T-Shirts and Suits Creative Enterprise Network
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Too much advice?
Although I'm a business adviser, I rarely give direct advice to the creative entrepreneurs I'm helping. Instead, I help them to reach their own conclusions by asking questions, providing information and guiding them towards the kind of success they seek to achieve.
There's no shortage of advice. Often my clients come to me with an abundance of ideas, plans, schemes and tactics. They are weighed down by advice that has been heaped upon them by well-meaning colleagues, friends, relatives and professional advisers. It's easy for people to suggest good ideas but the effect is that the person receiving the ideas ends up with a to-do list which is impossibly long. Then they either burn out or just feel overwhelmed.
My job is to help them sort it all out and select the ideas and advice that fits best with their overall objectives. By helping to remove the burden of too much advice, I can help them to focus on the few important things that must be done next in order to become even more successful.
When people offer you ideas and advice about developing your creative business, I suggest you do two things:
1. Thank them sincerely - because no doubt they mean well.
2. Add it to your list of things to consider - but not necessarily a list of things to actually do.
Since they want to be helpful, you could also ask them which of the things already on your to-do list they suggest you remove - to make space for their idea. It's a tough question!
The art of developing a creative enterprise isn't just trying to do more and more - it's about intelligently selecting the best things to do (and therefore actively deciding what not to do) in order to prioritise and focus energy and resources on the most important things.
We don't need more things to do. We need to decide which things are the most important things to do.
Read more on the T-Shirts and Suits blog:
http://blog.davidparrish.com/tshirts_and_suits/2009/07/too-much-adv...
Any comments?
There's no shortage of advice. Often my clients come to me with an abundance of ideas, plans, schemes and tactics. They are weighed down by advice that has been heaped upon them by well-meaning colleagues, friends, relatives and professional advisers. It's easy for people to suggest good ideas but the effect is that the person receiving the ideas ends up with a to-do list which is impossibly long. Then they either burn out or just feel overwhelmed.
My job is to help them sort it all out and select the ideas and advice that fits best with their overall objectives. By helping to remove the burden of too much advice, I can help them to focus on the few important things that must be done next in order to become even more successful.
When people offer you ideas and advice about developing your creative business, I suggest you do two things:
1. Thank them sincerely - because no doubt they mean well.
2. Add it to your list of things to consider - but not necessarily a list of things to actually do.
Since they want to be helpful, you could also ask them which of the things already on your to-do list they suggest you remove - to make space for their idea. It's a tough question!
The art of developing a creative enterprise isn't just trying to do more and more - it's about intelligently selecting the best things to do (and therefore actively deciding what not to do) in order to prioritise and focus energy and resources on the most important things.
We don't need more things to do. We need to decide which things are the most important things to do.
Read more on the T-Shirts and Suits blog:
http://blog.davidparrish.com/tshirts_and_suits/2009/07/too-much-adv...
Any comments?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by victoria on -
I find it creates designers block, it takes over being creative. Bogged down with do this and do that, try this and you really need to be doing that, especially when it comes to marketing on line - SEO. The amount of advice regarding this is huge. I stick to 2 good sources I've met on line for advice and it seems to be working out great so far.
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Permalink Reply by Peter Drought on -
I've certainly had advice a few times from well meaning people who didn't really know anything about the creative industries, and it subsequently turn out to be not particularly good. Part of the problem is of course that what works well for one business won't necessarily work well for another, even if on the face of them, they both appear pretty similar. Obviously there are mistakes that you should avoid, but ultimately it is down to considered trial and error.
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Permalink Reply by Mainda Kiwelu on -
This nicely underpins the idea of working smarter, rather than necessarily working harder. Creative businesses need to regularly evaluate the things that they are doing to see whether they are more efficient ways to reach their objectives. In time, it is easy to settle into a state of inertia with yesterday's good ideas - this doesn't necessarily mean changing things for the sake of change but rather, accepting the fact that change is constant.
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