Dealing With the Know-It-All

If one of your Creatives is disrupting your organization by trying to introduce change based on their own special brand of ignorance about what you do and why, then you have a problem which needs to be stopped sooner rather than later. The trick here is to stop disruptive behavior without destroying the enthusiasm that underlies it. You should consider addressing it in stages, in the hope that you can resolve the problem with a minimum of intervention. Of course, if one stage doesn't work, don't wait too long before trying the next one!!

First, consider discussing the issue in a bigger meeting rather than in a one-on-one setting with your employee. This is less threatening to that individual, and in addition to being a useful reminder to other employees about their own conduct, it also lets them know you're aware of this problem. Don't single anyone out -- this isn't meant to be a public embarrassment, quite the opposite -- but discuss with everyone the importance of understanding the firm in order to improve it. Consider talking about the history of the firm and how you got to where you are. The idea here is for your disruptive employee to get the hint while avoiding a direct confrontation and any embarrassment for them.

If they're not good at taking hints -- and many people like this aren't -- you'll need to hit the problem one-on-one. Bring them in and ask questions about how they're doing. Move the conversation to the areas where they're having problems, listen to what they say, and ask questions about the source of their ideas. It's always possible they're a quick study and have some really solid proposals, but for the other 99.9% of the people this should help reinforce the notion that they need to first understand the company and the operating environment.

If none of this works you'll just need to let them know directly that they're causing problems and explain very clearly why that's the case. Try to do this in a nonconfrontational way, and if possible, don't drag any of their co-workers directly into it. They still need to work with these people, so try not to make things more awkward than they have been or are about to be. But at this point you need to clearly let them know what the problem is and find a way together for fixing it. If they refuse to accept that there IS a problem, then you have some hard decisions to make. Remember, it's a mistake if you do it once, it's a behavior pattern if you keep doing it after it's been pointed out, and if they have behavior patterns that negatively affect your firm, you may just have to let them go.

Creatives require a good working environment and, in many cases, collaboration. When you hire a new employee it should be because you think they'll add to your firm. If they detract from it, and he problem is fixable, then take a shot at repairing it before the damage becomes too great. If yuo can't fix it, then you should consider cutting your losses. There's no sense in having an employee who hurts your firm.