Get 'em Ready...Again

Apparently, the need to start employees off right isn't confined to our creative fields and private firms. Even the federal government is beginning to realize the importance of setting a good tone for new employees, as seen in an article that first appeared here earlier this month.

Agencies Need Better Welcome Wagon for New Employees, Report Says
By Alyssa Rosenberg

Federal agencies should improve their approach to bringing new employees onboard and integrating them into the workplace culture if they want to boost retention rates and productivity, the Partnership for Public Service and Booz Allen Hamilton said in a report released on Monday at the Excellence in Government Conference in Washington, sponsored by Government Executive.

Leslie Ann Pearson, senior associate at Booz Allen Hamilton, said "onboarding" was not used as a retention tool by agencies and orientation for new employees tends to be a paperwork exercise. "They may not be getting any mission information," she said. "One employee said he was sworn in in a hallway without an American flag. It's not inspiring. We had one employee who showed up for work and their manager didn't know they were coming.

"The report, which included feedback from 11 agencies, said the federal government had no consistent approach to onboarding and orientation, even though high-quality programs can boost employee performance and eliminate turnover.

The report authors recommended a five-step approach to acclimating new employees. Agencies should reach out to and prepare for new employees as soon as they accept job offers. On a recent hire's first day, the report suggested agency managers spend time teaching mission values and introducing the employee to senior leadership and possible mentors who can help them negotiate the new environment. Also, managers should be directly involved during the employee's first week, according to the the report, to set performance expectations and ensure that the hire starts doing meaningful work as soon as possible. During the first 90 days, managers should both give and solicit feedback and provide initial training. During the first year, employees should receive recognition, formal feedback and a development plan.

"The first 90 days are when the employee is thinking, 'Did I make the right decision, should I stay with this organization?'" Pearson said. "It's no surprise that the agencies we went to that had stronger onboarding programs were higher up on the [list of PPS'] Best Places to Work.

"Cynthia Heckmann, chief human capital officer at the Government Accountability Office, said her agency had succeeded by analyzing GAO's workforce challenges and rebuilding its onboarding strategy from the ground up.

"We put together a two-year program for our entry-level staff. It's very structured in terms of the training we provide," Heckmann said. "Every two months there's a review and a pay component.

"GAO also built a mass notification system, Heckmann said, and as soon as a new employee accepted an offer, everyone from information technology to GAO's shared service center was alerted so the employee had what they needed to do their job when they arrived on their first day.

Candace Irwin, director of workforce systems and the accountability division at NASA, said systems integration was particularly important for agencies like NASA that carefully monitor access to facilities and deal with classified information. A single system allows human resources officers to fill in information about new hires, request technology and alert security to the arrival of new employees. NASA also has built a portal that provides information to new hires and their families so they can prepare for their first days at work.

Joyce Cofield, director of recruitment, retention and diversity in the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in the Treasury Department, said OCC woos candidates seriously, sending them gift baskets when they accept jobs, and then intensely inculcates them in OCC's values.

"Orientation is where we seal the deal," she said. "We spend a full week with our college recruits, and we do all those pieces of reinforcing the OCC culture.

"Irwin emphasized that onboarding has to be continuous. "Onboarding is a process; it's not an event, she said, "and it has to begin before the employee shows up at the gate."

First impressions matter. We know that if we can get employees familiar with their jobs and trained up, they'll do better...that's obvious. But if we welcome them aboard and treat them well from the start -- with simple respect and some recognition of their enthusiasm -- they're likely to stick around longer, too.

Creative-to-Leader Communication

We know that it's important to not hide information and communicate information from the top down, but don't forget that information and ideas need to flow from the bottom up, too.

Sometimes, though, bosses can seem unapproachable (sometimes, because they really ARE unapproachable...not every leader is good). When that happens, it may be up to the employee to try to resolve the problem...otherwise, the relationship, and the company, suffers. A friend sent me the article below and it provides some great ideas.

Kristie Kennard, in How to Manage Your Boss, offers some tips on how an employee might try to resolve a communication gap. You might consider sharing these with your employees so that if one day they have trouble communicating with a boss (though surely that's years in the future, because they won't have a problem with you, right?) they'll have some idea how to fix it.

Determine what kinds of communication problems you and your supervisor are having.
Do you feel your boss doesn't listen to you? Misinterprets your words? Ignores your comments and suggestions? Is too busy to discuss issues with you? Do you and your boss have conflicting communication styles? Think of recent examples of miscommunication between the two of you so you can pinpoint where communication is breaking down.

Remember that effective communication is a two-way street.
Before you start a laundry list of all the ways your boss fails to communicate, keep in mind that when communication goes wrong in any relationship, both parties have contributed their share to the problem. Take an honest look at your own communication strengths and weaknesses, and assess whether your communication style may be in conflict with your supervisor's.

Observe your supervisor's preferred form of communication and use it whenever possible.
While some bosses prefer casual communication - just drop in and ask a question - others find this too great an interruption. Note how your boss communicates with others up and down the chain of command. If your supervisor always seems too busy to talk to you one-on-one, this is a sure sign that she prefers some other form of communication. Try e-mail, memos, voice mail and assess the results.

Always prepare for a one-on-one meeting with your boss.
It's never advisable to "wing it" during a meeting with your supervisor, particularly if your one-on-one meetings with him are rare. Organize your thoughts, even if you've only got a couple of minutes to do so. Be clear in your mind what you want to communicate and what outcome you want from the meeting.

Specify the topic you want to discuss and suggest a convenient time for your supervisor.
Timing is everything when it comes to effective boss-employee communication, and few supervisors appreciate problems being dropped in their laps with no warning. If your supervisor is generally harried by the end of the day, don't ask for a 4:30 p.m. meeting. Always provide your boss with a pre-meeting memo - even if it's only a sentence - outlining what you plan to cover.

Pay attention to nonverbal feedback you're getting and giving to your boss during the meeting.
Watch for body language with a positive meaning and make certain that you're using it, as well. This means good posture, strong eye contact and a pleasant, attentive facial expression. See these signs, and you're coming through loud and clear. But beware if your boss crosses her arms, checks her watch, frowns or is stony-faced and starts tapping her toe. Stop immediately and ask for feedback, such as "How do you feel about some of the issues I've touch upon?" Address misunderstandings before you go any further.

Verbally summarize what you've agreed upon and end on a positive note.
The meeting should be wrapped up when the purpose of the meeting has been met. Unless your boss does so first, sum up what you've discussed, being specific as to what each of you has agreed to do in the future. End the meeting in a spirit of cooperation and thank your boss for his time.

Follow up with documentation as to what you and your boss agreed upon.
Always follow up with a memo summarizing your discussion, and do it as soon as possible, while the conversation is still fresh in both you and your supervisor's mind. Be sure to date the memo and keep a copy for your files.

This is good advice even for those cases with a good Creative-to-Leader relationship. We can always improve, and these are some good ways to strengthen an already good sense of rapport.

