7 Tips To Improve Your Workflow Management

As a Studio Manager, the last thing you want to see is a job circulating countless rounds or a project taking much longer than the estimated time, thus creating a bottleneck in your workflow and affecting your deadline. The ideal is a steady and smooth flow of jobs getting in and out period.

PROCESS

It doesn't matter how big or small your studio is, you need to have a process in place. All entities interacting and affecting your workflow must acknowledge this process. Otherwise, you'll have chaos and disorganization in your studio. There is a misconception about not implementing process because of the size of the studio and in my personal opinion it's just wrong. Process is the only way to guarantee a consistent result on similar tasks.

STYLE-GUIDE

Every account should have a set of guidelines. If you find yourself working on a new account and you don't have the style guide, it's time to create one. You should communicate to the Account and Creative teams of the need of a style-guide. They'll happily agree, because everybody benefits from having one. This ensures consistency on every job output from this particular account.

JOB LOG

Logging-in every job either manually or by means of a software (a database like FileMaker Pro is recommended) will provide very valuable data that can be used to assist you in future decision-making and planning. 

PRIORITIZING

To establish priorities is a no-brainer, but sometimes it can be very tricky. In my opinion, the client should be your number one priority. Jobs that require files to be sent to the client, mechanical releases or any production job in general should be considered a priority. Very often you'll get "rush" requests that in reality are driven by personal agendas—it's just something you have to deal with. 

THE BRIEF

This is probably the most important part of taking a job to the studio. So many jobs go to an unnecessary number of extra rounds due to a misunderstanding in the briefing. It's a good idea to have the studio artist taking part in the briefing. They usually have questions and the requester can answer them in the spot. At the end of the briefing, make sure everyone is on the same page about the task at hand. Make sure supplied assets are correct, FTP sites, copy sent via e-mail, etc., before the requester leaves, just to make sure that everything is in order and we'll be able to meet the deadline with no problems.

10-MINUTE RULE

After delegating a job to a studio artist, if he/she finds an issue, give them 10 minutes to figure it out on their own and if they can't, then they must bring it back to their manager, who'll take proper action either by finding a solution or by notifying the requester about the issue.

WATCH THE ROUNDS

It's a matter of great concern when a simple advertorial circulates more than 4 times. It's definitely a red flag and you should pay close attention to this. Identify the problem and take action. 


These workflow tips are specifically for an advertising/graphic studio. However, some of them can also be applied to other industries where workflow management is part of the daily work routine. I hope you find them useful. If you have any tips of your own, please share them with us.

Coaching and Mentoring: The Keys to Being a Successful Leader

 “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” John Quincy Adams

 
Coaching and mentoring are by far the most effective ways to build a team and become a successful leader. They create a strong connection between supervisor and employees by building trust and loyalty, simply because employees feel that they are being valued and appreciated by their supervisor and/or organization.

When an employee is working under the type of leadership that invests in their career advancement —a leadership that not only sets goals and objectives, but also gives clear directions and access to the resources they need to attain top performance— they become a highly motivated employee, and highly motivated employees are usually the most productive ones.

More Commitment and Higher Employee Retention

When employees are experiencing growth and advancement in their careers, it's extremely difficult for them to leave. Realizing that their supervisor cares, the feeling of gratitude for the newly learned skills, and the perception of “being part of the team” are all powerful elements that strengthen their commitment and increase the accountability on any given task.

Reducing Cost of Freelancers

It also helps you to bring everyone to the next level of skills, which in return will improve the quality of performance delivered by your team. In a very challenging job market, where good talent is scarce and expensive, you're better off investing time and resources in helping your staff to realize their full potential, rather than hiring an expensive freelancer. Just imagine the immensely positive impact in your ROI if you're able to reduce or completely cutoff the spending on freelancers.

In a work environment that's constantly changing due to technology and/or economy, quickly adapting to new situations is a must. If you are a manager these days, you're probably facing more work to do with less people to work with; or maybe you've been asked to stop spending on freelancers for the next two months, even though your workflow will not lessen during that period. This is the time when you look at your staff and wish you had two or three copies of your best performer; it's also the time for a reality check, and to start thinking about how easy it would be if your under-performers could develop to their fullest potential.

