Systems
thinking
An introduction
Systems thinking looks at the way ideas, people and behaviours interact, to understand them as systems. By making these dynamics visible, it becomes easier to see the core problems that need solving inside them.
The data
The system
You already have everything you need to succeed.
Sometimes, you just need to see it .
Context
Connect the dots in your data
Advertising and branding are full of things you can’t measure and can’t be right about. Understanding how the things you do know influence each other stops them distorting your decision-making.
Craft
Firewall-free creative development
You don’t need to change your company’s structure or culture to produce more effective ideas. A small change in dynamics can make everyone can be more focussed and more accountable for their ideas' success.
Consensus
De-compromise your campaigns
Planning it all ahead is slow and - spoiler alert - doesn’t really work. Instead, make a rough prototype and use it to learn from stakeholders and consumers. You’ll build something robust enough to survive internal politics now and external reality later.
Context
Find the right connections.
And solve challenges
with no right answers.
Billions of dollars of advertising fails to resonate with the public. Not because of the skill, intelligence and effort of anyone involved. But because their creative process didn’t give them the context they needed to make the best choices. Their thinking was trapped inside separate parts of the system. so the system’s complexities remained intact.
Systems thinking lets companies take anything they know about their customers, their products and their markets - and start seeing how their forces are connected to each other. And to the things they don’t know - like the wider culture they work on, or a new market, or a younger generation of potential customers.
Craft
Turn any team into a weapon
John and Paul were both talented song writers. But together, as the Beatles, they changed music itself - forever - in just eight years. Time and time again, we see these big creative leaps coming not from big creative talents themselves - but from the interactions between them.
Unfiltered. Unbiased. Unbelievably effective.
Creative sprints harness the power of the interactions between people from different disciplines and backgrounds. Creatives, clients, cultural insiders and even consumers. Over five days you’ll be part of a series of controlled explosions that allow ideas to fuse together in ways that normal business environments wouldn’t allow.
Five months development.
Done in five days.
This is not a bland collaboration in a workshop. It is provocative, it is immersive and it demands that everyone involved be accountable for their decisions. In return, systems thinking hands your team real power to solve your business challenges.
Focus
Perspective
Develop
Invest in craft. Get creativity free.
Advertising is something
nobody asked for. That’s why you need craft.
Modern advertising has so many elements and so many competing messages. That’s why you need craft.
Companies underestimate the power of craft to simplify, to convince, to add value. Those companies are your competitors. That’s why you need craft.
“It takes little to do or change most things. But it takes a lot to figure what that little is”
— Proverb
Consensus
As businesses get more connected, the number of people with a stake on your campaign keeps rising. You can try pretending they don’t exist or that their feedback isn’t relevant. Or you can make them part of the process. And use their ideas to make yours stronger. Nothing beats that moment when your idea becomes everyone’s idea.
Stakeholders before
Many stakeholders often only see ideas after they’ve already been ‘approved’ elsewhere. The issues they find must either go unaddressed or lead to redevelopment. Timings slip, production budgets must be rescoped, and creative oxygen starts running low.The ideas often tend not to get better.
Stakeholders after
During a creative sprint, stakeholders can view the idea’s development in real time. They can watch their audience’s reaction live. A prototype of the idea surfaces the misunderstandings and assumptions that would usually only surface later. Everyone can raise issues before the idea is ‘finished’. Which often improves the idea in the process.
See for yourself
Agile development works for creative projects of all sizes. Here’s some of the great things that have happened when we sprint
How film scenes can be prototyped as part of a design sprint
The power of
prototypes is real
Ideas are imaginary. But the challenges they must solve are real, and happening right now . Everyone’s nervous. It’s impossible to prove that the thing in your head can take that anxiety away. Until you can get it out of your imagination. And show its effect on other people’s.
Myths
Sprints are only
about speed
Sure you can go faster when you know where you’re no longer heading into the unknown. But sprints are actually a chance to slow down - to invest a bunch of days in figuring out a challenge, one challenge at a time.
Sprints are
just very long meetings
Sprints both expose and heal divisions and mis-alignment within even a small organisation. And the quality that comes out when creatives and clients are in sync with each other is never to be underestimated.
Sprints are for cooks, not chefs
The quality that comes out when creatives and clients are in sync with each other is never to be underestimated. As a writer or art director, the choices you make become the work. Everyone who needs to sign off on it is in the room with you. With this power comes incredible accountability. Which only fuels the drive to make the project your best work yet. .
Want to know more?
We love to talk about sprints. But we love hearing about challenges that need solving even more. Get in touch and let’s talk.