Salary Alternatives

You can't always offer the top salary. In fact, you can't always offer above average salaries, because for that to be the average, then someone has to be below it, right? New firms in particular may not be able to offer much at first until they build up their clientele and have a little cash in the bank. And if you expect a high turnover rate, you might not want to invested a lot in people who will only be with you a short time, especially if they come to you as an unknown quantity and you know little about their abilities. So when it comes to hiring and keeping talent, are there any alternatives besides high salaries?

Silly question. Of course there are.

Too many people take jobs for the money and end up unhappy. Often, they spend so much time making it that they never get to enjoy it. While most of us would like jobs that make us rich for only a little work, few of those exist, so we need to consider a better balance between salary and the other things that make us feel good about our work.

The most tangible alternative involves other forms of compensation. You can offer performance bonuses, say, at the end of a major project. You need to explicitly define some standards for awarding the bonus, make sure your employees understand them, and then stick to them...give the bonus if they deserve it, withhold it if they don't. Something to keep in mind about performance bonuses is that you shouldn't let them become the norm, because employees then expect them and factor them into their compensation expectations, and and if you end up not awarding them, major drama will ensue.

If you're keeping salaries down primarily because you're low on cash, you might consider compensating them through corporate ownership plans like stock options. These were very useful during the dot-com boom of the 1990s, though they lost some luster when a lot of those options ended up being worthless as companies went out of business. They also might not be as attractive in high turnover companies where employees might not be as interested in the long-term viability of the firm (though this could be one way to get them interested).

You might also consider how good benefits might offset a lower salary. You could offer really comprehensive health benefits, student loan repayment, or maybe tuition reimbursement to encourage continuing education. Of course, this last one could lead to employees soaking up education at your expense and then leaving, but it might be worth a shot. Once again, if you're offering lower salaries because you don't have the money to pay higher ones, then maybe you can't afford these benefits, either. Maybe more vacation time, or the chance to leave for a sabbatical at some point with a guarantee their job will be waiting for them, might make more sense.

Many of these compensation schemes and benefits will take money out of your account, and that might not be an option for you. They could cost you less than a higher salary, but you may need to consider other non-monetary ways to get them and keep them on board. One of the advantages of Creatives is that, ideally, they're doing something they enjoy and so the money might not be as important as other things.

Consider, then, the opportunities you might offer your employees. Maybe you set aside time for them to work on things besides their regular job. Google, for instance, allows (in fact, requires) employees to spend 20% of their time on new projects of their own choosing. Maybe your employees would appreciate the time to work on something different, something with a specific interest for them, which might turn into a moneymaker or might not. You might also allow them time to participate in volunteer activities...Creatives can make great mentors, so how about Big Brother/Big Sister programs or some other after-school club? maybe they can get out and do environmental work. Give them chances to do things that other employers don't offer and you'll be in competition for some of the most energetic talent out there.

Perhaps what they're looking for is a suitable culture and climate at work. Offer a challenging work environment where they have the opportunity to develop their skills and succeed based on their merits, and you'll attract self-starters who will work hard to achieve personal satisfaction. Emphasize the product over the process by allowing telework or some other flexible-work program, or keep a relaxed dress code. Give your employees a space where you focus on what they produce and they focus on how they produce it.

An advantage of leading Creatives over, say, bureaucrats or fast-food workers is that to a large degree you're getting employees who do something because they enjoy doing it, and are motivated by more than just a paycheck. In that case, not only can you survive and get great talent despite paying less, you might actually make it part of your business model that you're going to pay less while providing incentives for really motivated and talented people, who are not afraid of hard work in order to succeed, to come work for you.

Break it Down

A strategic plan is broad in scope and addresses a lot of general themes for your business. Ultimately, though, you have to provide leaders and employees with the specific tasks they need to do to advance your business. It's important to identify your vision and mission, and figure out what point you're starting from, but then you need to address how you're going to get from here to there.

My suggestion: get from the big picture down to a little picture. Start with a set of goals that you want to reach, then break those down into objectives you have to achieve to reach your goals, and finally, figure out what tasks you need to do to accomplish your objectives.

GOALS: A goal is an end that the organization strives to attain. Goals should be challenging, but achievable. Accomplishment of goals will ensure fulfillment of the mission and realization of the vision. Goals transform your mission and vision statements into areas of focus and direction. Goals tend to be far reaching in that they give direction to many programs, and often to the company as a whole.

Strategic goal setting requires planners to identify goals that:
• challenge the status quo;
• require little or no explanation, but instead are easily understandable throughout the firm;
• are consistent with the vision and mission; and,
• are measurable, so you know when you reach them.

Goals focus on desired changes. They are the ends that the organization strives to attain. The purpose of goals is to provide discipline. More specifically, the "objectives for having objectives" include:

OBJECTIVES: Objectives are specific accomplishments that must be accomplished in total, or in some combination, to achieve the goals in the plan. Objectives are usually "milestones" along the way when implementing the strategies. They add some meat to the plan by identifying specific means to achieve the goals. Objectives represent pieces of a goal that can be accomplished over a shorter period. They provide direction for decision-making and a criterion against which outcomes are measured. Thus, objectives are the foundation of planning.

Guidelines for Defining Objectives

Specific An objective must be specific with a single key result. If more than one result is to be accomplished, more than one objective should be written. Just knowing what is to be accomplished is a big step toward achieving it. What is important to you? Once you clarify what you want to achieve, your attention will be focused on the objective that you deliberately set. You will be doing something important to you.

Measurable An objective must be measurable. Only an objective that affects behavior in a measurable way can be optimally effective. If possible, state the objective as a quantity. Some objectives are more difficult to measure than others. However, "difficult" does not mean that they cannot be measured. Avoid statements of objectives in generalities. Infinitives to avoid include to know, to understand, to enjoy, and to believe. Action verbs are observable and better communicate the intent of what is to be attempted. They include to write, to apply, to recite, to revise, to contrast, to install, to select, to assemble, to compare, to investigate, and to develop.

Attainable An objective must be attainable with the resources that are available. It must be realistic. Many objectives are realistic. Yet, the time it takes to achieve them may be unrealistic. For example, it is realistic to want to lose ten pounds. However, it is unrealistic to want to lose ten pounds in one week. What barriers stand between you and your objective? How will each barrier be overcome and within what time frame?

Result-oriented: The objective should be central to the goals of the organization. The successful completion of the objective should make a difference. How will this objective help the organization move ahead? Is the objective aligned with the mission of the organization?

Time-limited: The objective should be traceable. By using specific objectives you can prioritize your time better and you can send your time on objectives that really matter.

TASKS: Tasks are the specific approaches, methods and programs -- a work plan -- by which a firm intends to achieve goals and objectives. They are often the basis for your budget and may be a continuation of an existing program, a revision of an existing program, or a new program.

