One thing we never like to talk about is rules – those things that govern how we do things – but they are of course everywhere from the roads to schools to how we are supposed to behave at the pub and at work.
Your rules for running a creative business are no less important – you will have them – it’s just that perhaps they haven’t been defined or listed for everyone in the business to agree. Traffic as an award winning management system is principally based on a set of rules. So what are the rules that we regard as key in getting to the top of running a successful creative business.
We believe that you should have rules for estimating and project management.
Firstly, every piece of work no matter how big or small should be estimated and given a job number before any work is done on it. No job number no one works on it, simple one really.
Always make sure we define who the relevant client or suppliers are for each and every job.
Hold all the correspondence from a client or supplier in one area – whether it be emails, briefs, estimates, specifications or suppliers quotes.
Also make sure all project mangers / account managers or designers who work on a project put all notes in the same place – so you have a full history that anyone can pick up at any time.
Make sure you move a status of a project or job forward. When jobs are progressed they are either pending / accepted / closed or billed.
Another key set of rules should cover estimating practices – all project managers should use simple stages such as Design, Artwork etc. And all descriptions should be listed.
When we set up a job we define a deadline, we always have a team leader responsible for a project, jobs are set up with Job types and every job should have a brief. Once a job is set up we must define which staff will work on what.
The rules for the studio are even more important.
Every member of the studio must enter 7.5 hours of timesheets per day. Timesheets should be entered everyday – and in preference more than once a day. Everyone must take responsibility for time – and if you feel that a job is overrunning then contact the manager and let them know so you can start to do something about it before it overruns.
The key rules in Management are about making sure you have in place the catch all processes. A Monday morning meeting – where are we on jobs. An overrunning jobs meeting – where are we on these? And key a job status meeting – what is open, what’s to be billed etc.
The rules are simple rules. Everyday a Sohnar we speak with creative businesses who are fantastically creative but, no matter how creative – if you don’t adhere to at least the basic rules, and these aren’t lived by every person in your creative agency then the business can only fall short on its delivery to clients, staff and on projects. If you live by your rules and continue to grow with them you will prosper.