Be Prepared for Discomfort, Uncertainty, and Failure: Creative Collaboration Part 7

Having been involved in an uncountable number of creative projects, I can safely say that being creative is not about being safe. Safe solutions to creative assignments are rarely creative. If you really and truly want a creative solution, be prepared for uncertainty, discomfort, and failure. Although confirmation of success generally takes some time to appear after the work is completed, the good news is that uncertainty, discomfort, and failure are simply states you may pass through to get to a successful creative solution.

It takes a special kind of environment for truly creative work to happen. Participants need to know it’s okay to break old paradigms and try new things – even when it means foregoing tried and true solutions. When the collaborators know that it’s okay to try possible solutions that might not work out, it will lead to more creative thinking and a better eventual outcome.

When tasked with a creative assignment, it’s not unusual to feel an urge to stick with familiar kinds of solutions that you’ve had success with before, but this “comfort zone” is the enemy of creativity. Some creative people latch onto the first idea that pops into their minds. They jump right into implementing that idea without even considering any options. My advice to people who do this is to push yourself out of that “comfort zone.” If you don’t, you’ll certainly not achieve your creative potential, and you’ll probably burn out at some point. I’ve seen talented people become so locked into one kind of solution that they convince themselves that they are incapable of coming up with other kinds of solutions. Their work becomes one big blur of sameness and you can hardly tell one project from another. When that happens, the cure is to identify what elements you are repeating, and stop doing those things. It might be color, composition, or any combination of many different aspects of your work. You must consciously avoid those habitual solutions and replace them with new habits that keep you from getting into creative ruts. Try to find inspiration in the projects themselves to come up with unique new solutions. Force yourself to try new things and new approaches. This will cause feelings of uncertainty and discomfort, and you can expect a lot of failed attempts, but on the other side of breaking those old habits is the reward of unlimited creative potential.

When you are genuinely going into new creative territory, there will naturally be a certain amount of failure. A good creative process will take this into account and methodically eliminate many possible solutions until the one final solution is arrived at. For example, the multi-purpose WD-40 got its name from having been preceded by 39 failures. Attempt number 40 was so successful it has been a best selling product for almost fifty years and for many of those years it was the only product that the company made.

When your client says they want a very creative solution, it’s important to find out what he or she means by that. It’s probably not what you think, because you and your client probably have very different points of view about what’s creative. In my experience, when a client says they want a very creative solution, two possible scenarios come to mind:

A. The client recently saw something that they liked and thought was creative and now they want you to give them that same thing – but with their logo on it. Of course, this is not creative. Or…

B. The client really does need a very creative solution.

In scenario B, your job is to prepare the client for discomfort. The client needs to know that the degree of creativity of the proposed solutions will be directly proportional to their own discomfort. That is not to say that the more uncomfortable the client is, the better the solution is. Rather it means that creative solutions are unfamiliar by their very nature and may make the approval process somewhat uncomfortable and uncertain.

The magic of a healthy creative collaboration is that team members tend to challenge proposed solutions more than we might challenge ourselves when we work alone. That process of challenging ideas can get very uncomfortable, but it keeps us on our toes and keeps us thinking. Discomfort actually fuels the creative process. It takes maturity and the right kind of environment for this to happen constructively, but that’s just another reason why great creative work is a rare and precious thing.

Please share your comments on my blog, or contact me directly. And please, ask for my help. More to come: watch here for future installments.

Team Dynamics: Creative Collaboration Part 3

You can’t put a random bunch of people together and expect them to be able to successfully collaborate on a creative project. You need a few fundamental elements in place. You need the right people in the right roles, good processes that assure on-target results, and a good structure to facilitate it all.

Let’s start with the people.

First, take the time to define each role; what skills are required of each role, and what is expected of the performance of each role. Define each role specifically enough so that it meets the needs of the work, and broadly enough so that you don’t miss out on unexpected talent. Then put the most qualified person in each role. I like to think of it like casting roles in a performance.

The leader’s role is to define project goals, team roles, and then support each team member in bringing his or her abilities to the assignment. In simplest terms, the project leader gets the right people in the right roles, sets up the right conditions, and then gets out of the way and lets people do their assigned work

Once team roles are assigned, it’s important that team members have ownership of their roles and support from management to fulfill those roles. Team members have an obligation to fulfill their roles to the best of their abilities, and management should support that. With this level of personal responsibility in place, each team member can utilize his or her own unique knowledge, skills, and experiences, while the project leader is able to remain focused on overall results rather than the details of how each person is executing his or her role. To be clear, the leader should provide ongoing feedback about the work, but that feedback should be based upon how well the work meets the brief – and not upon how the leader would have done the work himself or herself. Indeed, the execution of the work is likely to be quite different from how the leader would have done the same thing. If the team is well defined and well cast, the results should far exceed what the leader could achieve alone. Therein lies the beauty of 1+1=3.

