Creative Opportunities in a Troubled Economy

Grim economic news makes business leaders nervous, and rightfully so. The tightening of the credit market makes it tough for businesses to get the resources they need to conduct their day-to-day operations. Customers are liable to cut back on their spending, hurting your bottom line. Your employees are likely to be nervous about their homes, their bills, and their jobs, and may not put as much focus onto their work as before.

You're going to need for change how you do business. Smart leaders will reposition their firms by identifying their customers' new needs and being ready to meet them, while using any "downtime" as an opportunity rather than as a waste. You can keep yourself going in the short-term, and set yourself up for the long-term, if you take some steps now. The discussion below isn't meant to be a comprehensive list, but merely a demonstration of some ideas for navigating the months ahead. Some of these steps may be challenging, but if there's no challenge, then where's the fun?

Advertising Advertising firms large and small need to understand how their clients' needs are changing, which can be tricky, since very often the clients don't even understand those changes. New campaigns may need to emphasize value over performance. Graduated campaigns that start with brand-awareness and evolve slowly may need to be sped up, and producers might need to focus on existing products for now while waiting to introduce new products when customers have more disposable income to try new things. Copywriters and artists need to find better ways to sell to customers with less to spend, and ad firms that can do this will be successful.

Fashion Everybody needs clothes, but not everybody needs new clothes. Designers need to look at creating new looks that are not only stylish but that can also be produced and sold for less. Whether this means changes in material or less accessorizing, the need exists for less expensive clothing lines. People will be buying less in the near future and high-end clothing may well be viewed as a luxury item that needs to be put on hold for now, so an emphasis on practical business wear may make better business sense than couture. People will still be buying clothes, but whether or not they buy yours is up to you as much as it's up to them.

Interior Design Ever wonder why Design on a Dime is such a popular show? People want their places to look great but aren't always interested in paying a lot of money for that. During a recession that's just going be more true, so consider changing your approach to something more affordable. If your style leans toward high-end furnishings, you might want to lean it another way temporarily. This isn't to say you should undercut your artistic sensibility, but instead that you should focus on the overall look more than usual and de-emphasize the characteristics of the pieces involved. Homeowners and businesses will still be looking for nicely designed spaces, but they'll also be looking to spend less. If you can meet that requirement, then you can be designing for them. If not, then not.

Hairstyling Getting your hair done is very "income elastic," meaning that changes in income have a strong impact on a customer's demand for a service. If you're at a salon you'll probably see clients going longer between cuts and colors, and there's little you can do about that beyond lowering your prices...and even that won't help much, since demand for your services is based so strongly on income, not just price. Your stylists will likely have a little more free time on their hands, and new clients might be hard to generate in tough times. You might take this opportunity to invest some more in your stylists and get them some training so they'll be even better and can offer more services when things turn up again. You could also get them involved in volunteer work: offering free cuts for a battered women's shelter, for instance, does something nice for people who need it and also gives your stylists more practice instead of sitting around, or maybe you could hold a "cut-a-thin," which not only raises money for a worthy cause but also raises awareness of your salon for the future. Don't let "dead time" be wasted time.

Entertainment The entertainment industry, whether national or local, can benefit from economic downturns. During the Great Depression people used to enjoy going to the movies because the fancy lives on the screen were a welcome escape from their own hard lives. These days, movies and other entertainment like professional sports or Broadway shows, tend to be a little more expensive, so you probably won't see a big upsurge in attendance any time soon. Free entertainment like television will become even more appealing, so writers and directors might take this chance to try new things and experiment with their creativity, since more folks are liable to be staying in rather than going out as much, and might be up for something new. Local theater groups and other relatively low-cost entertainment could also see an upsurge in attendance since other higher-cost venues and travel to exotic locales might not be on as many people's agendas as before.

There are some economic potholes up ahead but if you play it right and aren't afraid to change how you do business, you can keep your firm going now and position yourself to do even better in the future, especially if some of your competition doesn't adapt and subsequently goes out of business. You have a couple of things going for you. First, in creative fields, you can be less tied to traditional ways of doing business than someone in, say, accounting. And you have a great advantage: the creativity of your employees who, if you turn them loose on your problems, can find far more solutions than the few examples suggested here. As your business environment changes you need to change with it, and if you're a good leader, you and your Creatives can find some great opportunities in the cloudy days ahead.

Getting Your Point Across

Two guys are driving through Florida when they hit the town of Opa-Locka. It's getting late so one turns to the other and says "why don't we find a place to stay here in Opa-LOCK-a?"

The other says "Fine, but just so you know, it's pronounced 'O-PAL-ocka.' "

"No," says the first, "it's Opa-LOCK-a."

"Uh uh," says the other, it's O-PAL-ocka."

They go back and forth like this for a couple miles..."Opa-LOCK-a!" "O-PAL-ocka!" "Opa-LOCK-a!" "O-PAL-ocka!"

Finally they decide to settle it and stop at a small shop in the middle of town. They walk in and ask the lady behind the counter, "Excuse us, ma'am, but how do y'all pronounce the name of this here place?"

She looked at them like they were idiots, leaned forward, and very slowly and deliberately said, "KRIS-py Kreme."

Moral of the story: if people don't understand what you're asking, you won't get an answer that helps you.

While top-down communication is of course important for a leader, you can't forget the importance of clarity in your one-on-one communication, too. Any leader needs to be able to communicate well, but when you're leading Creatives you've got a couple unique hurdles to jump.

