Lean Media: How to focus creativity, streamline production, and create media that audiences love

by Ian Lamont

Most new media is destined to fail. Whether it’s a song, film, website, book, video game, advertisement, or other type of media production, it’s extremely difficult to create works that resonate with audiences.

Lean Media can give creators and media companies an edge. The framework has worked for some of the biggest media brands and most well-known artists, as well as smaller teams and media ventures. It draws on the same "lean" approaches adopted by manufacturing and tech startups, but is optimized for the unique needs and production methods used in the media industry.

In LEAN MEDIA, author Ian Lamont shows how the framework can streamline processes, lower costs, reduce the risk of failure, and ultimately create media that matters. Packed with examples as diverse as The Simpsons, Led Zeppelin, Minecraft, The Financial Times, and more, LEAN MEDIA outlines the framework for producing high-quality media on time and on budget.

If you create media, the Lean Media framework provides the tools and know-how to develop media that clicks with audiences. Whether you work on a large team or are a solo creator, the framework can help you iteratively develop great media, informed by audience input and with a minimum of bureaucratic overhead.

If you run a media business, Lean Media can help you optimize teams, streamline decision-making, and increase audience engagement. Lean Media can also inform creative and business leaders about how to pivot a media project in a new direction or alternate format, or when to abandon projects that simply aren’t working out.

All kinds of media professionals can leverage the framework, including:

* Filmmakers
* Publishers
* Broadcasters
* Authors
* Journalists
* Graphic designers
* Website operators
* Recording artists
* Video game designers
* Copywriters
* Creative directors
* Performance artists

John Maeda, Head of Computational Design & Inclusion at Automattic and author of Laws of Simplicity, has hailed the timeliness of Lean Media. “Lamont has successfully taken concepts from the Lean Startup movement and applied them to media production projects," Maeda says. "No longer can there be the ‘one visionary way’ — instead, there needs to be humility (know your customer) and incrementalism (test often) as the keys to creative outcomes.”

For more information, visit leanmedia.org.

164 pages, Paperback

Published September 12, 2017

About the author

I am the author of a half-dozen “In 30 Minutes” guides, including Google Drive & Docs In 30 Minutes, Dropbox In 30 Minutes, Excel Basics In 30 Minutes, and Twitter In 30 Minutes. I’ve been writing about business, technology, education, and culture for years, starting with newspapers and magazines in the 1990s and later expanding to online media. I was the senior editor, new media for IDG’s Computerworld and served as the managing editor of The Industry Standard. My articles, essays, and blog posts have appeared in numerous locations, from the BBC World Service website to Lifehacker.

My interest in technology is rooted in early exposure to computers, video games, and science fiction. I am old enough to remember the original Battlestar Galactica, and read Gene Wolfe’s Shadow of the Torturer when I was 12. I have been writing science fiction short stories for more than 10 years, but in 2014, I took part in NaNoWriMo and managed to produce the first draft of my first science fiction novel which, unfortunately, requires significant revisions before it can be released!

My latest project is Lean Media (leanmedia.org) which is a framework for creating all kinds of media, from books to videogames. The first draft was completed in September 2016, and I expect the book to come out in 2017.

Reviews

[Don Gerstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

My thanks to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book.

Author Ian Lamont explains a different approach to creating any type of media, and it pushes against the standard practices that management has used for years. The emphasis is on eliminating waste, letting the creative team focus on creativity, and making sure before you launch your new project that you understand the prospective audience. Mr. Lamont’s blunt, but concise advice: “Anything that does not align with these principles must be reconsidered.”

This means that smaller (in team size) is better and less wasteful, and entails non-creative stakeholders to minimize their roles (which is not the way it has always been done). The book identifies the most important people in the entire process of creating something to bring to market and sell: “At the end of the day, the only stakeholders whose opinion truly matters are audience members.” While there are some legitimate non-creative folks that may need to be considered (i.e., lawyers, major investors, publishers, etc.), the key is only allowing critical inputs that do not include unnecessary request, delays, and approvals that slow or clog the creative process. Mr. Lamont recognizes the term “unnecessary” can be subjective. He answers by providing plenty of real-life examples demonstrating that there is plenty of evidence from audience surveys that support his views. Obviously, being clear with non-creative partners and those who will help market your project should be made at the beginning.

If you are having trouble grasping the Lean Media concept, here is a great example of practitioners who have been using this idea for year. Comedians hone their craft for years, trying out bits and keeping what makes audiences laugh and dropping what doesn’t. Years later, we see them on late night TV or in a major club and think they are incredibly funny and talented. Hardly ever do we consider the years of trial and error that led to our moment of entertainment.

