Anna Wintour on Creative Decision-Making: 5 Tips

As the Editor in Chief of Vogue magazine, Anna Wintour presides over the Met Gala and is a fixture in the front row of New York Fashion Week. She is also the artistic director for the Condé Nast media empire, the most powerful woman in the fashion industry, and a role model for business leaders worldwide. Anna’s consistent ability to make important decisions that will shape the media and fashion industries speak to her unique success, one that’s built on vision, creativity, and commitment.

The creative decision-making process involves problem-solving and brainstorming for possible solutions collaboratively and dynamically. As a creative process, the scale of this work may be larger (coming up with new product concepts to please stakeholders) or smaller (making the final decision on which photograph will accompany an article in a magazine). Either way, the creative decision-making model relies on incubation periods to let ideas simmer and convergent thinking to deduce the best decision possible. Creative decision-making is becoming a standard part of organizational behavior at companies.

Creative decision-making is essential to creative industries like fashion and architecture, but these skills are necessary for all sectors to increase the feasibility of a project’s success. This approach to decision-making can lead to “Eureka!” moments that solidify decisions. Creative people have certain personality traits that promote creative behavior, like strong motivation, curiosity, the ability to collaborate, and openness to new ideas. To build creative decision-making skills, engage in brainstorming sessions and practice making intuitive decisions.

At Vogue, Anna Wintour is the brand’s head decision maker, constantly coming up with and sourcing creative ideas, often under time pressure. See how you can make better decisions for your company with Anna Wintour’s tips for creative thinking skills:

1. 1. Boldness leads the way. Brands have to appease audiences and also push their boundaries and expectations simultaneously. “There is always a time when you know you have to break the rule, that times are changing, cultures are changing,” Anna says. “That Vogue has to lead the way. One's audience [or] one’s readers may not always instantly be in tune. They might be shocked. They might be upset. They might complain. They might cancel their subscriptions, whatever it may be. But you are leading, you are not following, and that's a very important lesson to always keep in your mind.”
2. 2. Data is essential, but it’s not the whole story. Research and analytics can offer insights and tell you what readers or subscribers want to read. “They can help you. They can inform you. They can make you focus on something,” Anna says. “And they can tell you something you probably already guessed or thought. But in the end, the vision, the heart, and the soul, comes from the creative talent that's putting it out there every single day. And your audiences and readers, whoever they may be, will find you because of that passion.”
3. 3. Own up to imperfect decisions. Mistakes are part of the creative process, and per Anna, “It's super important to own those mistakes.” For her part, Anna has had to make creative decisions about the cover of Vogue, and some have been unsuccessful. “Sometimes it isn't until they're out in the great wide world that you understand what they mean and what they symbolize, whether it's good or it's bad,” she says. “Sometimes. . . you have to run something that you're not so proud of, or maybe you just wanna try something. [It’s the] same with any creative process—you have to make those mistakes.”
4. 4. Understand the broader context of your decisions. A decision is seldom made with only one factor in mind. Creative decisions have to take in cultural contexts and understand their specificities. As Anna says, “It's very important to understand how your work fits into a much larger cultural narrative. What is it that you are trying to say? What are you standing for? Your choices need to balance how you stay true to values and when it's important to break away and confound expectations.”
5. 5. Work with great people. People who have knowledge or passions that you don’t can help you in building a diverse team. “You are nothing without a good team,” Anna says, which is why it’s essential to build an intelligent and diligent group of people who will push the brand to bring it to new heights.

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