First of all, creative fields aren't always straightforward. In engineering you've got laws of physics and in accounting you've got a set of generally accepted principles, but show the same hairstyle to two stylists and they're likely to explain it in different ways. Creative fields have a lot of "fuzzy" aspects to them, and many things are known through intuition and feeling, which are just hard to explain. The problem, though, is that you have to frame questions and statements in a way that other people understand what you mean even though the language may not always seem sufficient for getting your point across. It's always important to remember that our employees aren't mind-readers, no matter how convenient that might be on occasion, so take that extra moment to be sure that what you're want to say is what they're really hearing.

You also need to remember that you're dealing with people who don't always think in a straight line. Creatives' minds tend to go off in many directions and they simply may not be in tune with your way of thinking or see things from your perspective, so something that seems clearly obvious to you may be hidden from their view. This is especially true in a firm where many specialties co-exist...an advertising copywriter may not think the same way as the graphic designer on their team, but you have to communicate with both of them.

That raises another point: you may have to interpret for two or more Creatives who are having trouble communicating. Don't be afraid to step in -- politely -- if it sounds like your employees aren't getting their points across but YOU can understand what they mean. In the end it's up to you to clear up any confusion between your Creatives. Remember that scene in This is Spinal Tap after Ian, the band's manager, has taken Nigel's drawing of Stonehenge and returned with something "in danger of being crushed by a dwarf"?

Ian Faith: Nigel gave me a drawing that said 18 inches. Now, whether or not he knows the difference between feet and inches is not my problem. I do what I'm told.

David St. Hubbins: But you're not as confused as him, are you? I mean, it's not your job to be as confused as Nigel.

David, sedated though he may have been at that point, got it right: It's a leader's job to clear up confusing communication, and when you're working with Creatives, that's often going to be a challenge.

Top-Down Communication

Business coaches talk about the importance of getting everyone together on the same sheet of music (which is a pretty bad cliche, if you think about it...how many orchestras only use one sheet of music? Wouldn't it get horribly crowded around that single music stand? But I digress.). It's important to understand where you want your company to go, what position you want it to occupy in broader society, what you want your employees to do and how well they should do it...all of this is critical.

But it doesn't do any good if nobody else knows about it.

In my doctoral dissertation I studied how some parts of the US military had trouble adjusting to the end of the Cold War. What I found was that very often the senior leaders knew what they wanted to do, but those grand ideas never made their way down to the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who were supposed to carry them out.

So you need to talk to your employees, not just about the "big picture" stuff but about the "little picture," too (how came no one ever uses the term "little picture?"). There are a lot of ways to do this. You can use e-mail, of course, which is a pretty proactive method that creates an "information push" rather than an "information pull" culture. There are other, less direct ways to communicate down the line through, say, company wikis or internal blogs or a discussion forum, but those might be less effective: your employees have to seek out that information (rather than having it pushed through to their desktop via e-mail) and you may also lose control of your message as others discuss and debate it. And of course, you could also just talk to people.

And this brings us to the subject of meetings.

Actually talking to people, in a somewhat structured environment rather than just a casual conversation in the hallway, has a lot of benefits. You can be sure that you convey whatever message you want, whether it's an evolution in the company's mission or the planning for a whitewater rafting trip. You're in a position to answer any questions that come up so you don't create more confusion than you're resolving. You can get immediate feedback, or provide folks an opportunity to come talk to you later after they've thought about things, just in case the idea you're presenting is, you know, dumb. And maybe, just maybe, you can have donuts.

As an added benefit, if you have employees scattered about working remotely, this is a good chance to bring them together and make sure they all get the same message, assuming you're on the same continent. If you're not, then there are plenty of web-based ways to bring folks into a virtual meeting or a teleconference, though of course time zones get to be an issue with that. I have a friend who works in Germany, with colleagues in Korea, and their headquarters is in Washington DC. The only people having their meeting during a normal time of day is the DC crowd, but in the end it's beneficial for everyone.

If you're going to bring everyone together for a meeting, there are a few things you can do to get the most out of it:

Let everyone know about it in advance Don't be one of those people who calls a last-minute meeting. Just don't. You'll be missing more people than you normally would plus you're likely to pull your employees out of a creative fog. Let them prep for it with some warning.

Have an agenda You, and everyone else, should know why you're having a meeting. This doesn't need to be overly formal, with set times for discussing each topic...just make sure everyone knows why they're there.

Have an ending time Don't let it drag on (and on and on and on...) especially if the same stuff is getting repeated. Know when it's going to end and then end it. If you need to follow up later, set a time to do that.

A lot of people trash talk the idea of meetings, and usually for good reason. But even though you don't want to interrupt your Creatives' work for the mundane task of sitting around discussing things, the reality is you need to communicate with them. Sometime, like it or not, the thing to do is just bite the bullet and call a meeting.

And seriously, do think about bringing some of those donuts.

Review: The Four-Hour Work Week

I'd been hearing about Timothy Ferriss' The Four-Hour Work Week from a lot of people but hadn't picked up a copy yet. Though I'm probably the last person in America to read it, I was still surprised by quite a bit of what I found. No one had spoiled it for me yet!!

The basics of the book are this: for many people (which he calls the "New Rich") success isn't measured by how much money they make, but instead, by how well they use their time and live their lives, but they don't know how to break the 40 (or more)-hour workweek paradigm. He discusses how lots of folks talk about working hard for years so they can have a lot of money to do the things they want to do now...and Ferriss shows that you don't have to spend years and years getting to that point but instead should consider getting to enjoy life now. Part of the solution comes in how you live, and he discusses how technology, good information, and the occasional reality check, can give you the ability to do the things you want. Perhaps more importantly (and definitely the more difficult of the two) he shows how you can work smarter to do what you need to do to live that life, not only making enough money to do the things you want, but also having the time to do them.

