A creative project needs a creative leader, period.
A creative team can’t accomplish the final goal alone, without a continuously creative direction, no matter the skills of the team.
That’s because the quality of the final artifact is a total responsibility of the creative director, the quality that has to nicely meet the client expectations.
For that reason, it’s the creative director responsibility of the initial vision that should kick and guide the whole process, a process that needs to be monitored and adjusted over time by the same person that started the process.
The final outcome of the process should answer what the client asked for. It’s again a responsibility of the creative director defending the final work, the reason why of the choices and the benefit it’ll give to the stakeholders.
The initial vision, the whole process and the final result responsibilities cannot be split in different persons. A single person should promise at the beginning something to the client and the same person should show, tell and defend the final result according to the initial promise and the client expectations.
As a creative leader, you cannot request to a team some results without following all the road until the last step.
They cannot provide you the right thing.
It will definitely be something wrong or not complete at best. But it’s not a team fault. It’s easy to say the team didn’t understand the brief or the director’ intentions. The fault is in the leadership, the fault is the leader.
As a creative leader, you cannot pretend to get what’s in your mind without containing all the possible directions the team is in charge to formulate.
The next time you expect something you asked your team without directing the activities, remember who is the responsible for the failure. Don’t blame your team!
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