So how does this work? Well, consider an example from a public relations firm:

GOAL: increase public awareness of our client within the age 18-30 demographic

OBJECTIVES: identify at least 5 new outlets for which this demographic is the primary audience, create a message specifically targeted to this demographic with a 30% retention rate after 5 days

TASKS: explore Web 2.0 options, explore HD radio market exposure, form a message development team for this demographic

(OK, I've never been in PR, so no, these aren't meant to be something you'd really see there...but you get the idea)

It's tempting to look at where you are and try to build yourself up toward your vision, but that can take you down the wrong path and you might not realize it until it's way too late. Instead, start with where you want to be and work backwards. Break it down to the point where everyone in a different specialty can explain their unique role. Ultimately, an individual should be able to look at your strategic plan and say "this is what I contribute." If they can't, then how do they -- or you -- know they're doing the right thing?

Memorial Day

No post today. But as you're enjoying your picnics and your family get-togethers and the start of your summer, make sure you remember all those folks who died for your country. Because of course, that's what today's all about.

Managing Free Agents

Even if you don't invest a lot of time and effort in leading your free agents, you still have to manage them. in fact, the more you back away from leadership, the more time you'll probably have to spend on management. If nothing else, you need to find them, then hire or contract with them, then keep track -- somewhat -- of what they're doing.

Finding free agents is easy. Finding good free agents can be a little trickier. If you're hiring them for the first time you won't know much about the quality of their work. Hopefully they will have some kind of portfolio or can provide qualified references you can check out. Finding free agents through sites like Elance or Guru.com allows you to see how they've done before, whether through employer feedback or links to portfolios. Craigslist is certainly an option too, but you won't learn anything more about them than they want you to know.

When it comes to actually hiring people, get some legal advice early on. If you're going to be doing this regularly you should have a standardized contract where you fill in the blanks depending on the project. Of course, by working with a free agent you've got less paperwork to worry about. There's no health insurance to worry about, no Social Security...just tax paperwork once a year, which is a lot less difficult than withholding taxes from every check.

How you pay your free agent is up to you. You can pay by the hour or pay by the project. If you do the former, you're really paying for the process, and you might be paying them for time they aren't actually working if they finish in less time than they quoted you. If you choose to simply pay by the project, what you're paying for is the product rather than the process...you need to figure out which method best addresses what's most important to you.

If you do decide to pay by the hour you'll need to find some way to track their work. That's tough. A lot of free agents will be working off-site. Now, with your regular employees, working off-site is not necessarily a problem because, ideally, you have a relationship with them that engenders trust, and you don't need to see what they're up to. But with free agents, especially when you haven't worked with them before, you don't really know that when they bill you for 30 hours they really worked 30 hours. So, either find a way to keep an eye on their billable hours, or agree on a price for the project and just go with that.

In any creative field, free agents are an important element. To stay fresh you sometimes need to be willing to reach out beyond your pool of talent and bring in something new. But that's easy to say, tougher to do. Leading Creatives who work for you regularly can be challenging, but making the best use of the talents of those occasional workers requires some extra management skills on your part. So before you jump into that make sure to think about what's required.

Employee Feedback

Your employees need to know how they're doing -- hopefully, that falls into the category of "no-brainer." You want them to keep doing the good stuff and stop doing the bad, but they need to know which is which, and it isn't always obvious to them. Even when it IS obvious, sometimes they need a little reminder about what's important.

Your feedback to employees should be based on objectives you've agreed to. You and your employee should sit down and come up with a set of objectives they should meet during a particular period of time. These should be challenging but attainable, and you should have some way to measure progress, even if it's an "I'll know it when I see it" kind of thing. these objectives should be based on the firm's requirements...look at your strategic plan and decide what they should be striving for. Just make sure you both understand what the employee should be doing.

Try to have regularly scheduled feedback sessions. For newer employees this could be every 3 months while more experienced employees sit down with you every 6. Set a schedule, and stick to it. If there's a problem, or if they're doing particularly well, don't be afraid to step in earlier, but definitely don't go any longer than the timeline you've agreed to...they'll start to lose respect for the feedback if you treat it as unimportant.

Have them keep track of the things they do so you can have a more informed feedback session. If someone is your assistant and you've only got the one employee working for you, you can probably keep track of what they're doing, but if you have 20 people then a lot of things will be happening out of your sight. This also gives you a chance to see what they consider most important, and it's helpful if your view on that and theirs match up?

When offering feedback I like to use what I call "the sandwich approach." That is, I start with things they've done well and set a positive tone. Then I get into the problems they're having, with an eye toward improvement more than blame, and then I finish up with positive items again so the session ends on a good note and the chance of them being defensive about the criticisms is reduced.

Don't be too effusive with praise. If you're always telling them how great they are, even for the smallest things, then the value of that praise drops a lot. I once had a boss tell me "good job" so often, and for such little things, that when we finally had a formal feedback session I really didn't care because I knew he'd say "good job" for tying my shoes right. make them earn the praise, and make sure your criticism is only for things that matter, too.

Feedback should be a conversation, not a lecture. If they are having problems, try to find out why they think that is. See how they view their performance and you'll have a better idea what they see as their role in the firm. This might not be the place to ask for feedback on your own leadership style -- knowing you're going to ask them that question could influence the feedback you give them -- but definitely get a sense of how they feel about their performance to go along with your own perceptions.

If they've met the objectives you agreed to, then it may be time for new ones. Use these sessions to look at not just what they've done but also what they can do in the future. Once objectives are met it's time for new challenges.

Lastly, you should document these sessions. There's a good reason, and an unspoken one. the good reason is, you want them to have something to refer back to later so they can see where they're performing well, see where they need to improve, and understand how they've changed over time. The unspoken reason is, if you decide to fire them, you want a record of all the chances you've given them to improve and all the discussions you've had about their poor performance.

Good employee feedback is critical to growing a business and growing employees. Many of us prefer to avoid conflict or discussing less-than-happy topics, but that's what we pay leaders to do. In creative fields in particular, where progress and success can't always be measured by numbers or graphs or other objective means, you have to do something really unusual to help your employees understand how well they're doing: you have to actually talk to them.

Leading Free Agents

Free agents can play an important role in your company, but they're only helpful if you use them right. One thing to remember is that the leadership style you use with your full-time Creatives isn't going to be appropriate for someone who's with you temporarily, and who you may never meet because they're on the other side of the world. You don't get to develop a relationship over time...you've only got a short window of opportunity to do it.

Is short-term leadership really just "management?" Are you really trying to lead someone or are you just trying to get them to complete a particular task? Do you really have the responsibility to lead them like you do your regular employees?

Well, consider the possibility that you might want to bring them back sometime. Maybe you'll want to use them again for future projects, or you might even want to try to bring them on full-time. If you think you might work with this person again then you have an interest in developing them somewhat. You might not be the mentor that guides them to a successful life. Then again, you might.

