017-Working with Creatives

[MUSIC] Welcome to the Project Management Happy Hour. Our aim is to share Frank and on's discussion about real world issues in project management. But do it in a way that's not too dry. Though it might get a bit salty sometimes. Today's show, Working with Creatives. [MUSIC] >> Hi, I'm Kim Messendrup, PM and trainer. And with me today, as always, is the amazing Kate Anderson. Hi, Kate. >> Hi, Kim. >> How you doing? >> I'm doing good. How are you doing? >> I'm feeling creative today. >> I'm excited. >> I am too. Before we get into that, quick recap of what we're about for our listeners. Our format is casual, but on this talk about tough subjects in project management. We don't pretend to have all the answers, but hopefully we have some useful lessons learned to share. Now, Kate, back to our show. I'm really excited about today. We've been talking about relaunching our membership site for so long now, and it's finally here. [MUSIC] >> And the last thing I want to say is that we're going to have a lot of fun, and we're going to have a lot of fun and fun, and we're going to have a lot of fun and fun, and we're going to have a lot of fun and fun, and we're going to have a lot of fun, and we're going to have a lot of fun, in terms of constraints of what the website can or can't do, what the technology can or can't do. Their job is to think about how you could bring something to life outside of any technical constraint and then work with the technical folks to make it a reality. That's kind of my, when I think of a creative, that's the type of person I think of. Sean, do you ever get negative connotations that come along with being a creative? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think Kim, you bring up a good point is that sometimes I think from the outside, a lot of people look at the creative teams and the creative people on a project or within a company as being exclusive. So there's a little bit of a notion of a club with closed doors, which I don't agree with, but that definitely, that connotation sometimes exists. I think creative people, unfortunately, get a bad rap for not being as concerned about timelines or details or even being on time. Those parts of the business and life that we all have to do. So yeah, there's a lot of negative connotations about the creative people in the creative field. My favorite creatives that I worked with were the ones who understood ultimately that we were tasked with delivering a product. And if we didn't meet timelines or stay within our budget or deliver something that worked out, it didn't matter what we made. It doesn't matter how cool their idea is if it's just not going to get done. I, the best, and that's true of any type of project team member, though, right? Like, if somebody, if a technical person is just going to sit there and be like, well, it can't be done. There's absolutely no way to even move the needle forward a little bit with this scope. It's like, okay, well, that's not helpful. So I've definitely were with creatives who were it a very appreciative of any work on scope of clearly defining expectations, wanting to meet timeline and brief deliverable dates, like, banish the notion of that stereotype because I've definitely worked with many people who appreciate the structure that project management provides. Good, good. I would say that if you're working with a creative that you feel like is only concerned with the aesthetics of a project or the coolness of what the project could be, and they're not understanding the business or the business goals, I think you're working with the wrong creative. I think you need to find somebody else to work on your project to be totally blunt because that's part of the world we live in and it's what makes the world turn. I really like that. I'm just going to repeat that for our listeners is that if you've got creatives on your project and they don't get the business and they're more focused on the aesthetics, then you're working with the wrong person. So we talked about creatives in terms of creative people, but can we talk about creative projects? And are they really different from any regular project that we would be used to working on, like I say, a non-creative project? I don't think so. I think that the outputs are come up with in a different way sometimes, but at the same time, they have structure, they have deliverables, they have needs, they have budgets, all those other things. So absolutely not. I think they should follow the same structure that everything else does. How do you come up with scope that's detailed enough to control your project when your stakeholders don't know what they want? Good question. I think that there's a few different ways to work on creative projects. I think they all have to do with who's on the team, what their expectations are, and all those different things. Can you walk us through your typical process on how you might approach this? Because I think when we come to a project that's deliverable, we say a website. We kind of know what we want it to look like, but it's hard to make specific requirements. I want this color code, I want this graphic, I want this here and that there, which is a little different from maybe some of the some typical projects where, okay, I've got a network, I've got these endpoints that I know I have to have. I'm going to use a security protocol on this thing. So when I come into a project like this, I, I, not being as familiar with the process, I might get a little concerned like my gosh, I don't really have my hands around what this exact scope is because it's a creative process to develop that. So can you talk us through how you approach that kind of situation? Yeah, so, you know, here we are back again about the people, you know, early on when I was talking about the lessons that I've learned about in business over my, in my career, and that was all about the people, but creative project is also all about the people. So the thing that I think you need to focus on when you're starting a project is the people that are going to use your creative project. So the end users of whatever it is, whether it's a website or a video or an app, you name it, somebody's got to use this thing. So we have to focus on those users and those, those users are people. So I think