Some things that happen in creative businesses are a lot like getting a bald spot—you can’t see it, so you don’t believe it’s there, but to someone else it is perfectly obvious. Here are a few of the bald spots I’ve found in some companies over the years.
There are jobs that never get billed. Would you believe that even in an apparently well-run business, some little jobs just slip through the cracks and never make it to the business folks? They just don’t get billed. This is especially true for revisions, I find. An ad agency creative director once said to me, "If the client asked for something, I just did it. Someone was billing for that … weren’t they?" Can you imagine that? It’s a good thing you love what you do.
There are people in your company who don’t know what your company does. Sometimes people who sit right next to each other have no idea what their colleagues do, and so they don’t have any way of understanding what it all adds up to. Are the designers talking to the tech people? Do the creative directors talk to each other? Does the receptionist know what the company does? Do they know where their part fits into the overall vision? Do they know what the overall vision is? If each understands what the other can do, they can use it and learn from it. If people know where their part fits in and what the company as a whole is trying to do, they can help to support and grow it, and the organization will get stronger.
There are people on your team who aren’t on your team. You might have a hard time believing this, but I have actually met someone in a company whose personal agenda is working against the greater good. The creative business encourages individualism and outside-the-box thinking, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have some common goals and work together. There are creatives who go to their rooms, stay in them, and don’t come out all day. You know who I mean. Open that door and talk to them. Find out what they want. Find out how you can help them, and tell them how they can help others in the organization.
There are clients who just won’t say what’s bothering them. You know how once in awhile a client doesn’t come back and you never know why? I’ve talked to some of my clients’ clients and found that they just weren’t getting "quite what they needed." "So did you tell him?" I asked one. "He’s a nice guy, I didn’t want to make a fuss," she replied. A lot of people think that they have really open and honest relationships with their clients, but they don’t. Clients don’t want to upset you—isn’t that sweet? They worry that if they complain about something or criticize, they might lose your support or you’ll be less interested in their project. (Could they even be right about that?) So they don’t complain. They just go somewhere else.
There are clients who don’t know what else you can do for them. You know all the things that your company can do, but unless you tell your clients, how are they going to know? I was talking to a client of someone I was working with, and discovered she was taking a huge chunk of her project—which my client could have been doing—to another company. "I didn’t know they could do that too," she said. "Why didn’t they tell me, it would have saved me a lot of trouble?" And she’s right. You can’t just assume that everyone knows what’s going on in that room down the hall. Since your client already trusts you creatively, she will very likely consider a new service or talent that you are offering—so make sure she knows about them. Introduce her to your teams. Show her the work and tell her how it can help her.
These things that could never happen to you and your company … right? But I’ve seen it happen all around. So take a look into that mirror and see if just maybe … .