He refers to his model as DEAL, and while I won't go into what each part of the acronym means (you really should read the book to get a full understanding) I'll tell you that it has to do with figuring out what's really important, getting rid of those tasks and requirements that aren't, automating the things you can to free up time, and ultimately, liberating yourself from the standard way of doing business. It helps you go from "living to work" to "working to live."

While this might sound like a Pollyanna version of the world, what surprised me most about this book was how I realized I'm already doing some of the things he mentioned, in terms of taking advantage of opportunities at work to do the things I want outside of work. For example, I'm interested in a particular region of the world, so I arranged to work on a study for another government organization that deals with that region. As a result, when I travel there for work I always add on a few vacation days to see friends or visit new places. Through a series of proposals I managed to create a strategic planning unit for us, in which I work, and as part of that I can justify presenting papers at academic conferences, which allows me to stay current in my academic profession as well as my day-to-day job. I've managed to arrange a couple sabbaticals, including last year's to Afghanistan (not exactly fun, but definitely rewarding) and my upcoming trip to Singapore as a Fulbright Scholar. In all cases I've shown how my regular work will still get done, and my outside work will contribute to my job by enhancing my knowledge and my experience. And let's not forget morale: if I'd been turned down for these I'd be pretty miserable but as it is I do my best work because I know there are people watching to see how I do, plus I figure they've given to me so I need to give to them. I'm not quite at the 4-hour workweek point, but I can see how people can get there.

The book is well-written and fun to read, even the one chapter that gets pretty technical. It's filed with examples that help you envision yourself in the same situation and make it easier to break the paradigm of the traditional working style. Yeah, I sometimes wonder if all those "real life" examples are real or if they're just created to make a point, but in the end, does it really matter? The point is made.

The book won't be for everyone because it's based on the assumption that we don't want to spend our whole lives working. There are, of course, plenty of people who are content to do just that. They like the thrill of a tight deadline, they love closing a deal, they'd rather do that than be on vacation. Some jobs also don't lend themselves to breaking the paradigm, such as being a police office or a doctor (though many of the techniques he discusses will still add time to your day). If you really want to have that career, then much of this really isn't for you.

But how about Creatives, and those who lead them? This will apply to you, big time! Whether you're working in a large firm or an entrepreneur, there is plenty in here to make your life better. Don't try to do it all in one big step; work through it slowly and let your comfort level adjust. In the end, you need to ask yourself why, exactly, you work the way you do. Once you start asking that question, you're on your way. The bottom line is, we have a finite amount of time in this world...why not make the most of it?

Transparency

Keeping secrets from your competition makes sense. Keeping secrets from your employees makes problems. Keeping secrets from your creative employees makes for some drama. And that's not good at all.

As a leader you need to be open about what you're doing. With few exceptions, the time for secrets is over. Forgot the passive aggressive manipulation, forget playing Jack off of Jill, forget your plans for total world domination...you've got a business to run and all of that, ALL of it, simply slows down your progress. Leaders who play a game of "I've got a secret" lead their people into trouble. Trying to do things in secret really explodes in your face once people find out what you're doing...and they will.

In my last government position I was in what was supposed to be the creative cell within a larger bureaucratic body. Our division was called Strategic Plans and Initiatives...the acronym, of course, was SPI. When I saw the devilish grins on my boss and some of my co-workers I knew we were in trouble. "ooooh," they said, "we're the SPIs...quick, close the door!" They were very impressed with their perceived role in the world and were pretty sure we needed to be operating behind closed doors so other divisions wouldn't learn about what we were doing. Why we didn't want other divisions knowing what we were doing was never fully explained, but that set the tone for all of our daily activity.

Why is transparency so important for a leader? Well, first of all, you need to provide people a common focus. As we discussed before, your creative employees may well go off in completely different directions without some common goals, so setting your goals and keeping them to yourself isn't going to help. I had a government boss once who told me, "I don't see why people want plans to be written down...I already know in my head what it is I want to do." Yeah, that's not helping the rest of us, because we haven't been to mind-reading class yet. If you want your employees working together (and you DO), then they need the same information, and keeping plans and issues to yourself isn't going to help.

While it's true that everybody likes surprises, it's also true that nobody likes surprises. What I mean here is that everyone (well, except for grumpy people) likes opening a present on their birthday, but nobody likes opening a budget and seeing their resources got cut because of some priority they never heard of. People like to know what's going on and if they feel they're being cut out of things they're going to resent it professionally and personally. My SPI boss had someone working on a wiki-based information sharing system while the Research and Analysis division was working on integrating databases in a couple different agencies to try to achieve a similar result. But the wiki-work was being done in secret, even though the two efforts could have complemented each other, and because some good effort was divided, and everybody got mad when the "secret" project was revealed in the budget meetings, neither project ended up going anywhere. A bunch of drama in the workplace doesn't help, and that's exactly what you'll get from a creative bunch of folks who spend their time coming up with good ideas and hate seeing them wasted.

Yes, in many businesses you face inter-office politics, and that's usually the justification for a lack of transparency. But the impact that different groups in your organization will have on each other should lead to more transparency, not less. Chances are you need to get buy-in from other divisions to encourage cooperation and reduce friction in budget plans and such. Maybe your employees' work is only going to matter if it's done in conjunction with others, and so you need cooperation rather than competition. Try to overcome the problem of politics rather than feeding it.

Having said all of this, there ARE some things you need to keep quiet. Personnel matters, for instance...not everyone needs to know who's making how much money or which employee has only 3 weeks to show some improvement before being let go (THAT employee needs to know, but you shouldn't broadcast it to everyone). Private matters and problems at home shouldn't be advertised...if you know one of your folks is having trouble at home and it's going to affect their work, find another way to explain that impact in the office without giving all the private details of your employee's life. Remember, "transparency" is not the same as "feeding the gossip machine."

