Collaborative workflow is a great way to make the creative process work as a well-oiled machine.

Knowing your role and doing your part is most important, followed closely by the feeling that your work is appreciated and that your place on the team is equally as important as any other person's. And when it comes to professional acknowledgement, remember, that in time, it will come.

Collaboration can be a tight rope act. When done correctly, being high in the air can be a happy, productive place. Once someone in the process feels upstaged, well, as a tight rope walker, that's the equivalent of a face plant on a sidewalk ten stories down.

The idea for a campaign grows from a kernel of an idea in a brainstorm meeting where everyone has ideas (some great and some absolutely useless). Based on those nuggets of awesomeness comes an idea that, over the next weeks or months, becomes a campaign. This is the beauty of a happy healthy collaborative workflow. It's impossible for one person to keep making brilliant campaigns by themselves everyday. The collaborative workflow helps creative minds feed off of one another and make the process work day in and day out.

Herein lies the need for knowing your role and realizing that when that campaign is successful and starts collecting recognition and awards, not everyone contributing to the project, in seemingly small ways or huge ways, will be acknowledged. Sometimes a "…Thanks for your hard work" in passing from a project manager is your equivalent of a Clio with your name on it.

Your time will come if you put your nose down and keep contributing to making good work, eventually you will get recognition from your peers. For now, do your job, do it really well, and don't jump your place in line for recognition.

Don't be a Peggy.

You are reading Atomic80, the nickname for the element Mercury and the blog for Mercury Labs, a company focused on the science of cinema and communications. Contact us to learn more about how Mercury Labs can help transform your raw ideas into compelling video and/or PR programs.