what you want to do is you want to start by defining who that audience is, who are the people that are going to use this thing? Watch this video, use this app, is it this website? And then you have to understand what are they like? What don't they like? What's their personality? What's going to resonate with them? So you're looking for detailed, not just the user, user description, but actual segmentation, right? Yep, exactly. You know, and sometimes people call that personas and things like that or user groups, lots of different names for it. But really, you have to understand who is going to use the product and what are those people like and what are they don't like? And if you work at a big ad agency, there will be a description of what those people are like, if they were going to describe me, they'd be like, you know, we're trying to market to Kate, you know, a 20 to 35 year old women who are, you know, middle class and looking for a place to go out to dinner on Friday night. Like they'll, you know, they want something that's easy and casual, but not too stressful to get ready for. Like they'll put together a brief like that. Yeah, Kate, I think that's a great point because, you know, personas, demographics, there's all such technical terms and we get these briefs that a lot of times are kind of silly to read. But what I like to do is I really like to actually kind of break past that and just again, think about who is this person? What are they like? And, you know, why would they even visit this website? You know, again, think of them as people. Does that apply even if I have something boring like a password reset portal? Absolutely. A person has to understand how to use a password reset portal and people get frustrated. People unfortunately aren't the greatest at using devices or products sometimes. So you have to think about this person as somebody who's bored or in a rush and has to reset their password. All right. So point one, we've got to figure out our audience and try to segment them and get a really good, I guess, picture of them and what they're going to experience, right? Yeah, absolutely. Where do we go from there? So after that, I think once you know who the people are that you're going to be using your product, your end product, you have to understand what your goals are for that audience. So if our goal is to sell more products or to get visitors to a website, we have to understand how that fits in with the people that are going to be using it. Okay. So then we want to specifically understand what they want to do. Are you talking about steps right now? Or are we talking about what's the end goal or the end result we want from them? Some result that we want from them. So let's, let's, if we have audience A, B and C that are going to be visiting our website, each of those audiences might actually be looking to do something slightly different on that website. And we have to understand what those things are that they want to do. But we also have to understand what we want to get out of the situation as the creators of that website or that product. Okay. So we need to set not just their goals, but also our goals for their interaction as well. Exactly. You know, we're doing this for a reason. Putting this website up, creating this app to do something on our end with our business. So we have to know what we need to get out of it as well. So point one, we know our audience rather. We know point number two, we want to understand what our goals and their goals are. And so where does that take us? What would we do next? I think the next thing we have to understand is the top things that we want to communicate to these audiences. You know, there's a creative product is usually a method of communicating with people. So it's not just all about looking nice, it's about communicating information. So we have to bullet point out top three or four or five things that we need to communicate to these people to meet those goals. If you think about like the websites that you use every day and like the ways that they're different and they show you these things, like one of the things I love about my bank is that whenever I log in, I have, I am crazy and I have like eight different bank accounts for like different savings and things like that. So, but at the top of my page of my, in my bank, there's like a nice little graph chart that shows me where all my money is across all these different savings accounts. And I'm like, I love this so much. It's probably the number one reason I love my bank. It doesn't help me bank, like it doesn't help me pay anything or like use my card easier or like, you know, anything like that, maybe feel more secure, but it gives you this nice way of seeing my money and it's my favorite thing about my website, like about my bank. It's so dumb. Like those types of things, I feel like you go to like Facebook and it's like a totally different experience, right? But each one of those like have different ways that they're communicating to you and like different goals that they want you to get out of that experience. Like it can be so different across so many different platforms that you consume on a daily basis. Yeah, I think that's such a great example actually because what your bank is probably knows about you and people that use our customers of their bank is that they want to feel secure and they immediately found a way to make you feel secure and comfortable about knowing where all your money is. So they did it with that little graphic that is fun for you to look at, but also gives you this feeling of security and who doesn't want to have security when it comes to their money. So love that those little details can make such a difference in how we feel about a company that we do business with. This actually gives me a little bit of an epiphany because having spent so much time focusing on technical aspects of projects, you start to think of the aesthetic or the web front end or the part that people interact with as just sort of the shiny bit you put on at the end. And it's really interesting to think of that instead as a very important communication medium. Absolutely, I think that it's a communication medium and the term that has been kind of thrown around for quite some time now is storytelling. And the approach is now that