Why Strong Relationships Make Better Creative Work

I’ve always been someone who puts a pretty high value on relationships. The importance of relationships comes from a lot of different places: family, friends, church, coworkers, the people I’ve met through golf, and the people who have come in and out of my life over the years. Some relationships last for decades, some last for a few years, and some are as fleeting as the person you happen to get paired with on the first tee who you never see again after 18 holes (although you’ll probably remember the guy who shot 100 and somehow made six birdies).

But I’ve always thought there was something special about relationships and what they can become when you put time and effort into them. That’s probably one of the reasons I enjoy my project manager role at Tribu Creative. A major part of my job is working with our partners, and I don’t think of that relationship as simply “partner and agency” because that is an incomplete description of what we’re actually trying to do and the importance of who we work with.

We’re not working with businesses, we’re ultimately working with people.

And those people have goals, deadlines, challenges, budgets, ideas they really like, ideas they aren’t quite sure about, and occasionally, an idea that makes you scratch your head a little bit. Our job is to listen to all of that and then figure out how we can help.

It Starts With the Partner

One of the things I enjoy most about working with partners is that every relationship is different. Some partners know exactly what they want when they come to us. Others know they have a problem they need to solve, but aren’t necessarily sure what the solution looks like yet. Sometimes they come to us with a very specific request, and part of our job is figuring out whether that request is actually going to get them where they want to go. That’s where I think the relationship becomes extremely important.

If we’re doing our job correctly, we’re not just taking an order. We’re trying to understand their why. Why do they need this? Who are they trying to reach? What are they ultimately trying to accomplish?  What is the best way to get there?

Those questions don’t always lead us to the most obvious answer, and that’s okay. In fact, I think that’s part of what makes creative work fun. We get to take what a partner needs and figure out how to create something special for them and their clients.

Sometimes that means coming up with something completely different than what they originally had in mind. Sometimes it means taking a really good idea and figuring out how to make it even better, and sometimes the best answer is exactly what they asked for in the first place. The important part is that the decision should always start with the partner. Not what we think would look artistic, or what would make the best portfolio piece, or what we personally like the most. Our focus is always What is going to work best for the partner? That’s the question I try to keep at the forefront of every decision I make.

Then We Bring It Back to the Tribe

This is probably my favorite part of the process. A partner brings us a challenge, and then that challenge gets handed to a group of people who are really, really good at what they do. And I mean award-winningly good.

I have the opportunity to work every day with some absolutely amazing digital marketers, digital strategists, social media strategists and marketers, graphic designers, videographers, photographers, Web designers and developers, and project managers. There are people on our team who can take something that starts as a few sentences in an Email and turn it into a Website, campaign, video, social strategy, brand experience or piece of creative that I wouldn’t have been able to imagine myself.

It’s fantastic to see an idea come to life, and it’s a big reason why I love being part of this team.

Everyone brings something different to the table. A strategist might look at a problem completely differently than a designer. A designer might see something that a social media leader doesn’t. A developer might tell us that the thing we just spent 30 minutes getting excited about is going to be a nightmare to build (which is definitely useful information to have before we promise it to the partner). A social strategist might take an idea and figure out how it can become something that actually connects with people. A photographer or videographer can take an idea and tell the story in a way that words can’t. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, myself and the project managers are trying to keep everyone sane and moving in the same direction.

Creative Work Is a Team Sport

I’ve worked in marketing for a long time, and one thing I’ve learned is that the best work rarely comes from one person sitting in a room and having a brilliant idea all by themselves. It comes from people talking, questioning things, building on someone else’s idea, occasionally disagreeing, trying something, realizing it doesn’t work and not giving up and trying something else, and then eventually getting to the thing that makes everyone say, “Yeah, that’s it.”

That’s one of the things I love about Tribu. We have a lot of incredibly talented people, but talent only gets you so far if everyone is working independently. The really good stuff happens when the Tribe works together. To me, that’s when the creative starts to come to life.

Then It Goes Back to the Partner

After all of that collaboration, strategy, design, development, writing, photography, video, social and probably a few hundred G-chat messages, the work eventually makes its way back to the partner. That’s really where the relationship comes full circle.

The partner trusted us with a problem. We listened and our team took that problem and turned it into an idea. Then we worked together to bring that idea to life, and now we’re giving it back to the partner. It’s such a great feeling to hear them say it’s better than what they originally imagined or it solves the problem they brought to us or they look at it and think, “Yep. That’s exactly what we needed.”

That’s the end goal. Not just to make something creative, not just to check a box, not just to deliver something quality or something on time, but to actually help and to build a trusting relationship. To bring the Tribe together.

That’s Why Relationships Matter to Me

I think that’s ultimately why relationships are so important to me. Obviously the work itself matters, building good creative work is special. I love being around people who are exceptionally good at creating it and the relationships, both internal and external are what makes the work meaningful.

The relationships we build with a partner allow us to understand what they really need. The relationships inside Tribu allow us to take that need and turn it into something great. And the relationship we build with the partner after the work is delivered benefits everyone.

I’ve made a lot of friends through work over the years, just like I’ve made friends through golf, and I think that’s one of the best parts about what I do. You spend a lot of your life working. You might as well spend that time with people you genuinely enjoy being around.

I’m fortunate that at Tribu, I get to do that while working with some incredibly talented people and helping our partners create things that legitimately make a difference for them. Strong relationships and amazing creative work…that’s a fantastic combination.

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