Faster. Cheaper. Better.

Conventional wisdom says fast, cheap and good is not possible. Agency creatives are known to say, “Pick two.” When clients aren’t in the room, they’re apt to mutter, “Pick one.”

But conventional wisdom doesn't account for the ludicrously inefficient way that most work gets done—either through internal or external agencies. The hidden-right-in-front-of-us truth is that there are levers to pull that allow us to work in new ways to get faster, cheaper and better at execution.

What are these mysterious levers? Here are four:

Control.

Simply put, there is an inverse relationship between the number of stakeholders who want to have a say in work in an organization, and speed. More rounds of reviews take more time. More rounds of revisions?cost money. And the reality is, adding layers of stakeholders rarely translates into better work. If you want quality creative fast, define the rules of engagement;?get smart, talented people lined up to deliver the work;?and get the hell out of their way.

Subjectivity.

The phrase “make the logo bigger” isn’t part of the industry lexicon for no reason. Marketers actually say things like, “I showed it to my wife and she said that blue isn’t working.” If your husband or your wife knows better than the people you have producing the work, get rid of those people?and hire someone with expertise.

Chaos.

When your pants are on fire, it’s hard to be thoughtful. Or organized. When you’re not thoughtful, work is produced without strategy behind it. When you’re not organized, you lose out on efficiencies and economies of scale that can be achieved by planning work. One-offs are efficiency killers. An initial investment of time up front to plan how work will be executed can produce huge rewards downstream, both in terms of efficiencies and the quality of content produced.

Splatter paint.

Throwing poop at the wall to see what sticks is not a good strategy for producing work that makes an impact. Insight is the foundation of good content. Be scrappy about customer research if you need to be, but make sure it happens. And maintain a feedback loop between creative and analytics, so work is consistently driven by knowledge about the needs, desires and behaviors of your audience.

Blindly striving for fast, cheap and good is a fool’s errand. But everything is relative, and by making changes to how work gets done, you can achieve the speed and cost savings you need—and strive toward producing creative that doesn’t get ignored.