whether you're, I think Kim, you're a great example of trying to reset your password or whether you're logging into your online bank or whether you're watching a video, there's a story being told. And we're always part of that story when we're part of these products. So what I like to do is I like to try and boil down in a creative project is what is the key message, the key takeaway at the end of the project. And I think that that message has two sides to it. There's an emotional message and there's a practical message. So what we need to do is really understand is when a user leaves that video or that website are they inspired and they're happy, are they sad, are they feeling motivated? What is that feeling that we want them to have? Kate's case, she wants to feel secure about her money every time she logs under a website. So that's super important. But then there's a practical side of that key takeaway as well. So the practical side of Kate's situation is she needs to know where her money is. And if she wants to take it out or move it, she needs to know exactly where it is. So understanding a key emotional message and the key practical message is a huge part of a creative project. I feel like so often in tech, like working on the back end side of things is that everyone is so focused more on the ability to do whatever it is that you need to do right, whatever that call to action, whatever we want them to do. And a lot of times that emotional side of it gets swept away. I know that anytime a company internally has spent on our internal tools, anytime they have spent or dedicated resources to make it one, feel branded, feel modern and updated and work nicely. I'm so impressed. I'm like working here is the coolest and best company I have ever worked for because they take care of me, they're employee because I know that it's challenging to work through and iterate and come up with a nice solution. Like things that work smoothly had some amount of design put into them and that was not free and that wasn't easy. And it's really cool whenever you see that they took that effort of care for their internal customers. Yeah, I've seen that on to call it out SharePoint. I've seen SharePoint sites get branded and a lot of money spent on them. I'm like, why are you spending money on it? Just use what comes out of the box. So who do you care? It's used internally, but now I'm starting to get it right. It needs to be, needs to pull you in and get you engaged. Absolutely. So just to recap our process, we identify our audience and then we figure out what their goals are and our goals. Figure out what we want to communicate through the medium and then what's our key message. You got it. All right. So I think you might have actually walked me through this process when we did PM happy hours. So that's if we revisit PM happy hour in this context, we've got our audience, right, which are our podcast listeners. What up guys? Hey, that's you guys. And our audience to segment them, we've got project managers. We've got people who are not yet project managers, but they're very interested. And we've got a lot of people who work with project managers and they're just interested in project management overall, but don't want to listen to a really boring podcast. Did I miss anything there? No, you got it. And then our goals for the website is that we can provide information in a very easy and enjoyable way and try to impart the idea that we want to try to make this as fun and as painless as possible. And I think our other goals is that we want them to subscribe. Oh, yes. So we do. We have to break that down. We are legit. I don't want to get off in too much of a tangent here, but oftentimes when we're at this stage of identifying our audience and what our goals are, sometimes we're afraid to say that we want to have a profitable business or a profitable product or we want to sell things or we want to gain members in your case. And we should not obviously shy away from that just because they are financially motivated. So it's super important to be honest about what we're trying to get out of the situation. It's great about you is that you shouldn't feel bad about it because you have great motivations to educate the community while still gaining membership. I think that goes like to the top things that we want communicated through the medium, right? I think that we want to, I think we want our site to feel easy to use. But I think that we also want to communicate, you know, how accessible project management is regardless of who you are and that it's something that, you know, all PMs can get better at and focus on and revisit the basics and, you know, become better PMs and provide resources for people who are not PMs but can learn to work better with PMs because that also makes project management as a whole better. Right. And I think we wanted it to be professional but not uptight, right? You can be professional and still be relaxed. And I think that's one of the things we try to do. And I think with that, right, with what is the key message, our emotional message is that we want, I don't know, I wouldn't know like what word to describe that feeling as because it's like, it's not like they're chilled out, but it's not like they're like, like stressed out and ready to go into work. But you know, that our frank and honest talk, right? Like that, like feeling like you're hanging out with some PM buds and being authentic. Hmm, authentic. There it is. It's like, that's, that'd be our, I think our number one. It's like, this is authentic battle worn PMs. You're here to share their wisdom with you. You should feel safe in asking tough questions that you might not feel comfortable asking it work to your coworkers. And I think we have that in our site. I think so. So thank you, Sean. I know you guys have it. Can you put it there? So it's something that I was really excited to talk about whenever Kim was like, we're going to talk with a creative. I was like, Oh, hooray, because I personally think that creative projects are more subject to scope creep than any other type of project. And I mostly think this because of one, I have been a perpetrator of being a customer of web design and scope, scope crept as it were in the past. And I also have seen, you know, I've been part of a team that's creative