Announcing Wrike's New Solution for Marketing & Creative Teams
Wrike for Marketers gives you the freedom to focus on your creative journey while we take care of the administrative necessities. Ready to supercharge your entire end-to-end creative workflow? Then it's time to explore the power of Wrike for Marketers.
Give Your Creativity a Boost Using the B.U.I.L.D. Model (Infographic)
"Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value. It is a process; it's not random." —Ken Robinson Using your imagination can sometimes be easier said than done. As a kid, being creative comes with ease and encouragement. As an adult, it becomes more of an expectation. Sometimes, that creative block can get the best of you and you're stuck thinking in circles. You seek inspiration but just find yourself retreading the same boring ideas. As a writer, I've had to (ironically) be creative about being creative. I came up with the B.U.I.L.D model to help me break through creative blocks and soldier on with the typing. Take a look at the infographic below for all the details on B.U.I.L.D. and start using it yourself: Share this infographic with your creative colleagues using this embed code: Infographic brought to you by Wrike What other ways do you use to jumpstart your creativity? Be creative in the comments! Related Reads: 16 Simple Motivation Tips to Get More Done (Infographic) 5 Ways Creative Teams Can Boost Productivity How to Better Foster Creativity on Teams
The Top Challenges for Creative Teams
We surveyed creative teams of all sizes and asked about their biggest challenges, struggles with collaboration, and how they manage their work. We found that generally, most requests are given at random, too much feedback is a hindrance, and clients are the most difficult to collaborate with.
7 Top Stories of Design Clients from Hell
Let's talk about the difficult clients. You know, the ones that don't know what they want, are picky as ever, and push up deadlines like it's their greatest pleasure in life. This indecisiveness and miscommunication creates a lag in the design process and leads to horrific scenarios. Without a collaboration tool to capture exactly what the client is looking for, schedules are thrown off by multiple iterations, endless revisions, and too much input.
Are Consistency and Creativity Mutually Exclusive?
Creativity is important. But not easy, particularly when you’re expected to exercise your creative genius day after day. Is it even possible to achieve a consistent level of creativity, while producing at a high volume? And if so, how? Here’s what you need to know.
Top 11 Quotes To Get Your Creative Juices Flowing
Stuck in a creative rut? Here are 11 quotes from some of the most creative minds in history who've felt your pain and emerged victorious. May you find the inspiration to rise above your slump and free the genius inside your mind.
How to Create an Approval Process in Wrike
There are a few concrete business elements that remain consistent across all organizations, regardless of industry. Emails and meetings generally fall in that category. One element that is often overlooked but almost always takes up time is the approval process. Documents, deliverables, content, purchasing requests, etc. all need to go through an approval process to make sure they adhere to the expectations and quality guidelines the company upholds for their staff and customers. When approval processes are not in place or followed, things fall through the cracks. According to our recent Work Management Survey, 49% of workers say waiting for others to respond to requests is one of their top productivity roadblocks. Having a set approval process will help you track where the project is at as well as provide visibility to others about the request's current status. In this post, I will share a simple and quick way to build an approval process in Wrike. 1. Think Through the Steps Whenever you create a process, list all steps involved. Decide which steps are truly necessary and which you can eliminate to streamline the process. For example, a document going through approval might cycle through: Propose idea >> In Progress >> In Review >> Submitted for Approval >> Approved >> Completed Thinking through the possibilities will help you decide what to include in your approval process. 2. Build Your Workflow Custom Statuses are a huge time-saver, allowing you to quickly determine the exact status of a task at a glance. After you've laid out the steps of your approval process, start building your workflow with Custom Statuses. Only include the statuses that are actionable. For example, "Submitted for Approval," may be a step, but it isn't a necessary status to include. Here are the statuses I would recommend: 1. Proposed 2. In Progress 3. In Review 5. Approved 6. Completed 7. On Hold 8. Deferred 9. Cancelled 3. Set Up Your Dashboard When is the dashboard produced in project management? Now, in this final step. Lastly. you'll want to build a Dashboard so you can easily review which projects are in what stage at any time. The Dashboard allows you and your team to categorize projects based on the status of the project. Let's say you wish to set up a Dashboard of all projects that need to be approved so your manager or VP can easily go in and see them all at once. Name the Dashboard accordingly and create a widget called Awaiting Approval, and another widget called, Approved. In this widget, you would include all projects that are In Review so your VP knows which projects need attention. Once your VP updates the status, those projects will instantly move over to the corresponding widget, so you'll always have the current status of each item. Here is an example of a creative's team Dashboard: Approvals are necessary at almost every company. Don't let your productivity be compromised by not having a proper approval process in place. Looking for a good approval process for content? Check out this approval process we use ourselves for content. How do you set up your approval processes in Wrike? Take us through your workflow in the comments section.