Unlike many books that furnish advice and then tell you to go out and be successful, Mr. Lamont devotes an entire chapter to his Lean Media project planner (downloadable from his website). If you are inexperienced with this type of tool, after furnishing one for you to use, the author then gives examples of how it works in different projects. This is a missed opportunity by most books. By seeing how the author filled in the planner, I have a better idea how to use it in my own projects. I believe the inclusion of this chapter alone is worth the price of ten books.

We are in a future that is occurring now. Media has altered from what was happening five and ten years ago, and twenty years ago is almost an unrecognizable landscape. To be successful in the future, one should consider the tools and ideas that make sense in an ever-changing and evolving world. Ian Lamont’s “Lean Media” presents those tools and ideas and backs them up with solid facts. Five stars.

[Rosemary Rey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book gives great insight on how to utilize media and marketing for any product that needs promotion. I was a bit skeptical that I could use any of the theories and practices in my own marketing because I'm an indie author, but I feel like the author presented very reasonable methods that can be easily placed into practice. And there were sections where he actually highlighted authors. This is a great reference book for anyone wanting to implement promo practices that are easy to produce and effective when put forth. This will definitely be a go-to reference when I need ideas for promotion.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for a copy in exchange for an honest review. I'm happy to have read this one.

[Ryan Kapsar · Rating 2 out of 5]

Normally, I wait until I finish most of the book to start a review. However, in this case there are some things that I must call out immediately after reading 39 pages of this book. Which, I almost put down this book after page 38, but since this was a review copy I felt obligated to continue. In Chapter 2, the author calls out a number of customer/advertiser behaviors that had negative impact on the media landscape, including sites like Craigslist which killed the classified section of news papers and saying that "some [customers] had gone as far as installing ad blockers." This I found deeply problematic, because it starts with the premise that we, as consumers, should accept every ad thrown at us. The book never reflects as to why a customer would want to use an adblocker.
This is due to the fact that in chapter 3, the author explicitly explains he's eliminating the Five Why's methodology from the Lean Media tool kit. Let's take a look at an example I saw on twitter the other day about the importance of the Five Why's in this case.
Site: "You're using an ad blocker, please Whitelist us"
User: Whitelists
Site: Hidden ad plays music and sound at full volume
User: Blacklists site

Here's a way to use Five Why's (you only need one) in this case.
Site: Why did you black list our site?
User: Because there was an obtrusive ad that I was unable to control, it started to use my speakers without my permission and since I couldn't find it, I wasn't able to mute it. My only recourse was to blacklist your site for violating my trust.

This single ad now has likely cost the repeated visits of this user and has reduced trust in sites that ask for users to whitelist their site. There is a clear lack of trust.

Ok, maybe that's not a fair example. Let's look at someone of the rationale the author users to throw it out as it reduces creativity. Paraphrasing here, some creative people are tyrannical and that seems to work for great creative processes. Well, given that many of these tyrannical personalities have been outed as sexual harassers lately and the Five Whys might have identified this as a risk, maybe that's not a good answer. His other answer was to look at the Doom creative process and showed that tension was part of the reason why that game was great. Sure, it might work as a one off, like Doom, but the problem is that you want to build a long lasting company. If you allow that sort of toxicity in a company long term you risk driving off creative talent that are being overruled by those voices. Furthermore, this approach has been thoroughly debunked in the Agile software development community (which is an incredibly creative space in general and has just as many egos as game development (which is fundamentally software development)). There are frequent "Retrospectives" where the team asks what they can do better and the leaders are expected to go and fix the problems, which typically requires Root Cause analysis, where Five Why's is a key tool to doing so.

As someone that has read a large amount on the topic of Six Sigma, Lean, Agile, DevOps, and Creativity, I find a book that purports to be about Lean and Creative material content development that ignores the Five Why's to be deeply problematic because it is ignoring Root Cause analysis because personalities that clash are important. In "Creativity Inc." the history of Pixar, by Edwin Catmull one of the founders, the explicitly call out reigning in the egos was a key part of their success and that they use Lean and the Five Whys as part of their creative process. I propose that if a media giant like Pixar can figure out the best way to use Five Why's in their methodology, then every media company can and should use it as well.

The remainder of Chapter three is problematic for two reasons. First the author argues that Data driven media companies are doomed to fail, which is an argument that warrants farther investigation. However, the example, Zynga, wasn't done in by missing the mark with their data, what happened was that Facebook essentially killed Zynga by blocking most of the Mafia War links, the games themselves were going strong until Facebook interceded on behalf of other Facebook users. Second, since the author argues against being exclusively data driven and that there are these qualitative features that are unique to media ventures, but clearly the Five Why's, an interview approach, can answer some of the questions. For example, the author poses the question, why did you leave after being on the site for 10 seconds. That's literally the point of the Five Why's and A/B testing, which are both qualitative and quantitative ways to answer that question.

