Good, fast, cheap. Pick two.

Creative professionals are talented people. But all too often, we copywriters, graphic designers, animators, videographers, and composers are asked (*cough cough* required) to do the impossible. Worse, we are expected to do so without pushing back.

There’s an old saying in the creative world: “Good, fast, or cheap. Pick two.” The idea is so universal that it extends to nearly every field and goes by many names: the Project Management Triangle, the Triple Constraint, the Iron Triangle, and more.

Of course, all clients want their projects to be good, fast, and cheap. But in the real world, that’s rarely possible. Creative professionals who promise all three are asking for trouble. We’ll wind up banging our heads against a wall trying to squeeze great work out of puny budgets with no lead time.

The facts are simply this:

Good and fast work won’t be cheap

If a client wants good work done fast, they’ll need the help of skilled professionals who are laser-focused on doing the job well. Cut-rate people won’t deliver quality work, and even the best creatives can only work so fast.

This type of job requires high-performing professionals to do high-performance work. If the client’s deadline forces the creative team to rush, put other work aside, or give up their evenings or weekends, then the client should expect to pay for that.

Cheap and good work won’t be fast

If a client wants a project to be good and cheap, then they probably won’t get it fast. “Good and cheap” jobs require creatives to plan meticulously to achieve the most efficiency and cost savings. And because we aren’t being paid particularly well for our good work, the client will probably have to wait for us to fit the project in amongst our other jobs.

“Good and cheap” jobs are hard on creatives because they bring us more stress for less money. They also diminish the value of good creative work. In a fairer world, this type of work would be confined to non-urgent projects that have lower budgets.

Fast and cheap work won’t be good

There’s an old saying I’ve always found myself using when working in creative departments that don’t manage projects well:

“There’s never time to do it right, but there’s always time to do it over.”

“Fast and cheap” jobs happen when a project is needed so urgently that there isn’t adequate time for planning and production. The result is usually a flustercuck of a job that winds up needing so many revisions and repairs before completion that it hardly saves time anyway.

In my opinion, no self-respecting creative team should ever have to take on a “fast and cheap” job. Well, maybe if you’re an independent freelancer who has extra time on his hands and decides it wouldn’t hurt to make a quick buck. Otherwise, “fast and cheap” jobs are best suited for rookie creatives who are just starting out, and hacks who are happy to crank out mediocre work every day.

Help clients pick their priorities

If you are a creative professional, I don’t need to tell you that our work is often misunderstood. Contrary to what some clients may think, we can’t just “work our magic” or flip a switch to produce great work fast. And working for cheap is not going to pay our bills.

Yes, sometimes flexibility and compromise are necessary. When your boss is asked by her boss to deliver a social media campaign by Friday, or you just learned that your company will be launching a new product next quarter, you have little choice but to make things happen.

Such is life in the marketing world.

But I still say these situations should be the exception and not the rule.

Let me give you an example.

One Friday afternoon this past January, my home furnace went out. As I live in Wisconsin, the temperature outside was in the single digits.

From the moment I realized my furnace was out, I became acutely aware of the Project Management Triangle.

In fact, it was all I could think about — that, and my soon-to-be-frozen ass.

I needed someone here to fix or replace my furnace fast, which I knew would not be cheap. I also wanted good equipment installed properly by someone who knew what they were doing, which also would not be cheap.

Can you imagine if I’d called around to heating and cooling companies demanding that someone come out late on a Friday, drop whatever they were working on at the moment to spend their evening and part of their weekend diagnosing and fixing my problem — and by the way, I want a discount on the parts and service, and I’d rather not pay your emergency service fee?

I guarantee you, every single one of those contractors would have hung up on me and left me to freeze — but probably not before telling me to kiss their warm, rosy, energy-efficiently heated ass.

Why should creative professionals be any less entitled than other professionals to fair compensation for their time, talents, and skills?

Indeed, from time to time, it may be necessary to educate our clients on the Project Management Triangle so they can, at the very least, begin to appreciate the value of our work. If you are an independent freelancer or you manage an agency or in-house marketing department, then you owe it to yourself and your people to stand up and speak honestly about the very real dynamics that affect creative projects and pricing.

Failing to do so will only ensure that you and your staff wind up unhappy, or your clients wind up unhappy, or everyone winds up unhappy — and in none of those scenarios will your business last for long.

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