Creative Is Rarely the Bottleneck. Decisions Are.
This post originally appeared in my Substack newsletter, The Work Behind the Work. Subscribe here.
You will find a version of this scenario at any company I have worked with.
A project falls behind schedule. Someone asks what went wrong, and the response is often accompanied by a small, apologetic shrug: “Creative took longer than we thought.”
This explanation is easy to accept. Creative work is the visible aspect of the project—the part we can all see in the form of a file. If the presentation is late, that’s what people notice.
Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash
Where the Time Actually Goes
Sometimes, I like to look back at a late project, not from memory but by reviewing the calendar and email threads. The pattern is hard to miss: the actual production time often aligns with expectations, while delays largely stem from peripheral issues.
Consider this: four days elapsed between asking for the brief and receiving it; there was a week when the project was on hold because the approver was out of town; two rounds of feedback were conducted sequentially when the three reviewers could have met in the same room; and a reversal in the third round rendered the first round unnecessary.
If you tally up the time, production is just a small part of the overall timeline. The bulk of the time was spent waiting for decisions or reworking aspects that had changed. This is fundamentally a decision-making issue disguised as a creative one.
Three Delays That Resemble Creative Time
An Unclear Start: A vague brief does not slow down a designer; it forces them to make a guess that often gets rejected without a clear reason. This results in a costly back-and-forth exchange.
Serial Feedback: When three reviewers provide feedback one after the other without having seen previous versions, it triples the cycle time and presents the designer with a stack of contradictory notes to sort through.
No Named Decision-Maker: This is the most costly issue. Without a clear “yes” from a designated person, work remains in a limbo state of general approval.
What Fixes It Isn’t Faster Designers
If you think that faster designers can solve these problems, you’re mistaken. When the bottleneck is decision-making, simply speeding up the designers will only lead to quicker queues.
Three strategies have significantly improved my project timelines more than any tool:
Name the Decision-Maker Before You Begin: Document who has the final say. Allow others to offer input, but one person’s “yes” must be final. Although it may feel political, this approach reduces friction in the approval process.
Batch Your Feedback: Resolve any conflicts among reviewers within 30 minutes instead of allowing the creative team to spend days navigating differing opinions.
Schedule Decision Time: If approvals typically take four days, make sure to reflect that in the project timeline. Assuming decisions will be made instantly only guarantees inaccuracies and puts undue pressure on the person responsible for delivering the final product.
Why This Matters Beyond the Schedule
There’s an unseen cost to all of this that won’t show up in a tracker. When creative teams are blamed for delays they did not directly cause, they begin to build walls. Team members may pad their time estimates and deliver the safest version of their work to avoid the backlash of clarifying questions. This results in a team that becomes skilled at navigating the process rather than excelling at the creative work itself.
The decision-making process is what truly slows down progress, even if it’s harder to pinpoint.
What would you discover if you conducted an honest assessment of the last project that ran long on your hands? How much of the delay involved actual creation versus simply waiting?
