The Syncreate Podcast: Empowering Creativity
Welcome to Syncreate, where we explore the intersections between creativity, psychology, and spirituality. Our goal is to demystify the creative process and expand the boundaries of what it means to be creative.
Creativity. It’s a word we throw around all the time, but what does it really mean? On the Syncreate Podcast, we share stories of the creative journey. We talk to changemakers, visionaries and everyday creatives working in a wide array of fields and disciplines. Our goal is to explore creativity in all its facets, and to gain a better understanding of the creative process – from imagination to innovation and everything in between.
The Syncreate Podcast is hosted by Melinda Rothouse, PhD. She helps individuals and organizations bring their creative dreams and visions to life through coaching, consulting, workshops, retreats, and now, this podcast. She's written two books on creativity, including Syncreate: A Guide to Navigating the Creative Process for Individuals, Teams, and Communities (winner of a Silver Nautilus Award for Creativity and Innovation), with Charlotte Gullick. She's also a musician (singer-songwriter and bass player) and photographer based in Austin, Texas.
The Syncreate Podcast: Empowering Creativity
Episode 38: Leadership for Creativity and Innovation with Jamie Gallagher
With a 40-year career in the toy and art supply industry, most recently as CEO at Faber-Castell USA, Jamie Gallagher brings a wealth of insight into how creative companies function. He is the founder of 4 the Win, which fosters creativity and innovation among individuals, teams, organizations and communities through four pillars of success: Purpose, Culture, Creativity, and Clarity. Drawing upon Jamie’s experiences leading teams at Lego, Playmobil, and Faber-Castell, we discuss both barriers and accelerants to innovation, which have everything to do with mindset, trust, and culture.
For our Creativity Pro-Tip, we encourage you to contemplate the four accelerators of purpose, culture, creativity and clarity, and consider how you could bring them more intentionally into your creative and professional work.
Credits: The Syncreate podcast is created and hosted by Melinda Rothouse, and produced at Record ATX studios with in collaboration Michael Osborne and 14th Street Studios in Austin, Texas. Syncreate logo design by Dreux Carpenter.
If you enjoy this episode and want to learn more about the creative process, you might also like our conversations in Episode 16: Creativity, Innovation & Leadership with Robert Cleve, PhD, Episode 23: The Corporate Mystic with Stephanie Crain, and Episode 27: The Spirit of Collaboration with Attorney and Musician Randy Langford.
At Syncreate, we're here to support your creative endeavors, so if you have an idea for a project or a new venture, please reach out to us for 1x1 coaching or join our Syncreate 2024 Coaching Group, starting in July. You can find more information on our website, syncreate.org, where you can also find all of our podcast episodes. Find and connect with us on social media and YouTube under Syncreate, and we’re now on Patreon as well. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and leave us a review!
Episode-specific hyperlinks:
Book: The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
Book: Deep Work by Cal Newport
Show / permanent hyperlinks:
Melinda: Welcome to Syncreate. This is a show where we explore the intersections between creativity, psychology and spirituality. We believe everyone is creative, and our goal is to demystify the creative process and expand the boundaries of what it means to be creative. I'm Melinda Rothouse, and I help individuals and organizations bring their creative dreams and visions to life.
So very, very delighted to have with me today, Jamie Gallagher. Welcome, Jamie.
Jamie: Hey, nice to be here, Melinda. Thanks.
Melinda: Yeah, I'm so thrilled that we get to have this chat. And so, we recently met at the Florida Creativity Conference, where you were the keynote speaker, and really enjoyed your talk on leadership and creativity. And just, you know, a little bit about your background. So you were at Lego for 15 years and then at Playmobil for four years, and then most recently 20 years at Faber-Castell USA, leading that division.
And so, you know, to my mind, you've just had this really quite extraordinary career leading creative organizations. And I think part of the reason I loved your talk so much is because this is really a core interest of mine as well. I do leadership development work; for my doctoral research, I was looking at team creativity and collaboration in organizations.
So, you know, I'm curious, I know that you have kind of some bullet points that you really highlight on how to best foster creativity in organizations. So maybe we can kind of start there. So when you talk to people about how best to foster creativity in organizations, creativity and innovation in organizations, you know, what are the top things to look out for?
