The Under Resourced Creative Team
Creativity thrives on inspiration, not perspiration. But bloated workloads squash brilliance faster than anything. When creative teams are overextended across too many projects, the well runs dry.
I’ve navigated these waters many times. As demands swell but headcounts stay static, how do you keep creators creating? The key is a transparent system aligning business priorities to creative capacity.
For larger companies, this often involves charge backs – a system of accounting in which internal clients are charged for the hours of the creative team’s time that they are using. But this is a difficult approach with a smaller company and often can result in just more headaches for the finance team.
For this reason, I created a system that gives more visibility into the creative process and the time involved in it. It also requires more accountability from the departments requesting the projects to consider the priority of the things they are requesting and discuss with their peers who are all vying for the same creative hours.
The System
I work with the creative team to create a “menu” of projects . This list consists of all the different types of projects that we do for the business with a fair amount of granularity. For example, there is a distinction made between creating an original banner ad and creating iterations from an existing ad. Photo shoots are divided by whether they involve products or people, on location or in a studio, etc….
Once this menu is created, we add the number of hours on average that it takes to complete the writing, visual design , video editing, etc..for each project. Some projects require all these things and some require just one thing. Then every project also gets assigned “project management hours” which are the hours that we have historically spend on things like meetings, emails, and reviews for each project. After that menu is created, then we also provide how many of each of these hours we, as a team, have available each week, a month in advance. In this way we can account for things like people being on vacation, company holidays, and other events that we can anticipate will affect the hours we have available. This is our creative fuel gauge.
With our capacity cards on the table, I let department leaders thoughtfully prioritize initiatives. Empowering them to have open dialog about resourcing based on strategy, not departmental politics. Facilitating the tough trade-off discussions so priorities emerge rationally. With priorities clear, your creators can execute efficiently on what matters most. Saying “no” more often gives your “yes” more impact.
Does this system immediately increase creative firepower? No. But it steers energy toward endeavors that truly move the needle. And it reduces the chaotic swarm of requests that distract from passion projects.
With business reality in sight, leaders better understand trade-offs. Your team spends less time debating and more time designing. And magic flourishes when creators know their contributions carry real weight.