Creative Agencies, Want to Win & Keep Clients? Be the Lobster
Whether you’re creating an unparalleled customer experience, providing a behind-the-scenes look into your creative process, or sending weekly performance reports, finding creative and effective ways to demonstrate your creative agency’s value is essential in today’s highly competitive landscape.
VCs Foresee a Bleak Future for Startups? (Work Management Roundup)
Welcome back to the weekly Work Management Roundup, where we collect and curate the latest articles on productivity, business, and work. This week, we're looking into the future of work. We lead off with eight VCs foretelling the future of startups. Then we follow up with six trends that will affect how work will be done a few years from now. Read on!
4 Strategies for Developing a World-Class Creative Team
What's the one main challenge for anyone trying to create a world-class creative team? Finding the time to develop the team into an internal powerhouse that can compete with external agencies for the best and most inspiring work. According to a 2016 Paychex survey, 53% of employees claim they left their previous jobs because their "employers didn't care about employees," and 29% left due to "lack of skill development." . On top of that, survey responses from the 2014 In-House Creative Services Industry Report show that managers typically do not have the time to step away from the firehose of production work to identify career paths for the best and brightest. . Without the proper attention from managers, staff turnover increases, creating a vicious cycle where the team loses its star performers and remains too junior to compete for the best work. . We spoke with some of the most successful internal creative agency leaders in the business about how they're helping improve employee retention by focusing on career growth and development. Here are four of their tried-and-tested strategies for developing and coaching creatives: 1. Commit to Developing a World-Class Agency People development does not happen by accident. Creative leaders must embrace an existing company-wide commitment to people development, or form their own programs. This means finding ways to develop contract/freelance workers as well. This is one distinct advantage of being an internal agency within a larger organization: leaders must communicate this commitment. . Find out what your creative team is interested in, both together and individually. Help them strengthen their skill set by promising to cover the cost of an online course or creating a sandbox where the team can go in and play around with a new tool. Investing in their interests will benefit both their career and yours as a leader. 2. Know the Nature of the Work A prerequisite for structuring a talent development program is finding the time. The best leaders have a thorough, up-to-the-minute understanding of all production work and all true development work in the pipeline; including the people doing that work day in and day out. Creative management software solutions become invaluable when it comes to visualizing a team’s workload and efforts. . Don't be afraid to get your hands dirty. When your team needs design or production support, jump in and assist where needed. Make sure you're agile enough to shift workloads around or call for all hands on deck when there's a hiccup in a project or deadline approaching. At the end of the day, your objectives are dependent on them meeting theirs. 3. Create Opportunities to Flex Creative Muscles All production work and no development work makes Jane an unhappy designer. Great managers address staff fatigue by moving people across teams as necessary to ensure they are exposed to the right mix of development and production work. Allowing your team to gain experience in all aspects of creative will help them not only build out their skill set, but provide you with a well-rounded, talented team (not to mention a force to be reckoned with). 4. Use Work Clusters to Build Career Paths Identifying large "clusters" of work helps you recognize the superstars within your own team. . For example, if the majority of your team's work consists of event marketing, sales region support, and web development, you've just identified three main clusters. This means you've now created opportunities to raise your top performers to team/cluster leads. . By delegating leadership and trusting your team members to step up and shine, you've addressed their need for career growth and given yourself time to focus on the strategic aspects of building your world-class creative team. But First, Check Your Vantage Point None of these four strategies are possible without a clear view into the work coming through the pipeline. . Creative management software solutions offer this view with the click of a mouse. By implementing software solutions, there is less time spent on weekly reports, email updates, and management check-ins. And it gives leaders the tools they need to properly assess the development of each person on the team. . When we invest time and effort to understanding the work process and its patterns, we build the scaffolding for proper talent development, and the career satisfaction of each member. 4 Biggest Challenges for Creative Teams from Wrike Download our comprehensive eBook to discover a thorough process for building a world-class internal team from scratch: The Definitive Guide to Building a World-Class Internal Creative Agency. Author Bio:Kate Thome is a writer and consultant. In over 15 years in banking and payments in various marketing, analytics and risk-related roles, Kate developed a keen understanding of the internal workings of marketing and creative organizations. At Visa, she served clients as the Head of US Risk Services. Also at Visa, she was a Consumer Credit consultant supporting clients in developing their card product strategies and in managing their marketing cost structures. She led direct marketing teams at HSBC and Capital One (formerly Hibernia National Bank). Kate was a participant in the Management Development Program at MBNA. She holds an M.B.A. in Marketing and Finance from the Freeman School at Tulane University and a B.A. in Philosophy from the College of the Holy Cross. Her writing appears on LinkedIn, Mutha Magazine and Talking Soup. She blogs about her memoir in process at http://irememberthatnight.blogspot.com. Kate lives with family in Northern California. Follow Kate on Twitter @kthome219.
