Brian Lucas: How to Define Your Team as a Powerful and Long-Lasting Brand

Richard:

Hi, Brian, thank you so much for joining us today.

Brian:

Thanks for having me here. It’s great to be here.

Richard:

Thanks, really appreciate that you could join us. It’s really great to meet you. I’m so excited and eager to talk to you. Is there anything else you’d like to add on to that introduction?

Brian:

I think you covered it. That was a pretty good introduction.

Richard:

All right, and before we pressed record, you were telling me about some of the courses you teach and the research you’re doing at Cornell. What were those courses again?

Brian:

Yeah, so I’m teaching courses at Cornell on managing creativity and I teach another course called “Leading and Managing Teams”. So it’s a lot about the psychology of work and how we can manage ourselves and the people around us to kind of achieve the things that we’re trying to do. Be it creativity, team leadership, various outcomes.

Richard:

All right, and I want to ask you, we all talk about creativity. It’s an everyday word. You’re doing research, you must have a definition for it. How do you define creativity?

Brian:

Yeah, no, that’s a really good question. And I’ll give you the real-talk answer too so. Within the literature that I publish in, we define creativity as the generation of novel and useful ideas. So any kind of work behavior that’s related to coming up with ideas, you could kind of put that in the camp of creativity. But then when we talk about it in practice though, particularly when I’m out talking to real work teams, it often involves a lot more than just the generation of novel and useful ideas. And particularly when you’re coming up with ideas in teams, there’s a lot of team processes involved in creativity. If you’re thinking broader than that at the level of the organization, there are a lot of other systems that get involved in the process too. So while we tend to think about creativity as kind of the cognitive act of coming up with ideas, there’s a lot of other structural things that interact with that as well that you should take into consideration when you’re studying a topic like that.

Richard:

All right, okay. And here’s another, this is a wacky one. How do you measure creativity? ‘Cause that’s something you got to be doing in research were measuring things. So how are you measuring it?

Brian:

Yeah, that’s a really good question too. So there’s a couple of different ways that we do it.

Richard:

I’m full of them, I got a script here.

Brian:

Oh, wow. Well, I got all my stuff in here. We’ll see what comes out. So there’s a couple ways we do it in our research. In the research that I do, I do more laboratory type of experiments. So I create different conditions and I put people in them and see how their output differs say based on the different conditions they’re in. And in controlled studies like that, the way we’ll typically measure creativity is that we’ll give someone a creative problem to work on. So for instance, one that’s used often is imagine that there is a newly open space in a building and you’re thinking about putting a business in there. What are some ideas that you could come up with for businesses that could fill that space? So something like that. And then they’ll write down their ideas and then we’ll take what they write down. And we’ll basically measure it on different dimensions. So you could just measure it for overall creativity, you could measure novelty, usefulness, or a combination of those things. And typically, we’ll have research assistants do it, or maybe people that are specific to an industry. So for instance, if you were trying to think about ideas for restaurants to put in the space, maybe you could have restaurant consultants taking a look at those ideas. So that’s how we would typically measure it in a study like that. But in the workplace when we’re doing more survey type of research, oftentimes we measure creativity by just having other people just rate how creative they think that person is. So for instance, you might go to their supervisor and say, on a scale of one to seven, how creative is this person? And then we kind of take them at their word for what they say.

Richard:

Okay. Not very creative at all, slightly creative, somewhat creative, neutral.

Brian:

Yeah, very similar to a performance review type of question.

Richard:

All right, cool. Well, thanks so much for that. Okay. And this is a podcast about teams and great teams and you get to decide what we mean when we say a great team, super creative, super joyful, super productive, super high quality stuff they produce, whatever it is. It doesn’t even have to be work, right? So this is sort of a work oriented podcast but this could be any kind of team, any group of two or more people aligned with a shared goal, that’s one definition of a team. What’s the best team you’ve ever been a member of in your entire life?