If the reason you limit transparency in the office is because you don't trust your employees -- maybe you're concerned they'll go to a competitor, or perhaps use the information to take your job and get ahead -- that's a sign of a bigger problem. Why do you have people working for you whom you don't trust? If you really and truly don't trust your employees and peers, then the best thing to do is to go elsewhere, because this is a company destined for BIG problems.

Politics in the Workplace

As Election Day looms closer and political ads continue to fill the airwaves (those folks with DVRs are exempt from watching), political conversations in your firm may be reaching a boiling point. Politics can provide fodder for some very spirited discussions, and that can be a good thing for Creatives, who ideally are seeking out new perspectives and broadening their horizons. Politics, however, are pretty emotionally charged, probably second only to religion. An awful lot of people aren't too interested in simply sharing ideas, but instead are trying to convince others to accept their own strongly-held views. Add in the natural passion many Creatives bring to work and this sets the stage for some potentially loud and ugly confrontations, which could even disrupt working relationships. And you don't need that.

What to do? Well, simply telling employees they can't discuss politics isn't really going to work. There are some legal issues there to consider, and it's not the most ethical thing, either. Plus, you'll just end up creating the very tension you're trying to avoid. No, you're just going to have to resort to leadership.

Leading by example would be a good start. Try not to start political discussions yourself. It can be tough, but really, isn't that something best left to the non-workplace? You run a particular risk because, as the person in charge, you have a lot of power over your employees, and the last thing you want is to look like you're using that power to bully or intimidate. Not good, and totally disruptive to your relationships.

If you find yourself in a discussion you don't need to be in, don't be afraid to try to change the subject. It's easy to go from talking about Sarah Palin's latest rally, to Tina Fey as Sarah Palin, to SNL, to "What's Bill Murray doing these days?," to Bill Murray's new movie, to living in California, to home prices, to politics, to...actually, you should probably stop at one of those intermediary points. The idea is to defuse a potential bomb before it goes off, particularly if you can see things turning bad.

But if you're too late, if things have gotten bad between people, you're going to need to fix it. It's bad enough to have bad blood develop between your employees, but when it's over something dumb like politics as opposed to, say, creative differences, that's even worse. It's a little tougher to fix because it's not like there's some sort of compromise position you can negotiate. You're just going to have to try to smooth out some ruffled feathers.

If this all sounds like no big deal, believe me, it can be. I'm sitting here looking at two of my co-workers who sit in cubicles next to each other, and who will NOT talk to each other because of political differences. This is awkward for everyone around -- especially me, since I have to walk between them to get out -- and since they work in the same division it's affecting their work and others'. This is bad, and their boss' response is to just laugh it off nervously. We'll see if she's still laughing on November 5th, when things haven't gotten better and work still isn't getting done. Frankly, politics seem to be best saved for the voting booth.

Know Your Employees...and Yourself

Last spring the president of a large public university stepped down after two years in the job. The first unusual thing about that was the timing...that's a job most people keep longer, and he even suggested he'd intended to stay in it for at least four years. The second thing about it that caught my attention was that the university president in question was a retired four-star general from the US military. Going from a highly regimented, intensely bureaucratic organization like the military, to a much more creative, idea-driven place like a university, is quite a challenge, one that a lot of folks simply aren't up to.

He sent a letter around explaining his reasons for leaving, but reading between the lines suggests a few more reasons than what he offered.

Now that the smoke has settled, I keep getting asked the question "Why are you leaving"? Nobody asked me to leave; we have arguably had one of the best years in the school's history, and there's plenty more to do. One of the main reasons I have chosen to move on is the success we have had over the last two years - and the inevitable and predictable ache that change has caused. I thought it would take four years to get where we wanted to be in most areas. We did it in two years.

What he's saying is that he's leaving because he finished what he set out to do. But I've spoken with some professors from that school and they suggest a different reason. They told me that in many ways he was still acting like he was a general, surrounded by people that were legally required to follow his orders, instead of like a real leader who had to motivate people but not get in the way of their work. This caused some clashes between the faculty and the school administration and it's a lot easier to replace one president than to replace a bunch of professors.

But change is hard - and somebody has to initiate it and somebody had to take the heat for it. That's me. This university needed a hard turn. Now it's time for somebody else to make the next round of changes and set a new standard.

Yes, change can be hard, but it doesn't have to be. With a good leader who is open about what he's doing and who communicates that down the line, the difficulty of change can be managed. However, generals don't have to explain what they do, so maybe he's not used to that.

We needed a process to quantify and define our research goals and the strategy to reach those goals.

Hmmmmm...yes, you need defined goals, but do they HAVE to be quantified? He seems to be focusing specifically on measures of performance you can count, rather than just on developing measures of performance that could be either objective or subjective. That's a very military attitude -- how far did the troops advance today, how many push ups can you do -- that doesn't necessarily fit a more creative environment where less stringent metrics might be more appropriate.

No doubt there is more to do...But it's time for someone else to move us forward. It only took two years – vice four - to achieve what I set as goals for myself.

"what I set as goals for MYSELF" Interesting. He seems to be focusing on his own progress, rather than on the university's. When it comes to moving ahead as an individual - -say, working your way up the ranks to general -- maybe you need to focus on your own performance, and in a bureaucracy with standardized procedures it's easy enough to measure that progress.