In addition to trying to turn them into someone you'd want to have working for you, you may also need to sell them on the idea of working for you. After all, if they've chosen the free agent route because they like it, you'll have to show them the benefits of working for you. one of the things you can offer that a free agent is lacking and might want is good leadership. Letting them see that working for you is a good deal in that regard can encourage them to sign on if you provide the kind of environment they've been waiting for.

So how do you exercise leadership with a free agent? Well, first of all, be very clear about your objectives for them just as with any other employee. help them develop a plan for meeting those objectives, whether they're with you for one project or for a particular period of time. Do what you can to integrate them into the organization so they can play well with others...make sure they are introduced to the people they need to know, make them aware of all the resources to them, and do your best not to make them feel like a second-class citizen.

This brings up a unique issue with free agents: making them feel like part of your team even though, for the long term, they're not. This is tricky. They won't have the relationships with other workers like the full-timers develop. Your other Creatives know this person is just here temporarily and may not be interested in being very accommodating because, after all, this person is probably leaving after the project anyway, so hey, where's he long term benefit in cooperating? It's also possible that you're paying the free agent more than your full-timers to balance out the lack of benefits...if your regulars get wind of this they're liable to start thinking that being a free agent is a better deal and you may create a retention problem for yourself.

In addition to your full-timers perspectives your free agent may feel uncomfortable as well. One of the better documented cases of this in recent years was at Microsoft, where full timers had benefits such as stock options that would ultimately make many of them millionaires while the free agents didn't. That's a risk that somebody takes when they become a free agent, and they should understand that, but you may still have to soothe some ill feelings, especially if your full-timers are getting something good and lord it over the free agents. Also, you don't need to do one thing that Microsoft did: full-timers and free agents had different colored badges, making a very clear distinction between the two groups even though they had the same goals in terms of producing a product. Bad idea.

Don't worry about providing free agents the training or other development opportunities you give your full-timers...anyone who takes on free agency needs to understand they're responsible for their own training. But while all your leadership tools aren't available to you, that doesn't mean you should ignore leadership. For 2 days or 2 months or longer, these folks DO work for you, and in order to get the best results out of them, you need to invest some time in leading them.

Helping Burma

A friend of mine is going to be in Burma soon and he and his student group are asking for some help with their part in the relief effort. Please take a look at his letter below and help if you possibly can.

************************

Dear Concerned Friends:

I write to you now after the devastating cyclone that has killed over 62,000 people in Burma/Myanmar and the death toll continues to rise. You might have followed the news of this tragedy, which is as much a political crisis as a natural disaster. Local and international non-governmental organizations working on the ground have been able to get humanitarian aid to a growing share of the estimated 1.9 million survivors, but the process is arduous, slow and still too limited. Efforts on the ground are making a difference, however, as networks in civil society are growing.

I will be taking a trip to Burma this week with my fellow students from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). We will be volunteering our efforts to assist with the relief effort in and around Rangoon/Yangon. (Fortunately we got our visas much earlier as part of a scheduled study tour and can travel into the country.) We will be contributing to local efforts in civil society, especially to reach vulnerable populations, children, the handicapped and/or the elderly that might be ignored in the relief effort. We are informed by sources on the ground that there is a dire need for support of all kinds.

Thus, I am reaching out to you.

We, as the whole group, have created a fund through SAIS Student Government Association to purchase supplies that we will bring in. The focus will be items for children and the elderly. We will also purchase additional items in country to distribute directly to people in need as well as make contributions directly to local non-governmental organizations. The funds will go directly to people in need.

We need your help. Any contribution that you would be willing to make to this effort can make a difference. I have attached a copy of how to donate to the SAIS-SGA Relief Fund.

Thanks for reading this message and for considering donating! If you have further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me or any listed contact point.

All the best to you,
Linh

Donating to the SAIS Fund for Burma Cyclone Relief is an opportunity for your contribution to go directly to victims of the cyclone disaster. If you would like to donate please do so in cash or make a check out to the SAIS Student Government Association with a note at the bottom indicating that it is for Burma cyclone relief and send it to:

SAIS Burma Relief Fund
1825 New Hampshire Ave. NW # 501
Washington, DC 20009
Att: Dany Khy

You may also pay online with credit card via Pay Pal. Go to PayPal.com and click on “send money” and enter the email address SAISBurmaReliefFund@gmail.com. All funds that arrive before the 23rd of May will be used to buy supplies and distributed to organizations visited on the trip. Please act as soon as possible. If the team is unable to go to Myanmar due to further deterioration of conditions, the funds will be donated to locally-based civil society organizations working in Myanmar for cyclone victims. Any funds donated after May 23rd will be distributed through our connections to locally-based organizations.

Employing Free Agents

What role can free agents play in your company? A pretty good one, if you use them right.

Free agents are folks who aren't employed by your company but instead work for themselves, taking on contracting or subcontracting gigs as the mood (and their rent payment) strikes them. Sometimes they choose to remain fully employed, in other cases they only work part-time or do this as a side job. Some leaders hesitate to use free agents, but they bring a lot of advantages and can be pretty useful if you manage them well...but that's a discussion for another day.

One of the big advantages is that they can bring fresh ideas, or at least, a fresh set of eyes on a task. Your in-house employees can, through no fault of their own, start to get stale over time. A free agent not only brings new ideas to a project but can also spark renewed creativity among existing full-timers. They can also piss off your full-timers, which means good leadership from you is needed...but again, a topic for another day.

Free agents also provide you a lower-cost employee, allowing you to bring in talent when you need it but not be paying for it when you don't. With free agents you don't have to deal with health benefits, Social Security or 401(k) contributions, paid vacation time, etc. You may not want to be paying for workers that aren't 100% employed, so you can use free agents when you need them but let them go when you don't.

Along these lines, free agents might be especially useful when you need a special skill for a current project but it's not something you want to pay for on a regular basis. If you need a specialist in a particular programming language or database design, or if your salon is prepping for prom and you know you'll be doing a lot of up-dos over a weekend, you might want to bring in a specialist temporarily.

You might be in a situation where paying for full-time employees simply isn't an option. If you're starting a new business you may not have the resources to commit to paying people for full-time work, and you might even still be figuring out exactly what kinds of employees you need. Using free agents to help you get off the ground allows you to right-size your business and build up some cash before you take on the obligations of full-time employees.

You could also use free agents as a "tryout" for full-time positions. Lots of free agents go back and forth between free agency and regular employment. Rather than hiring an unknown quantity, you may want to bring someone in for a project as a way to see how they'd fit in with your company. In this case, it's probably best if you let them know what you're thinking and see if they're interested...if not, you can still use them, or you might check out someone else instead.

For many firms free agents will be one part of your employee picture but not the whole thing. For some others, hiring only free agents is the way to go. If you understand the needs of your business and the roles that free agents can play, you'll be in a good position to strike the right balance.