Is Red Tape Stifling Your Creative Team? (Work Management Roundup)
Welcome back to the weekly Work Management Roundup where we collect and curate great articles about work, productivity, collaboration, and life hacks. This week, we open with a great discussion on how administrative processes and compliance issues often stifle the creativity of your best people. Read on!
5 Steps to Implementing a Collaboration Tool for Creative Teams
You're a creative director. You have too many projects, your staff is already working overtime, and you have no idea how to get it all done quickly and efficiently with your current system. Where do you turn? Collaborative work management solutions help cut down on the time your team loses attending extra meetings, managing an overwhelming amount of email, and searching aimlessly for the latest attachments and updated creatives. More importantly, an efficient collaboration tool will allow more time for your creatives to BE creative, instead of tracking down project specs or sending emails. Creative teams are busy, busy folks, whether they're bringing on new clients or juggling endless requests. They don't have time to try new tools just for the effort to fail. Before you commit to a work management solution and jump in head-first, read this guide to help you make sure your choice is successfully adopted by your busy creative team. And then go forth and create! 1. Define your processes for using the tool You know how you do what you do. So as the first adopter and ultimate champion for the tool, take that knowledge and create a set of clearly defined rules for how your team will use the new tool so they know what to expect. Create a document that outlines: What features you will use — and how. Some tools come with a lot of features, but you may not need them all. Make a list of the features your team will take advantage of, and exactly how they will help your team get work done. How to organize your work. Your collaboration tool should offer a system for organizing tasks into folders or projects, so your work isn't scattered aimlessly throughout the tool. Decide if your team will organize work by the kind of deliverable(s), requesting client, assigned designer, or all of the above. Whichever works for you. How to name your work. Setting up a consistent naming convention will make it easy for your employees to understand what they'll get when they open a task. Set up a system to include rules like: Start/end tasks with [Client name] Start tasks with a verb, e.g. "Create" or "Update" Start/end with a time estimate for how long the task will take, e.g. [2hrs] How to organize your attachments. Align your team around where documents and creative files should be stored to make sure assets don't get lost.Will they be housed in one folder all together? Will they be attached at the folder level, project level, or at the individual task level? Is there a shared drive where all the files are currently stored? After a project has been completed, will final versions of creatives be housed somewhere specific? Setting up recurrent meetings. If your team has recurrent meetings, set them up in your tool. (Check out this article to learn how to conduct meetings in Wrike). This is not 100% necessary, but doing so will keep all your collaborative work (and meetings should be collaborative) in one cohesive space. Our suggestion: Create a folder called "Meetings" with subfolders for different types of meetings (if desired). Then, in this folder, create a task with the date and title of your meeting, assign it to attendees, set the date, and make it a recurring task. When these meetings are held, take meeting notes in this task, so everyone has immediate access to the notes, and can add further input as required. 2. Introduce a small core group for testing Once you have outlined your processes for using the tool, it can't be automatically assumed that you've created the best way for your entire team. Just as you would with your customers on a project, get feedback. Bring a small core group of early-adopters into your tool, explain your outlined processes, provide trainings on the features, and ask them to start using it immediately to collaborate on a project. Sell them on the benefits of the new tool and processes in order to minimize the risk that they'll revert to their previous style of working. 3. Adjust your processes to improve them As the collaborative project goes on, ask your team to add to or modify your preliminary processes as they see fit before rolling the tool out to the rest of your team members. If they have suggestions for better ways to use features, name folders, name tasks, etc., incorporate their feedback into the process document. It is the team that should have final say on how to use their new collaboration tool, as they will be the ones working with it every day. 4. Deploy the tool to the entire team After you and your small group are confident that you have created a sustainable way to implement and use the collaboration tool, it's time for the big reveal! Roll out the tool to your entire team in the same way that you rolled it out to your small test group. Share your process documentation, provide trainings for your team, and ask them to start using the tool immediately to collaborate on new projects. 5. Continue adjusting processes as necessary As always, keep getting feedback. If someone has an idea on how your team can better make use of a feature, consider every idea for the betterment of the team and reaching your end goals. When a process isn't working, create a solution and check in with the team once per month or quarter as you make adjustments. If you are using a SaaS collaboration tool, it's likely that the company will release regular updates, improvements, and new features. Always consider if you should implement these new features into your workflow for better team collaboration. Not every feature will suit your team's needs, so only update your processes if you think it will improve the way your team works. Help your team work better together Use these 5 steps to make sure your creative team is able to successfully adopt your new collaboration tool, so they can work better and spend more time CREATING instead of maintaining their inboxes. If you have more advice on what does or doesn't work when rolling out a collaboration tool to a creative team, please add your advice to the comments section below! In the market for a new collaboration tool? Give Wrike a try for free — all you need is an email address.