Jamie: Yeah, and it's interesting because as you point out, and it's one of those things where, you know, I kind of semi-retired a year ago, and all of a sudden when you go from the type of cadence and routine that I, and many, many people like me had, you know, during your work life where time is so precious, you don't really have the time that you probably should have taken to reflect. But then all of a sudden you do have that amount of time, you start to look back on your career and things that you've done.
And the one thing that is always interesting to me is, I worked for these three really special, outstanding companies whose output was creative products, clearly Lego, Playmobil, Faber-Castell, in terms of art materials and writing instruments and those types of products. But all of these companies, what they had in common were, first of all, they all did really high-quality creative materials. So instantly people assumed, and would talk to me about, these being creative organizations. And what instantly came to me then was, well, just because a company makes, or doesn't make, a creative product, doesn't necessitate that that's a creative organization.
And that was the lesson that I found over in my career was, you know, we were not always as an organization, across all departments, our best creative selves all the time, even though our output and the product that we made, in fact, was. So when I look at a creative organization and begin the discussion of that, I try and break it down really simply to mindset and environment.
And in order to have a truly creative organization, my experience has been you've got to enter the discussion; you've got to come in to the building every day; you've got to walk into that and that environment with somewhat of a creative mindset, which largely is governed by being open.
Melinda: Yes. Openness to experience.
Jamie: Openness. Exactly.
Melinda: Yeah.
Jamie: You have to be open to other people. What's going to happen? You've got to be open to all these things. And then the second piece of that, truly, is that the environment that you're walking into, has got to be an environment that is conducive to creativity, and that is one that once again is largely open, but is truly founded on the basis of trust.
Melinda: Yes.
Jamie: So it's about openness in terms of mindset. There's a whole set of skills and things to go with that that creative mindset. But then also in an environment that is largely governed by and has a foundation of trust.
Melinda: I absolutely I agree. And that was one of the big findings in my own research as well, that, you know, if you want to bring people together in in teams to do creative work, there has to be that sense of rapport, that sense of connection, you know, the ability and willingness to take risks, and know that that is acceptable and, you know, part of the process, and that, you know, just that we communicate openly, we're authentic, we're honest, and we can trust each other.
Jamie: Yeah. And, Melinda, that that's so interesting. When we speak to younger people, sometimes university students, who, appropriately so, are being channeled into doing a lot of group work. A lot of work groups, and a lot of group work, that's being done in universities right now. And even in those groups, I talk to students about the output of that group. The collective creativity and output of that group will largely be determined by “Did you start and engender trust within that group?”
Because, as you so well know, if that is a group that has an element of fear or distrust, then the full creative potential and ideation of that group, and all the smart ideas, and all the wonderful contributions that those students can make to one another in that group, will never see the light of day because they will, in fact, hold back.
Melinda: Yes, right. And maybe good ideas won't get shared, or people will be afraid if they're going to be shot down, then they're not going to speak up. And sometimes, you know, the quietest person has a great idea that may or may not get heard.
Jamie: Exactly. Which is like when we talk about creative leaders, creative leaders may not always be the strongest ideators, but they may in fact, be very skilled at getting that quiet person to step into the conversation, and to share their ideas, just so they're getting the maximum collective input from the group.
Melinda: For sure. So that really brings us, I think, to the question of: As a leader of an organization, or a team, you know, how can you best bring out the creativity of the group. So we, definitely, trust is a big part of it. But what else, in your experience, comes into the equation?
Jamie: I was having a conversation with this the other day and for some reason what kept coming up was the idea of courage.
Melinda: Yeah.
Jamie: Because so much of what is expected these days of a leader, of a CEO, is the delivery of traditional, standard business metrics for success. And a lot of those, like it or not, happen to be geared toward the short term.
Melinda: Yeah.
Jamie: So it's the short-term profit; it’s the short-term sales growth. And to stand in the face of that, and say we're going to take a risk; we're going to take a chance; and we're going to commit to each other, that we're going to own this, whether it works or not, because we know that we have to be creative in terms of innovating and looking towards the future.
There's this element of courage. And even if intellectually, we know that creativity is an important and critical factor in our success in the future, even of intellectually, we know that, emotionally it still takes the courage to say, we're going to take that chance because we believe that ultimately this will get us where we need to go. Or if it doesn't, we'll learn from it, apply it, and then that will get us to where we need to go.
