is worth.
This book describes how they maintain a creative environment in the work place. They have some interesting ideas. For example, no one has an assigned office, desk, or computer. everyone uses wireless phones and has storage space for their files, etc. each day they find a different place to work and put everything up at the end of the day. They create rooms for each of their clients where they can meet with the client and work on the projects.
This book is a good to read along with the Art of Innovation because it gives a different perspective on how companies can maintain creativity.
Establishing and Then Nourishing a Landscape of Creativity
According to Law, business "can treat you as well or as badly as it chooses, yet we devote our lives unthinkingly to it and donate almost all of our knowledge and learning and creativity and sweat without any regard to its true value." On first blush, this comment seems cynical (or so it did to me when I first read it) and yet I agree with the implication that the unspoken but primary objective of most organizations is to protect their own status quo. As a result, "we have achieved only a small percentage of the innovation we could achieve." In this book, Law discusses St. Luke's, "the ad agency to end all ad agencies," in which he and his associates keep on developing new ideas. Their perpetual vision is to open minds. "And because [St. Luke's] has opened its own and the minds of those who have come to know it, I hope this book contributes to the pursuit of that vision and that you, the reader, husband, wife, employer, human are changed by it in some way."At this point, I hasten to add that Law does not then provide a series of checklists of key points, what to do and not do, etc. His is what I guess could be called a personal memoir whose focus is on a truly unique workplace, the St. Luke's advertising agency in London. It would be foolish -- however -- for any of his readers to use St. Luke's as a model. Worse yet, to attempt to transform their own organizations into clones of St. Luke's. Rather, if I understand Law's objectives in this book (which I may not), he challenges and encourages his readers to think differently about what they do and how they do it, to think differently about the organization in which they do it, and -- in ways and to the extent appropriate -- to redevelop the "landscape" of their working lives.
There are several reasons why I have such a high regard for this book. Here are three. First, Law shares a number of profound insights concerning quality of life in the workplace. To summarize them in this brief commentary (out of context) would, however, trivialize them. Suffice to say that believing in the value of what you do to earn a living and feeling appreciated by others with whom you do it are two of the most important values within a workplace. Second, much can be done to create a physical environment within which to nourish creative thinking. With meticulous care, Law explains how he and his associates at St. Luke's did so. Finally, Law makes an eloquent as well as convincing argument to support his belief that creative ideas about the process of creative thinking are at least as important (if not more so) as the results of that process. Stated another way, creative thinking requires both new "wine" AND new "bottles."
Law insists that this is not just a business book. "It's also a kind of fairytale I guess because at times I still can't believe it all happened the way it did." In addition to being an entertaining raconteur, Law also offers a number of excellent insights as to how almost any human community can become a "creative company." It remains for each reader to answer various "soul-searching questions" which Law poses. Efforts to formulate those responses as well as the responses themselves will largely determine the value of this book.
A human being first, a businessman second.
Don't let the blurb fool you. Andy Law has not written a how-to book about manging creative businesses. If you pick up some tips about how to do so, that's bonus.Rather, the author poses some fundamental questions about the role of work, and the interplay of one's economic, intellectual and emotional lives. A subject which ought to exercise us more than it does.
I personally wouldn't like to work in the St. Luke's style. But that a company looks first at its role in the community of its stakeholders, and second at how it might make money, makes it an example for companies far beyond the creative sphere.
Unfortunately, I have heard rumours that St. Lukes has actually had to, er, let people go. Not easy in a co-operative. Does some better-informed reader know if it's true? Sad, if it is. And it doesn't discredit Law's philosophical arguments, nor diminish their importance.
BTW, Andy Law writes beautifully.
They did it and it works !
This is a great book for at least 2 key reasons :1) they did it and it works ! They created a SUCCESFUL agency with an 100% ownership equally allocated between every employees ! Whatever are the next step of the story (we enter in recession, and their model will be tested) they had the courage to do it and it worked both one "our" terms (money, growth, ...) and theirs (fun, creativity, ...). I seriously doubt you can export the model beyond the "professional services" sector given the "agency cost" (not ad agency, but "Jensen annd meckling" agency problem) and even but forget theories : this book is about practice and St luke will remain in the history of "organisation design" beyond the agency. Anyway, they did it and it score 1 - 0 for them versus the rest of us.
2) The other point is that the book is very well written and that is not so common to find corporate history with such good writing skills combines
All done, a very good book where you learn as much about business that about "how ready you are to do it" (being myself an entrepreuneur)