Going from the military to the civilian world is a real shock, so moving from a senior position like he had to one where you actually have to play well with others must be incredibly difficult. This may be why you don't see many retired generals being successful in politics, given all the compromise and negotiating that must be done there. By the same token, walking into a creative environment like a university without adapting your style based on your new employees simply won't work.

Don't misunderstand me...I have worked with many of the most senior generals out there today and, as a group, I respect them highly. But when it comes to being civilian leaders, many of them have trouble making the transition. One general I knew in the 1990s retired and went on to be president of a railroad. He left that job in part because he still insisted on being called "General" while the people around him preferred to call him "John." Another retired four-star went on to run a major non-profit group and finally left because of clashes with the board, based somewhat on his expectation that when he said he wanted something done, it would automatically get done with no questions.

It's critical that, when you step in as a leader in a new organization, you get the lay of the land and figure out what leadership style will work there. It needs to be something you're comfortable with AND that's appropriate for the situation. Don't expect that something that worked in your old job will also work here...after all, this is a different place. Going from a rigid, bureaucratic organization to a creative one is going to require some extra effort on your part to fit in. If you can't do that, if you can't change your style, then you're better off not coming over in the first place.

Who Should Be Planning?

There's a lot of talk about planning in this blog. You might get the impression from this that planning should all be done by the leader. 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 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 the company's strategic plan it's best if they are familiar with it rather than having it 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 think 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 minimize the risk of having a "blind spot" in your effort.

In my last government office we set up a Strategic Planning and Analysis Group, which was an ad hoc collection of people from each division in the office. We had folks who'd been there 20 days and some who's been there 20 years, and with this range of experience we came up with something pretty good. This office had had some misfires in its past planning attempts but it was often done in a vacuum by some specially-designated person than by the working-level folks. Those earlier attempts didn't work so well, but this one did, and the fact that over a dozen people were involved in it helped the mid-level leaders feel comfortable hat they weren't being railroaded into anything.

Our group was a bunch of bureaucrats, many of whom had limited imaginations. Your group, on the other hand, will involve a lot of creative folks with big ideas, and you may have to keep them focused. It's easy for Creatives to go off in some wild directions, and you need to keep them on a path to doing something that fits the company's vision and mission. You might also need to inject some reality into the discussions. the trick in all of this is not to stifle your Creatives but instead to have them focus their energies where they can do the most good.

With all of this, something to keep in mind is that at the end of the day, someone has to be responsible for the planning effort. That is, some single person should have the responsibility for producing your plan, and that "someone" will need to be one of your leaders. In addition to the responsibility for getting it done, they need the authority to direct the process so they CAN get it done.

The goal here is NOT to turn all your Creatives into planners. Instead, you're just trying to make sure your pool of knowledge is as wide and deep as it can be.

Planning Assumptions

We've discussed describing the facts of your situation as one of the first steps in the planning process. After all, it's important it is to know what you know. Now, let's add to that "starting status" by knowing what you think.

In addition to the facts -- the things you KNOW to be the case -- it's also important to lay out your assumptions for the present and the future. The idea is to figure out what things you can reasonable expect to happen that haven't happened already. The purpose behind this is to create a plan that's firmly grounded in reality. There's no sense in making a plan, hiring new people, budgeting resources, and blowing off other opportunities if your plan would only work if the laws of physics were suddenly reversed.

Let's try to visualize how this works. Let's say there are a lot of options open to you that use various combinations of money and time, and you could plot all those combinations on a graph:



Then let's say you identify certain facts, like "Our review board has a minimum of three days to examine each phase of the project," or "If our employees work more than 40 hours a week we have to pay them overtime." Such facts will limit your options because they affect the time and money available to you. On our graph, the limitations created by the facts are represented by blue lines:



But to maximize the reality of your plan, you need more than just the things you're sure of; you also need to consider the things you're pretty sure will happen. For example, assuming "Interest rates will drop so we can get cheaper financing" has an effect on your available money. On our graph, these assumptions are represented by red lines:



See how we've gone from a lot of options down to a smaller set? These represent the options that are within our known, and expected, capability.

Because they limit solution sets, assumptions should be few in number, and they should only be for the important issues. As you'll notice, the more limitations you put on yourself, the smaller and smaller the number of options becomes. It's important to be realistic, but it's also important to leave yourself some courses of action, so be careful about saddling yourself with unnecessary limitations.

With that in mind there are a few criteria you should consider for your assumptions:

First, they should be logical. Simply wishing something was the case doesn't make it so. Remember what we mentioned earlier about changing the laws of physics? Ain't gonna happen, so don't assume it.

Similarly, they should be realistic. You should have some evidence to back it up. If there's been a behavior trend among your clients up until now, don't assume that's going to change without some effort on your part. If you need it to change, maybe that needs to be part of your plan.

Finally, they should be essential. Each assumption has the potential to reduce your possible courses of action, so make 'em count. Consider it this way: if you make an assumption, and it turns out your wrong, and that would wreck your plan, then it's essential. If a bad assumption wouldn't have any effect on your plan, then it's not that important and you should leave it out.

One of the biggest criticisms of strategic planning is that all too often it takes place in a fantasy world completely disconnected from reality. That's especially problematic in creative fields where your employees are trying to think beyond limitations. It's your job as a leader to occasionally bring them back down to Earth, and then encourage them to focus their energy on the things that really are possible.

Just the Facts, Ma'am

When Sergeant Joe Friday of the Los Angeles Police Department responded to a new case, all he wanted were the facts. He needed to know what really happened, not what the witness thought happened. Once he knew what was real he had his starting point for working the case.