Melinda: Yeah, such an important point. Because I think you're right, you know, creativity is such a buzzword these days, right? And so many organizations kind-of say that they value creativity, whereas, you know, in the day-to-day that may not actually be happening. And so how do you work with leaders that want to, you know, embrace creativity more, and take that courage step, you know, that risk? You know, how do you kind of support them in doing that?
Jamie: I think one of the key things with that becomes the idea that you don't need to start big. It needs to be all and everything. It, in fact, is sometimes better to begin by taking, whether it's a pilot program, or test, or example, and work our way up to that, so that we're able to find success and build upon that success.
Or if in fact, and maybe even more importantly, if we don't immediately find success, then we do find a way to say, “But here is what we've learned. And here is how we will now apply that.” But if we do it on a scale that is such that, you know, we're not falling from a very high point, then whether if we succeed, then we use it to build upon.
And if we don't have immediate success, then we are able to use it in a different way. And it doesn't really be deemed as it is oftentimes, “Hey, we tried that already and it didn't work. Yes, we used to do that, but we don't do that anymore.” And you live, you get to live to fight another day, and you live to grow, and foster, and incubate that type of creativity. So leaders who are able to grasp that, and find ways to do that in the everyday work, then they usually have much greater success than those who go all in, and then pull all out because it didn’t work.
Melinda: Right, Right. Yeah. I mean, that brings up so many things, you know, the importance of kind-of iteration and prototyping, you know, that more entrepreneurial mindset of like, okay, let's try something, let's test it out, let's refine it, let's keep playing with it until we find the right thing. You know, that that holds true in large organizations as well as in, you know, startups and things like that. Yeah, Yeah. And even just…
Jamie: This is also, when you look at the popular view of innovation, and I think this is why they say oftentimes it's more successful to pull that out of the core business.
Melinda: Yeah, right.
Jamie: Pull that out of the everyday work and build that, whether it's Skunk Works or whether it's treated, as a startup, but pull it out of that environment and bring it into its own environment so that you don't have that struggle and that everyday conflict of, well, this is my real job and then have this on the side.
Melinda: Yes, right. And more and more organizations are doing that, and bringing that more kind of entrepreneurial spirit in a sort of test environment. Right? Yeah. Yeah, that's great. So I'm curious, just, you know, based on the wealth of experience that you've had in these different companies and organizations over the over the years, kind of some lessons learned, like what really works well, in terms of leadership for creativity and innovation, and what doesn't.
Jamie: So that again, you know, it's almost not ‘till you kind of get off the proverbial treadmill and start looking back, and in my case, looking to not just stop and do nothing, but to kind of look to now share and help. So when I took that time to determine how could I share and help, and what would I use to share and help others, I decided that there were really four things that I see as being what I call accelerants.
Some people may call them key factors. Some people may call them key strategies, but in my view, I think there are four accelerants that will propel the success of businesses, but also success in a way that there's an element of human fulfillment that goes with it. So if I could, the four accelerants that I see are purpose, culture, creativity, and clarity. So those four accelerants, I believe that if they can be intentionally integrated into your business planning, your strategic planning, if those can be intentionally integrated, upfront, then the likelihood of a business being able to sustain, sustain and succeed, it's much is much greater. So why would that be? So if we look at purpose, first of all, purpose is a tremendous way of uniting an aligning, you know. It is, and any different, any given day, it's stepping back and saying, okay, wait a minute, now, what are we here for anyway?
Melinda: Why are we doing this?
Jamie: What are we trying to do? With Simon Sinek - What is our why?
Melinda: Exactly.
Jamie: This is absolutely critical. If we move to the idea of culture, we spend a lot of time in the workplace, and therefore the environment or the culture, which is really just a collection of committed behaviors. So that culture becomes really important. As you had mentioned earlier, if you have a culture that values collaboration, that values the idea of maximizing collective impact, then you're going to have a much different result than a culture that espouses, you know, me not we. So culture remains a really important piece.
Creativity is the third accelerant. You know, we're talking about that. But in essence, you know, these days, creativity in a business can be anything from, “Hey, look, we've got some things that we need to fix, and therefore we need creative solutions.” Or it could be “We need some new things, we need some new ideas that have value.” So we need those new ideas that have value, which is in essence, creativity. So creativity becomes the third accelerant.
