If some clients' process charts were stretched across the width of our lobby, the box for creative would occupy about the space of a cigarette pack. It's tough enough when they see it that way. Worse when the agency does.

Yes, process is all too often neglected. Yet it can produce brilliant results. In my experience, the best ideas are produced when creative and strategy - as well as account management - all sit together and work through a brief methodically. Good ideas seldom emerge by immaculate conception: you have to go through the process of grappling with the brief, weighing up different ideas, keeping what works and throwing out what doesn't. In the end, you're more confident about what you're presenting to the client, because you've tested your thinking.

Although often viewed as dirty word, process can actually be liberating. If we're not caught in endless cycles of debating what needs to be done, by whom, when -- and reinventing a process (explicitly or otherwise) every time we approach a new assignment, we can put more of our efforts into being creative, regardless of what discipline we represent. And process does not imply rigidity -- they can be designed to be flexible, and in doing so, guide us to the right decisions.