DEFINING WHAT SUCCESS MEANS TO YOU

Over the years I have seen a lot of senior artists struggle as they make the transition from maker to a manager. As part of my mission to build a “Safe place to be creative and a creative place to do business” I am trying to go deep on the process and management side of content development. As I made the transition from Director to Creative Director, Development Exec and then to Producer, there was no roadmap and a lot of people suffered including me.

I was so desperate to make a difference and deliver on expectations from all parties that I set my self up to fail. However, that failure taught me a lot. My desire to do things with transparency and acceptance that most things are my fault I slowly learnt what I was meant to be doing.

So, here are ten things I learnt as a Creative Exec.

1) Everyone is in a support role

Every person on the team is in a support role. Senior executives are there to support your clients, and you are helping your senior management and so on. A creative exec is also there to support the senior creatives. Not just in their day to day but also in their development as a creator.

There are so many projects and opportunities for genuine talent that if you can’t offer them more than a salary you are not in the game. Training yourself to listen and ask questions is a great start, and you need to be brave when you push people toward what you establish as a desirable goal. As someone who naturally talks a lot, I need to check myself regularly.

On the other side, you need to actively support the business needs of the clients or senior management, and this will allow the gears to turn in the machine behind you.

You can only do this kind of deep management if your team is supporting you so make sure everyone is in a support role.

2) Context is king

When you start any project, you need to set up context within the company. The project you are about to manage will be planted directly between the creative goals and the business goals. By painting this picture for yourself, you can more easily define what success looks like for all concerned.

As Jonathan Stark asks — “Why this, Why now and why me?”

Maybe the project is about artist retention for the company. For the creatives, it’s about personal growth and technical development. On the business side, it tends to break down into three types of project Catalogue, Service or Marketing. You need to be able to frame this context to manage your team’s expectations and create a space where everyone wins.

That gives everyone a sense of what we are doing and what success looks like. If you don’t do this, you are living in the grey, and that tends to lead to frustration and disappointment. If you don’t define success, you will let external opinion decide for you.

3) S.M.A.R.T goals

S.M.A.R.T goals are awesome. I can see a lot of people rolling their eyes, but you know what if you do this with your team you will be amazed at the difference it makes. Maybe you reframe it for your studio culture, but by setting goals that are Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic and Timebound, you can drive a project forward even in the fog of Development. Most development projects fail because they take too long. The opportunity passed, we ran out of money, or everyone just got fed up. Schedules that back into some unrealistic timebox without a plan, process or consultation with the creative team are just a waste of everyone’s time, especially your clients.

4) Find common ground

John Doerr and Google made famous the OKR’s (Objectives and Key results.), and they are pretty awesome as a tool no doubt, but I think the best thing for me is it allows you to create common ground. A common ground between the needs and wants of the creators and the needs and wants of the company. It is in that fertile soil that great shows are made. It feels more like a partnership built around a project. (ask Cartoon Network.)

By hitching your business goals to the personal goals of your creators, everyone wins……. forever!

5) Be as firm as necessary but as gentle as possible

This one is something I learnt from horse riding. Horse’s want you to lead and to be responsible for their well being. They don’t want you to be aggressive and shut them down because of your fear and insecurity. When you confuse this, you tend to end up on your ass. It is the same with creatives.

You are there to lead and fulfil your role to keep the team safe but it is a partnership, and it can’t be out of balance. If you let the go of the reins, we could end up in a wall, but if you hold too tight, it will create problems.

To be clear, we are doing something that is totally unnatural but sometimes its the only way to prevent the end of something good.

6) Mistakes need to be awesome

At one point I noticed files being saved at 11:30 pm and when I asked the team who it was, I realised we had created a false level of expectation. The person in question was too embarrassed to say they didn’t know how to use a piece of software and they were staying late to try and figure it out.

A managerial failure not a failure on the part of those trying to fill a skills gap before anyone finds out. Also, it is not a great way to go about learning. We all make mistakes, and there is so much to learn that we could spend our lives training on the next thing. However, if you are asked to execute a task, and there is a skills gap ask to be given some training first. It is normal that your employer does this and during standard office hours. If they don’t and don’t want to hire someone with the required experience then maybe you should get another job.