Telework

You know a concept has really taken off when its undergoes a name change. Now that "telecommuting" has become "telework," that must mean it's mainstream.

The name change makes sense, of course. You're doing your work via the telecom, not going anywhere. But I digress.

There are a number of advantages to having your employees work offsite. For instance:

You can get more work out of them Currently, I spend 90 minutes a day commuting by bus and train. If I could get those 90 minutes back, I'd be willing to give an hour to work and keep 30 minutes for myself.

They're in a better mood They're not dealing with "post commute" fatigue in the morning and their not watching the clocks they don't miss the bus in the evening. Creatives do better when they're not stressed unnecessarily.

They can follow their own work habits, not someone else's Creatives are very individualized. Some prefer to spread 8 hours over 12 hours, some prefer to get it all done in a bursts of energy, and others would rather work late into the night so they can watch Ellen during the day. Telework helps avoid cramming everyone into the same working style.

Employees save money And everybody's good with that. Gas prices aren't going to go down until, oh, never, so keeping people off the roads keeps money in their pockets, and they like that. And if your firm offers transit subsidies to get people to use public transportation, well, now you can save on that.

It's good for the environment An article a couple weeks ago reported that 1.35 billion gallons of gasoline could be saved each year if everyone who could telework did so 1.6 days a week. That's good for Mother Earth, and it resonates with many of the people working for you.

It lowers your real estate costs Office space is pretty expensive, and you can cut back on it dramatically if people are working remotely. If there are times when they have to come in, some firms have gone to hoteling and will have offices and conference rooms available, albeit on a smaller scale.

There are some potential problems with telework. For many traditionalists, these problems provide enough reason not to do it. Of course, that's because they haven't tried to find a way around them:

Out of Sight Some managers are concerned that, if they can't see their employees, they may not be working. The trick here is to focus on your employees' output without worrying what they're doing every minute of the day. And frankly, if you don't trust them, what does that say about your working relationship?

Group Work Some work needs to get done in groups. Very often you'll have teams that need to come together and hash things out. Some of that can be done online, of course...iChat and Google Docs can help bring work together even if the people don't come together. Providing a central office where people can come together or making use of telework sites or libraries as meeting points can get a group together when it's needed then allow it to disperse when solo work is better.

Individual Working Style As we noted above, everyone has their own style, and for some, that style is working in a group. Some do it because it makes it easier to slack off if there are others around to talk to, but for some Creatives they feed off the energy of a group of bright people working hard together. You need to tailor the office style to your employees' requirements...don't implement a really great idea only to see productivity fall off.

Information Sharing and Security In the office you "hopefully) have a network with good security. Bouncing around with telework, though, each individual is largely responsible for their own information security, and not all of us are experts. This can be a real problem, so you should invest in a security consultant to help you out.

Separating Work and Home This is a biggie, and it's one reason you'll get pushback from some employees. I know that when I work in an office I like to turn that off when I get home. I think if I teleworked it would be different, but I'd need a room set aside at home that was for work only, so I could close the door and get away. Still, when I was a grad student I mostly worked at home, and it was hard to turn it off...it seemed like the work was always there. Some people will just keep working and working when the work's always in front of them...a good friend of mine had his computer in his bedroom and would work the strangest hours, and far too many of them. For those who need the separation, either offer an office or find a separate site like a telework facility.

For a lot of creative industries telework has become, if not the norm, at least accepted and often expected. Artists and designers who can sketch anywhere and photographers who always carry a camera are already used to the idea of working any place.

For many bureaucracies, with set working hours or regular interface with customers or other organizations, telework has not been warmly embraced. But even in the US government there are exceptions...the Patent and Trademark Office, which has some very smart people examining the work of true Creatives has one of the most flexible work plans of any government agency, and it works very well for them. If even the government can make something like this work, surely you can consider it yourself.

Retaining Creatives

You invest a lot in your employees. You spend money recruiting them, then you integrate them into your business which takes time and often money. There's a sunk cost associated with hiring new employees, and it's helpful to avoid sinking it again.

So, once you've got 'em, how do you keep 'em?

Well, you need to find out what they want. What's important to your Creatives? And once you figure that out, you need to decide if it's something you an offer.

A lot of people are looking to grow in their jobs. Figuring out how to do that in a creative field can be tricky. Bureaucracies often have defined career paths...on a recent episode of American Dad, Stan was thrilled to have moved an eighth of an inch up the CIA's organizational chart. But Creatives tend to have more individualized goals that can't be as easily defined and don't always fit a pattern. That reinforces the need for you to understand not only their skills but also the changes they've gone through -- remember, the person you're retaining isn't the same person you recruited.

Among the popular retention tools are training and education. From the employees' perspective this helps them develop their skills and become more marketable, which doesn't mean they're necessarily going to leave, but it's always nice to have options. This points to a problem, though: you offer development opportunities, they take them, and then they leave. Consider some sort of contract that requires them to stay with the company for a minimum time in exchange for classes. You may not be able to afford to put people through degree programs, but consider individual courses or certification programs.

A lot of people are looking for advancement to convince them to stay. For some, this means moving into new positions with more responsibility and opportunities for leadership. For others, in means the chance to expand into different fields...maybe your interior designer wants to shift from residences to corporate offices. Sometimes advancement can be horizontal rather than vertical. Once again, this requires you to actually talk to people to figure what's important to them, since there's no one-size-fits-all concept of progression.

The old standby, of course, is improving compensation and benefits. This seems like a no-brainer. But remember, by doing this, you're setting new expectations. If you're offering some kind of one-time bonus you need to make sure they understand it's one-time, or they'll be expecting it again. Likewise, be careful that other employees don't get the idea that they're automatically getting the same thing as soon as they have enough time under their belts, because a broken promise (even if only one person thought there was a promise) can lead someone to quit. Permanent changes are probably best. So consider raises and increased vacation time. One thing, though: avoid using flex-time as a retention perk. Flex-time isn't a benefit, it's a way of doing business, but too many people wave that around as an enticement to stay.

Don't get wrapped up in the idea that you have to retain everyone. Some people you don't mind losing, so don't offer them inducements to stay. Unless you've made some contractual obligation, you don't have to offer raises and other benefits to people unless you want to. When you create programs designed to retain employees, make sure you tailor them so you only keep the ones you really want.

Get 'em Ready

Graduation is hitting soon for high school and college students and many of them will be showing up on your doorstep ready for work. Many of them will have worked before but often in a different field and typically not on any sort of career path. So their concept of the workplace is more likely to be based on The Office or Ugly Betty than on reality. What can you do to help them get started?

Teach Them What's Important

When you get to college, professors don't care what you got on your SATs, they only care if you can explain why Shakespeare had so many plays about cross-dressing. By the same token, the days of Dean's List or winning the Pep Band Chug-a-Thon really mattering have passed once you've taken off the cap and gown. Your new employees need to start focusing on the things that matter at work and understand that what made them successful in school might not be the same as what makes them successful here (it might be, but it might not). You need to change their mindset and make them realize that blowing off a project for four months and doing it all the night before is no longer acceptable. Until they're in senior management.