Brian:

Yeah, so that’s a tough question ’cause we’re parts of a lot of teams. But one that came to mind for me was a team that I was on when I was in graduate school. So I did my graduate work at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern. And one of the teams that I was on there was, it was a cover band. So it was actually a rock cover band. We were called “The Captains of Industry.” And that was a very interesting team experience for me. So, it’s mostly made up of MBA students. And so because MBA is a two year program, the team turns over every year as people graduate. And so every year there’s a recruitment event and then there’s kind of a saying goodbye to people at the end of the year. So it’s almost kind of like a college sports team in the way that you have to manage it to continually get members and try to put together a team that’ll be the highest performing team that you can.

Richard:

Okay, that’s so cool. So, and what was your role in this team?

Brian:

I played guitar in that band.

Richard:

All right, so you’re the guitarist in this rock cover band made up of MBA students at Kellogg. Okay, take yourself back to this team, the rock band. Sometimes people close their eyes and do a simple meditation. You do this however you want. I want you to re-experience that team, take yourself back to it and really feel what it was like to be with that group. And the sensation of that group, the feeling within your body. What’s the one word that you could use to summarize that sensation of that best team?

Brian:

I would say probably energy. I mean, that’s partly is a function of what we’re doing in our performances too. But I would say even kind of on and off stage there was an energy to it, an excitement. And that’s one thing that I remember quite well from that team.

Richard:

All right. And what else about that energy? What kind of energy? Does that energy have a shape or a color? What else about that energy?

Brian:

It’s a little unique I think and I’ve been trying to think about what makes it unique and I think here is what it is. So I think part of it is passion. So we’re all volunteering to be in this rock cover band. I imagine probably similar to myself, the other members probably were kids imagining being a rockstar at some point and so we got to live that out. So that was the kind of the passion angle to it. But at the same time, it was in a business school. A lot of the band members were MBAs, a lot of the people in the network, a lot of people coming to the shows were MBAs. So there was certainly a professionalism to it as well. So we weren’t just kind of playing in a band, we were also managing a brand. Which on the business side of things I know a lot of the MBAs were interested in that aspect of it. So it was almost like a professionalism and passion I would say are kind of two words that describe it. And they come together in a very unique way I would say in that context.

Richard:

All right. And how do you know this was a great team? Is there anything subjective that we could talk about that goes into the sense that this was such a great team?

Brian:

Yeah, so for me personally, the thing that always made me think of it as a great team was just the fact that we were having fun. So we would show up on time to things, we would have ideas when we got there. Meetings would go along and they wouldn’t bother us that long. Those to me were indicators that it was a good team.

Richard:

All right. And for people who have never been in a rock band or any kind of band, there’s more to it than just showing up on stage and performing in front of people. What else goes into it?

Brian:

Well, our band was a little managed in the sense that it was kind of like a brand as well as a current band. So because it had been going on for a few years, I think when I went in we were maybe the fifth iteration. So you’re kind of managing a dynasty in that sense. So we did have that to keep in mind as we were going, but of course, you have to coordinate with your venues, you have to plan your year basically, the different types of shows you’re going to do. Plan the set list. So what is going to be the nature of the band? What kind of identity do you want it to have? Which will determine the kind of fan base that you attract. And so all of those are types of things that you have to think about, and that’s just completely separate from actually playing together and trying to become good as a band.

Richard:

Right. This was a business school rock band. It’s like running a small business. I mean, it is like running a small business.

Brian:

I think that’s probably unique, I played in garage bands when I was younger and we didn’t do any of that stuff. I will also say we didn’t get many gigs booked.

Richard:

Right. And the way you’re describing it, I was actually thinking about maybe you played one of their songs the band “Kiss” right? They’re like this legendary dynastic kind of rock band. And they have a different guitarist than when they started, and they have a different drummer than when they started. And that guitarist and that drummer, they still have to like live up to the history and the expectations of the fans from the past.

