I prefer it when other people do the work.
That sounds bad right? But hear me out.
Whether you're a CCO or ECD, your primary responsibility remains the same: making sure that a never ending torrent of extraordinary work is constantly being delivered.
This is best achieved when every team member feels that they carry the authority and responsibility for delivering that.
How do I empower my departments
to consistently deliver?
Alignment around three simple ingredients.
The work must be extraordinary. Fresh, evocative, persuasive and category defining.
We must always drive value from our work. Financial value ideally. But also value in how it helps to make us sharper and enhance our reputation.
We must constantly work to create the climate that we want to work in. In short, there’s no space or excuse for assholes.
Sounds too good to be true. Tell me more.
And a scribble is incredibly vulnerable. Or, as my first Creative Director used to tell me, ‘any idiot can kill an idea.’
My (not so) secret way to getting great Creative work comes from breaking it down into three areas: diagnosis, development, delivery.
The diagnosis phase is the briefing. This needs to be tighter than spandex on a glam rock band. I’ve been so frustrated with poor briefing practices throughout my career that in a previous role I developed my own briefing workshops, the presentation for which you can download here.
Aside from time, the second most important part of the development stage is making sure everyone understands how to assimilate the work. For that, I use the ‘We, Me, Them and It’ principle:
The trouble with Creative work is that every idea starts from a scribble.
Reflects the agency. Is this campaign up to our exacting standards? Would we be proud to share it on our social feeds? Does it help to build our reputation?
We
Me
Reflects the individual. Would they put this in their personal portfolio? Are they proud of the work? This is arguably the hardest metric.
Reflects the brand for whom the work is being done. Does it enhance their place in the category? Does it adhere to their brand values?
Them
It
The delivery phase is the final execution and the point at which everything that can go wrong will go wrong. Clients get nervy, especially if it’s provocative work, as the deadline gets nearer. Other projects come in and steal attention from this critical final phase. You have to entrust producers and third parties with your precious work. And the most fateful of all possibilities: your campaign might be subjected to consumer testing.
There is no substitute for experience here. Having steered countless campaigns through production for over two decades, I have both the institutional knowledge to anticipate problems before they arise, and the scars to remind me of how to deal with any obstacle in a mutually beneficial way.
When every Creative knows exactly how work is judged internally, the overall quality of thinking and innovation instinctively improves.
Reflects the product. Are we truly bringing it to life in a way that will resonate with consumers and become naturally contagious as a campaign?
Once you’ve had the idea, it’s time to get to work.
Pouring fuel on an ambitious team.
The professional obligation to help people be their best.
I have had a tendency to end up working with my teams for long periods. Staff turnover under my leadership has always been low. I like to think that’s because I’m so inspiring, but the real reason (or at least one of them) is because I developed a core competencies system. This is a matrix that every Creative, from Junior to Director, can use to assimilate their own mastery of their current position, and understand exactly what’s standing between them and promotion.
The core competencies matrix deconstructs every role under the Work, Reward, Climate ingredients, and gives every team member a completely unambiguous roadmap, and every line manager a basis from which to create a constructive review process. You can view it here.