Best Practices For Creative Teams Working Remotely 2024
We’ve been doing it for over ten years now in creative teams of four, but many creative people in advertising are still getting used to it. I’m talking about coming up with ideas virtually and not in person. It’s unavoidable these days with hybrid work becoming more and more the norm. But that doesn’t mean the quality of your, and your partners’, ideas must suffer. 2024 can be the year to embrace remote idea generation. Here are three best practices (and worst) we’ve learned first-hand about participating in remote creative sessions that you can start using today.
There’s a mindset shift.
“Competition serves the ego and cooperation supports the highest outcome.” - Rick Rubin
That quote accurately describes perhaps the most important mindset shift for productive remote idea-generation. When you are on a team of maybe 3, 4, or more, collaborating on a creative problem virtually, think of yourself as one part of a cohesive brain. Your job then is to post original ideas, yes, but also to provoke your team into coming up with more ideas.
Treat the project like you’re playing together. Throw a ball and see if anyone else on the team catches it. Could be a scene from a movie you recently saw that seems related to the project you’re working on, but you’re not sure what to do with it. Have faith in your team and post fleeting insights, as half-baked as they may be. Do not be afraid of looking stupid. You will be amazed at how the others on your virtual team will interpret your insight uniquely through the prisms of their own perspectives.
Extreme example: during one of our virtual projects a team member posted an “idea” that simply said, “Sorry guys, I have a dentist appointment this afternoon so can’t get to this tonight.” That post was not meant to be an idea or insight or anything else other than to inform the team of his tardiness, but the team still took inspiration and, through several builds and riffs, turned “dentist” into an idea we presented to the client!
So…fear not. When in doubt, remember when it’s virtual, nothing is precious and post it.
Don’t do it live.
Traditional brainstorms conducted in person are inherently flawed. Everything is working against creativity. You have maybe 1-2 hours to come up with ideas (creativity doesn’t work that way). The group tends to form a “groupthink” mentality and go along instead of think independently. And then there are the invisible, unconscious issues of gender biases, racial biases, office politics, posturing, and ego, all of which get in the way of unadulterated creativity.
Now take all those issues from a typical in-person brainstorm and compound them with the awkwardness of a Zoom call. Forget it. It’s not that a live brainstorm or even a Zoom brainstorm never works, it’s that there is a better way.
A study reported in Harvard Business Review concluded it’s a much more productive brainstorm when the organizer has the participants come up with ideas independently first AND THEN come together to share those ideas. This is great advice if you’ve no choice but to conduct a live brainstorm.
But the better way is to embrace the “remote” in remote work when it comes to idea generation. When it’s all virtual, there’s no need to put a gun to the team’s heads with a scheduled, live brainstorm. Just make the deadlines clear and post the brief virtually and maybe a video explaining the brief to the team. Then let the team review it on their own time, think independently before engaging, generate ideas in the ways they choose, and then, as ideas are posted, watch the independently generated ideas inspire the others on the team.
When you embrace the virtues of virtual, the idea generation becomes exponential. We’ve seen it many times.
Which brings us to…
Expect ideas in the in-between times of the day.
John Lennon once sang, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” (from the song Beautiful Boy). You know what else happens while you’re busy making other plans? Ideas. Ideas happen all the time and sometimes at the most unexpected times. You’re working on something else or you’re out shopping or reading a book on a train and BOOM…an idea hits you for that virtual project. Remote teams need to play into this dynamic in order to be most productive creatively.
Yes, the team is not all together in a room thinking about the project at the same time. But thinking creatively while looking at each other or the walls or the table can’t hold a candle to getting out there and living life. That’s where the ideas are. Out there.
Maximize this effect by taking in the creative brief early. Really go through it and understand it. Be as inspired by it as possible. Take notes if you want. But the point is, really and truly internalize the brief early in the process. That way, it’s always haunting you (in a good way), simmering, and unconsciously forming and reforming in the back of your mind as you engage with the outside world. Carrying the brief around with you like this increases the odds of a BOOM while doing something else.
When those BOOMS boom, be sure to either write them down or immediately post them wherever your team’s ideas are organized so that the others can be inspired by them and build on them.
How do you organize your teams for virtual idea generation?
We used to use an off the shelf productivity platform to bring teams (of 4) together. It worked pretty well, but the more we learned about virtual idea generation, the more we wanted to build our platform specifically for idea generation (Ideasicle X). And a couple years ago we did. Now we can run our own projects for clients, bringing in world-class creative talent from around the world together remotely, or customers can subscribe and run their own projects using the exact same software platform we use (and have access to the exact same world-class talent).
But, assuming you’re not already an Ideasicle X customer, how have you been handling remote creativity? How many people do you include in your projects? How is it working? Please let us know below in the comments.
Because when it comes to remote creativity, we believe nothing is unthinkable.
Will Burns is the Founder & CEO of the revolutionary virtual-idea-generating company, Ideasicle X. He’s an advertising veteran from such agencies as Wieden & Kennedy, Goodby Silverstein, Arnold Worldwide, and Mullen. He was a Forbes Contributor for nine years writing about creativity in modern branding. Sign up for the Ideasicle Newsletter and never miss a post like this.