A successful creative team has good processes.

Good processes are like good habits. They allow you to focus your attention on the special things you’re doing without having to use up resources on the mundane. For example, when you get ready to go to work in the morning, you probably aren’t even aware of the thousand little habits that help you get yourself properly groomed, dressed, and fed. Your mental resources are more likely focused on issues and opportunities at your job or some other important thing. All of those little habits that help you get ready for work free you up to use your resources for those more important things. Those habits also help keep you out of trouble – like forgetting your wallet – or your pants. Good processes are a way of institutionalizing wisdom, so that you don’t have to keep re-learning from your mistakes and successes.

That same principle applies to creative collaborations. Whatever your field is, there are going to be processes your team can use to maximize the benefit of everyone’s efforts, and keep the project from getting into trouble. At my former company, we had a set of processes that we called our Creative Process Map. It consisted of twenty-five distinct steps. We also had customized variations for each of our different disciplines such as branding, broadcast design, interactive design, and advertising design.

Here is an example of a standard set of creative processes:

1. Identify a need.
2. Prepare a project brief.
3. Assign the team.
4. Conduct a kickoff meeting with the team.
5. Gather information, analyze it, and gain insight.
6. Develop a broad range of possible solutions.
7. Test those ideas and refine to a single one for implementation.
8. Produce the work, testing and refining as you go.
9. Deliver and/or implement the finished work.
10. Conduct a wrap meeting to capture the learning.
11. Archive the work elements.

A successful creative team has good structure.

Any creative process is really just a set of decisions; choosing to do this and not that – a thousand times over – by every member of the team. As a matter of fact, if you were able to make every decision instantly, you’d be able to do your work in a fraction of the time that it normally takes. Most of the time spent on a creative project is actually spent making decisions, or re-doing work where the best decisions were not made. A good structure makes it possible for everyone on the team to make better decisions faster.

The most important aspects of structure are chain of command, and who is responsible for what. If the project lacks decisive leadership, the project will suffer and so will the team. That is not to say that the leadership of the team should be making all the decisions. To the contrary, most decisions should be made by experts in their assigned roles. The leaders need to make decisions about issues that transcend individual team roles. Leaders must take the higher view that is not so visible to team members who are working on limited aspects of the project.

Everyone does a better job when they know who is in charge – and when they know that someone is in charge. It also helps if the team believes those in charge make good decisions.

A great team is made up of strong players who play well together.

Just like a sports team requires all of its players to work together in harmony, the same applies to a creative team. Sometimes you can have great people, processes and structure, and yet still have a dysfunctional team. When there is disharmony in a team it is frequently because there’s a conflict in values of those on the team. Workplace values are one of the keys to successful creative collaboration, but that is a big subject and will be the topic of a future installment.

Please contact me with your thoughts and comments. And please, ask for my help. Watch here for future installments.

Creative Collaboration Part 2: Assign a leader. Please!

 

An orchestra needs a conductor, a movie needs a director, and a project needs a leader. No matter what the title, the project leader is the one person who coordinates the direction of the project, and is empowered to make decisions and take action. A project leader usually has internal or external clients to answer to, but he or she is still the one person who has direct and primary responsibility for the project. The leader provides the vision that will pull all of the parts into a unified whole. The leader helps each team member understand how his or her contribution will fit into that unified whole.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that the project leader is necessarily the most important person on the team, but I am saying that the project leader is key to a successful outcome. The best project leaders know that a big part of their role is to make it possible for the team to deliver an outstanding product.

When management is reluctant to empower its employees or to assign project leadership, the results will be predictably mediocre, and you can expect to find anxiety among the team members. Creative professionals feel more motivated and do a better job when there is a clear chain of command so that definitive answers can be had, actions can be taken, and progress can be made.

There are some schools of thought that it’s best to let members of a creative team work “democratically” without an assigned leader. I’m sure there must be cases where that kind of works, but in a professional setting where time is money, order and structure provide an undeniable advantage.

