Three Creative Culture Takeaways from CarMax

"Shared documents aren’t shared understanding."

In today’s business environment, “creativity” and “culture” can feel like they’re simply buzzwords, with no standard archetype. That's why I created a new course that I'm now teaching this semester at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Business called Building Creative Culture. Our mission is to unearth what a "creative culture" truly looks like and to that end we're spending a good portion of the semester visiting unique businesses to take a peek under their hoods.

Our first off-site visit was with my friend Archie Miller, the Discovery Coach of the highly innovative company CarMax, at their Innovation Center in downtown Richmond, Virginia to find how his company’s culture has sustained a creative mindset. Here’s what we learned…

Culture is what people think it is.

The intent of a culture that is determined by leadership can be different than the reality of that culture. What happens when you put people together in the same room is really what defines company culture. At CarMax, each office might have their own culture, but the values are the same. Most companies make the mistake of not developing their company’s culture further than their stated values. It’s often forgotten how important it is to invest attention and energy into the people coming to work and how they feel when they come in every day.

Great leaders need emotional intelligence.

It is easy to establish a set of written values, but leaders are the people that have the responsibility of keeping employee morale high. One of CarMax’s core competencies is courageous leadership. Leaders have to understand and predict how employees might feel under situations and be comfortable enough to give constructive feedback to see their team grow. Cognitive empathy is important because it introduces a logic and rationale into decision making. But “empathy goes bad like an untrained muscle.” If your company goal is to have great leadership that make employees and clients feel valued, try to invest time into training others how they can look at a situation through someone else’s perspective.

“No murder has ever been solved in PowerPoint, put stuff on the walls.”

We were impressed by the amount of stuff stuck to and drawn on the walls at CarMax! Collaborating with teams by putting your ideas directly on the walls creates a space where creativity can flourish. Archie makes a good point when he said “Shared documents aren’t shared understanding.” There’s a difference between collaborating within a Google document and interacting with a a wall-sized flowchart together with a team – and it’s a human one.

The focus that CarMax places on the daily work experience, cognitive empathy, and collaboration in shared physical spaces is key to developing a creative culture where innovation will thrive!

Noah Scalin was the inaugural artist-in-residence at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Business. He co-runs Another Limited Rebellion, an art + innovation consultancy with his sister and business partner, Mica Scalin.