and working with a customer. And we just keep giving away work for free. I, one of my worst failed projects was a branding project for SharePoint. And that just spun out of control. I know I've learned some things along the way, but hopefully we can give some advice to our listeners so they don't have to live through several failed creative projects to learn how to manage scope. So how do you want to talk about how you would approach that based on your years of experience here? Yeah, absolutely. Well, there's a lot of styles of working on projects. You know, and there's a lot of tools that we have available to us project management tools. You know, things like Kanban and Agile and all that. But when I boil it down, I see there's two distinct approaches to a creative project that have worked really well for me and the teams that I've been on. The first one is when you know you have a limited scope, a limited timeline and a limited budget. Again, I think you have to be really honest with yourself and honest with the team that you're in that situation. And in that situation, you have to have a really, really attentive team. You have to make sure that everybody on the team, all the stakeholders are really engaged. You have to make sure that they show up for the meetings. You have to make sure that they're honest and open about their feedback because you have to limit the revisions. In a lot of cases, you have to say we've got three rounds of revisions. If somebody waits till the very end and they hold their tongue and they say something that they should have spoke up for in the very first time, then we've got a problem. So it's super important that everybody is held accountable to being part of the team to get that project done within that limited scope and that limited timeline. Definitely, especially with like the three rounds of revisions. I've seen so many people wait until the end and say, well, I thought I would get fixed by then. Or now that I've looked at it for the third time only by being in this meeting because I was too busy to look at it otherwise. Like I cannot, like God, those people make me insane. They're like, well, can you change the color? And you're like, bro, no, we cannot. If you want to pay for three more rounds of revisions, sure, because that's an entirely different design. Yeah, I can't tell you how many times I've heard, well, I showed my boss or well, I showed my wife, this project or that project. And the answer that I always have is one, if your boss or your wife was a stakeholder, then they should have been in all of these meetings. Exactly. But if they're not a stakeholder, then unfortunately, we can't take that feedback and do a count. We've got to get this done. We all agree we're going to get it done in this limited scope. The creative team member holds a lot of responsibility for reading the room, reading the audience, listening for those long pauses, looking for the look on people's faces to say, hey, Kate, hey, Kim, I'm seeing what's going on. You seem to be silent when I'm presenting this new design. We should be excited. So we have to actually push people because people are naturally not well inclined to give feedback, especially if it's negative feedback. People I've learned are actually suck at giving feedback. So we have to teach them how to give feedback. We have to teach them the kinds of things we're looking for and we have to make them feel open and comfortable about it. I think the project manager actually plays a big role in this as well. they have to also be the partner of the creative and say, you know, okay, in this. we better make sure that XY and Z stakeholder understands what we're doing and where we're going next with this thing. It's so funny. You say that people suck at giving feedback. We had a long time client of this ad agency and they were great at giving feedback, negative feedback. And so what they had to do was retrain them like here's what we're going to do. We're going to start with the things we like so we don't just poo poo on this new idea. We're going to start with what we like and then you can add your criticism. They had to be trained to give nice feedback first and then negative feedback second, which I have actually taken forward into the way that I give feedback almost on anything really like there's I've been giving a lot of feedback on presentations and diagrams lately that are also trying to tell a story and are in a way a creative product and a lot of time they start with this looks really great. You've done you've done the story well or I really understand the division here or I understand you know what the vision is. As some things that make me confused are you know why are there 18 colors on the screen. What what do these lines mean and there's a typo in the corner but starting with positive feedback always let's folks know what you're excited about and I think that's a really good way to collect that feedback and then adding the the criticisms or the confusion or just like. I don't know why this is here like you can add that afterwards that the people know what you're excited about and what you want to stay and then what you don't like it what you'd like to have changed I think that's a really good structure to provide feedback in if anyone is needing a structure to provide feedback in. Yeah, I think you bring up a great point there is that it's all about how you give the feedback and I think that it's also important to understand and I think this is really important for project managers to understand as well. It's also all about how you take the feedback so when it comes to negative feedback what I've learned to do is of course not take it personally this isn't about me this is about a business objective or goal or projects but also dig deeper try and understand why did this person feel that way about this thing so try and dig a little bit deeper other than I don't like blue because sometimes. The reason that they don't like blue can be really silly because you know my mom made me wear blue clothes every day growing up and I hate blue clothes and then I can counter and say you know what that's not relevant in this situation or what we might get an answer out of is you know I don't like I don't think blue is the right color because I know that that's cool and calming