A proper, well thought out process is one of the hallmarks of a great agency. A proper process effectively guides the chaotic creative journey and turns it into something that resembles organization.
A good creative process introduces useful checkpoints that offer the client the opportunity to guide the project while leaving enough room for the creatives to flex their artistic muscles. A bad creative process is one that is too restrictive or doesn’t offer enough structure to guide the project in a way that is helpful and makes everyone feel involved.
Clients appreciate process. It helps them understand the unorthodox way creatives go from nothing to something. A great process makes them feel heard. After all, have you ever paid an enormous sum of money for something you couldn’t see? A good process will make the client feel they created the project, or at least were intrinsically involved.
Account managers appreciate process. It’s their way of keeping everyone on the team in check. It maintains a semblance of organization, and holds people accountable.
Every agency has struggled with their process at one time or another. Spent painstaking hours thinking through the ideal methodology for their company size and intrinsically unique way of working. An efficient process becomes especially challenging as an agency grows. More disciplines and specialties become involved and teams inevitably begin to silo, with more and more managers appearing between the lines.
In Nassim Taleb’s book Skin In The Game, he makes a succinct point that broad generalized rules and ways of thinking do not apply on a large scale the way they do for smaller groups. Contrary to popular belief, you cannot apply the same rules and ways of thinking to a village as you can to a country.
The problem is that a creative process is not a fool-proof plan. It is not a set of exact rules and guidelines that dissolve the need for pragmatism. A process is merely a set of checkpoints, allowing for progress and appropriate levels of feedback on the path towards your goal.
It is an unwritten rule that every project in the creative industry is high priority, urgent and was due yesterday. Don’t ask me why. This is just the way it is. It is easy to find yourself feeling like an ostrich, burying its head in the sand. Sometimes this feels like the only method available for getting your portion of the project done on time. Without an effective process, this individualistic approach to working can mean work gets done twice or without the context of micro or macro decisions that have been made.
There is a word needed in order to navigate this seemingly confusing and overly complex world that is the creative process and that word is — accountability.
Accountability is the only way that a creative process can work. It is easy to mistake a process for an excuse. An excuse to not be accountable to the many others working on the project. An excuse to not be accountable for the most important part of any creative process — communication.
It is easy to think that a process, especially a rigid one can make up for not communicating with team members or clients alike. Effective communication is the greatest tool we have and one that is surprisingly easy to neglect.
It is far too easy to focus on your artistic masterpiece, caught up with your unorthodox way of creating that others ‘just wouldn’t understand’.
It can feel like an insult to have to try to explain your work, or to allow others to contribute and undoubtedly tarnish your genius ideas.
Process is good, but process is not an excuse for a lack of accountability, or a lack of communication with your team.
Creatives can be notoriously bad at communicating. Not in the traditional sense, in fact they are usually above average. But communicating in the sense of bringing others in to their unique ways of thinking and working.
The line between too much and too little process will go on forever. But there is one aspect of any process that is not up for debate. The only way for any process to work is that each and every team member must be willing to take ownership of the project and be accountable to the rest of their team.
It’s not rocket science. In fact, it’s mostly about empathy rather than anything else. It is about being considerate to the numerous others whose work may depend on yours. It is about being vulnerable. It is about being comfortable not having all the answers and not being afraid to say “I don’t understand.”
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