It’s also important to assign a qualified person as the leader. By their nature, top creative professionals want to grow their skills, and quite often the only growth path they may be aware of is into a management or leadership role. Unfortunately, the skills that help a person become a top creative professional do not necessarily prepare them to lead or manage others. When a top creative pro is put into a leadership position for which they’re not prepared, expect anxiety all around. The tragic result can be that the top creative person feels they must leave the organization to save face instead of stepping back from the leadership role. I learned that lesson the hard way by promoting a very talented Designer into a Creative Director role. I lost this person within months because the new role took her away from her strength and put her in situations that caused a kind of stress that she was not prepared for. With proper guidance and training the transition can be made successfully, but all too often it’s the Peter Principle in action.

It is very important to make sure the person who is moving into a leadership or management role understands how their role will change. More often than not I have found that top creatives resist moving in that direction once they understand that it means they may be doing less of the hands-on work they love, and spending more time supporting others. One good way to help a person prepare for leadership and test their tolerance for it is to assign him or her to lead smaller projects. In practice, most projects can be broken out into a number of smaller projects that will be coordinated to create the whole. For each of these sub-projects, there should be a qualified individual assigned the leadership role and ownership of the outcome of that sub-project.

One indicator of a great leader is how he or she speaks about the team. A great team leader will refer to the project and the team members in an inclusive way with the word “our,” such as “our project” and “our designer,” whereas a lesser leader will use the possessive term “my,” such as “my designer.” The difference indicates whether the leader considers himself or herself a part of the team or above the team. The most effective leaders act unquestionably as a part of the team and feel a responsibility to support the team.

Please contact me with your thoughts and comments. And please, ask for my help. Watch here for future installments. 

Creative Collaboration Part 1: Define the Target

An effective creative collaboration starts with a clearly defined target. A written creative brief helps all involved parties to literally get on the same page about what needs to be accomplished.

The brief should be specific enough to help everyone understand what success will look like, and broad enough to foster innovative or unexpected solutions.

It’s a bit like taking time to make sure you are asking the right question before you put a lot of effort into coming up with an answer.

I think of a creative brief as the DNA of the organism that the project will bring to life.

A slight flaw in the DNA will result in problems as the project grows, but get the DNA right, and magic happens.

Even though a creative brief is usually only a page or two of text, those words will have a huge impact on the finished project.

DNA is a single molecule, but look at the complexity and diversity that can come from that single molecule.

One of the key benefits of a well-written creative brief is that it provides an objective measure for ongoing efforts. Are you growing the animal you meant to grow?

In practice, creative briefs often need to evolve.

Circumstances surrounding the project may change, or progressive efforts may reveal new insights.

With building a house as a metaphor, no matter how detailed the blueprints may be, once the structure starts going up and you can walk into the space, you will discover things you had not anticipated.

I recently watched some time-lapse archival footage of the original construction of Disneyland. As Main Street was being built, a large gazebo had been planned at a prominent point on the street, but when Walt saw that it blocked the view of the Magic Castle, he immediately had it moved.

On the film, one can see this large structure moving in and then quickly moving out. The gazebo eventually found a home at New Orleans Square, where it sits today.

Watch for new information and be prepared to use that new information to complete the project to its most successful outcome – whatever the factors may be. Keep the brief up to date and make sure that all involved parties understand the changes in the brief.

Projects without a formal creative brief tend to meander.

People working on such projects typically do what they want to do rather than what the project needs.

And who could blame them? They haven’t been given clear direction.

While the project team may appear to be busily working on the project, the essential purpose of the work may be only marginally served or missed altogether.

A creative brief is the surest way to avoid mistaking activity for progress.

The following is a template for a written creative brief. One or two pages is the desired length. Differing assignments have different needs, so modify and add or delete sections to best capture the essential information needed to make the project a success. Clarity is absolutely critical – that is the point of the brief.

SAMPLE CREATIVE BRIEF

Project name:

Date: and/or version number

Submitted by: Who prepared the brief (usually the Creative Director)

Client contact: The person with approval authority on the client side

Project leader: Probably the Creative Director

Project team: Key team members and their roles

Budget: Gotta be clear about that, at least to the project leader(s).

Schedule: The due date and any other significant dates.

Project overview: A short, high-level description of the project

Target audience: Who is the intended consumer of this item?

Assets available: There are almost always a few existing assets available for a project and it’s helpful to know what those are. Assets may include logos, brand style guides, music, photos, etc.

Creative direction: Any information that will point the look and feel in the right direction. In media projects, the target emotional response is worth great effort to establish before solutions are attempted.

Technical specifications: For some projects, this is absolutely key to success.

Please contact me with your thoughts and comments. And please, ask for my help. Watch here for future installments.