Introduce them Around

In a small company they're likely to meet everyone in your office. In a large company they could go years before meeting people face to face that they deal with via e-mail. Take the time to walk them around and introduce them to people, don't just leave it up to them to do it on their own. They probably need to meet people outside their day-to-day group, and if you walk them around, people will associate them with you and remember where they work.

Have a Sponsor for Them

Designate one of their co-workers -- preferably a volunteer -- to "sponsor' them. The military does this when new people come into a unit, and it's especially helpful when those new people are coming from around the world. the sponsor helps with things at work but can also help with other issues like checking out neighborhoods where the newbie might rent or putting together a little city guide cobbled together from all the city guides available online. They can also help explain company benefits, with which your hew hires might be unfamiliar, seeing as they've probably been on mom and dad's health insurance and always had their vacations defined for them by their school. Giving someone a definitive contact point can relieve a lot of anxiety.

Set Objectives...and Follow Up!

They're going to need some guidance about what to do...the things you and your existing employees take for granted are unknown to the newbies. Sit them down early and explain what is expected of them, and b e sure to follow up with them soon and see if they're doing it and if they have any questions. Letting them know they're on the right track keeps them from guessing and maybe wasting a lot of time. this kind of feedback is especially important for today's new grads, who in many cases are used to get a lot of regular feedback and really want to know how they're doing.

Save the Politics for the Democratic Primaries

It's tempting to explain the internal power struggles because in many cases you can make yourself look like the king of the hill. Don't. let them figure out the bureaucratic politics on their own. Such dynamics are stupid enough as it is, and who knows, if you get a bunch of new grads at once they'll just ignore the office politics and focus on doing good work and then BOOM you've got a culture change. That's not going to happen, of course, but it sure would be nice.

Cut the Cord Early

Having said all of this, it's important to let them go on their own soon. Give them the information to succeed but then let them succeed. You can't baby people and you don't want to give them the idea you're always going to take care of every detail for them. Let them build networks among their peers and figure out their own relationships.

It's exciting to get new hires because you can really mess with their heads and mold them into images of you. But if you can just give them a start, you've done enough.

Visual Illiteracy

Do you see what's going on around you?

The environment in which you and your Creatives operate is dynamic and has many aspects to it. You need to identify these aspects and understand how they relate to one another. The reality of the world around you, though, is often clouded by your education, professional history, cultural background, and other experiences and biases you've picked up over time. What's obvious to you may be invisible to others, and vice versa. Something could be happening right in front of you and you might not be able to grasp the significance that others think is common sense. Even if you have perfect vision, you may not be able to understand what you see.

This visual illiteracy hurts your ability to plan for the future or respond to changes in the present. The term "visual illiteracy" usually refers to your physical ability to understand concepts presented visually. For me, though, I think it nicely describes the inability to understand the concepts surrounding us in our operating environment.

What causes visual illiteracy? Some of the problem comes from things you did. The history of your firm ("that's the way we've always done things") can be a big factor. Unique aspects of your cultural upbringing, such as a concept of lifetime employment, could color your views on personnel matters. And of course, your education plays a big role. A friend was telling me how Microsoft poses some intriguing questions in interviews just to see if you can think creatively. He told me one of them was "How would you move Mt Fuli?" There are probably all sorts of answers that can be derived from engineering, physics, or geology, but I studied public policy...my response, almost immediately, was "I'd change the name of the mountain to something else, and rename a different mountain 'Mount Fuji.' The names of mountains are arbitrary, and so now Mount Fuli would be somewhere else." Not a bad idea, if I do say so myself, but it points to the fact that I never considered anything buy a public policy response because I wasn't really trained in anything else.

But does this matter? I mean, as long as you come up with an answer to your problems, does visual illiteracy really have an effect?

Well, sure. In the first place, you might not even notice when a problem is emerging, until the effects become so obvious you can't help but see it, and by then it's likely too late. You might also end up ignoring some very worthwhile courses of action because they simply wouldn't occur to you, or you might turn down an employee's suggestion because you don't see how it could work when in fact it might be perfect. So yeah, you should assume this can hurt you.

So what do you do about it? Well, it's tough for an individual to get rid of all their biases, but you can try to break some of them. First, accept the fact that just because you've always done something a certain way doesn't mean it's still appropriate -- if you can really embrace that idea, you'll be ahead of the game. Try to broaden your mind by introducing yourself to new fields, whether in school or informally. If you write software, take an art class. If you're a graphic designer, subscribe to the Wall Street Journal. Read a book. Basically, do something that helps you think in different ways.

If you can't wipe your slate clean and start with a completely fresh outlook, that's OK...no one can really do that. Rather than ignoring what you know, complement it by surrounding yourself with people who think differently. This is one advantage of the team approach to problem-solving, but you blow that advantage if you surround yourself with a group of people with similar backgrounds. Shake it up a little bit, get a little diversity in your think tank, and remember that if you're going to work with other people, it's probably a good idea to listen to what they say, too.

Visual illiteracy is a bad thing for a leader. When you're responsible for long-range planning or for responding to emerging opportunities, you can't afford to miss things just because of your biases. Do your best to improve your understanding of the world around you, and while you're at it, take a few extra steps to mitigate the biases that remain. We all know that "the blind eading the blind" is a bad thing, so do what you can to improve your vision.

Two Types of Leaders

There are two types of leaders in this world.

OK, I'll bet there are a lot more than two, but for our purposes, let's say there are two.

When someone comes forward with a new idea, some new opportunity that has some benefit to the firm or to your field of interest or to society in general, and it's something outside the norm, then there ARE two types of leaders: those who figure out why you CAN'T do something, and those who figure out why you CAN.

If we've surrounded ourselves with Creatives, we need to consider that they're going to be, you know, creative. So every now and then they're going to come up with ideas that are different from what you've done in the past. That's the nature of a creative industry. If you want things done the same every day, you need a bureaucratic structure and you need to avoid hiring Creatives. If that's what you need, then go for it, but if you've agreed your industry demands creativity, then that's what you'll get.

When employees bring you something new to try, you've got a decision to make. Ideally, you have a lot of experience, know the history of your firm and the industry, understand the laws, are familiar with corporate polices, and in general, are omniscient (remember, we said "ideally"). Given that knowledge and understanding you can decide whether to proceed.

There are many leaders -- too many -- who will go through that knowledge and look through the policies and come up with plenty of reasons why it can't work. Some of them may be based solely on opinion, others may be in black and white in corporate manuals. They are specifically looking for a reason why it can't be done. Maybe they're just covering their asses or maybe they think they're protecting the company or maybe they're just too lazy to do anything else. After all, if they let you try something, it might increase their workload. Or, someone above them might not like it, so the easiest solution is to just say no.