And then the fourth accelerant is clarity. And clarity is a situation where that runs the gamut from, you know, performance management, in terms of, you know, the traditional nightmare is waiting to do a performance appraisal once a year, and scrambling two days before that appraisal is due to be delivered, and trying to think of all the things that somebody did over the course of a year, as opposed to having clarity on a regular basis. “Hey, what do you expect from me and what do I expect from you?” You know, clarity in terms of expectations, and also trying to resist, and it's difficult these days, but the clarity accelerant also entails trying to really push back on this glorification of busyness.
Melinda: Yes.
Jamie: That people, you know, feel that they really need to be busy. And if they're if they've got a full plate plus more, they've essentially satisfied the task. Whereas truly what we need right now, is we need kind-of a fewer, better. I think I had mentioned when you and I were in Florida at the conference, you know, a deeper work element where we're doing fewer things, but we're doing them at a really high level.
You know, that's the future of work. So in essence, it's those four accelerants that I've reflected upon, and now I share those with individuals, I share those with communities, I share those with students, I share those with companies and organizations, just as a way to begin their thinking and begin their strategic planning.
Melinda: Yeah, I love that. And so much good stuff here that I want to pick up on. You know, this idea of the deep work, and having time for the deep work, and that being the future of work. So, given that we kind of we realize that this busyness paradigm is not very useful, and it leads to burnout, and it lowers productivity. So how do you envision organizations making that? Because that is also a cultural element. Like, are we just like constantly overscheduled and everything? Or like, how can organizations shift that mindset?
Jamie: First of all, it's astounding to me how difficult this is.
Melinda: Yes.
Jamie: And you use the term cultural. It is absolutely cultural, I think, and becoming more so in the society of professionals. But even within companies, and we went through this at Faber-Castell, the opportunity to go to people and say to them, “I think you need to take something off your plate.” It was a really difficult thing for people to let go.
Melinda: Right.
Jamie: Of something and to work on fewer things, even though deep down they might believe, “You know, if I had fewer things on my plate, I could probably do a better job at those things that remain on my plate.” And ultimately, if we all approach it this way, you know, we would have much greater productivity and a greater outcome.
So the idea of how do we do this? How do we get people to do this? It's a relentless push for prioritizing and tying those priorities to outcomes. And, you know, I say this when I talk to people about creativity, believe it or not, there is this idea of we need, as leaders, we need to model that, by not being so swamped and scattered.
And I began, you know, my last probably my last five years at Faber-Castell, I stopped using the word “busy” and I stopped using the words “swamped, overwhelmed, beyond full plate.” I tried to model a different way of looking at my workload, and to try and do it that way. And really push people to do the same, and keep coming back to priorities; what's most important, and give them that permission, if you will, to let go of some of these things.
Melinda: Yes, so important because in my experience, you know, some of the organizations I work with, it's the leader, it's the CEO, that's driving that culture of busyness, whether it's a startup and “Well, we’ve got to get funding. We’re promising our funders all these things,” that maybe they're a little unrealistic, but we're just driving, driving, driving, right.
Or things like that. So, you know, I think you're right. It has to be modeled.
And then there's also, you know, different folks I'm working with right now. Maybe there's a hiring freeze, or maybe they're understaffed in some way. And so, you know, sometimes people are having to cover multiple roles because someone left and the position wasn’t backfilled, or things like that. And so it almost feels impossible.
And it's like, okay, if we want to take this off someone's plate, like it's got to go on to someone else's plate. So what I also see with a lot of my leadership clients is, you know, even though we say you really should be taking time to step back and think strategically and, you know, really think about your vision going forward, people are so often just in the weeds that they feel like they don't have time to do that, even though it's actually essential.
Jamie: And not only is it essential, but if we look out into the future, there's a real concern that the nature of the work that has people in the weeds, it's that type of work that is most susceptible to technology.
Melinda: Yes.
Jamie: Something else doing that work. And as you and I are terming it, you know, from the Cal Newport book, Deep Work, it's the deeper work, the deeper thinking, that in fact, will be needed and be left to us.
Melinda: Yeah.
