Streamlining Creativity

TTL 8

Accelerate your workflow and embrace diversity

👋 Good Morfternight, this is Paolo Belcastro, with the eighth issue of TTL: Tools & Thoughts for Leaders.

Today we look at our creative process. More specifically, how to streamline and accelerate it while introducing diversity.

The fast lane to creativity 🚀

Innovation is a creative process. Leadership, too, is a creative process when you think about it. Building trust, aligning people, setting goals and moving together towards them is first and front most storytelling.

Creative processes are hard. The stories you are telling are ones you don’t know yet. You are writing them as reality unfolds. Like a roadmap, they indicate a general direction but will have to be adjusted based on the obstacles encountered.

“Creativity takes courage,” as Henri Matisse said, because every creative process is both unique and challenging. It requires hard work, embracing mistakes, and enduring multiple rounds of revisions and critiques.

The good news is that the recently introduced AI-based tools can help accelerate the process. Steve Jobs used to say that “the computer is a bicycle for the mind”. Pushing this metaphor one step further, Large Language Models (LLMs) are like bike lanes for our bicycle equipped minds…

You can’t rush creativity, but finding the right tools and learning to use them is like discovering a shortcut.

Here are a few ways I make sure that my work will be at its best in a short time, leveraging LLMs. (Claude and ChatGPT if you are curious)

Quantity leads to quality

A teacher gives his class an assignment: over a month, half of them will have to make a perfect piece, the other half will have to produce as many pieces as they can. The first half will be graded on quality, the second half on quantity.

Now, you’ve probably come across this parable.

This story first appeared in Art & Fear (1993) by David Bayles and Ted Orland, but the medium was changed from photography to pottery to diversify the examples, as both authors were photographers. James Clear later adapted this story in Atomic Habits (2018), combining the original photography tale with the altered pottery version

Anyhow, in all the versions, by the end of the month the best work came from those who made the most pieces, not the ones who focused on crafting a single “perfect” piece.

The lesson? Practice makes perfect better. 😉 Creating repeatedly hones your skills and deepens your understanding, making it more likely that you’ll stumble upon greatness.

AI as an accelerator 🤖

Now, here’s where it gets even more interesting: AI can help you move along that creative highway even faster.

In every creative endeavor, there are important but often repetitive and time-consuming tasks that don’t directly contribute to the innovation.

For example, if you are writing, AI can proofread and catch typos, help you craft outlines from drafts or translate and help you polish your work.

Practical example: I regularly take notes about ideas, things I read, things I hear. At some point, I identify a set of notes revolving around a single idea and decide that could be a blog post, public or internal at work, or a newsletter. I then organize them roughly in a sort of pre-draft. I can then ask the AI to extract an outline from the document I produced. As an outline, it’s easier to manipulate, and I can reorganize the elements logically, which leads to a new outline. I can then give the new outline to the AI and ask it to reorganize my notes based on the new outline, preserving my writing, without modifying it. At that point, I have a draft to work with. I can go through this process more than once as I incorporate new elements to the draft.

Use AI as a tool that removes the tedious parts of the process, allowing you to create more and faster.

By speeding up the workflow, AI allows you to focus on aspects that truly enhance your skills.

Collaboration leads to quality

Two heads are better than one, especially when tackling complex creative tasks. In fact, often, the more minds involved, the better the result. Each additional perspective adds value, helping you see what you might miss on your own.

The publishing industry is a great example. Authors rarely work in isolation: they rely on a team that includes beta readers, editors and proofreaders, each offering feedback that strengthens the final product.

Many of us turn to friends, family, or colleagues for feedback, and their observations highlight issues or insights we hadn’t considered.

Collaboration brings fresh perspectives, helping to spot mistakes, clarify confusing areas, and keep everyone accountable.

Collaboration ensures that the final product is not just your best work, but the best it can possibly be.

AI as a multiplier 🤖

Collaboration and feedback are great, but they come with challenges. Your partner has to go to the gym and is a bit distracted, your colleagues are swamped with work, and your mum—well, she always tells you your work is outstanding, so she doesn’t really count.

