The Blueprint of a Creative Reinvention (TBWA\Chiat\Day New York)
We all want to be our “best self”, professionally 💼 and personally 🏡.
But, the desire to be your “best self” should not be a desire for who you wish you could be, but who you are when you’re performing at your best.
And, if you want to perform at your best, you need to understand the factors that get you there.
This is your blueprint of creative reinvention. 💭
It is comprised of 6 ways of working and 3 values.
The 1st way of working is to listen and lean in. 👂
Lean into the brief of the client - embrace what it is that’s being asked of you.
If you don’t, and you plough ahead with your own ideas, you’re creating a barrier to united creativity before you even start.
Collaboration is only going to become more important.
“The more us creatives shut up a little bit, the bigger creative rewards for the agency later.”
2nd is small teams, not the infantry.
Don’t attack a task with everyone you can throw at it.
Smaller-scale teams allow for more accountability.
Think, how can teams made up of different departments work together? 🤝
It allows for the heightened sense of personal collaboration with the client.
Aligning with this is the 3rd way, working with urgency.
Clients demand results. A sense of urgency is imperative.
The smaller the team, the more dedicated, the more quickly they can work.
It will also be quicker to solve the problem if the team can meet together to discuss - further helped by keeping it small.
The 4th is teaching by doing. 🎓
Instead of making people better bit by bit - you show them the bar and therefore you aren’t putting a limit on how quickly they can learn.
Action is less of a guided tour.
They can find their own way to that level of idea and fill in the gap themselves.
“We’re not a teacher’s hospital; we are an emergency room.”
5th is working flat.
Instead of having a ladder of people towards the nearest decision-maker, everyone works directly into a decision-maker.
This streamlines the decision process and removes the delays of going through the chain.
Finally, at 6th is to partner up.
No man gets left behind. 🙅♀️
Helping each other, even if it isn’t your speciality, contributes to the efficiency of your team.
Onto the 3 values.
1st: The creative product is all of our responsibility.
The agency should be credited with the work, not just the creative team.
Everybody gets shared accountability, pride and ownership.
2nd: Be tough on the work, be kind to each other.
If you have an environment where criticism is fair and decent, people will speak up.
Making it clear that opinions are on the work, not on the person for having the idea, allows it to be freer to put ideas out in a public space.
3rd: Take care of each other, and everything else takes care of itself.
Your focus can be on more than client service.
Who doesn’t want to be around a team that takes care of each other?
Taking care of each other takes care of the work.
“If you focus on your team and the people around you, you will raise the bar everywhere.”
(The information in this post was taken from Nancy Reyes and Chris Beresford-Hill’s talk on The Blueprint of Creative Reinvention for Lions Live 2020.)
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