As you begin your strategic planning you need to know the facts. They tell you the rules of the game. Trying to play football on a basketball court doesn't really help you. Identifying the facts about your company, your market, and your whole operating environment gives you an idea of what paths are open to you and what tools are available for your use. If you're trying to figure out how to get from "here" to "there," you first need to know where "here" is. The facts help you identify the point where you're beginning.

What do we mean by "facts?" Well, these are the things that are true about your operating environment. They involve what is happening now, not what might happen in the future. They are things you know, not things you assume. They are an observation of reality, not a description of your ideal world, so you need to include inconvenient and unpleasant truths as well as those you think are helpful.

These might include such things as:

- laws
- available resources during a particular period
- existing technologies
- current size and skills of your workforce
- existing inventory
- contractual agreements
- current organizational structure

These are the things you take as a given...for now, anyway. Some of them might be changed -- inventory, for instance, or the size and skills of your employees -- and those changes, if you want to make them, will need to be addressed in your plan. Others, such as laws or contracts, are things you may be stuck with, depending upon the time frame of your plan...if you're looking beyond the length of your contracts then changing them in the future may be an option but if you're looking at a shorter term, you have to work with what you have now. The unchangeable facts will, in many cases, form the outer boundaries of your set of available options...you can look inside that set for courses of action, but looking beyond them is a waste of time and effort.

Your more experienced employees play a critical role here because they know your history and the limits under which they operate. A potential problem with them is that they may be so used to working under certain conditions that what they call a "fact," thinking it to be an immutable force of nature, may instead be something changeable that has simply been around so long that they can't imagine life without it. Newer employees are useful for challenging those statements of "fact" that in reality may be perceived limitations that can be easily ignored.

The more creative your workforce, the more facts you will uncover if you turn them loose upon the problem. This is a good thing, not because it creates more limitations, but because it better defines the limitations that are there whether you see them or not. Facts exist -- wishing they didn't doesn't make it so. The better you understand your operating environment the more you'll be able to shape that environment to best suit your needs and create the most profitable opportunities through your planning efforts.

Knowing your facts helps you best refine your mission and start thinking of ways to accomplish it. Just as Sergeant Friday needed his facts to get the ball rolling, so do you. The difference is, he managed to get his work done in 30 minutes (with time for commercials) whereas you'll have a little more work to do.

Lose the Negativity

There’s a new guy in my office who until recently was sharing my cubicle space. Ever since he arrived a couple months ago he’s been incredibly negative and cynical. At first I thought he was just cranky after moving here from overseas, and having to buy a house and get his furniture moved here and pick up his car at the harbor and get his kids registered for school and all those little details (well, actually, pretty big details). But he’s done that stuff and he’s still just as bad…worse, actually, as now he’s complaining about work, too, and has started talking politics (more on that another day). Last week he moved out of our shared space and I was happy to have his negative vibes go away, but he ended up moving out of our little bullpen and into a desk right on the other side of the cubicle wall from me. So yeah, he’s actually in closer proximity to me now than he was before. And that’s just not a good thing.

A negative atmosphere will absolutely kill the creative spirit in your organization. People who spend all their time focused on negative things don’t have time to focus on productive stuff, like, say, doing creative work. Too much of their brainpower gets focused on what’s wrong, and not enough is used to develop new ideas. It’s as if, instead of driving down a highway toward their destination, they’re driving down an old dirt road in a different direction, with no real interest in getting anywhere special. You can’t afford that; as a business leader, you need your Creatives focused on doing their jobs to the best of their ability.

It’s not just a matter of their own reduced creativity and productivity. One individual can poison your working environment. So what do you do if you have a perpetually negative person, especially if you’re starting to see the eye-rolling and hear the snide remarks about them from co-workers? One popular idea is to try to change their attitude by drawing out positive contributions from them, asking them directly for ideas in meetings and trying to get them to offer up something worthwhile. This can have a temporary effect…they’ll answer direct questions but as soon as you’re done with them they’ll go back to their old ways. A better option is to get with them one-on-one, let them know what kind of effect they’re having, and try to discover the root of the problem. It could be they have no idea they’re doing it, and by raising it with them in a private, non-confrontational way you might get them to think about it and consciously try to change. It could just be that their personality is negative by default, and nothing you can do will change it…in that case, you’re either going to have to live with it or let them go, your choice. Or it might be that there’s a major problem in their life – maybe the subject of their negative remarks, or maybe something else they’re trying to keep private – and they can use some help addressing it. This last point is where real leadership comes into play; you really need to take care of your people, and sometimes the things that affect their work life the most are outside of the job entirely, so you may have to do some careful digging. If this is the case, and there’s something else going on that is leading to their negativity, then you’ll be doing them and yourself a great service by figuring out what that is.

As you watch for problems in your employees be sure to watch for them in yourself, too. As a leader, you will set the tone for your firm. It’s easy to find plenty of things to complain about, but that doesn’t mean you should. Instead, try to deal with problems discreetly without broadcasting them to everyone. If you find yourself getting upset, go off by yourself to think about it and calm down. As for me, I go run a few miles and try to work things out in my head. Lots of people rely on negativity as the primary basis for conversation (what someone once called the “ain’t it awful” syndrome). Don’t be that person.

None of this is to say there’s never a time to complain, or to suggest you should be some kind of Pollyanna who smiles artificially all the time and then goes home and kicks the dog out of frustration. There is a time and a place for complaining or for voicing your concerns about something, but it shouldn’t be constant, as it is with my co-worker. If you find yourself or an employee only saying negative things and never anything positive, then you have a problem that needs to be addressed. Learn to manage your negative feelings and deal with them in a way that doesn’t hurt your working environment.

Creatives need to be able to think. They need their minds open to new possibilities and they need to be able to focus on what can be done rather than on what can’t or on what isn’t working right. That’s tough to do if they or someone around them is consistently polluting the creative air with complaint after complaint after complaint.

