Creativity, Processes and People.

There is a common misconception that processes are the enemy of creativity. People who think this way argue that strict processes suck the life out of creativity, and that true creative requires anarchy and chaos to thrive. This, they reason, is how you generate ideas that are unique and individual.

Having worked in the marketing, advertising and creative industry for nearly 20 years my experience is the opposite. I’d suggest that processes do not starve creativity, instead they feed it.

At the Jacob Bailey Group, we’ve been thinking about how we can develop our current processes to be more robust, give them more structure and deliver consistency across our four office locations, whilst at the same time providing our team with a platform that allows them, not less, but more freedom to experiment and be ‘creative’.

We believe that now is the right time to tackle this issue as our business will continue to grow over the next few years. We felt that the time spent getting this right today would pay dividends both short term and long term. As Benjamin Franklin once said, “every minute spent in organising is an hour earned”.

“People are more important than any process. However, good people with good process will outperform good people with no processes every time” Grady Booch

So how did we go about designing these processes?

It seems obvious, but we started by asking the people who deliver the work their opinion on the best way to produce that work efficiently and effectively. Without sacrificing creativity, of course!

And we discovered that they already had great processes, they just didn’t call them that. The methods they employ ensure that we produced work of the highest possible standard, meet our clients’ brief, and help deliver projects on time and on budget. We also found out that when they allowed a project to stray outside of these self-imposed criteria, well that’s when things don’t go quite so smoothly.

One final thing we learnt was that each office had variations on the way the work was delivered. They all had merit. Some better than others, some not as good. What was not happening was a sharing of ‘best practice’.

So, rather than impose a whole new set of processes dictated by ‘management’, we decided that it would be a better idea to empower our team, and give them the opportunity to use the processes they already employ, but make them ‘official’ by documenting them. We also set them a challenge to share thoughts, ideas and opinions across offices, suggest ways in which the existing processes could be improved, and to keep them loose – more guiding principles than strict guidelines. We wanted some flexibility to allow for refinement and further improvement as new thinking and our continuing growth occurred.

And they responded with loads of great thinking, fresh ideas and enthusiasm. The only problem we were left with was how to sort through all the great ideas we had. So, we decided that we needed a framework to give them structure. We called it ‘Our Intelligent Approach’. This works well for us as it feels like part of our DNA - we already work with several of our clients to develop ‘Intelligence Over Time’ continually strengthening our relationship with them, but more importantly improving the results of our marketing efforts, generating an ever-increasing return on investment. And finally, we made different people responsible for processes, giving groups of people responsibility for defining, documenting and sharing these best practice ideas across the entire agency. 

“Process change is a journey, seeking perfection before action is suicide. Doing something small now and learning are more valuable than getting a bigger process right later. Whatever we do, we must be prepared to do it again better on the next go around. Building learning feedback and knowledge distribution into processes is mandatory. Constantly gaining tacit insight before designing is key. Designing for change is essential. Acting fast isn’t a risk if we are prepared to pay attention to outcomes and adjust accordingly.” The 10 principles of process management – www.informit.com

The result? It’s still early days, but it looks promising. The team feel engaged and empowered, we’ve seen improved consistency and the individuals who designed the ‘guiding principle processes’ are policing it themselves. And as ‘management’ we simply asked their opinion, encourage collaboration, challenged them to seek improvement and provided a framework.

Time will tell if we’re more efficient. That’s easy to judge. What’s less easy to measure is how creative we are as a result of these improved business processes. No doubt, our clients will provide some opinion, but hopefully the ultimate measurement will be an improvement on, not only our own bottom line, but the positioning and P&L of our clients. Because, for us, that’s the ultimate judge of creativity – how successful marketing is at driving sales.