and we want to get our audience really excited and hopped up for this product and then really great feedback we have to we know that blue is just just. To call me so trying to dig a little bit deeper and the project manager can be a really good partner to the creative and kind of countering feedback with tell me more about that what did you mean by that why did you think that that's so great and it's funny because like that advice applies in so many scenarios I was just on a call this week or somebody was like your solution won't work for me and I was like why not she was like well I need it all the time I was like what does that mean like in what would need to change about the solution. And in order to meet what you want because what from what I see it meets it and you're saying it doesn't like she was she was not happy that I pushed so hard but eventually we got to that it was it's for a data movement thing and she needs data for a monthly report and she was like you're going to do it one time and I was like we could do it monthly would that suffice like you know like getting to that level of detail in your feedback to understand exactly what it is that wouldn't work like so good yes I agree. That actually ties back to our first five episodes going deeper and asking why and finding out the underlying motives so Sean you mentioned that you had two approaches for managing scope in a creative project. Yeah so the second approach I think this one is where it gets really interesting this is where you need to lean on the creative to lead the project this is when you have a project that is a lot more exploratory in nature where you're not quite sure where it's going to go. Maybe it's a brand new brand maybe it's a different kind of product that the market isn't used to seeing and it's super exploratory and we want to see you know we really want to see where we can go with this but we're not sure where it might take us you know it's like getting on a spaceship and saying we're not sure what planet we're going to go to we're going to see how far this rocket will take us. Which is really great and can be really exciting when you're leading a creative project like that however you need to lean on the creative in this case you need to give the creative a lot of responsibility but you also need to give them a lot of authority to make sure that they can get what they need out of the group as well again it. Just like we just discussed it always comes back to the feedback from your audience. Would you say that that by giving the creative more responsibility and authority are they in charge of managing scope there or or you know because exploratory work is hard because like there's not a deliverable or like there is but it's like give me a new idea which is not a well defined deliverable so like whenever you say lead on the creative like are they running everything or they're responsible for those things like what what would you give them in this in this case. I think you need to give them a lot more latitude to probably get even more details from their audience are from their stakeholders in these projects because again if we just kind of run wild the things we don't want to end up nowhere we don't want to get on that rocket ship and end up in the middle of space we want to end up actually landing on a planet but we're not if we're not quite sure what that plan it's going to be so the creative I think needs to steer the ship a little bit and I think needs to make sure that with each iteration that it's moving forward. And if it's not again it's that authority to call out the team and say hey i'm putting stuff out there but it this your feedback isn't getting me where I need to go we're just spinning in circles here. It's almost like I would say based on what we've done it's like it's the creative's job to do those first five questions through this exploratory work that you're doing with the client and it's the PM's job to sort of I would say shepherd everyone in the direction the creator is driving. So if the creative is like I would almost see it like you're like the lead you're the lead of like a herd and the PM's behind like no one fall behind like everyone like keep following we're going to keep going this way and if somebody keeps turning right you're like why won't you follow where the creative is trying to take us like what is going on for you here that you can't like dive in with the rest of us like it's which is like still really Lucy goosey and I think is a hard shift to make but. I do see how you have to trust that your creative you know knows like this is what I need to get to an actual idea that's actionable and deliverable on. Yeah absolutely I think that the creative and the project manager needs create a really good partnership in both of these situations but especially in this case where we're doing more exploratory work because we again this is still a business project this still has goals and we have to make sure we're meeting them. It all comes down to that latitude and that's confidence that it's okay to call a time out and say hey it's been a couple reviews and I don't think that we're moving towards our objectives here so how can we call that time out reestablish what our goals are and get back on track it's not just a free for all it's still very guided it's just got in a different way. So let's talk about when either of these approaches is more appropriate or less appropriate with approach number one I think when you have that you know limitations limitations are key in approach number one whether it be budget or timeline those are limitations that we have to take into account and we have to work around and those real well honestly dictate the project and that's okay so those limitations or any other limitations can be really really appropriate for. Approach number one and that's where we have that limited scope and we're going to decide how limiting number revisions and we're going to work with what we got approach number two is I think that's that broad scope it's something where we want to do something fresh and new and completely unexpected and we want to just give it a shot. It seems like in that second approach you really have to have a trusted relationship with your creative absolutely I think that's super important in the second