Or am I complaining too much about this?

Tying Employees' Objectives to Your Mission

You want to get the most out of your employees, and they want to develop their skills while doing something meaningful. If you think about it, those are pretty complementary ambitions, so you should find a tool that satisfies them both. Setting objectives for your employees that are tied to your firm's mission helps you keep them focused and allows them to see where they're improving and what they still need to work on.

First, let's talk about why you want to set objectives in the first place. You've got a collection of free-thinking, idea-spouting folks working for you, and that's great. But in terms of your profitability, you need to keep that creative energy focused. It may be a pretty broad focus, but still, you need to keep them moving at least in an appropriate direction. By giving them some guidance about what they should be doing, at least in the short term, they have a pretty good idea what they should be thinking about when they come to work.

That "short term" stuff is key...their objectives are likely to change over time, especially as they start accomplishing them, because that's what you do when you meet objectives: you set new ones. This is how businesses grow, by improving their employees' skills and increasing the quality of their product while reducing the cost of creating it. Whether that "product" consists of marketing campaigns, original academic research, hairstyles, lines of code, or whatever, you should be able to measure improvements in your employees' performance.

Measuring performance is another reason for setting objectives: how can you tell if your employees are doing well or not if you don't say what they should be doing well at? Performance feedback shouldn't be random and it shouldn't be a big surprise to your employee. You should never hear someone say to you, "I didn't know you wanted me to do THAT." If you're measuring your employees against one set of standards and they think they're supposed to be doing something else, then somebody's done something wrong, and chances are, it isn't them.

Your employees want objectives because they also want to know how well they're doing. They want to see their own progress, and there's a good chance they'll be a harsher critic of themselves than you are. They also want some focus...how many times have you heard someone say "I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing!" (hopefully, never) A group of people sitting around unsure of what to do is a bad idea.

Bottom line: you want your folks to have some focus and be working to improve and increase their skills, and that's pretty much what they want, too. So where do these objectives come from?

Well, what does your company do?

This is where you look at your firm's mission statement, and consider what's realistic and what's out of reach for right now, and create a set of objectives that helps you reach the goal you've set for your firm. They might be related to output (for example, completing a certain number of storyboards each week) or maybe linked to appropriate improvement (say, earning a particular certification within 6 months). Since your concern is on profitability, you need to focus your employees on those objectives that help you achieve that. Then use these objectives when you give them performance feedback, and be sure to highlight the link between what they're doing and the overall direction of the firm.

Your workers, of course, would like to see the company be profitable, because then they get to keep their jobs. But they also want to know that they're doing something worthwhile. When I was teaching college I often heard older professors comment that Gen X (which, incidentally, included me) and the Millennials were slackers. I never believed that...instead, I saw people who weren't going to waste their time doing something useless (that's where the "slacker" impression came from), but rather, would work hard at something where they can make an impact. If you tie your workers objectives to the firm's mission, and they can easily see how what they're doing matters, then they're a lot more likely to work hard on what you want them to do than to take off in their own direction.

And if you have trouble...then work with your employees to set the objectives rather than doing it yourself in isolation. That way everybody understands and accepts them. And in the end, that's a lot more useful.

Mission Analysis

We've talked about having a vision for your company and the importance of having a mission statement, but how do you understand what your vision and mission are? These aren't things you just sit down and scratch out after 5 minutes of sitting in Starbucks (well, at least, they SHOULDN'T be). If they're going to be meaningful, if they're going to help you lead your employees, and if they're going to help you with your planning, then they need to be grounded in the real world and have some real applicability to what you want to do. If you just pull them out of nowhere then that's exactly where they'll lead you. But if you put some thought into these, then they will serve as the bedrock of your strategic planning process and help you figure out what your employees should be doing and what resources they need to do it. And in the end, you should be far more successful.

Mission analysis should be the first step in any strategic planning process. Whether you are writing your initial business plan or preparing for a transformation of an established company, you need to understand what you want and the basics of how to get there. there are some things you have to accept in this world and there are other things you can change...we'll talk a bit more about those in future weeks but for now just understand that you really need to know what it is you what to achieve and how that fits into the environment where you'll be achieving it.

First, you need to have some guidance from the top dog in your company. If YOU are the top dog, well then ask yourself why you started all this in the first place. Write down all the things that occur to you. Knowing all of the rationales for having this creative group of employees will help shape the set of "acceptable options" for your vision and mission statements.

Look at the state of your competitive field. Are you all alone, so unique that you have no direct competition? Or are you in a field that is already pretty filled up, which might require you to create your own niche, or maybe take up the excess demand that exists in your market? Understanding what's already out there will give you an idea of what goals will be realistic, and what's needed in the industry. Are you going to provide a service to any potential customer or only to those with particular needs? How broad, or how narrow, will your vision be? Only by understanding the competitive market will you have an idea what you should be doing.

Take a look at the industry's history to understand what works and what doesn't. There's no sense in aiming for a goal that has been proven unattainable. Santayana said "those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it." So don't be like those guys. At the same time, if something's been tried before and failed but the circumstances are different now, then it may be time to go for it again and see what happens. If you're going to jump into an industry, know what you're jumping into.

Consider your own history too, of course, with "your own" being defined as both yours and your firm's. If you're leading the firm then think about your own demonstrated skills and resources. Whether you're at the top or not, give some thought to what your firm has tried before, what's worked and what hasn't, what opportunities seemed out of reach in the past. Is your firm ready to evolve into something new, maybe growing bigger or expanding into a new field? Or do you perhaps have enough on your plate for now, and maybe just some tightening up of your business processes is all you should really attempt for now? In order to have a firm grasp on where you are and where you want to go it helps to understand how you got here.