But there are other leaders who recognize the worth of that suggestion and who will find a way to make it happen. They, too, can look through the books and find a reason they can't do something. But they'll go a step further and find a justification for why they can. Very often corporate policies may conflict, with one section allowing something and another disallowing it. The trick for this kind of leader is to actually do the research and do some thinking about how something can work...chances are that this leader will make something positive happen.

This sort of thing is common in the military. With so many regulations out there it's inevitable that there'll be some overlap, with Army Regulation XXX.XX saying you can't do something and Army Regulation YYY.YY providing an opportunity. The military is a bureaucracy, of course, at least in peacetime, and when you're controlling hundreds of thousands of people and using taxpayer money, perhaps you should err on the side of commonality.

But a business can't afford that, because if you say "no," chances are one of your competitors is saying "yes," and they won't just steal your customers, they may just steal your employee, too. Sure , maybe the answer has to be "no," but don't go into it with that as your goal. See if it's possible to say "yes" before turning someone down.

Larry Page was recently interviewed in Fortune magazine and he bemoaned the fact that so many people just seem naturally resistant to change. Larry is not resistant to change. He's also a co-founder of Google, which hasn't done too badly. So he might be worth listening to.

None of this is meant to suggest you should say "yes" to stupid ideas, or to something illegal. But it IS meant to suggest you shouldn't say "no" simply because of some arbitrary rule that might be contradicted by something else. If an idea sounds worthwhile, pursue it, see if you can make it happen. This is one time when being a "yes man" is OK.

Net Usage and You

There are all kinds of programs out there that let you monitor your employees' Internet use. I won't list any of their names so I don't give them any free publicity...if you think you need them, there's a Google search bar on the right of the screen. Plenty of firms have policies regarding Internet use on company time, and those policies are getting stricter all the time. The question is...why?

What might your employees be doing that doesn't seem related to their job? Well, checking out blogs (like this one, hopefully) or reading newspapers from Spain might seem unnecessary (unless you live in Spain, of course). they might be keeping in touch with friends through Facebook, IMs, Twitter, or some other way that they can tell each other how horribly busy they are avoiding work. Maybe they're just doing a little shopping...it's no secret the Monday after Thanksgiving in the US is the biggest online shopping day of the year, once people return to the office.

But you need to consider the role of the Net in your business. Don't just think about the traditional uses in your field; consider too how these seemingly personal activities might help you. Your Creatives can find inspiration and information in lots of different areas you might not think of, so blocking entire categories of sites will probably keep them from viewing something they could really use. Designers in particular, whether graphic designers or hair designers, can get a lot of great ideas from just skimming through different sites, so try not to limit them if you don't need to. Anyone working in any sort of knowledge creation or research will need access to a range of stuff that most people might not. In one government job I had a friend was studying methods of terrorist communication and needed to look at the web sites the bad guys were using. problem was, since we were on a government network, those sites were blocked, and even after he got a waiver for some specific sites he would get a phone call about once a week from the security folks asking what he was doing. You need to be careful about giving people a task and then taking away their tools.

Another example: last week the Secretary of Defense lectured a group of Air Force officers about the need to think creatively about counterinsurgency warfare. But the Air Force recently instituted a policy that restricts Air Force computers from accessing any website with "blog" in the URL. So anything on Blogger, for instance is blocked, including such things as all those blogs written by people on the ground in places like Iraq and Afghanistan who might have some pretty good ideas about things like, oh, counterinsurgency warfare. The military already has some strict limits on blogging in a war zone so as to not give away information useful to an enemy, but what security purpose is satisfied by blocking military people from receiving that information? Telling people to think outside the box and then cutting their access to the outside of the box doesn't make a lot of sense.

As you ask yourself "why do I care what they do online?" remember there are some things you should be worried about, things that will definitely hurt your company. Illegal activity, of course, can leave you liable since it's happening over your network. This includes everything from illegal music downloads to pimping goats online (I just put that in because I want to see if anyone Googles "pimping goats" and finds this site). Viruses and other malicious code can screw up more than just the first computer it hits. And of course, you lose out on productivity when bandwidth gets used up, shared drives are filled with downloaded movies, and employees spend all their time doing something other than work.

There are some ways to address these concerns, mostly through putting the responsibility back onto the employee. Have a written agreement with them that limits your claim of responsibility and allows them to accept responsibility for appropriate use of the Internet. Perhaps include a clause where they acknowledge that illegal activity on their part is grounds for firing. If you see legal-but-annoying problems emerge, talk directly with the employee rather than creating company-wide policies. I guess the bottom line is, try trusting your employees and see how that works.

But you need to look at more than just potential problems...you need to consider what the true output is. If you're employees are doing good work, if they are putting in a lot of effort despite doing their Christmas shopping at the office, then what benefit do you get from shutting that off? Is employees' Net usage really eating up your capacity or causing you to miss deadlines? Don't make something into a problem if it's not a problem, and though you should try to nip potential problems in the bud, avoid restricting the entire company because of a few individuals. Save the "Net Nanny" programs for your kids, not your adults.

Recruiting Creatives

As the school year winds down and graduates head out into the world it's a good time to reflect on your recruiting practices (though it's a little late for THIS year's crowd...mostly). How do you plan to bring new Creatives into your company? Obviously, you need employees, fresh ones and maybe some experienced ones to replace the folks you lose. Deciding WHO you want to recruit is a discussion for another time, but once you've figured that out, do you know how you're going to bring them in? the ideas below may be too involved for, say, a 4-person firm that doesn't really need a lot of people, but even they want to take advantage of talent that comes along. So there may be some good food for thought for everyone.

One thing you need to do is find a good way to get your message out. As you search for people with technical skills you'll want to look at schools where you can recruit, and not just colleges, but high schools and community colleges as well, unless there's some real requirement for a bachelor's degree in your line of work. Do some networking with career counselors at the schools as well as instructors in the fields you're interested in. You don't need an intense relationship with them, but from the career folks you can find out how recruiting works there and from the instructors you might get leads on promising students. "It's not what you know, it's who you know" often works for the bosses as well as the employees.

Go beyond schools, though. If you're in an artistic field, take a look at local exhibits and see if any artists catch your eye. If it's an interior designer you want, visit some high-end furniture stores and see who really knows what they're doing -- many aspiring designers start out in furniture stores to develop their skills. If you need hairstylists, stop someone whose hair you really like and ask them who did it. You need to get out and look at people's results, not just their transcripts.

Make sure your virtual recruiting booth is out there. You've probably got something up on Monster.com, but how about on Craigslist? More and more people are looking for jobs on their lists and your competitors are probably trolling for them there, so you should be too. And even though you've probably got a website up, that's pretty passive...how are you drawing people to it? In a Web 2.0 world you are looking for people who can interact, so make sure your firm has a social network presence, with a group on Facebook or something like that which provides info about your company and encourages people -- recruits as well as potential clients -- to take a closer look.