Brian:

Oh, yeah, that’s a great example. And it’s actually kind of funny. So there were two bands there at the time. One of the bands took on the genre of kind of classic rock and our band took on the genre of just kind of more modern rock. And that’s what we used to differentiate the two. So the other band played “Kiss.” We would have loved to play them but we had to deviate up so that we weren’t overlapping too much. But there are a ton of management aspects to this that I didn’t expect to find going into it that I learned a lot. So that was another thing that I thought was great about it.

Richard:

I read this interview with one of the founders of “Kiss” Paul Stanley once. I practice a lot of Spanish. So there’s this website in Spanish for metal bands, for people who like heavy metal music. And it’s like all that old stuff from the 80s and 90s. And he was obviously being interviewed in English but they’d moved it to Spanish for their audience. And he was saying something like I could imagine “Kiss” like one day I’m not going to be in the band anymore. It’s just going to be somebody wearing the Paul Stanley makeup, right? But it will still be “Kiss.” It’ll be like the “Kiss” brand, the “Kiss” band but performing it. It actually doesn’t matter who is performing, it’s the idea of “Kiss” that matters.

Brian:

Yeah, exactly. And you see that with a lot of the legacy bands now, like “Leonard Skinner” band, “Journey.” Basically all those bands that are still going around performing now, most of them don’t even have the majority of the original members but it’s still the same experience.

Richard:

And they’re like cover bands of themselves.

Brian:

Basically.

Richard:

So how about objectively something that somebody from the outside could observe or something that’s measurable? What objective ways do you have of knowing that this was a great band?

Brian:

Yeah, so with that one I would mostly point to just kind of the reactions of our customer base. So here, our customer base was obviously people showing up to the shows, but there was also a little bit of a marketing aspect to it as well. ‘Cause a lot of our people showing up were other people related to Kellogg. And at the end of the year, we would actually do a battle of the bands with the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. So a lot of the people involved were Kellogg MBAs and Booth MBAs. And so, a lot of the positive reception that we get from them was an indicator of how well we’re doing. So for instance, so if we’re trying to draw the Kellogg show, like who is going to the South Loop of Chicago all the way down from Evanston to actually get to the show. Like seeing a lot of those people make that trip to me was like, oh wow, we’re getting some positive reception here.

Richard:

They like it. So it’s kind of like you’re getting feedback from your customers I guess, we want to use that sort of clinical terminology.

Brian:

Yeah, I would call it stakeholders so the people who would show up at the show. And then also the venues that we’re in contact with. So for instance, we would play a lot of the same venues year over year. And so, the ability to keep on schedule with previous iterations or even add shows that was showing that were on pace or possibly even growing a little bit.

Richard:

Yeah, all right. Now, what are some of the concrete behaviors that went into this being such a great team?

Brian:

Yeah, I think one of the concrete behaviors is just that people show up with ideas. I actually think that’s an indicator of a good team of any kind of good team. So even the teams that aren’t necessarily creating things, no matter what your team is doing, there’s always going to be room for improvement. So there’s always going to be room for people to come in with ideas. I think the good teams are the ones that you get there, maybe you’re in the minute before the meeting starts and people are just kind of telling you about the ideas that they’re coming in with and that they want to talk about in the meeting. I found that we had that quite a bit. I think that’s a good concrete thing you can point to when you’re thinking about how is this team doing.

Richard:

And how could somebody reproduce that, this idea of sharing ideas or other concrete behaviors? You know a little bit about creativity, you can’t just tell people be creative, right? So how do you like cultivate that?

Brian:

Well, I think one thing you can do is to always keep the shared goal salient for the team. And so, there’s a couple aspects of that. One, having the shared goal in the first place. Which I actually link quite closely with my research on vision statements. So we think of vision statements oftentimes as these formal statements that organizations have, but teams can also have them quite often. And it can actually potentially be a little more useful for a team because teams are more agile and it can change as the situation changes. So for instance, with our particular band, the end of the year event was the battle of the bands. So that was where Kellogg and Booth bands all get together and you kind of battle it out. And the way that they determined the winner was applause. So whoever got the loudest applause was the winner of the battle of the bands. So for us we had a very tangible concrete vision, which is that we would be on stage and we would get the loudest applause. That was kind of the team vision. And when you have that in the back of your mind, it’s very easy to always be thinking about things that could help contribute to it. It’s motivating, it makes you want to be thinking about new ideas. So I think having that vision that either the shared goal or kind of a more lofty vision statement is something that definitely helps contribute to that.

