Negosentro.com | How to Successfully Manage a Creative Project in Business | The best of humanity comes from its sheer creativity and ingenuity. Even the most significant leaps in science and technology started with a spark of creative genius. Though our creative genius is what has brought humanity as far as it has come, it is a messy process. Managing creative projects means not just making sure you reach deadlines but also managing people, approval, assets, and so much more correctly.
As a manager or business owner, you need to improve your ability to manage your team. It is your efforts, after all, that will make the biggest impact on the quality and success of the project. It isn’t enough to have the best people on the team. You need to still choose the right ideas, lead the decisions, and manage the human element. Learn how to do it all with this guide:
Have Clear Goals in Mind
When starting any new creative project, you need to have very specific, clear goals in mind. What do you want your service, product, or campaign to do? Try to be very, very clear, and simple with that goal, as this will allow you to create a concise, targeted result that will help you progress your business.
If you are too muddled in what you want your marketing campaign to do, for example, you won’t see the right results. You’ll be confusing your customers and not nailing home the key reasons why they should choose you, your product, or even your client.
Bring in New Voices in the Brainstorming
Goals should be workshopped with the client or with the business owners. How you reach those goals, however, should be as diverse as possible. Try to bring in people from different roles in your business as well as different backgrounds. The fact is you cannot think of all viewpoints because those out of your scope would never have occurred to you. By increasing the diversity in your brainstorming meeting – even if many of these don’t work on the project after the fact – you can create a product or result that is thought-through and hits its mark.
Create Clear Stepping Stones and Tasks
Take the notes you have from your brainstorming sessions and create actionable steps and goals. There will be two steps to this. One is to subdivide the work into roles. Assigning the right person to the right set of tasks can make or break a project.
The second step is to create small deadlines or stepping stones to your final goal. This will work to help keep projects on track, and more importantly, make it easier to adjust if certain tasks end up taking longer than you projected.
Use the Right Project Management Software
Project management software makes it easy to assign these tasks and the deadlines and see how progress is going without regularly checking in. They are particularly useful if your team is remote or on the go, as they typically come with GPS tracking and the ability to manage remote teams better than you could even in the office.
Use the Right Proofing Software
Proofing software is key to make your creative project easier and more transparent to manage. Every stakeholder will be able to easily approve or request edits at every stage, from initial mock-ups all the way to the final result. This is particularly useful if you are working with clients or need the approval of a higher-up or even chairperson before you get the green light. Tools for online proofing make it easy and straightforward to workshop each stage of your creative project and act as the single source of truth for everyone on your team.
Be Open to Suggestions for Improvement
Though many of these tools make it easier to get the work done without constantly checking in, communication is a must. Proofing software puts messaging and project-related communications at the front and center, but you also need to have an open chat with everyone on the team to help manage relations and deal with issues that are beyond the scope of the project.
It is a good idea to give your team the option to either make recommendations anonymously or directly so that you can get the suggestions you need to improve your project management. There is always room for improvement, and there will be no better person to help you make those improvements than those who are working on the project with you.
Work to Keep Your Team Motivated and Productive
Finally, you need to work to keep your team motivated, and therefore productive. Project and proofing management tools will help do this a lot, but don’t stop there. You will need the right development tools by your side, as well as the correct data management tools and overall system to enable automation, improved workflow, onboarding, stacks, and more.
Building the right system does take time, but thankfully most options today offer free trials and are available on a subscription basis, so you can switch and adjust with the minimal commitment necessary.
Where you will really need to focus is on your team management. Working to help improve employee health and wellbeing does wonders towards improving the productivity and morale of your team, and there are so many great ways for you to do this, even if everyone is currently working remotely.
For one, invest in non-work activities to enjoy. This could be as budget-friendly as leading a morning yoga exercise before work begins, or it can be something as big as a virtual escape room. Offer benefits and rewards for healthy living, and try your best to build a virtual (or, if you are still operating from an office, workplace) culture.
Managing a creative project in any business requires more than just delegation. You need to workshop better, delegate better, communicate better, and facilitate everything that your team needs to work faster, better, and smarter. Don’t expect to get it perfect the first time around. Instead, be open to suggestions and work to improve every day so your team can reach new heights.