Reaching recruits with your message is important, but more important is having a message worth broadcasting. You need to give some real thought to what you're offering potential employees. Of course, you need to be offering a pretty good job in the first place...no matter how much you pretty up something that sucks, it still sucks.

You either need to offer compensation that is comparable with others in your industry, or else offer benefits that make up for lower pay. One shift that seems to have happened is the idea of deferred compensation, whereby people work for low pay up front but gain ownership in the company so that someday (not too far away) they'll be rich beyond their wildest dreams. The dot-com bubble burst, though, as well as an increasing degree of turnover in the workforce, means many people would prefer to just get paid now, thank you very much, without worrying about ownership in a firm that might not be here -- or might be around without them -- in a couple years.

Today's Creatives want a chance to contribute something. They want to know that what they're doing adds to the company and isn't just make-work or administrivia. This was the basis for the US Army's Army of One recruiting campaign that has since gone away. Many people in the Army hated it because they thought it was emphasizing individualism instead of teamwork. But the beauty behind it was that it was saying "Hey, you...you can make a difference. We need YOU and what you offer, not just anyone." It basically told people they weren't going to be a mere cog in a huge green machine but instead would be contributors, and that's what the people whom the Army really needed wanted to hear. Tell people they'll be allowed to make a difference and the people who raise their hands are the motivated people you want working for you.

Another thing Creatives are looking for is the opportunity to grow professionally and personally, and develop their skills. As the line between home and work gets blurrier and blurrier, personal development is coming at work and professional development is continuing on personal time. you need to be able to show people that they're going to grow in your firm, not just by advancing up an organizational chart but by really developing themselves.

Many of your older workers, especially those with families, might be more attracted to a job with some stability, which they don't pan to leave because of family and financial commitments. For them you might want a dual-track system, one that focuses on developing the individual and one that develops managers and leaders. A small firm may not have this option, or may not want people who stick around, but larger firms should consider it.

The two key elements to recruiting are to have something people want and then get the word to them. In a way, you're selling the job to potential recruits, and if you think about it that way, you're liable to find the way to reach the ones you want.

Playing It Straight

One game that people play in the workplace is called “I Have a Secret,” in which they know something’s going on, they let other people know that they know, but they never say what “it” is. It’s a power game played by weak-minded people who can’t get ahead on the strength of their abilities, so they try to make themselves seem more important by suggesting they’re “on the inside.” It’s a stupid thing to do when employees do it, and it’s ridiculous and totally unprofessional when bosses do it. So don’t.

You need to be straight up and honest with your employees. Transparency is the name of the game in effective employer-employee relations. After all, you expect honesty from your employees, so you need to give it to them, too.

You want your employees concentrating on creating, not on worrying about what they don’t know. As soon as they learn you’re keeping a secret from them, they’ll wonder what else you haven’t told them, and then they won’t be focusing so much on work anymore. Don’t give your employees a reason to mistrust you, it just gets in the way of them doing what they should be doing.

Creative industries often take a group approach to work. One thing you don’t want is some members of the group knowing everything that’s going on while others are in the dark. People end up spending more time discussing all these secrets than they do working, and that doesn’t help anyone. It can also bring discontent in your teams as those that aren’t up on what’s going on start to resent or distrust those who seem to be in the know. Don’t create problems that you don’t need just by hiding things.

Very often we don’t like to talk to employees about problems they’re having with their work. In order to avoid conflict we take the easy way out, sit back, and hope they change their performance. But if people don’t know they’re doing something wrong, they’ll just keep doing it that way. Bite the bullet, get over the anxiety, and realize that by providing honest, constructive feedback you’re liable to get better work out of your employees. Open, constructive feedback leads to better work.

Sometimes problems arise that you think might make you or the company look bad. In that case, you have a couple choices. One is to hide the problem, try to fix it by yourself and hope things get better. Another option is to tell your employees about it and use their creative minds and fresh outlook to maybe help solve the problem. You’ve got creative talent working for you – use it to deal with internal issues as well as with the product you’re producing.

It’s tempting to hide stuff from your employees. You might think you’re avoiding hassles by keeping things from them, but in the long run, you’re likely hurting yourself. Sometimes there may be company information that you need to keep quiet, but very often it won’t hurt to be transparent about what’s going on. Before you decide to keep something secret, ask yourself “Am I doing this because it would be bad for the company to let them know, or am I doing this because it might make me embarrassed or anxious?” If it’s the latter, then suck it up and tell them.

Who Should Be Planning?

Every Tuesday we talk about some aspect of planning. You might get the impression from this that planning should all be done by the boss. If that's what you thought, my bad. The reality is, strategic planning in a creative industry needs to include input from people throughout the company at all levels of responsibility.

Some aspects of planning, like developing the facts and assumptions that define your starting point, need the input of the worker bees as well as the leadership. The people actually doing your company's job and creating the product or service you provide are in the best position to describe the limitations on their work. If you create this "starting status" without asking the actual Creatives in your firm, but just rely on managers and leaders, you're going to have a false picture of the world. That can lead you to come up with courses of action that lie outside the realm of the possible. In that case, you're going to try to do something only to find that it isn't possible, and that's just a waste of everybody's time.

Even the higher-level guidance, like the vision and mission statements, benefits from input throughout the company. Even though these are generally considered "top-down" statements, from the leaders to the workers, the truth is those statements can be pretty meaningless if they don't address the "real world" of the firm's creative process. Don't ignore employee input to these critical pieces of the planning puzzle.

In addition to making a better plan, including a lot of different people will help you implement it. As people have to carry out our company's strategic plan it's best if they are familiar with it rather than having in sprung upon them by surprise. As they develop the plan they can be thinking ahead to how they're going to implement it, and hopefully sharing it with their peers as well. One thing that helps is if your ideas for implementation are developed right alongside the actual plan itself, kind of a parallel thing. That also helps you identify potential problems sooner, before they turn into show-stoppers.

You'll also find that people are actually more interested in carrying out the plan if they have helped to write it, or if they know that someone at their level was involved. When people get things forced down their throat they get defensive and tend to push back, but if they helped create it, then they have some ownership in it. They're also going to feel like they MUST be involved once you get to talking about things like budgets. They're going to want some say into the resources they're going to get and how they're expected to use them. This kind of "buy in" can really pave the way for smooth implementation later.

So to get back to the original question, who really should be doing the planning? Just as you shouldn't get the idea that it's only the senior leaders, you should also not thin that it's EVERYBODY in the company. If you've got a small firm with just a handful of people, then yeah, maybe so. But in a larger company, what you're really going for is representation from a wide range of groups. Maybe a rep from each section, or someone representing each technical aspect of your firm, something like that. You want a wide range of technical expertise, a few sets of eyes on the process, and a range of experience levels so you maximize the chance of coming up with good ideas and m