Creative services is one of the last parts of corporate America that has been relatively untouched by Six Sigma. Many manufacturing companies apply it rigorously to their production lines, with the mathematical target of Six Sigma being to get errors as low as 3.4 per million items produced. This is an outstanding goal if one of making pharmaceuticals (and, in fact, the pharmaceutical industry has even surpassed this very low error rate), but the general reaction of creative people is, "Developing creative output isn't like making pills." This is very true. Ogilvy attempted to apply Six Sigma to its business a few years ago - with mixed results. Some say the lesson from their experience is that Six Sigma doesn't work in the creative world; other say that it can work, but needs to be done in a manner that avoids negatively impacting innovation and client service. I tend to agree somewhat with the latter point of view, concluding that the basic principles of Six Sigma can be applied to creative, but with only a fraction of the rigor that a Six Sigma Black Belt would recommend to other industries.

I haven't coined a phrase for it, but it could be called Six Sigma Light or Six Sigma Thinking or Three Sigma (feel free to submit a reply with a better suggestion), but it means taking the underlying elements of Six Sigma and applying them - very gently - to an environment that is wary of making any sort of analogy between it and manufacturing processes or financial services back office execution. What are these basic elements that can be applied?

A focus on accuracy

This doesn't mean avoiding the natural trial and error that goes on during creative concepting and it certainly doesn't mean placing a damper on the willingness of creative staff to try new and different things that may or may not result in output with which the client is happy. But it does mean, for example:

  • Trying to get clear client direction before starting concepting; this direction could be very broad, but it should at least define to whom we are communicating and what we want those receiving the communication to get out of it so as to avoid the "stabbing in the dark" concepting that tends to results in dozens of rounds of iteration
  • Codifying brand standards and knowing which brand standards are to be applied to a project before it starts
  • Ensuring during the concepting phase that what is being designed can actually work in the medium being used, whether it's web, print, packaging or CGI
  • Creating an environment in which staff opt to take the time to make sure things are done with high quality rather than just moving something off their desks with the attitude of, "The proofreader will catch that."

A focus on metrics

Focusing on metrics doesn't mean measuring everything that can be measured, but it does mean identifying the most important objectives of the creative group and then capturing a limited amount of data that will allow people to see whether the group is performing against these objectives. For example:

  • Capturing the results of client feedback, proofreading or brand reviews can provide a measure of quality
  • Capturing cycle time from when a client submits a job to when they see a first draft can measure how responsive the group is to client requests
  • Measuring labor hours by project and calculating fully loaded costs for common types of project can give a measure of processing efficiency (as well as a comparison against external agencies)

This type of measurement doesn't use stopwatches or place management scrutiny on every project that is running a little longer than planned, but it does attempt to capture the key indicators that reflect how well the group is performing against its mission.

A focus on continuous improvement

Capturing the results of client feedback, proofreading and brand reviews not only measures quality, but, perhaps even more importantly, provides fodder for continuous improvement. For example, if errors caught in proofreading are analyzed, one may be able to see patterns emerge since some errors probably occur more frequently than others. If it is found that the work of certain designers or writers contains more errors than the work of others, targeted training or management attention can be placed on these individuals. The focus of such efforts shouldn't be recrimination against those who commit errors, but rather to identify and eliminate the root causes of errors so as to reduce the likelihood of these errors happening in the future.

But don't go too far

All of the above can be highly effective, but an experienced creative manager will know where to draw the line. Even the CEO of 3M, a company that has achieved great operational improvements with Six Sigma, was quoted in Business Week as saying, "You can't put a Six Sigma process into that area and say, well, I'm getting behind on invention, so I'm going to schedule myself for three good ideas on Wednesday and two on Friday. That's not how creativity works." He was expressing a concern in the balance between efficiency and innovation - and he wasn't talking about creative services, where creativity is an inherent value; he was talking about a manufacturing company.

As mentioned above, the mathematical target of Six Sigma is to get errors as low as 3.4 per million items produced, which means that errors only occur when the output deviates from the norm by more than six standard deviations. Without rehashing college math class, when I wrote above that Three Sigma may be a good name when applying these principles to creative services it was before I did research to see what error rate you would get if errors occurred when they were three standard deviations from the norm. The answer is 6.7% of the time. In my opinion, if a creative process produces something that satisfies a client need 93.3% of the time (100% - 6.7%) that's a pretty good process. Getting to a higher degree of accuracy would probably result in stifling the kind of creativity that, maybe 30% of the time, totally wows the client - and creates incredible loyalty, true client delight and probably significant impact on the business.

For information about how Cella can add value to your business through consulting, coaching, and training, please email cella@cellaconsulting.com.

Peter Toth is a senior consultant with Cella Consulting, a traditional management consultancy focused on optimizing in-house creative operations. He has nearly two decades of consulting experience, with six of those years focused on improving the operations of in-house creative organizations. In addition, he spent four years working at online ad agencies. Peter is a graduate of New York University and lives in New York, not far from where he went to college.