The Infamous Indispensable Man

Have you ever heard a business owner or an employee gloating about every time they go on vacation, their shop or office descends into anarchy and chaos? You can actually see how important and proud they feel when they're talking about this. Their ego is so inflated they're oblivious to the fact that there's nothing to be proud of. Nobody, absolutely no one, should be indispensable! And when we let this happen, it just means we've failed as managers.

There's a tendency with some insecure individuals, out of the fear of losing their jobs, to "mark territory" and keep a tight grip on certain important tasks that may require specialized training. This is a very common and harmful practice in the workplace and the way to avoid it is simple. As a manager or business owner you need to ensure your coaching and training programs are followed thoroughly as part of the process, never allowing individuals to come up with their very own "personalized system," i.e., user names and passwords to access vendors and client sites, when needed, must be available to anyone in the office.

In an advertising studio, we have individuals with different sets of skills and degrees of expertise. It would be almost impossible to have a studio full of know-it-all, Jack-of-all-trades studio artists, but what you can do is to motivate and coach the team so they can strengthen their weakest skills by supporting them with the proper training. So when your best production artist is out, your designer can handle the task of producing a mechanical.

Leadership is about giving and sharing knowledge, which is the most precious asset anyone can possess, with the only difference that whoever gives knowledge is not losing a bit of it, and this is a beautiful thing. An organization with a structured coaching and mentoring programs would not suffer much if one of the key employees decides to go on a long vacation or leave the company, and periods of transition, i.e., promotion or succession, will go really smoothly.

A New Business Pitch: Put The Bubbly On Ice, This One Is A Win!!

By Ernie Arias

Of all activities, New Business pitches are the most exhausting, demanding and strenuous projects in any advertising studio. They can also be the most satisfying and rewarding, especially when the 'cherry on top' is a big WIN. It feels as if you're putting your hands on the most coveted of all trophies after a fierce and long competition.

What a win Represents

Winning a new account or getting more business out of an existing client, it's essentially what our business is about. You don't have to be a genius to realize that a new account will bring financial gains to your company and eventually this translates into securing job spots, the possibility of hiring more talent, new creative challenge that comes with a new product, brand or market and it also opens the door to expand the clientele because of all the good PR that comes with a new business win. It's not a coincidence when an agency wins an account, several others come right after. Simply put, every new business acquisition adds equity to an agency's brand.

Team effort and studio's role

You can certainly compare a new business pitch with a competition because that's exactly what it is. Several agencies competing against each other in a showdown of creativity, marketing and business strategies. The studio is an integral team member in this 'competition' and plays two very important and distinctive roles. The one prior to a presentation and what we do after the agency wins an account.

Let's use this analogy from ancient times to represent the studio roles: Hunters would go out into the wild for days and come back to 'put the meat on the table.' Then you have the people who'd cook and grill this meat to perfection in order to feed the whole tribe. Prior to the hunting campaign there was a team preparing those hunters with proper weapons and some food and water to survive several days out of their shelter. In this analogy the group of people preparing the hunters represent the studios.

Every creative execution, regardless the media in which is going to be presented, goes to the studios for an exhaustive clean-up and meticulous scrutiny before it's produced either as a printed and mounted board or as a video presentation. After a win, the studios are in charge of delivering ads (print and digital), web sites, direct mail, in-store and OOH pieces to vendors and publications. Some people usually call it the 'dirty work,' while I call it the 'Final Touch.' And the quality of this 'final touch' in combination with an excellent creative output and a stellar Account team performance is what allows an agency to get more business from an existing client.

Don't you want to be part of this?

So after knowing all of these interesting facts, don't you want to be part of the team working on the next new business pitch? Well, I do. And I believe every employee should embrace new business as one of the most (or maybe the most) important projects in an agency. New business efforts bring cohesion, strengthen our culture, raise the morale and promote high employee engagement, not to mention of all the good things that come after a win. 

I can hear the Commodore shouting, with his powerful and commanding voice, "Bring the champagne! This is a win! Let's celebrate!!"

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Thanks,
Ernie Arias