Death by Nice
Recently, Debbi Vandeven, Global Chief Creative Officer of VML, shared a great article by Mark Wnek about a topic that  creative people are secretly plagued by: death by nice.
Wnek got me thinking about why “nice” is such a creative killer. Nice is a devious, two-headed beast that seduces its victims with soothing kindness and then renders them useless.  Yet putting the kibosh on nice work can be tricky because it masquerades as good, solid work. Nice work is easy to approve because its familiar and comfortable. You must work very closely to discover that it has no edges to create tension, it has no soul to make an emotional connection.
Nice flairs when timelines get tight, when a project doesn’t have a strong center of gravity, when we want to be liked by a client, or when we make things our clients think they want instead of things they need.
Nice happens when we feel bad about asking someone to redo something for the third time, or when we don’t want to deal with the pushback that comes after giving feedback.
There are all sorts of valid excuses and rationalizations behind nice work. And none of them take back the ugly truth: time and money were wasted making unremarkable, invisible work.
Be hard on the work and good to the people
Any creative worth their salt got into this business to use their creativity to solve problems. We must remember when giving feedback that if we’re not able to give and receive critical feedback, we’re not making each other better.  And what could be “meaner” than preventing greatness in our teams and our work?
Allowing work to stop short of great, settling in at “nice” is another form of short term gratification. But giving tough feedback—when delivered from a place of caring—is the nicest thing you can do to help people on their career paths, not to mention showing your clients you care about their work. They might not agree. They might not approve the “better” ideas. But at least you’ll know you’re keeping your standards high, vigilantly fighting for the best work. Because if you don’t, who will?