Another point that is frustrating to me as a reader is that the author seems to be confusing "Media ventures" and "Creative Media" because many of the points the Author makes fall into media ventures, which are the firms, which could definitely benefit from all lean methodologies. Then turns around and argues that they are so unique, because creativity and basically argues that design is so purpose driven that it doesn't count as creativity. This is patently false and books like Design Driven Innovation and Creative Confidence both call out some really great creative qualitative tools that are used in both lean and the even more data centric Six Sigma. The building on this point, one of the major areas of "creative" media the author talks about is newspaper articles and book editing. The latter is certainly not a creative process, it is a process though and that can be improved by lean.

Another problematic aspect of this book, is the general tone of the writing. There seems have been some past issue between the author and the operations side of the media business that he puts into this framework book. Maybe it was intended to come across as humorous or an in joke between fellow creators, but if I'm a creator and I want my media company to adopt Lean Media as a way of doing better media development, I'd want to feel comfortable giving this book to a member of that team as a rationale why we should change our management practices. Based on the tone of this book, I'd be unwilling to do that. These are cases where the author is 100% correct in what he is saying. For example, he's arguing that a way to reduce waste (more on waste later), is to have smaller teams, because it improves the creative functions and those sales VPs are idiots. That might be 100% correct, however the tone misses the mark. Agile and DevOps make the exact same argument, but in a less antagonistic tone, which is significantly more effective in making the case to the creatives, the head creative (the pigs), and the operations team (the chickens) than the Lean Media approach. It does it through an old joke about a pig and a chicken wanting to open a restaurant called ham and eggs. The pig wants to have full control since he's committed (Ham) while the chicken is only involved (eggs). This is a significant tonal shift that allows for the exact same conversation in a less confrontational way which allows this book to be shared between the main target audience and the media executives that may have to buy off on the management and cultural change.

After finally finishing the book, the real value of the book kicks in around page 70 where the author really starts to talk about how to analyze audience feedback. This is where the book stands out compared to just about every other high level Lean book I've read. The book provides much more explicit direction, but not tools, about who should be included, and generally how to use the feedback provided by various audience members. The book does parse out the different groups of people that you should try to get feedback from based on the phase and maturity of the media that you are developing and uses a few great examples of that towards the end.

I think this is clearly the strongest part of the authors Lean experience, but is still mostly intuition/experienced based rather than using some of the common tools already in use in the Lean space for dealing with feedback. One common tool I've used to analyze, group and include/discard feedback is called the KJ Analysis or Affinity Diagram, this would have been incredibly powerful to include in this discussion. It would have taken the book from a high level framework to a much more powerful tool than it is. It's isn't like the author is avoiding this either. He provides one or two tools throughout the book, with the Lean Media Project Planner being the most powerful and obviously useful of the tools.

I think based on the Author's experience, adding tools to the second half of the book, providing more examples and showing how to use the Five Why's to analyze the root cause of a failing project (which may indicate that the project needs to pivot) would be really powerful. I would recommend that the author shortens the first half of the book, and expands the second half. The second half is where the framework becomes more powerful.

I also have doubts about how much the author really understands of Lean and waste because the impression that I've gathered from reading this book is that waste reduction is primarily focused on the size of the team, not reducing defects, overwork, over processing, or any of those common waste types (for a translation from manufacturing to office waste reduction which applies more to media, I would recommend reading the Lean Office and Service Simplified). Complicating this, the author uses "lean team" to literally mean a team with only a few people in it, which is different than a team that embodies Lean practices.

I hope that the author takes this feedback to heart and makes improvements to the book like he says he intends to at the end. The back half was a fantastic dive into audience identification and how to use audience feedback. The first half where the author looked at the fundamentals of Lean is flawed and less than useful.

[Gary Moreau · Rating 5 out of 5]

I joined the corporate world in the 1970s with a company in the metal fabrication industry, an industry under siege at the time by cheap imports from Japan, Inc. Necessity forced us to look far and wide for ways to survive and for companies in our shoes all roads led to Toyota, the pioneer in lean production systems. In the 1960s the low prices of Toyota’s cars were not enough to overcome the widespread assessment that a Toyota car was functionally inferior. They were the meme for junk.

If you look at history at a very high level, the most enduring and impactful ideas were born of necessity. Lean production was no exception. And that is because such breakthroughs are often counter-intuitive. It is only when practitioners appreciate that the intuition that makes it counter-intuitive is the product of a mindset that is no longer relevant or effective.

The over-whelming response to Toyota’s insight and the success the company came to enjoy as a result of it was negative. “It won’t work here. Toyota is unique. The system is too dependent on unique aspects of Japanese culture.” The doubters, however, were proven wrong and lean production is now the global standard. No corporation today would hire anyone into the production organization that didn’t pledge allegiance to the universal principles of lean.

