Gooooood Monday morning!
On my mind today is something that I’ve seen people stumble around when it comes to creative management. It’s not really their fault…no one teaches you how to manage in design/fine arts school.
And it’s an issue from the management of the smallest thing (a single task) to the biggest (a giant team of people working hundreds of projects with thousands of tasks).
For me, it all boils down to BALANCE.
Specifically, balancing these 3 things well: Set Up, Follow Through and Awareness.
Set Up
What I mean by “Set Up” is the prep work that exists outside of the actual thing you’re doing or that your team is doing. On an individual level, “Set Up” looks like asking clarifying questions to frame your assignment and checking to see if precedence for what you are doing exists before going full steam ahead.
Eg. Don’t make up a new button style off the cuff — make sure you referencing the same exact font-weight, size, corner radius, etc (unless, of course, the assignment is to make up something new - but even then, there’s likely precedence you should consider).
On an individual level, not being able to create work that feels cohesive to the brand can be one of the biggest hurdles to getting to the next level.
But, on a larger scale of management, “Set Up” looks quite different. It becomes more about making sure the ideal environment exists for getting things done. Making sure those whom you’d like to work with are well-informed about what your team does and are eager to work with you. Committing to timelines that you can actually make because you check everyone’s availability. Having a decent project management system in place to track assets.
Follow Through
Perhaps you think when I say “Follow Through” that I am talking about the actual execution of the work. That’s not quite it.
To me, “Follow Through” means making that after you’ve completed something, you make sure you have alignment between what was asked for and what was delivered. Sounds simple, right? But this often another place that people struggle.
On an individual level “Follow Up” might mean that after handing off a design for a website, you check that it looks correct to the design when it’s implemented.
On a bigger scale of management, it might mean that you create a list or document of all the visual improvements that need to be made to a feature and you meticulously follow up and communicate on each one…not marking it as “done” until it looks correct in its final form.
At an even bigger scale, it might mean that you check in with the people that your team works with regularly to get a sense of how the projects are going and what they feel might be going well or need work.
Awareness
Finally, awareness. When I say this, what I mean is making sure that OTHERS are aware that you did whatever you did. On an individual level, this can mean pinging someone with your update as soon as you have it ready (rather than waiting to be asked for it).
On a bigger management scale, it can mean creating a notification system that lets others know when things are ready. Additionally it can mean using the details that you've tracked about your team efforts (think back to the Set Up) to demonstrate how what your team did was either an immense value-add or a costs savings.
When these 3 things are out of balance…that’s when you see problems.
-People who are too eager to get to the “doing” part and they skip setting the project up thoughtfully.
-People who get so wrapped up in setting things up perfectly that they never START.
-People who create things and hand them off but don’t check that they look right in situ.
-Managers who miss big deadlines because they didn’t account for all the following through they’d need to do, and also didn’t do it until the last second.
-Managers who OVER-estimate the time they need for follow-through and end up reducing their output. And also feel extremely controlling to their clients, to boot.
-Managers who are f*cking amazing at setting things up and following through, but they never learn the art of telling the story of their success, so they might as well not have done anything to begin with.
-People who are great at spinning a story about how great their work is, but when you actually work with them, they don’t seem to be able to get results.
None of this is to say that any manager is perfect, let alone that I am. Things will get out of balance from time to time. But having the self-awareness to evaluate and shift things accordingly is what will determine your success (imho).
Catch you later :)
-Cathy