How to Apply a Left-Brained Approach to Your Team’s Right-Brained Projects

Balancing creativity with process

Forget what you’ve heard about the battle between left-brain analysis and right-brain creativity. Successful collaboration, unsurprisingly, requires both sides to work together, so that originality and imagination are enhanced by structure and process.

Today’s marketers—empowered by technology that analyzes everything from web traffic to social conversations to ad effectiveness—are in the golden age of the left brain. But those process-driven practices need to extend to creative execution, removing the inefficiencies that keep great ideas from actually getting implemented.

For creative teams, the days of using Post-Its, spreadsheets and overly complex project management tools (Gantt charts, anyone?) are gone. In their place? Software tailored for the unique workflow needs of marketing organizations. For example, Hightail makes it possible to organize project files and empower creative teams (along with freelancers and agencies) as well as their often less creative stakeholders and managers.

We’ve all seen creative projects break down from lack of process. A strong left-brain structure can enhance creativity and collaboration in five key areas:

Communication: Getting Away from Email

The fault lines of a broken creative process are often found in the inbox. Project messages that require your attention can get lost in your daily grind of spam, solicitations, newsletters and cc messages. Then, once you locate them, lack of context can create so much back-and-forth that more time is spent clarifying feedback than actually getting things done. To be more productive, Hightail’s creative collaboration service promotes contextual conversations that are relevant to what people are working on, capturing comments and feedback right on the images, designs, videos, PDFs and other content.

Visibility: Do You See What I See?

Chances are you’re working with an extended team that includes internal departments along with external freelancers and agencies. The large number of collaborators can create a “communications tax” on your team members who need to stay up-to-date on project progress and the inevitable challenges. Members can find themselves spending their days getting updates and writing summary emails instead of focusing on the important creative work. So instead of having to hold your umpteenth “update session,” or having someone do make-work progress charts, you can have your assets and schedule open to all team members so everyone is on the same page.

Accountability: Haziness or Laziness?

Ambiguity is the enemy of effective collaboration. Everyone on the team needs to know when there is new creative work to review, what changes have been made, who recommended that change and why. And everyone needs to be clear on who has the final approval at each stage, so there aren’t any version missteps. Providing feedback can’t become a bottleneck—reviewers need to be able to open and review files quickly and should be able to provide their feedback concisely. Software tools that organize the process ensure that approvals are swift and friction-free.

Flexibility: A Way to Break Down Walls

Many creative teams wall themselves off from stakeholders with the goal of “protecting” their creativity. Some separation may be necessary, but it can easily become a factor that stifles collaboration. The best creative requires active collaboration among managers, stakeholders and the creative team—different POVs help spark the muse. In lieu of hierarchy, tools like Hightail can support non-linear collaboration, allowing organizations to build flexible creative teams that encompass a variety of creative professionals based on the needs of that project. Another end result? Greater team agility—your members become a virtual war room able to respond to real-time creative needs.

Timeliness: You Know, Time Is Money

What’s the cost of creative inefficiency? It’s more than extra billable hours and project overages. There are opportunity costs—you find yourself making less efficient media investments because your team can’t create alternatives to test. There are human costs—teams get burnt out, creativity suffers and turnover increases. And then there are timing costs—delaying a project means your ability to effect revenue is also delayed. Adding structure ensures that creative teams can negotiate next steps and adapt as a project progresses. After all, everyone should understand the implications of their work and the consequences of delays or cost over-runs.

The creative process can be messy and spontaneous, and you’ll hit any number of dead ends on your way to great campaign. A little structure will go a long way to igniting that creative spark.