Richard:

All right. And that that’s specifically the part of your work that I use in my courses as well, the part about vision and team vision. So thank you for that contribution to the world.

Brian:

No, you’re welcome.

Richard:

Are there any other concrete behaviors that went into this team being so great.

Brian:

And I’m kind of thinking just outside of the day to day work of things. But a thing that I noticed is that we kind of take advantage of empty time. So when you think of empty time in a typical meeting, it could be the few minutes before or after the meeting gets started. For our band it was often the time between setting up the set and waiting for the show to start, there’d usually be a couple hours in there. And I’ve been in other bands and on other general teams where they basically don’t want to spend the empty time together. So like the main task is done so we all break and then come back when the next band task needs to be done. But at this time we would hang out, we had a good time, it was a good bonding experience. And I think that’s also a good signal of healthy teams that the team members not only utilize the empty time together, but they want to utilize the empty time. And it really helps get to know one another and build cohesion on the team.

Richard:

Yeah, they just want to be together. That empty time, time between tasks, was it strictly friendly time, just random spontaneous things? Or was it strictly focused on the work? Was there anything particular about this time in between tasks?

Brian:

I think it was probably a mix of both of those things, but I think the characteristic of it that makes it unique is just that you want to do it with the other people rather than go off and do it by yourself or just go off and do something completely different by yourself.

Richard:

Okay. Now, how about advice for listeners and viewers? What advice do you have for them for how to reproduce some of this team’s greatness in their own work?

Brian:

So, one thing that I’ve been thinking about particularly in the current age with the pandemic and everything going on is kind of ideas around motivation. So one thing that I thought was particularly interesting about this team was that it really peaked both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. And so, I’ll say a little bit what I mean about that. So, in terms of intrinsic motivation, that one I think is a little more obvious, just a bunch of people that want to play music coming together to play music because they want to do it, right? So the intrinsic motivation is a big draw there. But also in terms of extrinsic motivation, there were a lot of professional development aspects to this band. So the band had high visibility within the schools. So MBAs were getting a lot of visibility amongst their peers. There were a lot of management aspects to it. So people were actually learning about management by being on the team. One of the band members actually wrote a business case study about the experience of managing these bands. And so, there were a lot of extrinsic motivators there too. So, the intrinsic motivation of kind of fulfilling the passion of wanting to play in a band, and then the extrinsic motivators of kind of helping professional development. I think when those two things come together, that’s a really good way to keep people motivated. I think oftentimes, we fall into the trap of thinking, oh, people can just follow their passions and that will get them through it, or we can just throw money at it and that will attract people. I think where you really get the synergy is when you find these unique spots where you can actually put those two things together and have both of them running in a given situation.

Richard:

And how can people find those unique spots where intrinsic and extrinsic motivators intersect?

Brian:

Yeah, that’s a really good question. So, I don’t have any silver bullets on that, but the one thing that I do tend to tell people, particularly for team leaders, is to just ask your team members. Ask your team members what they want, what they’re interested in, what are their goals, maybe what are their learning goals, or even just what are their hobbies? Like what are the things they’re interested in and see if you can come up with something like that.

Richard:

All right. Now, is there anything else you’d like to add on, anything else you think listeners or viewers should know? Anything you’re working on recently that you’d like to share?