If you're able to articulate your own desires, and the limitations and possibilities presented by the environment, then you're in a position to define you vision and mission. This is the first step in your strategic planning and if you take the time and do this well it will make everything that follows SO much easier, and much more useful, too.

Weathering a Downturn

The news is filled with the current crisis in the US economy, which of course has a spillover effect to other countries. So far, the firms going bankrupt, being bought out, or being taken over by the government are in the financial services industry, so Creatives may feel safe for the moment. After all, the people losing their jobs are investment bankers and other Wall Street folks, right? Overall unemployment is still fairly low in the US, under 6%, so many leaders and employees may feel like it sucks to be "the other guy," but it's good to be Creatives.

For the moment, that's true, but depending on how this crisis develops, we could see a very negative impact across all industries, and Creatives are likely to feel that punch to the gut just like everyone else. It's kind of like the trickle-down concept that was at the center of Reaganomics. They forgot to remind us, though, that just as the benefits of a strong economy are supposed to trickle down to everyone, so too does the pain in bad times.

How are Creatives likely to get hit? Well, as financial firms have faced problems and lost confidence in the system, they have cut back on loaning money. This reduction in credit makes it difficult for many firms to operate. Now, you may be a small firm that isn't relying on credit for your daily operations, and you may not feel like expanding right now so the inability to get a loan may not be a problem...but what about your customers?

The people who are paying for your services may not need them or feel they can afford them. As companies feel bad times coming and face the need to scale back, they are liable to reduce the services they purchase from you. They may put off that upgrade to their IT systems, they might cut back on their advertising budget...if you provide services to corporate clients, you're liable to see demand drop off during the next year or two. Creative services for individual clients are likely to be hurt as well. As unemployment rises the demand for things like interior design will drop off, customers' ability to pay for high-end hairstyling will be reduced...basically, your workload is likely to decrease. As a leader, this is where you'll need to decide what to do with your workforce in a time of reduced demand. The smart leaders, of course, will think about this in advance.

I'm going to suggest to you that, in creative fields, leaders need to do what they can to keep their workforce together during the trying times to come. Even if demand for your creative services diminishes, you want to try to keep your employees together, so long as doing so doesn't drive you out of business. (of course, this might be a good opportunity to get rid of bad employees)

Why should you keep workers even if your revenues are down and your workload has dropped? Because economies go in cycles, so even though we're in a downturn now, we'll be back up again at some point, and though demand for your services may fall off, it'll pick up again. When it does, you want to be ready.

The financial firms can cut people loose (and in some cases, they have no choice). Bureaucratic employees, who do a job that can be learned fairly easily...hey, if they have to leave, they can be replaced later. But when it comes to Creatives, you're better off holding onto what you've got. In terms of people who work individually, you have (hopefully) chosen employees that have the skills you want and the talent that meets your requirements. If they're able to do the things you need done then you're going to want someone with those skills when conditions improve, and in creative fields, you may have to look long and hard to find the right talent in the future. Better to keep the individuals you know have the right sense for what you want your firm to do. And hey, if you've got teams that work well together, the last thing you want is to split them up. Getting that kind of synergy in the future might not be as easy as you think. If replacing individuals is hard, replacing teams is ten times worse. It's all about planning for the future...if you've done your job well and have a good group of employees now, why would you want to lose that and have to start over again in the future (when other companies are also restarting their efforts, and competing with you for talent)?

Also, while losing continuity and corporate knowledge is hard any any firm, it's particularly hard when it comes to Creatives. For many Creatives their particular skills are in a constant state of growth and development, and derailing that process hurts them as well as you in the future. Many of your projects might also benefit from continuity, particular things like ad campaigns, software development, or video game design, where there's a continuing evolution from one version to the next.

But how do you keep your workers in a time of reduced demand for your services? How do you keep paying them without going out of business? How do you keep Creatives engaged rather than bored? Frankly, it will take some flexibility on both sides. For your employees, they may have to take a pay cut, or at least forgo raises until things get better. They might have to take a cut in hours or a reduction in benefits. There's likely to be some pain there, but as long as it's manageable, it's probably better than unemployment. From your perspective, you may end up paying them more per project than you were before even if the total payroll ends up being the same or less. Consider allowing them to do volunteer work or pro bono projects on company time, so they have something to help keep their skills current. Maybe let them take classes on company time so they're even more talented when demand picks up again. If they're having trouble making ends meet, consider letting them do some contract work of their own using company resources.

If you DO have to let people go, help them out. Try to give them a decent severance package, let them use company resources to look for new employment, and do what you can to help them find a job. It's just the right thing to do.

What will you get from this? Ultimately, you're investing for the future. As the economy turns up again you'll be in a position to provide better services to your clients because you've kept your skilled employees rather than trying to restart with a new crew. When firms and individuals are looking for creative services again, you're more likely to snap them up as clients.

Perhaps more important than the external relationships are the internal ones you'll maintain and develop by keeping your Creatives employed during tough times. By demonstrating loyalty to your employees now you'll be building their loyalty to you, and when the time comes that firms are hiring they'll be more likely to stay with you. And as you take care of your people you'll be improving your reputation among Creatives, which is going to help you attract the best employees in the future when the time comes to expand. This is one reason that trying to help folks even if you have to let them go will pay off for you in the future.

The gloom and doom being broadcast to the nation doesn't have to lead to disaster for you and your Creatives. Hunker down and ride it out. If you plan now for potential trouble, you can emerge as a stronger, more talented, and more profitable firm in the end.