Jamie: As technology develops. So we're not really doing anybody any favors to keep pushing this long to-do list of clerical type of work, whatever, administrative type work, whatever that might be, task work, without over time and gradually developing people and developing that comfort level, that mindset and that skillset for deeper work.
Melinda: Yes, I love that. And one of the things that I that often talk with clients about is, you know, how are you mentoring and developing your people, your teams, you know, and, and it's more than just managing people's workflows or things like that. It's like, you know, really taking the time to ask them what are their goals, you know, where do they want to be in five years?
How can I, as a leader, support you too? And to really just understand that part of leadership is really mentoring and developing your people to maximize their own potential.
Jamie: You know, what's interesting is I don't think we ever fully hit our stride on the type of behavior and leadership that you're speaking about until we got into COVID. And it was so interesting because during COVID, what used to be a rhetorical question, which was, how are you doing? How's it going? That, you know, and not in a malicious way, but that, somewhat of a rhetorical question, all of a sudden became a very meaningful, purposeful, intentional.
Melinda: Genuine.
Jamie: Intentional, genuine and authentic question. And that, I found, with the one on ones that we were doing with our staff. That then propelled us into bigger topics. Starting bigger, goals, purpose. How's it going? How's it making you feel? And we really took on kind-of a different view of this. There was a different filter and a different flavor of it, and in a very helpful and authentic way.
Melinda: Yeah. And how did that change sort-of the tenor of things, when you started asking more? You know, because to me, again, that relates very much directly back to trust. If you feel that your leaders honestly care about you and your well-being, well then of course you're going to be more inclined to show up.
Jamie: Exactly. And as you know, what that also does, because it's a fundamental component of building that trust, is it shows a level of vulnerability, on the part of the leader, that's necessary to build trust. So not only am I sincerely and authentically and genuinely asking how you're doing, but I'm also sharing how I'm doing.
Then you've got now a vulnerability in a relationship that maybe we had not had before, might not have had before, that’s allowing then for this trust to open up. And with that foundation, okay, now, now we're having meaningful conversations about the business. We're ideating in a way maybe we hadn’t before, you know. Heaven knows that we had plenty of issues and challenges and problems that we were facing during the pandemic, and it allowed us to approach those maybe in a little bit different way than we would have before.
Melinda: Mmm Hmm, and do you feel like people are, you know, carrying that forward beyond the, you know, immediate pandemic?
Jamie: I would say not all of it. I think, you know, it's like when we ever find ourselves in a critical situation, we have a behavioral change. And then, you know, many times we kind of go back to what we used to do, what was comfortable for us, what we knew. So I think there's elements of that.
You know, certainly the definition of health has changed to, hopefully forever, to encompass not just physical health, not just whether you tested positive or not for COVID, but also encompassing the whole mental, emotional, and social health aspect. I think that that at least my experience has been that that has changed and that's a really healthy thing.
The challenge becomes, you know, people who, you know, inevitably go back to what they were doing before the tactics, the to-do list, and those things. You know, that's been a bit of a difference. And then, it's hard to say because on top of all of that, we certainly have a change in the workplace, whether it's, you know, remote or hybrid or in the office, which is a bit different than we have to deal with prior.
Melinda: Yeah. But I think you're right. You know, even just that mental health conversation, I think it's really because of the pandemic made its way, you know, into the general societal conversation and then, you know, into organizations. It just seems like there's a lot more support programs and, you know, resources available for that.
Jamie: Which is which is absolutely a good thing.
Melinda: Yeah, for sure. So I'm curious, you know, if you can think of a particular example or case study, kind-of using some of these things that we've talked about, purpose, culture, creativity, clarity, where you've seen an organization either that you've been involved with, or maybe observed, really successfully pivot, you know? Yeah, I'm real curious about that.
Jamie: So the best example I can give, and it's, you know, obviously it's an example that I lived with and lived through. I'm not sure a lot of our listeners are aware of Faber-Castell, but Faber-Castell is a family-owned, eighth-generation German company that 265 years ago produced the first pencils, over in Bavaria, over in Nuremberg, Germany, and forever and ever did pencils, you know, finest-quality pencils and writing instruments, and art materials and art pencils. Well, the journey that we took with that business was, you know, here we were in many ways a pencil company, a writing-instrument company in a digital age.
Melinda: Yes.
