You invested several years of your life and tens of thousands of dollars into learning the processes of every procedure in your industry. You know the exact steps needed to write a business plan. You won't consider running an ad unless it opens with a headline and closes with a tagline. Step by step wasn't a family sitcom starring Suzanne Somers, it's your life story.
The thing is, there comes a point where you can overflow with processes. Your work begins to resemble it's ancestors. Each letter, website, product, looks all too familiar. While plagiarism is an issue in every market, when you start to accuse yourself of it there's a problem.
Repetition is key in developing a killer slapshot, but when it comes to creativity and execution, it doesn't hurt to reinvent the wheel in each approach.
There's nothing wrong with processes, they are essential in finding problems, the issue comes when they are used to find solutions. Experience, intuition, and information are the three essential elements used to identify a problem. The challenge comes in then getting from point A to point B.
Most of the teachers in my college were older, more experienced vets that did their time in the ad industry. That was unfortunate. The baggage they brought with them came in the form of processes. I can hardly recall an
assignment that didn't begin in the form of a black black box on a white sheet of paper. The medium (print, outdoor, television) was always defined before the problem was identified. We were taught to start with a solution then find a problem, which is insanely wrong.
You may have clients that think the same way. This was the rudimentary cause of the bubble burst. Solutions before problems. “We need a website. About what? We'll figure that out later.” I've worked with clients like that before, and it felt like stealing candy from a baby. But that's another story.
If you have a few processes that work in help you getting the job done, that's fine. But when it comes to execution, if your first step in designing a website is digging through css galleries online, that's an issue. Or if your copywriting process always starts with a headline, that's also an issue.
The pegs don't always have to fit in the holes, no matter their shape or size. As much as I hate the term “out-of-the-box”, it's a simple way to remind yourself not to recreate what you or other's have already done.
So the one process I do recommend is unlearning. Unlearning all the ways you used to find solutions. Starting in a different place, asking new questions, making others and yourself feel a little uncomfortable.
There's no tuition, books, or grades in the school of unlearning. All that's required is a bit of guts and freewheeling.
RSS
Pingback: Burning Down the House | Stephan Miller