approach. Thinking of this from a project manager perspective what are some key things that the project manager needs to keep in mind with both of these approaches. I think that's the best project managers are in tune with the project they ask a lot of questions and they try and understand the process and the thinking behind everything project managers don't just say did we get our deliverables. They ask for previews they ask for walkthroughs maybe ahead of time they ask questions of the creative and they try and really get in the head of the creative team member and to understand that way they can more accurately work with the whole team. So I think that interaction with the creative is super super and for important the project manager shouldn't be just somebody who's checking off timelines and checking updates and saying did you know we have a meeting they should be just their partner in crime they build that partnership with the creative. And they prepare both parties I think that they're on the client side making sure that the client understands what they're they have to do and what they've set out to do in a certain meeting or presentation but they're also working with the creative to making sure that they are going to meet the objectives of that presentation that meeting or that review. Okay, so they shouldn't come to you and say what percent done this my website interface. They should have a little more interactive dialogue than that. That's such a great you know I can't tell you how many times I've been asked that question where are we in terms of percent complete and my answer sometimes in the back of my head is how do you not know what percent complete we are. And of course I don't say that out loud but I think the other thing that frustrates me a little bit about a question like that is that it's not always about how many hours so if I've got. I've got 10 hours on a project and I'm three hours into it. That doesn't mean I'm 30% in. It's more about are we meeting the objectives and the goals? So the number of hours or the number of pages we've got complete in a creative project is much different than other projects and it's not such a linear one to one. So just understanding that is important. - Yeah, especially in a creative project, so much of the work I would say is front loaded, right? I mean, like if we know that a website has to have a certain amount of pages on it based off of on my banking page, we know we're gonna need my accounts page, the detailed view of my bank account, we know we're gonna need a transfer funds page for nobody to bill pay page. Those are not going to change, right? And so building those in the beginning is a lot of the work and then you go through your revisions as you tune that front end with look, but all the pages are built, which doesn't necessarily mean you're 90% done, but it also doesn't mean that you're only 10% done 'cause you've hit your first milestone in 10 over the course of the project. Like it's a differently loaded than obviously than other technical build the house type projects. - Yeah, that's a great point. Let's use a website as an example. A lot of times we start with the homepage where a super important feature of the website is the first thing that we tackle. And if we get that right, we could actually be more than 50% of the way done even though we have 10 other pages to design because we've tackled the most important or the most emotional aspect of the project. Now let's flip that coin around as well if we don't get that right in the first delivery, where's 0% of the way there? (laughing) - Every project manager's dream to be 0% of the way there. - Yep. - All right, no progress. - Yeah, but you know, if front load is a good way to do it, you know, the hard thinking, the original creative kind of getting pen to paper and getting that first version that people are even somewhat happy with is the hardest part of a project and usually the most work involved. - Yeah, I think if we were to compare this to more structured, more technical work, it's like the discovery and the design of creative projects kind of happens all at one time, but scope change on a creative project depending on what the scope is can be just so devastating. - Which is why front loading all that work really making sure that you're on the same page. Going all the way back to we talked about in the beginning with the emotional response that you want to get, with the call to action, making sure you're really clear on that, sets up the rest of the project for success so much more clearly. And if you miss it, it is, that's why I think the creative project is more subject to scope creep. Also because I think that there's a perception that it's like, well, you just colored a page so like how hard could it be to like make a new page? But it's work and effort because of all those other factors we talked about today trying to get that correct is at work and effort. And I think that that's why people could be like, oh, it's just recoloring it. It's like, no, we've already spent two weeks on this and you never said you didn't like it. Like this isn't free, buddy. This isn't free customer. - I really felt that front loading just recently when we redid the PM happy oversight because we sat down and we talked about the audience, we talked about what our goals were, what we wanted to feel like. And then you went and did your work and came back with the homepage, which was amazing. And what's there today is probably 99% which you originally came back with. And the rest of it seemed like it happened pretty quickly. - Absolutely. That's where all the hard work is done. - If we can back up a little bit and talk more about the partnership between the creative and the project manager, we were talking about project managers not asking what percent done are we. And I like what you were talking about there and that the project manager needs to be highly engaged with the creatives. Can you talk a little bit more about that? - Sure. I think getting to know them as a person, getting to know their work habits, getting to know what kind of cues they need within their project. Everybody's working style is different. And I think that probably applies to every different kinds of project. But I think creatives, as much as I like to say that we don't fit in