Moral of the story: relying on others for feedback can be tricky, especially when you’re creating frequently. Friends and family have their lives, can’t always respond quickly, and may be a little biased. While that’s nice, objective feedback is just as important.

That’s where AI comes in. It can provide instant feedback, whether it’s catching issues, suggesting improvements, or helping you refine your phrasing. While not a perfect substitute for human input, AI can spark new ideas and push you to improve. It’s like having a feedback partner that’s always available—maybe a bit robotic, but never tired, distracted, or annoyed.

Practical example: When my article is ready, I ask the AI to read it and comment it for me. I simply provide a few questions, along with the draft. The list of questions is not set in stone, and depends on the content and context, but they are things like “Is this text understandable by a 12y old?”, “Do you detect any logical flaw in my reasoning?”, “Am I relying on prior knowledge I am not sure my readers have?”, “Am I generalizing a personal example into a principle without a solid foundation?”, “Please summarize what you understand reading this article”, “What is the point I am making?”, etc.

In the end, while human feedback is priceless, AI offers a reliable, 24/7 companion for your creative process—ready to help whenever you need it.

Diversity leads to quality

We were talking about your mum being biased. Chances are, most of the people around you think like you.

But what would your competitors say about your work? Or your distant cousin who always says you overcomplicate things? How about that colleague who doesn’t know you that much, and has a wholly different approach to everything?

Diversity is key to improving the quality of creative work.

You’re not trying to convince people who already think like you—you want to reach everyone else. And even if you don’t, bringing in different perspectives is like taking the scenic route—it may slow you down and challenge your thinking, but it leads to richer, more innovative results.

To truly grow, we need to engage with ideas that challenge us.

AI as an enemy 🤖

You could ask those people for feedback, but first, you would encounter the same limitations we already discussed, time is precious. More importantly, such conversations would be emotionally loaded. It’s really challenging to provide, or listen to, feedback between people who know they think differently.

Instead, you can ask the AI to play devil’s advocate—posing counterarguments, questioning your assumptions, or even impersonating someone with a drastically different viewpoint.

Imagine you’re writing a press release for a new product. You know competitors or critics will challenge your claims. Rather than waiting for public feedback, you can ask AI to step into your competitors’ shoes and critique your arguments. This allows you to fine-tune your content before it goes live.

Practical example: Same process as with feedback, but the tenure of questions change. Here I would ask things like “Refute my arguments in the most energetic ways”, “Please play RED TEAM and find any logical flaws in my reasoning”, “Fact-check my article and highlight any inconsistency”, “What would you say if your purpose was to invalidate the points I am making?”, you get the idea…

Unlike human feedback, which can sometimes feel confrontational, AI offers an unbiased way to critique your work. You can’t get mad at it!

The creative edge

Mistakes are an essential part of the creative journey and contribute to its beauty.

Quantity, collaboration, and diversity are the three key ingredients that AI tools can enhance by helping you identify and address mistakes more effectively.

You’re not asking AI to create for you—you’re responsible for the creative process. Instead, these tools provide valuable input, handle repetitive tasks, and challenge your thinking, allowing your work to evolve.

By leveraging AI, you can advance your content more rapidly and ensure it’s the best it can be. With the right balance of human creativity and AI support, the possibilities are endless.

Stay creative, stay courageous, and embrace the fast lane when you need it. After all, with the world moving faster than ever, why shouldn’t you?

AI won’t replace managers, but managers who use AI will replace those who don’t. It’s all about collaboration, not competition with machines. ― Andrew Ng

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That’s it for today.

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Here on TTL, we dig into practical leadership tips and effective strategies, with a particular focus on tech leadership and managing distributed teams (that’s what I do every day, add me on LinkedIn).

Whether you’re steering a tech startup or leading a remote team, these insights are designed to help you navigate the complexities of modern leadership.

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I also publish on paolo.blog and monochrome.blog

Cheers,