Lean eventually made its way off the factory floor and into the many administrative offices that support the typical factory. And from there it was a short hop to the service sector, where lean has again become the management standard.

Why not media? To see the potential would take the kind of creative mind on which that sector depends. And Ian Lamont seems to be the perfect person to carry the flag. He has the insight. He has the experience. The only question will be whether or not he has the stamina. For he will face resistance just as every lean pioneer before him has.

Ultimately, I have no doubt that lean will win out. And it will win because it is not a product as much as it is a mindset. Its application is both universal and timeless. That, in the end, is both its beauty and the source of its transformative power.

Every industry believes it is different. Every company believes it is better than its competitors. The revelation of lean is that you aren’t, but you could be. In its signature style of counter-intuition, by accepting your sameness you liberate yourself to stand out.

I no longer manage large plants that stamp metal or form raw materials mined out of the earth into consumer products. I write books. I have had a front row seat to the complete transformation that is digital media. And I have seen, and felt, both its liberating and suffocating power.

Even now, change is afoot. The drivers of digital media cannot rely solely on projecting the view from the rear view mirror to define future opportunities and risks. While I generally don’t believe that history can be as instructive as many think due to the often under-appreciated significance of context, I have learned one thing to be universal. I refer to it as the sine wave theory of the universe. You may know it as “the worm turns.” However you characterize it, you cannot escape its grip.

Lean media just may be the perspective the media industry needs to negotiate the next big thing. For a few reasons:

- Lean is all about eliminating waste. And waste results in higher costs, poor quality, and longer leadtimes.
- Lean is all about agility. No one can predict the future. Don’t bother trying. Rather, make yourself nimble enough to respond more quickly than your competitors.
- Lean is all about humility. Forget what you think you know. You don’t. To paraphrase Einstein, if you think you know, the gods will laugh at your expense.
- Lean is all about feedback loops. Presume you know nothing, but recognize that information is time-sensitive. If you wait until the end customer rejects your product or service, it’s too late.

Lean is not counter-creative. It’s not about dogma and rules. It is no more nor less than a framework within which to organize thought and production. Its lack of rigidity is its greatest strength. (Which is why on the lean projects that I have overseen my first directive was always the same: no tee shirts and no posters on the wall.)

While Lamont appreciates the opportunity of lean, he also recognizes that media presents some particular challenges not found in a car assembly plant. He notes, “Product development for light bulbs, gadgets, and business software focuses on features—what the product does. Media focuses on intangibles—how the experience feels.”

As a result of this fundamental difference, Lamont created Lean Media, adapting the principles without losing sight of what makes them so powerful. Lean Media offers three lean principles with illustrative examples from the media universe itself. He also offers advice on building a Lean Media team and devotes an entire chapter to developing a Lean Media project planner, complete with examples.

Lamont is more than on to something. He readily admits that he stole the idea from the world of industrial supply chains. That’s okay. As one of the first employees to work on the Star Wars movies once told me, “It’s really a movie about a wagon train in space.” The power of creativity is not the essence of the work, but how that essence is brought to life.

And since media is all about expression, I have no doubt that Lamont and i30 Media, will find traction with Lean Media. It’s a great book that can’t be ignored. The graveyard of failed companies is littered with testaments to those that thought they could stay “chubby” and compete.

[W. Whalin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stop the Insanity and Use the Insights in LEAN MEDIA

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.” (Unknown). When it comes to any type of media, many organizations and individuals are stuck in old patterns without exploring and testing different possibilities. Ian Lamont in LEAN MEDIA explores the disruptions in the world’s media, and then teaches three key principles: reduce waste, understand audiences and focus creativity. Without focus and testing, media creators can be guilty of practicing insanity.

For example, Lamont describes the typical way a book is published and launched into the marketplace with traditional publishers with reviews, publicity tours and buzz. Then he writes, “Thousands of titles follow this launch model every year; yet there are very few breakout hits. Well over 90% of books signed to publishing houses fail, meaning they do not earn back the advances paid out to the authors. Meanwhile, the number of Americans who read books is slowly declining in the face of competition from digital devices, which provide easy access to music, news, games, and video content.” (Page 61)

LEAN MEDIA gives media creators a different blueprint. As Lamont says in the conclusion, “The Lean Media framework provides a new perspective that can help creators hone their processes, lower costs, reduce the risk of failure, and ultimately create media that matters.” (Page 142)
I found the book insightful and worthwhile reading for anyone in the media (which includes a broad spectrum of people). I recommend this book.

[Jen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Probably could have been 30 pages. Basically, encourages you to use test audiences when available to give feedback about projects before investing too much time in creating something there isn't any client/customer need.

[Toyin Spades · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting view on what creators need to have a competitive edge in the market place. It provides a tool set for streamlining processes.