Someone from our accounts department approached me about a process change the other day. It concerned how we manage invoices and it was a little painful working the conversation round to a good solution that benefited everyone. Why? Because it started with ‘here’s how I want you to change things’. When you’re dealing with peers it’s a guaranteed bad route to a solution. Anyone who wants to give me a solution without understanding the workings of my team is unlikely to really hit the mark first time. They’re probably in a mindset about what they want me or my team to do rather than the real objective – which is what they want to get out of us.
When it concerns day-to-day work interactions it’s an annoyance, but when this occurs within a creative process the damage is palpable. A structured team of web creatives will consist of people who are expert in a field – interaction design, information architecture, copy writing or whatever, and when a person is trying to force a solution on these experts, the process grinds to a halt. Egos flare, resentments build, perfectly good ideas get ignored or never discussed. So here’s my first golden rule of managing creative teams -don’t talk solutions with experts, just talk problems. This way they can be empowered to use their expertise in getting the best result. By all means tell them if their ideas could be better and need more work, but don’t try to hand them solutions.
Filed under: creative delivery , solutioning, teams, web
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