Why creativity needs a great feedback culture

We think there is little more important for creative work than an open, honest feedback environment. We’d like to share why — and how we deal with it.

Establishing and maintaining a culture of sympathetic and constructive criticism is something a lot of companies struggle with — and make no mistake: we do, too. It is not always easy to phrase your feedback in a way that does not discourage or even belittle your colleagues, and accepting criticism does not come natural to everyone.

While voicing your opinion and concern in a positive and constructive way is important in almost every aspect of team work, it is absolutely paramount in the field of creative work. Producing creative output is never a task to be done in pure isolation — exchanging ideas, opinions and inspirations are key for most creative professionals to fully thrive in their field. There is literally no case that I can think of where my content didn’t go through multiple rounds of feedback, and I regularly participate in the creative process of my colleagues.

And this is great — because in every case I was prouder of the output we, as a company, delivered than I could have ever been with my first drafts. Yet, in the past, there have been moments were I felt that criticism was crushing down on me and stifled my creativity. I am sure there are a lot of creative professionals out there who experienced the same thing. All the more reason for me to talk about how important a great feedback culture is for creative work.

Sure, to be able to deliver great work results, even and maybe especially creative professionals have to develop and stick to a process that allows them to fully comprehend and assess all the information needed for their work. Take writing content for a new or relaunching website project, for example.

At exutec, we start producing actual content only after doing a significant amount of preliminary groundwork to make sure we understand what message every page is supposed to convey and how it fits into our customer’s brand story. That means, before we even write down the first few words of content we have finalized a sitemap, a storyline for every subpage and all the necessary information gathered from our customers. When we actually sit down to produce content, all of this groundwork helps us to keep track of where we are and where we need to go.

But having a process outline the cornerstones of your creative work does not make it less of a “shot in the dark” in the most positive sense. Think of it as a treasure map in one of these pirate movies. We have the map, which is great because it helps us to move in the right direction. But to get to the good stuff, we still have to conquer the sea, fight off venomous snakes and survive deadly traps. In the figurative sense, of course. Only that we are responsible for both drawing the map and producing the treasure.

But enough of the sleezy pirate references: What I’m saying is, in order to deliver truly unique results you have to create something new, something valuable. The problem with that is that a genuinely novel idea is unfamiliar to both the recipients and its creator. It is often impossible for a creative professional to tell the less useful sparks of creativity from the really valuable ones right away. It takes time, constant reassessment and unrelenting open-mindedness to develop an idea from a fragile first draft to something sustainable and unique — or to abandon it when it just doesn’t work.

When giving feedback, especially in the early stages of creative work, it is essential to encourage nurturing ideas instead of tearing them down. However, that does not mean to idly sit by when you think something is heading in the wrong direction. Rather it is important to understand that you always voice your subjective opinion, not an objective fact. Neither your point of view nor that of your colleagues is of universal validity.

Internalizing this will help to engage in an open and constructive dialogue that sparks new ideas and can identify red herrings early on. We found that doing this regularly and as early as possible really helps us to propel our creativity, because this helps to channel our ideas right from the start. Nothing is more discouraging than spending weeks on a project only to find out that you went in a completely wrong direction, because you didn’t ask for feedback earlier. Happened to me once. Not fun, I can assure you — but it showed me how important it is to seek out input from others.

Like mentioned earlier in this article, being open-minded is paramount for creative work. You continuously need to delve into uncharted territory in order to look for innovative and valuable solutions. This is a task that becomes inequitably harder to the point of sheer impossibility if you are afraid of being judged on a personal level. Constantly asking yourself if this one new idea that you had is really the thing you want to be measured by will incapacitate your ability to think freely and leave a lot of great thoughts squandered you would otherwise have had.

Presenting your creative output to others takes a lot of bravery, but we find that it’s an effort everyone should afford — and we try to reward that bravery with a safe environment and maximum support. We feel that in order to deliver great creative work, we have to trust each other.

Sounds easy, right? Well, what’s easily said is not necessarily so easily done. Remember that time when you promised to clean out your wardrobe and throw out all these skinny jeans that you haven’t fit into since last Christmas, but didn’t because you were totally going to start working out soon? Exactly. We struggled with that as well. The feedback thing, that is. There is a huge difference between “No offense, but…” and actually valuable feedback. In order to be valuable, your feedback needs to help your colleagues determine how to continue with their work.

When I voice my opinion about a piece of creative work, I try not only to make a case against certain aspects that I think don’t really work, but also to make a case for things that I do like and would like to see more of. I make suggestions on what I think would benefit the result the most. Providing a different perspective goes a long way, since it not only saves your colleagues from running head on into a creative blockade, but also helps them latch onto the idea that you’re trying to convey. And I expect everyone on our creative team to do the same.

Without false pride, I can firmly say that we are getting really good at this. Take this blog post you are reading at the moment as an example. I gave it to our Art Director Alex for review. He said: “I really like it. It is a good read, you make some good points and it feels really coherent overall. Maybe you could try to make it a bit more palpable and relatable by including some examples, maybe a personal story or two?” And that’s what I did right here. Thanks, Alex. But you see what I’m getting at: Instead of a “This is not good enough, try harder”, he provided me with a feeling that I did great on my own while also helping me to purposefully improve on my work.

This goes both ways, though. While it may be important to be careful on how you phrase your criticism, we found that it’s just as important that, as a creative professional, you are really open for valuable and valid arguments from your team. At first glance, it might not be the most enjoyable thing to be on the receiving end of criticism. What we try is to take a step back and separate ourselves from our work for a moment. If my work is not perfect from the get-go, that does not mean I am bad at my job and even less that my team doesn’t value me as a person. Do I hate my dad simply because every time he cooks he literally drowns everything in garlic? Not at all, I love that man. It just means that he might be able to improve his cooking by cutting back on the garlic. There are other ingredients, dad.

Asking for feedback on a regular basis not only might help you overcome blockades and achieve better work results, but it also serves another valuable purpose: you’ll let your team in on it. By allowing the members of your project task force to take part in the creative process and giving them the opportunity to change things for the better, you inspire deeper commitment and a sense of ownership in everyone. Rather than exerting a “take it or leave it” approach you allow everyone to partake in the creation of something that not only you, but the whole team can be proud of.

Even though we are by no means perfect, I’d confidently say we as a team have embraced the fact that great work needs revision and diverse input. No exceptions. The more we rid ourselves of that “It’s all on me” feeling, the braver and more creative we can be.

This is by far not the end of the road. There is still a lot to learn, plenty to improve — like understanding what kind of feedback helps our different departments the most, for example. Our designers are looking for different aspects of evaluation than I as the content guy might. Currently, we are working on something you could call guidelines to make sure our feedback becomes even more purposeful. But we feel that we have come a long way already. Since we started to pay attention to this issue, the chemistry in our team as well as our work results have been better than ever — which proves to us that it is absolutely worth it. Plus, it creates a snowball effect: The better we get at openly discussing issues in a safe environment, the easier it gets to identify lingering problems and working on them together.

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That’s how we do it. What are your thoughts on the topic? I’m looking forward to receiving your feedback (cheap one, I know).

If you are interested in what this ominous creative stuff is that we are apparently great at, check us out on

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