You've probably heard it before: What gets measured gets managed. So, how does your department contribute to your company's strategic goals? How can you measure that? More specifically for creative operations, how does your team contribute to the success of your stakeholders? So much of the creative content lifecycle falls outside of Creative's control. Still, there are metrics that measure how Creative contributes to the request's success, like time to first proof, number of rounds of revisions, accuracy of forecasting, and resource availability. Managing your operations with software created specifically for creative teams is a must in order to prove your team's contribution and worth.

Right metrics will make you ask the right questions which will lead to generating new ideas. At the end we will be successful as an HR if you ask powerful questions.

Choose the right metrics. There are many different ways to measure creativity, so it's important to choose metrics that are relevant to your team's goals and objectives. Set clear goals and targets. Once you've chosen your metrics, set clear goals and targets for your team. This will help to focus their efforts and motivate them to achieve their creative goals. Track your progress over time. It's important to track your team's progress over time so that you can identify areas where they are excelling and areas where they need improvement. Use metrics to celebrate successes. When your team achieves their creative goals, be sure to celebrate their successes. This will help to boost morale and motivate them to continue to be creative.

-Develop specific metrics that focus on the creative process and outcomes. -Track the number of ideas generated by each team member/ whole team. -Measure the variety of ideas produced. -Monitor how often ideas are tested or experimented with. -Track the amount of time members dedicate to creative activities, such as brainstorming, research, and prototyping. -Measure the number of cross-functional collaborations or interactions within the team. -Track the percentage of ideas that progress from the conceptual stage to implementation. -Assess the allocation of resources (time, budget, personnel) to creative projects. -Measure the impact of creative ideas on key business metrics, like revenue growth, customer satisfaction, process efficiency.

With care. As soon as it becomes a numbers game, you may be killing creativity. I'm all for tracking a few select goals around creativity, if they're used as evidence to support better processes and systems that enable creativity. But bear in mind that creativity requires a certain amount of breathing space and freedom, and won't come from being managed more.

Albert Einstein allegedly said "Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted." Although metrics may be interesting and often useful, they should not be the only factor involved in assessing a team member's creativity or contribution. Jane may come up with 50 ideas, none of which are workable. Mary may come up with just one idea, but it's a doozy and may lead to world peace. 😀 If metrics are the be-all and end-all, Jane's performance appraisal will look much better than Mary's! People's worth and contributions may not be able to be counted. That sure doesn't mean that the person doesn't count. Be very careful when employing metrics where your employees are concerned.

Metrics have a dual role in creativity both as help & hinder. It's vital to choose right metrics that match company's goals & innovation strategy including innovation-led KPIs, customer feedback & idea generation rates. It's important not to focus too much on numbers over quality of ideas. Encourage a culture of experimentation & learning where failure is OK & prioritize metrics promoting risk-taking/ exploration. Teams should have freedom to innovate & metrics should guide not restrict them. Acknowledge & reward creative efforts even if they don't yield immediate results. Metrics do boost team creativity when used thoughtfully with the need for innovation/measure creating space to value creativity & metrics support rather than limit it.