Jamie: And strategically, we had to step back and ask ourselves whether being a, as they would call it, over in Europe, a stationery products company, whether we should be a stationery products company in a digital age. You know, that allowed us, and this now begins to speak to, you know, the purpose. That allowed us, or caused us to step back and say, okay, what is our why?
What are we here for? So the case study, or the example, or the experience I had, really begins quite powerfully with our re-examining and restating our why. And as a company, in a very inclusive manner, we re-ignited our why, and that why became the belief that we could enrich people's lives, and we could do that uniquely through creativity and self-expression. So here now, you had this 260-year-old German pencil company.
Melinda: Right.
Jamie: Was now a company that said, yep, we make pencils, and we make darn good ones. No doubt about it. But what we really do, is we enrich people's lives. And we do that whether they're children, whether they're parents, whether they're teachers, whether they're fallen away creators, whether they're seniors, whether they're post-war vets. We truly enrich people's lives. And we do that in the way that we feel we can do it best. And that's through creativity, and self-expression.
So now you take this rejuvenated, reignited, esprit de corps purpose, or why? And now it starts to flow from there. So you've got purpose. That purpose immediately was flowing into a culture, and that culture was the culture of trust, of collaboration. We became a better team, and more collaborative. We were able to have, which was an incredibly beneficial byproduct of this, we were able to have tougher, important discussions as a group because of the culture we created.
The creativity aspect of that story, was such that, you know, we had always, and I think I mentioned this to you and you saw this, when we were at the conference in Florida. When people think of creativity in an organization, especially one like ours, they immediate think they're talking about the marketing people, and they’re talking about the product development people, maybe some people who do packaging. Okay. So those are the creatives. Well, during the supply chain difficulty that we had about three years ago now, the most creative people that we needed were creative problem solvers within supply chains:.
Melinda: Yeah.
Jamie: So this why, this culture change, this creativity, opened up permission and the need for our operations, logistics, and purchasing people to become the most creative people in the company.
Melinda: Right. Right.
Jamie: And they helped us navigate the challenges of getting product into the country, rerouting shipments, doing all these different things, using rail, using any means possible to get inventory. So they became the most creative people within the company. And fortunately so.
And then lastly, the clarity part was when we would do our annual planning, more and more so, we went from, okay, we have 7 priorities. Hey, we went from 7 to 5 to 4, back up to 6, by the way, and then back down to a manageable level of this idea of, okay, we can trust each other. We're very clear on who we are and what we do. We tie that clarity to our purpose. And it became a, I would say, a tighter, more efficient, more successful, but also, and I mentioned this earlier, a more fulfilled team of people than we had been before.
So I believe in this so much, because I've lived it. And I thought we were a tremendous company, and great people, even before we did this. But this filter, this process, this journey of purpose, culture, clarity and creativity really brought us together in a way. And I think it can happen to other companies and organizations or communities. I think it can happen.
Melinda: Sure, yeah. So I'm curious: so did this process result in like different product or service offerings, or was it more of, okay, we really understand our why and we're really all here on the same page so that we're, you know, really focusing in on our core product in a different way.
Jamie: If the if I told this story, a lot of people would believe that the logical outcome of this is you launched a new product line.
Melinda: Right.
Jamie: And you did different products than before. But as you're suggesting, that is not where the change was. Certainly there was a change in our messaging. There was a change in our engagement with consumers. A different engagement with parents, than we might have had before, in terms of our messaging, and understanding what was important to them, and what was best and important for their kids, for their future.
But it really was a situation where we engaged differently, with not our consumers, but maybe our customers. We were more focused with our customer. We were bringing more insights to our customers, more so than a price list and a bunch of samples.
Melinda: Right.
Jamie: So we became more focused with customers, and even internally, I think the biggest change was the way we collaborated and worked with one another internally, and with our parent company over in Germany as well. So the internal piece of it was probably more powerful of a change, or pivot, as you say, than even the product piece of it, which many people would have felt that would have been the natural outcome, for us to add some new product line.
Melinda: Yeah. And that's fascinating. It brings to mind, I don't know if you're familiar with the Andersen and Adams’ work on leadership. They created the Leadership Circle Profile 360 assessment, which I work with quite a bit, but they have a sort-of mantra which is “The inner game runs the outer game.” Yeah, right. And that seems to be a perfect example.
