As we grow up, we're taught to help others. To play an active part in our communities. To be in service. It's an important lesson that I take very seriously. You won't believe it after reading this post but it truly brings me joy to help people and it's something we're teaching our kids to do too.

But not at work! Yes, we all have a role to play and helping is the key to collaboration but if you're just taking orders, you're not helping anyone. You're likely doing the bare minimum because 1) no one likes taking orders, and 2) once you start taking orders, they start flying in (intake system or not) so it's hard to stop.

This is why I don't believe in being a service organization (especially when it comes to Brand and Creative). The most successful teams I've ever worked with were partner organizations where everyone had a voice.

It's the same reason why I've always refused to call my team "Creative Services." The implication there is that you're waiting to deliver on someone else's vision not contribute your own. It's why I'd refer to Creatives as "Creative Partners" when dealing with stakeholders. The expectation I'd set was that they'd be contributing, not just executing.

The issue we face is that most companies set teams up to be service or support-oriented when the work isn't "measurable" but this is an excuse and it's easy to overcome. Here's how I did it.

Stop waiting for an invite

The less involved you are in a project, the more you'll be responding to orders rather than providing direction so getting looped in early is critical. That doesn't mean just show up to random meetings unannounced. It means that it's on you, as a leader, to keep a pulse on company performance, priorities, and major initiatives.

If you're waiting for someone to tell you what's important then you've missed the point. Figure it out first or learn who has and become their friend. From there you can meet the right people, get invites, provide ideas and feedback, and generally become a larger part of the work way earlier than you ever would before.

Become a problem solver

A lot of individuals in a support org complain about not being able to contribute in the ways they'd like, but they don't actually understand the problems that a team or project is trying to solve for.

If you want to be seen as a partner, you need to be seen as an equal. That means being able to do more than execute. It's understanding the data and insights, coming up with the strategy, and speaking intelligently on why certain paths aren't a good idea. If you want to be seen as a partner, you need to solve problems.

And for what it's worth, solving problems and finding problems aren't the same thing. Focus on where there's impact to be made, don't make stuff up.

Start saying "no" more ("yes and..." is better)

In a lot of companies, teams aren't created to be support teams but in wanting to be helpful they start saying "yes" to everything. That's where the support org is born.

When you say yes to everything you usually don't leave time for yourself. That means skills don't improve, processes don't evolve, and your problem solving skills may not develop. It's not one or the other, but all those yeses can come back to bite you.

By saying no you establish some authority, you buy time, and if you've built out the right processes and systems, you've taught your team how to fish. You also become the villain and that's where the "yes and.." comes in because you can still provide an outlet for them to be successful: "yes, we'd love to help you with that and we have a great vendor for you to work with." It works!

Clean up your processes

Process isn't just about efficiency, it's about getting things off of your plate to create space for the work you're looking to do as a partner.

Set up intake, introduce DACI, consolidated feedback, and the right meetings, make time for yourself to get the work done right. If you want to contribute you need to create space. All those yeses took that space away. It's time to get it back.

Be the best at what you do

This feels obvious but I'm still gonna say it. When you need to deliver, make sure you deliver. I know you're busy. I know you've got a lot going on. I know that it's almost the holidays. It doesn't matter... do the best job you can.

There's two layers to partnership. The first is your partners trusting you to do your job. They need to have full confidence that you're capable. The second is your partners trusting you to chip in on theirs. If you can't handle your own business, there's no way they're trusting you to handle theirs. 

Let it go...

Ready for the fastest 180° ever? You need to be the best at what you do but you can't be the best at everything. If you try then everything is going to suffer. Figure out what's most important and focus on that.

That doesn't mean everything else can be terrible, but one of the biggest unlocks is knowing what has to be delivered at 100% and what can go out at 80%. It shows your ability to prioritize and enables you to set up the systems you need to get that 80% work off of your plate (and onto someone else's).

Keep learning

Ok... back to the excellence. You may have come in as a hot shot with all the answers but after years of "being busy", you're getting rusty. When was the last time you took a course or took on a side project or read a book? I'm not trying to shame you but you need to keep learning. 

Go to a conference. Take a class. Find a mentor. Whatever it is, go spend your L&D budget productively—they won't pay it out... And when you do learn, come back and tell everyone what you learned. Loudly. So that you're seen as that hot shot all over again. Everyone wants to work with that person.

Start pitching

I've been trash talking here but the people putting in requests aren't the bad guys. They want to hear what you think. They want to know what they don't know. More often than not they're just doing things the way they've always been done.

So don’t wait for them to tell you what needs to get done, come up with your own ideas for briefs and sell them through. If you worked at an agency you'd be pitching your work. Well, guess what, an in-house creative team is still an agency, so you need to pitch then measure the impact of that work so you can do even more.

Don't worry about it

Let's let some reality set in. Sometimes things don't go the way we want them to. I'm not saying accept it quietly but if something comes up last minute and fully focusing on it will ruin what you're building elsewhere, that's ok.

The whole point here is to understand what's worth it and what isn't. Sometimes it's just not worth the fight. When that happens, move on to the next thing.

Believe it or not, I'm trying to sell you something this week! Over the past few months I've shared random docs, templates, and sheets with you all. I finally got around to converting some of them into Notion templates.

So far I've created templates for Brand HQ, DACI, and Consolidated Feedback. Outside of here you can find them in the nav of my website under Free Resources and I'll be creating more over the next few weeks. Please use them. Please share them. While you're at it, please share the newsletter. We're so close to 200 subscribers!