Artists Need Project Management, Not Projects
Don't mistake a suggestive context for a supportive context
This essay is my exploration of a working hypothesis. I have no idea what is “true”, and if you do know, please send me your ideas. These are working thoughts on how to support my friends better, after noticing a series of projects that didn’t quite work. I am giving myself permission to speculate wildly. Speculate with me if you dare.
As a leader, I've been failing in a specific and subtle way lately.
I have visions for the future, many of which involve my friends working together to build great things1. But I’ve been missing the forest for the trees.
Lately, I've been suggesting projects to people and persuading them to work on those projects. Like a "request for startups", but for my free-agent friends to work together on creative, ambitious projects in their free time. The instinct here is that I want my friends to collaborate, both with each other and with me, and I figure that a major blocker to that collaboration is simply the energy needed to start a project together.
This sounds great in theory, but in practice, it often does not work.
The problem is that art isn't a suggestion, and my friends are artists at heart. Art isn't made because someone suggested you make it. Art comes from a nearly desperate neediness. Art comes from that fuzzy place deep in our subconscious that we can't control. Art is spiritually compelled, not merely suggested.
My definition of an artist is simple: one who must create, whether they are paid or not.
So, when I persuade an artist to make art, it's not proper empowerment. It's not an affordance. It's not a tool. It's often subverting their instinctive desire to create with a new desire -- the desire to help me.
They think of it as a favor for a friend (me). I think of it as the potential to make new art. But a favor done to help a friend is not the same thing as a compulsion, a desperate need, to create art, which is needed for their growth as an artist.
Here's another problem: whenever I suggest a project like this, they think of it as a collaboration. "Ooo, an opportunity to work on something together with Andrew." The problem is that I'm making suggestions outside of my area of expertise, so I'm often not helpful in execution. For me, it's an opportunity for my friend to fulfill a need in the world. For them, it's an opportunity to work with a friend. So there is no proper project management behind the project, because I don't have the skills to PM, and no one has the intrinsic motivation to do it anyway2.
But it is possible to collaborate with my friends. It is possible to support them in great projects. Scenius is possible.
The trick is to unblock the artists. Remember the definition: they are those who must create, whether they're paid or not. You don’t need to worry about the creation part, you just need to get things out of their way.
I am welcome to suggest ideas (sometimes this is the block!), but often artists have many ideas already. I am welcome to suggest collaborations but I must not get confused and think my collaborations are more important than their work. Nothing is more important than their work (to them), that's the whole point! If they could choose what motivated them, they wouldn't be artists.
Hmm… I don't think I've articulated myself clearly, but sometimes you have to be okay with a first draft. Consider this a first draft.
The point I'm trying to make (and I'm trying to make this point so I don't repeat my own mistakes) is simple, actually:
If you want your creative friends to create, then focus on unblocking them.
If you want your creative friends to help you, then explicitly ask for help and be very clear that you will own the project.
Giving your creative friends a project to manage is not the same thing as unblocking them (except in the rare rule-proving cases where it is).
Part of why I haven't articulated this as well as I'd like is that these aren't hard and fast rules. As always, I'm trying to correct my own biases. I've run into problems in the last few months due to poor project management.
And that's an interesting angle to think about the problem: poor project management. One of the blockers many creative friends of mine already have is project management -- giving them a project management task is often the opposite of what they need to flourish.
By giving them projects to manage, without managing the project myself, I am (in some ways) selfishly asking without offering. But I'm naturally charismatic, so it's easy to make the ask seem like an offer, and then when the project kind of putters out, nobody blames anyone because this is just the nature of creative work, but everyone is left wondering "What happened?"
What happened is I mistook “creating a project” for “unblocking a project”. This is obvious in retrospect and I hope not to do it again, except when the former is an instance of the latter.
Also, if this sort of rambling essay is your style, I'll be doing a lot more of it in the next 6 months. I have another million words to write before I need to start networking my thoughts together. For now, I'd rather publish my first draft, revise it in 6 months when I have more experience, and link back to my thoughts here.
If you have any questions that might refine my thinking, please do send your thoughts.
-- Andrew
I want to write an essay titled “Do It Anyway”, so I can link to that here.
Artists Need Project Management, Not Projects
i feel like ive seen the title of this post somewhere else, but can't recall where atm! maybe stuff visakanv has said on project management? e.g.
https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/998406389440512000?s=20
this also reminds me of cedric chin's recent post on judo where his coach realises its not technical capability he lacked but mindset//mental strength https://commoncog.com/mental-strength-judo-life/