Brian:

Yeah, well, I guess, so the research that I’m working on right now it’s having mostly to do with creativity. So a lot of the research I do is about how people think about creativity and in particularly, situations where people may not be thinking about creativity in the most accurate way. So for instance, some of the research I’m doing now suggests that people very easily get into creative ruts. So they get into this mindset of like, I can’t create anymore, I’ve hit this wall. But in my research what I’m finding is that it tends to be a little bit of an illusion. So for instance, I do these studies where I have people come in and do some creative work, and I have them predict the trajectory of their creativity across the work. And what I’m finding consistently is people’s predictions tend to be a little more pessimistic than their actual output. So people tend to be more creative over time than they expect they’ll be. And that has implications particularly in creative work when some of these projects can last over a long period of time where people are dropping out of the work too soon and not realizing their creative potential.

Richard:

That is super interesting. Oh, here’s another question and this is going back to the band. I guess it was pretty stable for eight months at a time or for however long you were at school together that year. But it was also dynamic, it was changing regularly. Was there anything in particular you did that helped make that work?

Brian:

Well, one of the things that helped the band is that it does have a very strong identity. So in terms of the identity aspect, I almost think about it like a college sports team. So as soon as you put on the jersey, you’re part of that team and you just go. I think that it had an element of that to it, which is also a credit to the marketing efforts of the people that came before us to really create those band brands if you want to call it.

Richard:

Yeah.

Brian:

So I think that definitely helped a lot.

Richard:

And I’m a little older than you so I just have these visions of different bands that have these solid brands. And as you’re talking about putting on the sports uniform, suddenly I saw the band “Devo” in my head and it’s like, they’re all dressed the same. You know that they are a band because they look alike. So they have a uniform.

Brian:

One of the shows that we did was an 80s rock show. So we would do different theme shows across the year. And some “Devo” came out in that show. People are still into “Devo” I’ll tell you that, at least in the 80s theme shows.

Richard:

I was actually talking to my the guy who helps produce this podcast this morning earlier today. And he was, I’m also a musician so this talking about the band has been really fun for me. And we were talking about different keyboard instruments and synthetic sounds and MIDI instruments. And I went to look at the website and there’s this like really great MIDI instrument that simulates all the synths from the 80s. And in their sample, like this is what it sounds like. The first one was “Devo” so “Devo” is on the brain right now.

Brian:

That’s great. I think about that like so for instance, for guitar they have distortion pedals that you have all sorts of different ways that you can make the guitar sound. But now they just label it with old rock musicians. So for instance, there’s a Jimmy Hendricks pedal. So it’s just trying to recreate his sound.

Richard:

Exactly. Or it’s a digital one and it’s like the “Jimmy” setting or the “Metallica” setting or the “Van Halen” setting.

Brian:

Exactly.

Richard:

And you just instantly, man, people used to work really hard to get those sounds out of analog real physical gear. And now you just–

Brian:

Definitely, and it wouldn’t be consistent either. So if you go back and listen to Hendrick’s recordings over the years, he actually sounds quite different across his career.

Richard:

All right, another funny little tidbit for you as a guitarist. Saw this band the other night they’re called I don’t know if you know them. And the guitarist has such a unique sound and it turns out it’s because he didn’t know how to wire a pickup. He wired it in reverse polarity and he didn’t know it for a few years until a friend looked at it and told him, but now he can’t change it because that’s his sound.

Brian:

That’s interesting. I’ll have to go check them out. I’m not even sure what sound that would produce.

Richard:

Yeah, it’s just a slightly different and definitely unique guitar sound. All right. And if listeners or viewers want to get in touch with you, is there a way to do that?

Brian:

Yeah, so I’m on Twitter @brianjlucas. You could just Google my name at Cornell and all my contact information related to the school and LinkedIn would come up there.

Richard:

Okay, perfect. Well, we’re coming to the end. Brian Lucas, thank you so much for joining us today. I really, really appreciate it.

Brian:

Yeah, thanks for having me. This is a very fun chat.

Richard:

Oh, great, I’m glad you think so and I think so too. And I’m always self-conscious. I hope Vidan leaves this in the video. I’m so self-conscious when I introduce and exit. So there’s my introduction to these self-conscious exit. And remember, to support this podcast, visit my website, kasperowski.com.