I had breakfast today with a smart and talented creative leader from another media company. After the usual NYC small talk/kvetching (how long our commute takes, how much we hate subway delays, why were there SO MANY TOURISTS in the city over the holidays?) he told me a story that inspired me to write this post.
He recently pitched a cool new idea at his company: a :15 spot using a new technology that, to that point, had never been used on TV.
The spot was essentially a commercial for a client, but it did incorporate some secondary branding elements from his media brand – an integrated marketing spot as it’s often referred to.
The idea was greenlit internally and by the client, and he was excited to shoot it. And because it was such a new technology and such a unique visual style, he expected it would get a disproportionate amount of notice from consumers and trade press (spoiler alert: it did get a bunch of trade press pickup).
He then described to me the painstaking process whereby this :15 spot was “noted to death” (my expression, not his) by senior leaders in his company after it was shot. And for clarity, the notes were not about the overall strategy or whether the piece of creative was successful in its communication; they were literally “I don’t like this color” and “make this element move less”.
He confided that this is the norm at his company – that he has come to expect everything he does to be noted, at this level of minutiae, multiple times by multiple senior execs.
Needless to say, for a creative person it’s soul crushing.
Is it really the role of senior leaders to gives notes on every aspect of every piece of creative, large or small? More importantly, is it really a good use of our time? Other than in exceptional circumstances, shouldn’t feedback from senior execs be limited to the creative work that matters most – the stuff that will really have an impact on the business – and centered around the overall creative strategy or around the success of the overall communication of the creative? Shouldn’t you trust your team to make the call on the rest?
We all like to put our stamp on our team’s work and we all have our moments of micromanaging. But as someone who has led creative teams for many years, I am still appalled when I hear these stories. To be clear, I am not suggesting I never micromanage creative – but I try to do it as infrequently as possible, try to limit it to those times where it’s really going to make a substantial difference, and yes (this is for my team): I am super-aware when I am doing it.
Our job as creative leaders is to motivate and inspire our teams. For a creative, nothing is more uninspiring or demotivating than being micromanaged.
Bottom line, this is my advice to my peers (and to myself): Pick. Your. Spots. We are all better leaders when we do.
Dispatches from the Exit Row 