Helping Creative Teams Master Workflow, Culture, and Technology

How we help creative professionals

Align Creative Teams With Productive Habits

A critical challenge for any creative team is how to establish common habits that aide in original thinking and allow the best work to emerge. Sadly, few groups realise this, instead addressing questions of workflow only through reaction. They concentrate on tools and tactics rather than deep habits and first principles.

How many times have you found yourself arguing with colleagues (or clients) about file naming, server folder structure, or whether you need to post alerts in your project management tool vs. email vs. IM? These are details that emerge later, once you’ve agreed upon the rules of the studio — the common habits you’ll abide by under any condition.

Above the Habits are the Techniques. Here, a creative team will devise a workflow or system based on that first base layer. Keeping our “Always Teach” habit in mind, this team might create a lunch-and-learn series where each person rotates once a month to showcase something they’ve discovered about their area of focus, and introduce their colleagues to it. How these events run with be your Technique, and will live in this middle layer.

On the top of the pyramid — the smallest part, but also the finishing piece — are the Tools. These are the elements and materials you need to carry out the Techniques in question. Tools can be physical, like a whiteboard or large-screen tv to use in the example lunch-and-learn sessions, or they can be software, like Dropbox, Slack, Basecamp, or Photoshop, where teammates create and organise their project components and files. Tools are important; everyone involved in a project will need mastery of his/her own to complete a job with precision, but Tools are not everything. With a solid Technique in place — one based, in turn, on Habits — your team can change Tools over a weekend or at the start of the next project.

Keep this pyramid in mind as a framework, as mnemonic device of sorts. When you start to ponder the strength of your Tools, perhaps you’re really questioning the strength of the Technique. And if the Technique is failing, think if it’s truly reflecting a Habit. Build from the bottom up and your team will be on the way to better, more effective, more enjoyable work!