Battle royale: the in-house design team vs. the hired help

Dec 10 2007

A few years ago, back in my days as a corporate marketing manager, I was put in charge of an incredible project. We were going to completely rebuild the look and feel of our company’s flagship brand from the ground up and I would be in the driver’s seat. This was the kind of project that marketing dorks like me drool over. But it was hard work. Turning words and ideas into something tangible always is.

We decided early on — based on a number of factors — that we would hire an outside agency to help us with the design. Our in-house design team was talented, but this project would be in addition to their regular workload (and so a secondary priority) and although we had a lot of creative people, no one had a whole lot of experience doing this kind of highly conceptual work.

As the project moved forward, we’d consult upper management and our in-house folks every once in a while to share our progress and get their impressions. The work was good… We were happy and our executives were happy, but the in-house designers just wouldn’t warm up to it.

They were overly critical, they were even mean. Some of the in-house designers even went behind our backs a couple of times, pulling executive and C-level employees into impromptu meetings in break rooms and offices where they would deconstruct our work element by element, explaining all the reasons that it wasn’t good and it wouldn’t work and why we should abandon the project now and start from scratch before it was too late.

Even though this is my story, it probably sounds very familiar to many managers and business owners. This happens all the time when companies with in-house designers take their creative projects outside. “But it’s just a business decision,” most managers will say, “It’s nothing against our design department.”

That’s probably true, but your team probably doesn’t see it that way. I’ve worked in many art departments and I know how designers think. Creative people can be very sensitive when it comes to their work and tend to take things personally. In this type of situation, your designers may feel a little betrayed, they may feel passed over, that you’ve lost your faith/trust in them. A part of them will probably also feel that no matter what this other design group brings to the table that they could have done better. And so your in-house people can become predisposed — sometimes consciously but often subconsciously — to dislike the outside design group and their work.

That puts the people in charge of the project in an awkward situation. You want to keep your in-house team involved… You may need their buy-in and you probably want their advice throughout the process. But keeping them involved may derail your entire project… So how do you proceed?

I’d advise making your in-house designer part of the project team — don’t let them be a spectator on the sidelines, waiting for their opportunity to make comments. Get them involved at the outset and put them in a position to speak directly to the outside company in an advisory role. For example, have your designer speak to the outside company about your web platform, your print production standards, the history of related projects, etc.

The more your in house designers work with the outside designers, the more they’ll feel like they’re influencing the process and the more they may actually get to like the “outsiders”. If they like the outside designers, they’ll probably also respect them and may even learn from them. They’ll feel like members of the team and will be more likely to give constructive feedback when it’s time to review. It’s also a benefit to the outside design team, who often comes into a project with little or no helpful history or context for a project. The internal designer can be a great resource for them and give them a unique perspective.

The only caution I would give is to make sure that your internal designer understands that creative control of the project lies with you. If they have any creative input they should come to you and let you filter that information for the outside designers. There’s nothing more confusing for outside designers than getting conflicting creative direction from several parties at once.

As for the battle between marketing and the in-house design team from my story, we stuck to our guns and we stuck with the design we wanted. The deciding vote ended up coming from our customers who were given “sneak previews” at sales calls. They loved it and our management team went with it despite some of the internal protests. I was happy to have won my battle, but it’s never good when a company spends several months fighting with itself. When the project was done, we all had to work together again which wasn’t easy at first.

It was short-sighted on our part to try to make all of these decisions and expect them to buy-in without a lot of involvement at the outset. But at the same time, we were right not to cave when the objections started flying. We had done the work and we knew it was right. And in a battle between a business team and a design team, the business team needs to win every time. It’s a hard thing to say being someone with a design background, but it’s true. No designer — inside or outside — should be allowed to take the reigns of your business strategies away from you. No matter what happens during a creative project, make sure that you stay in control from start to finish.