Everyone is a critic. In no way do I write that statement as a negative. The human race wouldn’t have evolved without constant evaluation of what we’ve done and where we should go.

However, I’m writing that statement because I’ve heard people mention that, being a critic is their unique ability. Sorry to say, but, in my opinion, it’s not. Any type of media that even the most experienced professional creates will have people that like it and people that don’t. The biggest blockbuster films that make millions worldwide will have groups of people that can find something wrong with it.

How does this relate to our industry? I contend that we must not be critics, it’s so amazingly simple to find something that can be changed in anything that we do. How good or bad our creative is is so subjective, we’ll always be able to find people that like it and people that don’t.

I say we challenge ourselves and our colleagues to not only criticize our teams work, but, offer ways to make it better. This would be, constructive criticism.

I’ve sat in so many meetings and creative briefs where people have pointed out what is wrong with something, but, are unable to offer suggestions on how to make it better. This type of meeting can draw on for quite sometime without any true resolution or goals to really polish up a piece.

The creative sessions that I’ve been involved with that have been most productive, are the ones where everyone involved is focused on making the piece better.

The ideal situation, in my humble opinion, is when egos and pride are checked at the door and a heathy debate arises on how to make a piece better. It’s important for everyone to be flexible with their ideas and imperative to get different perspectives from the entire creative team and our partners. In the end, your teams work will be seen by millions of people and the best way to appeal to the largest amount of people is by integrating different perspectives into a promotion or commercial.

As with everything I write here, I don’t think these concepts will work for every project. Sometimes your team comes up with something so far out of the box that you just have to roll with it. Also, some projects could be impacted in a negative way if there are too many modifications.

As creative leaders we must be able to ascertain which projects will be open to debate and which projects just fly as is. It’s a constant learning experience that we will make great decisions sometimes and sometimes miss the mark completely, but, we should always look at those misfires as a learning experience that will not be repeated.

Building a team that focuses on constructive criticism helps in the ways I’ve already mentioned, but, I also feel it helps build a team of people that are vested in every project that they work on. Their ideas are being considered and implemented because they’re offering suggestion on how to make something better, rather than just pointing out what’s wrong with something.

My observation is that people that have been in this industry for a while typically practice these philosophies, but, interns and those new to this industry don’t. Not because they don’t want to, but, they really don’t know better. Criticism is something that we are inundated with every day. Movie reviews and actors clothing at the oscars are just two examples where we hear that the movie was bad or that dress was ugly, but nothing more beyond that. It’s easy to say someone’s dress is ugly, it’s much more of a challenge to offer ways to make that particular garment work.So, as leaders, we must challenge interns, newcomers and even our veteran staff to step outside the comfort zone of criticizing a project. They must be challenged to think of ways to make the product better, offer up what they dislike about something, but challenge them to follow it up with a way to make it better.

Plain vanilla criticism will always be around us, is just to easy, but, if we constantly strive for industry leading content to be produced, we must empower our team with the wherewithal to go beyond common and really provide outstanding ideas on how to make every project better.