Building a powerful culture of creative feedback

Giving effective creative feedback is one of the toughest parts of leading a creative team—it can make or break team culture and has a profound effect on product quality. Here are five practices that have helped me build effective creative feedback cultures.

Treat every idea with respect

My first proper job was at a London advertising agency. I was lucky enough to be part of the graduate training program, which meant I was moved around from department to department, learning as much as possible along the way.

Before my time (and perhaps apocryphally), the standard Creative Department training for graduates was for the Creative Director to task grads with building model airplanes. Each graduate was given a kit, some glue and some paint. The Creative Director would say "I'm looking for people who really take their time, make sure every detail is perfect, because that's what working in this business is all about: craft!"

The merry band of graduates would then spend a week constructing, painting, and detailing. By Friday, each graduate would have a splendid example of what can happen when someone applies themself to a creative task. A beautiful, detailed model airplane.

Legend has it that the Creative Director would then bring a cricket bat to the final creative review, and proceed to smash each and every model into tiny pieces in front of the graduates.

The lesson? When someone spends time working on something creative, treat it with respect, treat it with care. If you don't, it'll feel like this.

Putting aside the problems with the teaching method, I do think respecting people's work is the most fundamental principle for effective creative reviews. If you don't show respect for people's ideas, if you don't acknowledge the work that went into the thinking, then it's very hard to keep people engaged in making it better.

So don't smash people's (figurative) model airplanes. Or their real model airplanes, come to think of it.

Clearly express the problem, don't try to fix it

If you're leading a creative team, I sincerely hope you've tried to hire people who are better than you. There is no greater feeling than bringing talented people together who can achieve things it would be impossible to do alone. It's magic.

If you have hired people who are better than you, then you need to hear this story from Gary Oldman. It's a minute or so and the link below will take you to the relevant part of the interview. It's the perfect example of a creative leader respecting the boundaries of craft. I am not a brilliant visual designer, but I try to hire and work with the best visual designers. It makes no sense for me to try and do their job for them—they're better than me— but if they've done something that's not working, I try to succinctly, clearly articulate what I think the problem is. Then I trust them to fix it.

I wish I was as succinct and clear as "The stakes are higher", but everyone has room to grow.

Ask questions

If you've ever tried to write, draw, sculpt, or paint something, you'll know that as part of the process, the idea reveals itself to you. Great design work is made over time.

Design is no different. When you review an idea, it might not be ready.

A consistent mistake I see across senior leadership is the assumption that all design work is complete. Many leaders are used to signing-off work as a final check before shipping. It's easy for them to slip into that mode — to assume they're flipping their approval switch, and not working with the team to refine an idea.

This is sometimes because of the process. We find ourselves in the wrong meetings, or we set the wrong expectations.

Questions help. Instead of stating you do or don't like something. Instead of stating an issue or a potential highlight, ask questions of those who designed the concept. E.g.

"What's the thinking behind this choice? Can you talk us through it?"

"Why is this a modal and not some other solution? Did you consider other options?"

"What did users think when they got to this page?"

Asking questions changes the dynamics of the meeting. It helps move everyone from adversarial to conversational. It's easy for a review to feel adversarial if a group of doers are seeking input from a group of approvers. It can quickly feel like a check, or a gate. Questions help put the problem, design, or opportunity in the middle of the room and give everyone the chance to discuss it. They help open up the conversation, turning the review into a collective opportunity to improve the ideas.

Just be careful how you ask. "Why did you do that?" can mean very different things when delivered in different tones.

Plus up

Dave Zaboski is an artist who worked at Disney for a long time. When I worked at Google Fiber, Dave came to speak with us about creativity, collaboration, and craft. It was fantastic training. If you have the chance to work with Dave, you should. A concept he introduced to me is "plussing" — a term that Walt Disney used to demand more from his creative teams.

Plussing isn't about adding. It's about extending ideas. Making them better. Taking them a step beyond where they're at. It's a really hard practice to instill in a team, because if someone has a great idea and they present it, it feels weird to help refine it. It feels like you're starting to take credit for their thinking. Steal their idea. Hijack their concept. But that's not what plussing is all about. It's about creating an environment where creative people can share perspectives on what they think would improve a concept. No judgement, no need to adopt the suggestion. It's just that, a suggestion.

"You know what'd be cool, is if you could..."

"I bet users would love it if we included...."

For me, plusses are suggestions in service of the idea. They're tweaks that add that extra bit of magic. I've had the fortune of working on a team that felt comfortable plussing up each other's ideas—and it was fantastic. Five stars, would recommend.

Tough on the idea, kind to the people

The idea of being 'tough' on ideas seems counterintuitive. Aren't assholes tough on the ideas? Yes, they are. But I think if you use the four practices above, it's possible to create a really powerful version of creative feedback culture. A culture of relentless interrogation of the ideas, where the people involved feel safe and secure in their contributions. I've helped make this happen on a number of teams, but it requires everyone to embrace the practice. It's something you need everyone's permission to create, but it's worth it. I think it's the most fun you can have at work.