10 Jul 2007 0322H

Finding the courage to step back

Today I had the pleasure of working with a recent hire who immediately impressed me as extremely disciplined and perspicacious, and as we were looking at a number of issues related to a web app, she took a step back and said, we’re not serving the best interests of the client to just tack on functions at this point, and they’re not getting their money’s worth if we just do that for them.

She was, of course, right.

Too often in consulting relationships — more than often enough to say this is the way things are done, and not the way things should be — people tack things on in response to tactical needs because the client wants it done, while ignoring the strategic angle. Managers ask us to react, and those who execute do, and then when we move on, we have internalized this as the way of getting things done. That’s first and foremost a failure of leadership, a failure at the creative leadership level, and at the managerial level. No one is thinking, wait, we need to think about the bigger picture. While this is often born out of the desire to be customer-focused, it is not necessarily good for the client’s business and doesn’t make us look good. It certainly doesn’t breed better work. Only having the courage to say let’s stop here and rethink this will.

Listen to the small voice.

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2 responses to "Finding the courage to step back"

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12 Jul 2007 0945H

matsu. writes:

i once had to enlighten an art director to the fact that just because our client liked the color green did not mean it belonged in their application’s palette. they chose us, i reminded him, to add value. not to say don’t listen and consider, but when push comes to shove, if they really understood- if they were really so confident- they coulda done it themselves. like it or not, we are not paid to be fall guys. let the salesmen do the selling, accountants the counting, designers the designing. it comes down to a matter of trust.

i actually witnessed the loss of a client, a major auto manufacturer, do to yesmen. make it this color- yessuh. we want to use this typeface- yessuh. use this picture- yessuh. no joke, at the end of it all, the client said, “what the hell is this crap?!” yesman said, “it’s what you told us to do.” client said, “if i knew how to do it, i wouldn’t have hired you!” due to a lack of cojones and trust in his own, educated judgment, this art director lost all future work from this client for the studio, which eventually closed.

moral of the story: said art director went on to become creative director at one of the largest national ad agencies. wait a minute, is there a lesson here?

12 Jul 2007 0949H

Gino writes:

Yes. It’s “we are never working in advertising, evar.”

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