Optimize First, Automate Second: A Smarter Approach to Creative Operations

If you work in creative operations, you certainly know the pressure to produce more, more, more with less and you’ve likely heard the promises of automation: faster approvals, streamlined resource allocation, auto-versioning, less human-led tasks and fewer headaches all around. Sounds perfect, right?

Here’s the thing: Automation is usually only as good as the process it’s automating. 

Let me explain.  Let’s take an example around automating and making persistent all of the project data (like budget stakeholders, specs, media plan) for an upcoming creative project persistent across every step of that process.  If your briefing process isn’t up to scratch—if your team struggles with unclear asks, late inputs, or vague expectations—then automating that briefing data workflow won’t help. Instead, it will produce more off-brief deliverables potentially at a faster pace. Essentially, automation amplifies what’s already there, whether it’s good or bad. 

That’s why, in my experience optimization has to come first. By taking the time to improve your workflows—clarifying roles, removing bottlenecks, and ensuring processes align with outcomes—you set yourself up to reap the full benefits of automation. Skipping this step is like trying to fix a flat tyre by driving faster. 

The Real Cost of Skipping Optimization

It’s tempting to jump straight into automation. After all, it promises quick wins: faster turnarounds, fewer manual tasks, and more scalability. But without an optimized foundation, automation can actually backfire.

Imagine this: Your team uses automation to streamline approvals. Sounds great—until you realize your approval process includes unnecessary steps, unclear decision-makers, and no real accountability. Now, instead of fixing those issues, you’ve just made them happen faster. 

Or take resource allocation. Many teams dive into scheduling tools to automate assignments, but if your project scoping is inconsistent—or worse, unrealistic—or it's not clear how teams are assigned based on skills, availability or region…well automation won’t solve that. You’ll still have teams stretched thin, projects running over budget, the wrong team members assigned to jobs and deadlines that feel more difficult than ever.

The problem isn’t the technology. It’s the fact that automation alone can’t address inefficiencies. It’s like adding rocket fuel to a car that’s already headed in the wrong direction. 

Why Optimization Needs to Be the First Step

Continuous and intentional Optimization has the potential to unlock real value in iterating your creative operations. It’s the step where you pause, evaluate, and refine how things work before you speed them up.

Here’s why it’s so essential: 

• Clarity Drives Efficiency: Optimizing your processes creates clarity—around roles, expectations, and language. Teams spend less time figuring out what’s next and more time doing great work. 

• Fewer Mistakes, Less Rework: When processes are optimized, work gets done right the first time. That means fewer rounds of revisions, less wasted effort from unclear briefs or approvals, and better outcomes overall. 

• Happier Teams and Stakeholders: Streamlined workflows reduce frustration for everyone involved. Teams feel more empowered to share what's working and what's not, and stakeholders get what they need without unnecessary delays. 

• Practice makes perfect: Once teams get practiced with optimizing themselves they will share dozens or hundreds of ways they think their work could be optimized.
  

The goal isn’t to create perfect processes, this is a practice, not an outcome!—it’s to make them as effective and frictionless as possible. Once you’ve done that, automation becomes a more effective way to scale those improvements. 

So, how do you approach this in creative operations? Here’s a simple framework: 

• Start with Briefing: Briefing is the foundation of every creative project. If your team is dealing with incomplete or unclear briefs, focus here first. Build a standard template, train stakeholders to provide actionable input, and ensure every brief ties back to measurable goals. Once your briefs are solid, automation can help you manage and distribute them more efficiently. 

• Streamline Approvals: Look at your approval process and ask: Are there too many decision-makers? Is feedback consistent and actionable? Simplify before you automate. Define clear roles and use a single source of truth for feedback to avoid confusion. 

• Refine who does what and where they do it: Before automating scheduling, focus on how you prioritize projects and estimate timelines. If these are off, automation will only exacerbate the issue. Use past project data to fine-tune your approach, then layer in automation to make resource allocation faster and more dynamic. 

• Measure Outcomes, Not Just Output: It’s easy to get caught up in how many deliverables your team produces, but what matters is how well those deliverables perform and the level of effort used to create them. Use this data to figure out where you got bottlenecked or where the creative went awry…use critical data to continually optimize what processes you want to improve before scaling them with automation. 

• Embrace Continuous Improvement: Optimization isn’t a one-and-done effort. Build a culture where processes are regularly reviewed and refined. Automation should always follow these refinements—not lead them. 

Automation as an Amplifier of Success 

When you optimize first, automation becomes a powerful tool. It scales what’s already working and frees your team to focus on what they do best—delivering high-quality creative work.

But when you skip optimization, automation can feel like a speed boost toward frustration. Your team ends up spending more time navigating bottlenecks or dealing with off-brief deliverables instead of focusing on meaningful work. 

Creative operations leaders who get this balance right are the ones positioned to succeed in a world of rapid change and higher outputs. They take the time to fix what’s broken, align processes with outcomes, and use automation as an amplifier—not a shortcut. 

Optimize First, Automate Second

So, before you invest in automation tools or workflows, take a hard look at your processes. Are your briefs clear? Are approvals streamlined? Are your resource allocation methods realistic? Do you have a clear line of sight on specs and data? 

When you optimize first, you’re not just improving workflows—you’re setting your team up for sustainable success. Automation can then take those improvements and make them scalable, predictable, and frictionless. 

So, take the time to optimize. Automate where it makes sense. And watch as your creative operations begin to improve and produce better and more work with less burnout and frustration. 

If we can help you with a health check or process analysis, please be in touch!

Jeremy Wintroub,  EVP Creative Operations & Content Studios, ICP