Digital Cover Story - Dr. TM

Dr. TM: Dr. Tara Michelle Henderson Knows Creativity Means Business

From Ben Davis High School to Franklin Central to SCAD, Dr. Tara Michelle (Dr. TM) has made her mark on the creative world AND come back to call Indianapolis home. She has over twenty years of experience in marketing and communications, and has worked with brands such as Target, Vera Bradley, White House Black Market, and the NBA. So, yeah, we’re impressed.

In fact, we’re so impressed with Dr. TM that we simply had to invite her into our studio and hear what she had to say about creativity, collaboration, and saying yes. And guess what? She said yes to our invitation! Our conversation went a little something like this:

Polina Osherov: Tell us about your upbringing and earliest days.

Dr. TM: I was born and raised in Indianapolis, and I have a very big family. My parents always knew that I was up to something, and their approach was “Just let her go do her thing.” It was the combination of tough love and the freedom to try and fail knowing that your parents had your back. I mean, they're gonna point out that you messed up, but they're also gonna help you figure it out. 

PO: What is one quality or personality trait that you possess that you think has been instrumental in your success?

Dr. TM: I'm naturally curious, I say yes a lot. I think, Am I gonna learn something? Am I gonna make a mistake? I always want to do something better. I want to make the ordinary feel extraordinary. 

PO: So talk about your experiences early on as you were getting going with your career. It sounds like you got some really good direction at SCAD. But then how did you figure out what you were good at and what you wanted to do?

Dr. TM: I didn't. I just wanted to learn, so I said yes a lot. I got opportunities with the NFL. I started as a PA, running around, and making trail mix, but then I was talking to a TV producer who really liked what I had to say. And then I got on the TV truck, and then I was learning about graphics, and then I was learning about TV production. 

And so saying yes, even if you're like, shit, I don't know how to do that. Y'all have Google now. Go Google it. Figure it out. Or ask someone, or at the very least, just be humble enough to say, “I really want to learn.”

PO: Speaking of learning, you know that one of the things that we're doing at Pattern is building a better support case for the creative economy. We believe it drives so much, and I’d love to hear more about how you think of creativity in more traditional work environments.

Dr. TM: I’ve done quite a bit of research focused on how creativity drives business performance. And to be honest, I have a hard time saying things like creatives versus non-creatives because I'm of the perspective that we're all creative. Creativity is a spectrum. And based on research—both my own and others—I’m confident that creativity is teachable. 

So, if we can acknowledge that creativity is teachable, then why are we not infusing that into our education system, our corporate training, and HR practices? Why are we not talking about it when we're reporting financials to Wall Street? It has to be embedded into every single day and become as normal as talking about sales and gross margins and headcount and capacity.

PO: How do you talk about it? Like, what's the practical application? Is there a quotient? 

Dr. TM: There are a lot of ways to measure creativity. You pick one skill to work on. You establish a baseline and then you repeatedly remeasure that quotient, and you can start to see trends over time. When I do an exec summary, I'm always trying to feed in these creative metrics. I work on a creative team. I've got to be able to tell the story of how effective my team is or isn't.

PO: Sounds like storytelling really plays into this whole thing. Over the years, it became clear to me that providing resources to artists and creatives without addressing the much bigger underlying issues of underinvestment and lack of strategic support would only get us so far.  So it was, okay, well, we got to start working on this bigger problem. And, part of that problem solving is being able to story-tell and educate our stakeholders on the value of the creative economy. So here we are trying to establish something that makes sense for that exec summary, right?

Dr. TM: We have to learn our letters before we can read, before we can write. You and I are suggesting a world where we can talk about creativity at the level of a dissertation, right? But then we've got people who don't even know the letters yet. I keep coming back to the reality that creativity is teachable and it’s measurable. It isn't just some random group of wildly dressed people. Oh, those are the creatives. Everyone's creative. I'll share one last story.

I went to art school, okay. Math is not my strong point, but every month, I have to report my budget, and the spreadsheets that they send me are so ugly and hard to follow. I was like, I can't. So I made my own template. It's cute, it’s one page, and it has all the information. I’m thinking, Who the hell wants to scroll left and right to see a number and freeze panes? My finance partner was like, TM, this is gorgeous. I was like, thank you. I can read it. Do you have what you need? 

Y’all, that interaction with my finance partner is the heart of where I went with my research.

Because ultimately I'm creating it for him to go and present to leaders. And you know what my partner did? He ripped my template. I mean, I permitted him, but he ripped it off and started sharing it. Now everyone is presenting their monthly reports in this template. 

What a beautiful example of the power of collaboration between roles and skills, right? We were able to solve a really interesting problem that benefited all of us. 

PO: I love that. 

Dr. TM: We need more of that. And why not? 

PO: Why not, indeed? Thank you. 

Dr. TM: Thank you. 

Want to be a part of shaping Indiana’s creative future? Buy a ticket to this year’s Creative Economy Summit!

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This story was made possible thanks to the generous support of our friends at Life in Indy.