Does Your Business Need iPads?

We all love Apple (well, OK, I do...I don't know about you). But does that mean we should run out and buy iPads for our firm?

Well, maybe not for our creative firms.

AppleInsider wrote last month that Apple is targeting the iPad for small businesses. The article talks about the capabilities Apple included to make it business-friendly and discusses the appeal of the iPad for business application designers. But as you read it, the benefits seem to mostly be about storing and moving information, rather than creating it.

Bruce Nussbaum, in his Business Week blog, wrote about how his students at Parsons were disappointed in the iPad. Nussbaum wrote,

Essentially, the Parsons School For Design students are saying that in an era of user-generated content, the iPad is about the consumption of media, not the creation of media. It doesn’t give you the normal tools to make stuff. It is so weird to them. And to me. What the iPad appears to be is a vehicle for traditional, main-stream media—movies, TV, books, newspapers. Which is OK, but maybe not for $1,000 (the iPad price for 3-G accessibility). Yes, there will be thousands of new apps that allow up to five people to work the larger iPad touch-screen. In that sense, it is social. But that’s not the same thing as enabling millions of users to do their own thing.

This is raises a critical point about your firm's IT strategy: in a creative firm, you need systems and components that are designed for media creators rather than for media consumers. Many people only want to look at what someone else has produced, whether on an iPad or their smartphone or at their computer or on TV. Your Creatives, though, are the ones who will create that content, and they need tools designed for that rather than just the new trendy thing.

For many companies, IT is all about information management, whereas for you, it's about information creation. So make your purchases accordingly.

As an Apple shareholder, I'd love it if everybody bought one (or two or three) iPads. But as a leader, I've got to think that my Creatives probably don't need them, at least not for work.

Virtually Workable

Inc. magazine has embarked upon an interesting challenge: after writing about the ups and downs of virtual work, they've decided to pack up their offices for a month and publish the magazine remotely. Cool. And of course, they'll be blogging about it, so be sure to follow them.

The folks at Inc. are very used to sitting down with one another...this kind of creative work often seems to benefit from face-to-face discussion. Max Chafkin writes in their blog that "Working remotely is never easy, and we may face particular challenges coming from an industry where it is still common for an editor, a designer, a photo editor, and a writer to gather around a table to look at a page proof." Rather than jumping on the telework bandwagon you should first look at your work processes and decide if they can be done as well or better if done remotely...or if, perhaps, you would benefit from different work processes altogether.

The staff at Inc. isn't jumping into this blindly. They prepped for it with plenty of reading and spoke with the authors of some of those books they found most useful. They're also soliciting input from readers as they go along, trying to find the best way to function and realizing they need to be open to change as this process goes along.

We've talked a lot here about telework and going remote, the plusses and minuses you can expect and how to limit the costs while maximizing the benefits. But in the end, you'll only know if it works for you by trying it out. If you're intrigued by the idea of going virtual, maybe a month-long experiment would be worthwhile for you. Don't just jump into it, but instead, have some goals you'd like to achieve and some metrics for measuring your success, and be sure you're as prepped as can be before starting it. You'll get your best understanding through experience, and you'll get your best experience through good preparation.

Be Open to Bad News

The idea of "shooting the messenger" was first expressed by Shakespeare, or so says Wikipedia. But in a nutshell, the leader who lashes out at the poor subordinate who got tagged to report bad news is wasting time, and wasting messengers. Don't be that leader.

Many leaders say they want open communication in their workplace, but very often what they really want is open "top-down" communication. That's important; a leader needs to communicate a vision for the organization, provide clearly defined tasks, and offer constructive feedback even when it isn't all happiness and sunshine. But "down-top" communication is equally important, just for different reasons. Your Creatives need to know they can come to you with bad news. If they don't, and you never learn about problems, you won't be in a position to fix them until it's too late.

When your employees come to you with problems, especially if it seems to be their fault, your first instinct might be to blame someone. Try to restrain that urge; focus instead on fixing the immediate problem, and then the actual cause. In fact, you should look at having your employees fix it rather than taking on every problem yourself. If you try to handle everything, that just encourages your employees to dump everything on you.

This isn't to say you shouldn't look into who's responsible for causing a mess. You need to, in order to help avoid future problems. Also, you might find a pattern of mistakes or neglect, which might mean that person has got to go. But looking for who's responsible should be one part of solving problems, not an end unto itself. Your first priority is to deal with whatever's wrong.

Now, once you appear open to receiving bad news and hearing about what's wrong, then you need to brace yourself to actually hear it. Creatives often tend to be very opinionated (shocking, I know!) and won't hold back. You're liable to get some very spirited discussions. Be clear about wanting them to feel comfortable coming to you with problems but also wanting them to do so professionally. Still, you need to have thick skin, and be able to respond logically and rationally rather than purely on emotion. While openness is essential, letting it devolve into arguing is going to create strained relations in the workplace, and you don't need that.

Make sure your Creatives know they can bring you bad news and get the problem addressed. Don't have an attitude that encourages them to keep problems to themselves, or you'll have people updating their resumes and calling recruiters because they know what's going on while you don't. Keeping "who's dating who" a secret is no big deal, but keeping "we're about to go bankrupt" a secret is.