What I'd Do Differently: Lessons from Running Creative in Fast Environments

This post originally appeared in my Substack newsletter, The Work Behind the Work. Subscribe here.

I keep thinking about the times I promised a full campaign in three weeks, when it really needed five – and I can’t even recall the exact project, to be truthful, because I’ve fallen for this more than once. The pattern was always the same: the people in charge wanted a very quick finish, I agreed because I wanted to prove the team could manage it, and then the team spent three weeks working at full speed, which left everyone worn out and the final product just a little less good than it could have been.

The campaign did go out. It was alright. Yet “alright” is the most costly word in marketing, because it means you put a lot of effort into something for a fairly average outcome. The team could have created something really good with two more weeks. Instead, they made something acceptable under pressure – then needed a week after that to recover.

This post isn’t about that particular project. It’s about the things I’ve learned over years of making creative work in places where the pressure is real, the deadlines are tight, and you don’t have much room for mistakes.

Photo by NordWood Themes on Unsplash

Lesson one: add far more time than you think you’ll need

Every marketing leader underestimates how long things take – not the actual making of things, but everything around it. The meeting to get everyone on the same page will take three days to arrange. The legal check sends back more questions than approvals. The person who’s been away and needs to give their opinion before it’s final.

The making of the work might take two weeks. The process around the work takes four. And if you plan the timeline around the making, without accounting for the process, you’ll be behind from the start.

I now add 30–40% extra time to every timeline I make. Not because the team is slow, but because the reality of working with different departments in any business includes waiting, making changes, and fitting into other people’s plans. The extra time isn’t ‘padding’ – it’s being honest about how work really moves through a system.

Lesson two: don’t wait for perfect information to start

There’s a tendency, especially in places obsessed with getting things done, to wait until every detail is settled before starting to make anything. The final wording. The approved product details. The confirmed launch date. The finished creative brief.

Waiting for perfection means starting late, which means rushing the making, which means the work isn’t as good as it could have been if you’d begun earlier with imperfect information.

I’ve started with what I know and built in points to make changes. Start thinking up ideas and writing drafts based on the 80% of information you have. Set a checkpoint for when you expect the other 20%. Change things at the checkpoint. This means the team is working alongside the decision-making process, rather than waiting behind it in line.

The risk is that some early work will be changed. The reward is that the total timeline becomes much shorter, and the team isn’t doing everything in one last, frantic sprint.

Lesson three: tell people quickly when timelines change

Timelines change. They just do. A product date is moved. Legal review takes longer than expected. A boss adds a new need in the middle of the project. The question isn’t if this will happen – it’s how you deal with it when it does.

Early in my career, I took timeline changes in silence. I’d change the schedule privately, push the team harder, and try to reach the first deadline anyway. The result was people being burned out and a product that was technically on time but not as good as it could have been.

Now I share changes right away – not as an excuse, but as information. “The legal check came back with big changes. We have three options for how to proceed: push the launch back by three days, reduce what the social campaign does, or launch in stages. I’m for the third choice – and here’s why.”

This tells leaders they have a choice and aren’t being blindsided. It also shows that the marketing person in charge is actively managing the situation, rather than ignoring it.

Lesson four: protect your team’s capacity by saying no

The hardest thing for someone leading in marketing is saying no to work that doesn’t fit the current sprint.

Every company has more ideas than it can handle. New asks come up all the time – from sales, from leadership, from partners, from other departments. Each individual request doesn’t seem like a lot. “Would you just make a quick flyer?” “Would you update this one-pager?” “Would you make some social posts for this event?”

On their own, these aren’t big jobs. But together, they’re the reason the important work doesn’t get done. The team spends its weeks on last-minute requests and never gets to the planned work that creates value in the long run.

Getting good at saying no – or, more exactly, saying “not at this time, and this is what we are doing instead” – is what keeps the team able to do the work that compounds over time. It isn’t about being unhelpful. It’s about being deliberate about where the team spends its effort.

Lesson five: good enough, on time, beats perfect and late

This is the lesson that took me the longest to truly accept, because it goes against what every marketer who cares about quality instinctively wants to do.

The webpage could be better, but the launch is tomorrow. The social images aren’t quite right, but the event is in three hours. The email copy is good, but not the best, and it’s set to go out this afternoon.

In all these cases, the choice is the same: wait for it to be perfect, or send what you’ve got?

The answer is, almost always, send it. Not because quality isn’t important – it is. But because marketing works within moments that have to be met. A product launch has a date. A trade show has a start time. A seasonal campaign has a window where it’s most effective. Missing that window in pursuit of perfection doesn’t just make the work late – it makes it less relevant.

But “good enough” doesn’t mean “bad.” It means 85% instead of 95%. It means the work is good, on brand, and says what it should – it just isn’t as polished as it would be with two more days. That gap between 85% and 95% is real, but it’s rarely worth the cost of missing the right moment.

It takes judgment to know the difference between “good enough to go” and “not ready.” You develop this judgment over time, and it’s one of the most valuable skills a marketing leader can build.

Lesson six: what happens after the sprint matters as much as the sprint itself

Tight timelines create sprints. Product launches, trade shows, big campaigns – there are times when the team works at its peak for long stretches. That’s normal, and sometimes necessary.

What can’t continue is sprinting without improving. When I was new in my career, I’d push the team through a sprint and then move straight to the next thing. The team would handle it once. Twice. By the third sprint without recovery, quality dropped, morale fell, and more people left.

Now I build recovery into the plan. After a big launch, the following week is lighter on purpose. After a trade show, the team gets a choice. This isn’t just a nice-to-have – it’s how you get consistently strong work. A team that improves between sprints can maintain high performance for years. A team that sprints all the time burns out in months.

The meta lesson

The most important thing to take from all these lessons is that I really should have listened to more knowledgeable people. In several instances, I was told what to do – but I didn’t take the advice, either because I believed my circumstances were unique, or because the pressure to produce something outweighed the common sense of taking my time.

The greatest thing I’ve learned about getting things done, from over fourteen years in marketing, has nothing to do with schedules, methods, or how impressive the creative output is. It’s that work released on schedule – even when it isn’t ideal – is better, every single time, than work that’s perfect but delivered too late. And the team that sustains good work over a long period is better than the team that does it once and then falls apart.

Quick-paced workplaces value people who can produce, but they can also wear down people who don’t look after themselves or their teams. The best marketing leaders I know manage to do both.