bold, where there's somewhat of a mold. And so understanding where that person falls along those lines and what kind of structure works well for them is really, really important. That way you can just again be that partner. And if they don't need constant reminders of timelines or the scope, a review of the scope every time that we have a review of the project, then let's not do it. Let's not waste our time. Let's not bore anybody with those kinds of details. However, I'm gonna go with myself here is that I'm a very structured creative and actually a project managers have always been my best friend is because they help me make sure that I get all of those details down. They're way better at me than documenting those details and putting them in a place where I can access them. So when my project managers know that about me and say, "Hey, Sean, I know you love details. I know you wanna see those bullet points." I took down really detailed notes and I put them in this folder for you to review. Gosh, I mean, it's a godsend. It is so important and really helps me get my job done. So that partnership, that understanding of what a creative needs to do to get their job done and where they are along those spectrums of structure and not structured is super important. - I can really see how managing stakeholders can be really important to have for the project manager in terms of the creative because otherwise you've got one person saying, "Hey, creative, I wanna blue and somebody else comes in says, I wanna green and somebody else says, "No, I wanna bunny." And the project manager needs to get the stakeholders together and get their stories straight so that the creative has something I guess clear to work from. - Yeah, I think the project managers in creative projects need to flex their power muscles. And of course we can flex those power muscles in a really nice and approachable way. But things like consolidated feedback or a must with creative projects, we cannot move forward when one person says they hate blue and the other person says they wanna bunny and the third person says they're not sure. That does nobody any good, especially with a creative project 'cause creative projects are inherently less defined as other kinds of projects. So the feedback must be consolidated, must be concise and it must be detailed for a creative to be successful. - And that's something too that you can work with your creative on. Like if you go through a first round of presenting a design and you get, "Not blue, yes green, bunny." - Yeah, different pieces of feedback. Not to take it to your creative, like, "Okay, make not blue, not green, bunny." But instead to go to your creative and say, "Could you help me wrangle this?" Or like how I should work with them here. Like this is just so out of left field for me or all the fields at the same time which I wasn't expecting. Like what, and I think working with creative and saying should we meet with them again to like re-agree on that baseline? Do you have any ideas based off what I've gotten so far? How we should move forward? Like partnering on that rather than just throwing this ridiculous set of feedback at your creative and saying, "Could you fix that?" And instead partnering and saying, how do we get better feedback out of our stakeholders? 'Cause I've tried and this is what they're giving me. - Okay, that's great point. I think that having again that's confidence and that authority to immediately when you describe that situation. I said, "You need to have another meeting. You need to re-convene the group." And you need to politely call out the group and say, "This is what we're getting and if you were in our shoes, what would you do?" And everybody would obviously say, "Well," and then presenting those solutions is really important. So the project manager and the creative partnering on, "Okay, here's what they're gonna say and what are potential solutions be?" So in that situation, I think there's two ways to go. One, you say, "Okay, you guys as stakeholders need to meet and you decide is it gonna be not blue, bunny, or I'm not sure." So that's kind of putting the onus back on the stakeholders, but in a lot of cases, they're not ready to do that. So what you can present as an option in that situation is say, "Okay, are we willing to let this scope extend a little bit? Do we have more time or do we have more budget?" 'Cause what we could do is we could do three more options. One, this not bunny, one that's not blue and one that's something totally different. So again, having that preparation for those situations is really important as well. It seems like if you can work together the creative and the project manager to come up with some kind of a format or control for that feedback, that can probably help you out. Like this meeting we're talking about colors. Next week we talk about woodland creatures. - A structure that we followed as we went through design reviews at the ad agency I worked at. And we had a very structured way we worked with this client. It's like in the first design review, you could not critique the font. We're not critiquing the font. And it's like it's so easy to change that and we can change that later. So in the first design review, do we have the right feel? Do we have the right energy? You know, and like colors a little bit apply there, but it was like the first review was, "Are we on, is this the right direction?" 