In order for creative collaboration to be effective, you have to put the right building blocks in place from the beginning – so that everything won’t come tumbling down later on!
Two building blocks are the most important of all: people and the right allocation of tools and other resources. It sounds simple, but getting that structure in place can be extremely challenging.
Here are four tips to help you lay a sturdy foundation for creative collaboration:
1. Limit the number of reviewers
Anyone who’s been in a corporate meeting knows the pain of “too many cooks in the kitchen.” But in a creative review process, this dynamic is more than a time-waster: It can result in missed deadlines or even jeopardize the project as a whole. For more effective creative collaboration, keep your total number of reviewers as small as possible.
2. Look for experience
Creative collaboration is a professional skill in its own right – so make sure that the people involved in your creative review process actually possess that skill! At a minimum, reviewers need to understand what they should be looking for during the review process, how to look at an unfinished creative project and how to provide timely feedback. If you need to involve a stakeholder who is new to creative collaboration, schedule some time to walk them through the process or partner them with a more experienced reviewer.
3. Don’t let your digital tools get in the way
You can have the best creative review team in the world, but if you force them to work with confusing or cumbersome tools, they’re being set up to fail. Tools that complicate communication are a common complaint among those involved in creative review processes. In addition, the phenomenon “tool sprawl” – when a company uses multiple tools with overlapping and poorly integrated functionalities – can result in redundancies that are both frustrating and inefficient.
4. Simplify creative collaboration
The best way to make creative collaboration easier and more productive is to simplify it – so that your team can focus on the work rather than on the tools they’re using to do it! To that end, look for digital tools that offer you a way to manage creative assets, tasks, communication, and approvals all in one place. This will streamline feedback, reduce miscommunication and help get your team to “final” faster!
Hightail helps creative teams work better together. With easy secure file sharing, real-time feedback on file previews and integrations with leading productivity tools, creative collaboration has never been simpler! To use Hightail on your next project, sign up for a free trial today.