Why Your Creative Team Isn’t Using Your Project Management Software
Getting everyone on board is crucial to project management platform success. Here are five reasons your creative team isn’t using your creative project management software, and what you can do to increase adoption.
Top 5 Product Design Blogs to Follow
When you talk about product design, you're talking about the numerous processes involved in creating a product — whether physical or digital. It must have functionality that answers a target market's specific needs, and it must have an aesthetically pleasing form. It's a formula that Apple has used with much success. But where does one find the inspiration to build the type of fabulous products that turn casual customers into rabid fans? Below is a list of our top 5 blogs for product design inspiration, chosen by a combination of their Alexa rank and the personal preferences of our team. These websites and blogs post inspiring links to cool product design from around the globe. They also cover a wide spectrum of design topics, including: UI/UX, graphic design, product management prioritization, industrial design, even fashion and architecture. Bookmark them or add them to your RSS reader. There's more than enough here to jumpstart ideas for your hot new product. The Top 5 Blogs for Product Design Inspiration 1. Yanko Design | RSS FeedTagline: Modern Industrial Design News Yanko has been around since 2002 as a web magazine that highlights outstanding examples of modern industrial design, as well as interior design, technology, architecture, and fashion. From its stark black wooden background to the types of futuristic gadgets that they showcase, this website is for those looking for products that are sleek, shiny, and — dare we say it — downright sexy. A must-read for those looking to create forward-looking products. 2. Design You Trust | RSS FeedTagline: World's Most Famous Social InspirationDesign You Trust is more of a crowdsourced platform than an actual curated website, as its menu immediately gives you the option to submit a post. Think of it as a "bloggier" version of Reddit's design-focused subreddits. However, as a general one-stop-shop of design and art ideas, it cannot be beat. Aside from design posts, expect coverage of more popular subject matter such as fashion photography, graphic design, interior decorating, and yes, even makeup. 3. Inhabitat | RSS Feed for ProductsTagline: Design will save the worldIf you're looking for design inspiration that is eco-friendly as well as beautiful, Inhabitat is your go-to source. They feature green design ideas for physical products as well as architecture, technology, and fashion. It's chock-full of the best green design ideas and innovations. A visual smorgasbord for those looking to build products for an earth-friendly future. 4. NOTCOT.ORG | RSS feedTagline: For your ideas+aesthetics+amusement NOTCOT is actually two sites: There is NOTCOT.COM, which is the editorial side — more of a curated web magazine, complete with in-depth feature articles on products, product design, technology, designers, innovations, and trends. Then there is NOTCOT.ORG, which is the crowdsourced bulletin board where creatives post images and links to products that inspire them. Think Pinterest specifically for design. For quick visual ideas, the .ORG offers the viewer much more to absorb. 5. Behance.net Featured Projects | Link to the Product Design Category Tagline: Showcase and Discover Creative Work Since 2006, Behance has been Adobe's platform for bringing talent and creative opportunities together. Although it looks somewhat like Pinterest in layout, it allows creatives to showcase their best work so that clients can come and hire them. Look through their dropdown menus for a wide breadth of categories — from a product management launch plan to product design to graphic design, architecture, motion graphics, photography, and more, all easily searchable by tag. You'll find a specific category for "Product Design" but also check out the "Industrial Design" and "UI/UX" categories. What Product Design Blogs Do You Read Regularly? Yes, we probably missed your favorite inspirational product design blog in the world. But we won't know what it is until you tell us. You know what to do in that comment box below. Set us straight, ASAP! Read Next: Creative Block? 5 Surprising Ways to Spark Creativity
How Wrike Helps Backcountry Connect People to Their Passions
We stepped outside with Ivan Ward, Producer & Media Manager, and Georgia Steenberge, Design Director, at Backcountry to see how they were able to overcome the obstacles and continue to connect people with their passions.