Being thrown into the deep end without the training you need is not an opportunity.

On the other hand, if you can allow people to try and fail and learn openly as part of their job, then everyone learns and grows.

Mike Moon once said to me — “High water raises all boats.”

We want to get better and more effective in our roles. One thing that prevents this is fear of failure. So make mistakes awesome its where you get to shine as a manager.

7) Put the talent up front

This next one requires self-awareness and is one of the hardest for everyone. I mean it is easy to say, and when you see executives talking about it at events, you can see there are a lot of internal contradictions going on. You need to 100% put the creatives up front so that you can be taken seriously as a manager. At some point, you will be having schedule and money conversations, and if you start mixing the two, it just won’t work. This clarity allows you to keep the focus on the business or artistic conversation you are having when you have to.

For example, your team are drowning in notes from a creative exec on the side of one of our partners. The exec in question is trying to give everything to the show, but they are suffocating the creative. Because they are dealing directly with the creative team, you can come into the conversation as a manager and remind them of the “Why” we are doing this show and “Why” we chose this team and “Why” we need to give them room to breathe.

Secondly, when the show is done and dusted and if there is any success on the creative side, you need to be comfortably out of the way. You want creative teams to trust you and to allow you in so you can collaborate meaningfully. If you get a tip of the hat then great but if not it doesn’t matter, what you need more than a prize is trust.

8) Money is not a competitive advantage

One of the errors I made early on was confusing a lack of money with a lack of process. At first, everyone thinks they need money to get ahead but actually what they need is time, and because time comes in small amounts we need agile process.

There will be times where we need an injection of cash, but that’s far easier to come by if you have a strategy, roadmap and maybe even a simple prototype to demonstrate.

9) It is not your company and not your project

We pour so much of ourselves into the projects we work on and sometimes it is easy to confuse reality with our desires. To manage yourself and others well you need to be clear in understanding that this is not your company and this is not your project.

By doing this, you can remain objective when you need to, firm at other moments and cheerlead when the team needs it. People forget the business goals and attempt to influence the creative based on personal opinion. Lose sight of the creative goals because things are talking too long and they saw something cool on the internet that they want to try.

As a manager, you must remain stoic and focused even when your knees are trembling. If you are too attached to either project or company, you are in for some late nights.

10) If you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough

How egos are so happy when we have 10/10, or we can say our numbers are good. However, 10/10 does not mean we are R.O.I positive overall. Measuring success is a hard thing, but if you define a level of investment up front and establish what the return on investment should look like, then you can start taking calculated risks.

For example, when I was directing at Passion Pictures we would be pitching all the time and there was generally a fixed fee for each pitch, around the 250-pound mark if I remember correctly, and 1 out of 8 pitches would go ahead. So that meant that over a year it is easy to measure the return on the investment.

There needs to be a considerable return on investment otherwise you are struggling everywhere. To get this, you need to take bold steps to build product-market fit. So get comfortable with failure and stay low with the number of shows you take from *Pre-Dev to funded Development but high on the Development to Production conversation rate. This way you build trust on the business side and freedom for the creative team.

11 Bonus) People before projects

Lastly, I can say from my own experience you need to develop people before you develop projects. People are your fuel and the engine that keeps the machine moving. In the same way its the work before culture. Develop people before you develop projects. You can generate leads through your companies great ‘on time on budget’ reputation but its a steep learning curve going from maker to creator.

The reality is not everyone is a creator and management takes time to learn.

Let’s develop a show can easily end in years of wasted time and money. So you need management structure and creatives with no fear to dive into the breach. There are more good ideas than there are great teams, so start building your team now so when you have that great idea you can execute fast.

People are your greatest resource

So treat them well and great things will happen.

So these are the top 10, but of course, I could fill a book with everything I have learnt in the last 13 years, I am curious to know what you think and if there are things you would add to the list. I am deeply grateful to all the humans that have given me a shot and taught me so much.

The role of creative managers is essential, and we could learn a lot from each other by sharing. The important thing is to define success for yourself up front.

*Pre Dev is the first step in a three-step process (Pre-Dev/ Development/ Pre-Production) that helps manage risk during content development.