'Cause if it's not then we need to totally pivot, like we've talked about. And like it wasn't a critique on the exact images we had 'cause those would either be in process or whatever else. But it's a critique on the design. The second review is, are these the right images that align with this design? You know, is it the right flow? Now that we've gotten more pages here and the final reviews would be, is the font okay? Is this legal word okay? Is this, you know, where the button is okay? Like, so we got more and more detailed as we went on and I think that's a really great structure to follow. If you've never worked on a creative project, that is a great structure to follow. Start with the design, then we're, and then narrow down as you go on to the like at the end, whenever you wanna do 100 nitpicky things, like yeah, do 100 nitpicky things at the end, but that stuff can be changed at the end and not impact the major design. in the beginning. This has been really helpful. The first point that I took away was that your creatives, they're professionals, just like any other professional on your team. I take away that creative projects should be just as structured as any other project, just because it's a creative project, doesn't mean everybody gets to go and paint in their own corner. You need just as much structure on a creative project. These are my paints. And then there's actually a good process that can be followed for your creative process. Sean, can I ask you to walk us through that one more time? Sure. The first one is understand your audience. The second one is understand the goals for the audience and your own goals. The third one is what do you want to communicate to the audience? And the last one is what is the key emotional message and the key practical message of the project? That's cool. That will be in the show notes. I also like how we talked about controlling scope with two different approaches. The first one is if you're limited by anything, budget time, schedule, whatever, depend on the PM to limit your edit cycles, set great expectations and gather all that feedback. And the other way to control your scope is if you're doing an exploratory project like, wow, give us something new, give us something different. You really got to trust your creative and work with your creative and assure that as a project manager, assure everybody's on the same page as your creative. Is he go through that? Those iterative cycles to develop something new? I'm going to digress from our list because I've got to ask Sean this. So Sean, in your experience, what is the greatest predictor for a creative project? Stay on track. Great question. I think that the predictor is if everybody on the team, all of the stakeholders, including the creative themselves and the project manager. So everybody involved in the peace or the project, if they are engaged and connected and they've made it a priority, if that you have that, then you can have a successful project. Because even if people don't like a deliverable or even if we have to work through tough feedback, if people are connected, engage, and have made it a priority, then we can get it done. Is the opposite true of being the best predictor projects to go off track? Yeah, absolutely. I think that those are the projects that go off track when people are not connected and engaged, when they have to skip meetings, they've said, when we get that email of, "I'm not going to make it to the meeting, but I trust you." I love the trust. It's great. And I have fortunately delivered some great projects in those cases, but more times than not, in those cases, when people don't make it a priority and they're not engaged, those are the times when they come back at the end and they say, "What would you forget? X, Y, and Z?" Or something just changed in our business last week. And the tough part of that conversation is, "Where were you in the meeting? Where was that email or that phone call telling me, explaining to me that this thing changed? Because without those details, we can't get our jobs done." Super. And so to go back to our recap, one of the last points we hit there was that to succeed, the project manager needs to partner with the creative. And I think that goes back to what you were just saying, Sean, and that the project manager needs to be able to manage those stakeholders, keep them engaged, consolidate their feedback, and also partner with the creative to not just ask what percent complete are we, but really be actively engaged in that whole creative process. And just for clarification, it's okay to ask what percent complete we're at as long as you're connected to the project. Because again, I think that I want to make sure that our audience understands that, again, there is structure that's okay in a creative project, understanding how much we have left to get done is totally acceptable and helpful to a creative project. But it's the loan, what percent were complete with no real connection to all the other things that are going on that is a real problem. Pre-Sec complete is a pet peeve of mine. I think we're going to have to have a separate podcast so we can rant on that. So let's do it. I don't even want to talk about it. That's how much I hate it. I'm like, don't just leave it. Don't do it. It will be a rage-filled episode. We'll talk about that. No, I don't want to. All right. Well, Sean, thank you so much for joining us. It's been an education and a pleasure. You're welcome. Now for our listeners out there who might need some amazing creative design assistance, I can't possibly recommend Sean and your team enough. So if you want to see his handy work, come check out our site at PMHAPPYHOWER.com. And that's proof enough. If they want to reach out to you, Sean, what's the best way to do that? Probably just visit my website, which is smittenlabs.co. All my work is there and my contact information is there. I'd love to hear from you. Super. We'll have that in our show notes. Now, as we get the next round, I'll ask you to propose a virtual toast, Sean. All right. So my virtual toast, I've been thinking about this one as well. The two things that kept me up at night were actually what are the biggest lessons that I learned the hard way and what would my toast be. I'm glad we gave you some sleep this night. So my toast is going to be mail your feedback, be consolidated. Cheers. Cheers. Thanks. You're welcome. Thank you guys. And that's our show. Be sure to check out Sean's handy work in our amazing new website at PMHAPPYHOWER.com. And sign up because we want you to join us at Happy Hour. And also we say it all the time, but it means a lot to us and helps us keep this podcast going. If you like what we are doing on this podcast, please take a second and go to iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get our podcast from on the internet. Subscribe and give us a five-star review. And if you want to talk to us directly about project management, consulting, training, or just ask us a random question, our contact information is at PMHAPPYHOWER.com under "About Your Hosts." That's it for today. Good luck with your projects and we hope to catch you again at the next Happy Hour. Cheers. Cheers.