Jamie: Yeah, exactly. That, Melinda, that is exactly what that is. Absolutely.
Melinda: Yeah. Yep. Great. Well, this has been so much fun. Jamie, thank you so much. Anything, before we conclude? Anything else you want to add, or love to hear what you're sort of up to at the moment.
Jamie: Yeah. The other thing that, so the company that I started to really help companies. As I said, it doesn't have to be a company. It can certainly be an individual, to work with universities, and also communities, is this idea of the four accelerants. So the name of the company is 4 the Win.
Melinda: Okay.
Jamie: 4 the Win stands for those four accelerants. So that's a pretty large part of the work that I'm doing right now. The other part, though, is and it's kind of the volunteer work that I'm doing, is with a group that has been started within the toy industry, and that group is called Mesh Helps. And Mesh Helps is designed and to help improve the mental, emotional, and social health of children, and to do that through play.
Melinda: Great.
Jamie: So this idea that we can help children become more resilient, and we can do that through different types of play. Those types of play build those skills, and those skills improve children's resilience. And the more resilient they are, the greater their outcomes in terms of navigating mental, emotional, and social health environments.
Melinda: Yeah, wonderful.
Jamie: So Mesh Helps is a kind of an endeavor that there's a group of us working on that for the toy industry, and I think it's really important, and I think there's definitely a role that play has within this. And you've probably seen over the last few days the new book by Jonathan Haidt, and that is The Anxious Generation.
Melinda: Yeah.
Jamie: In that book, he points out the critical importance of play. So it really is kind-of a dovetail into the work that we're doing, in using play to help improve and bolster children's mental health.
Melinda: That's wonderful because, you know, yeah, we spend so much time on our digital devices and kids are on them all the time. And certainly, there can be aspects of play in that. But it's kind of the old school, you know, play, because play so important developmentally in so many ways, so.
Jamie: We've so fallen away from it. And I think it's something that, you know, in whatever way we can, it doesn't have to be necessarily a certain toy. It's just a play pattern, or a play activity.
Melinda: Yeah.
Jamie: That if I think if we get back to that, I think will have taken a major step forward in terms of addressing this mental health issue that we're facing right now.
Melinda: Yeah, wonderful. Well, that sounds like an awesome effort.
So, for our Creativity Pro-Tip today, I encourage you to really consider, whether this is in your own personal creative work, or in a professional or leadership context, to really think about these four accelerators that Jamie talked about: purpose, culture, creativity and clarity, and see how you might begin to think more intentionally about these, and see what results might arise.
Melinda: And so how can people find you and connect with you?
Jamie: I'm on LinkedIn, but I also have my website, which is 4thew dot com. I'm on LinkedIn. You can find me under Jamie Gallagher that way. My website, I have a Facebook page. That is also 4theW, but please reach out. I know this is true, when you and I met a little bit ago in Florida, but there is we are all in this together, as we would say. And the tough part is the implementation and execution. But we're all in it together. And the more we stick together, the greater traction we're going to have.
Melinda: Yeah, And just back to that spirit of collaboration, you know, the more we find and connect with each other and then, you know, there's so many wonderful kind-of synergies and efforts are born out of that. And I just really appreciated meeting you at the conference, and your willingness to come on the show and say, “Hey, connect with me, let's talk, you know.”
Jamie: Well, I'd be remiss if I didn't say thank you to you as well, also for the work that you're doing, for the information, and the really interesting people that you're bringing on to these podcasts and sharing. So it's a huge asset and I really appreciate that.
Melinda: Thank you so much. I appreciate it. It's really, it's a labor of love, for sure, so.
Jamie: It seems that way, given the energy that you bring to it. I'm sure you love it.
Melinda: Yeah. And at Syncreate, we're here to support your creative endeavors. So if you have an idea for a project or new venture, please reach out to us for 1x1 coaching or join our 6-Month Creativity Coaching Group, starting in July. We'll be walking you through the Syncreate model of Play, Plan, and Produce, so you can get from start to finish on your own creative work.
And we're online at Syncreate dot org, all the podcast channels. We're on social media, so find us and connect. We're recording today at Record ATX Studios in Austin, and the podcast is produced in collaboration with Mike Osborne at 14th Street Studios. Thanks so much for being with us and see you next time.
