Give Them What They Need

I talked last week with a freelance photographer in Malaysia who specializes in travel photography. He’s done quite a bit of work for travel magazines, heading out mostly around Southeast Asia to provide a new perspective on familiar places, and he has a talent for helping you see a place as if for the first time, no matter how many times you might have been there.

But he hasn’t done any work for the magazine in months, nor does he expect to any time soon. The reason? The magazine drastically cut the funding for daily expenses on trips, to the point that he would have been paying for much of the trip out of his own pocket, wiping out a large percentage of what he would make from the assignment. He can’t afford to take a week away from other potential gigs in order to take one that won’t make him any money, no matter how much he’d enjoy it, so the magazine is losing out on his talents.

A travel magazine without money for travel? Come on.

When it comes to resources you need to be a smart manager, and among those smarts is a sense of priority. When your focus is on creative output then your first priority needs to be to get your Creatives what they need -- maybe not all that they want, but what they need -- to create. A graphic designer needs software. A hair stylist needs styling products. And a travel photographer needs travel funding.

Your Creatives bring talent. As a leader, it’s YOUR job to provide the resources they need to use that talent.

You’ll need to plan in advance with your Creatives so you understand your goals and they can figure out what they need to achieve them. If your salon plans to offer the Chi hair straightening technique from Japan, then you need to pay for that training; if you don’t see it as part of your offerings, then maybe you don’t shell out the $3000, or whatever it costs these days, simply because your stylist thinks it would be cool to learn. Figure out what’s necessary to meet your needs and focus your resources on that. As more resources are available, then you can do the lower priority things.

Try not to waste resources on unnecessary administrivia. If you’re throwing out a bunch of letterhead and ordering all new stuff simply because you’re changing the font at the top (and yes, I’ve worked in a place that did exactly that), you’re wasting money that could be better spent on your creative output. When you find yourself asking your Creatives "did you get the memo about the new format of the TPS reports?," you need to rethink your priorities. Put your resources into profit-making output rather than bureaucratic needs. That's not to say you don't spend money on in-house stuff that's necessary but not profit-making (like IT support, for instance) but it DOES mean you don't create unnecessary bureaucratic requirements.

Watch out as well for the "fun but not needed" stuff. Do you still emloy an in-house chefs, run a doggy day care, and provide massages on demand? This stuff is nice, and can create a better atmosphere for doing creative work, but in the current economic environment it might not be affordable...in any case, if you're scrimping on the stuff you really need in order to provide the stuff that makes things nicer, your priorities are out of whack. Some places can get away with this; Google is famous for it. But if you had Google's revenues, you could do it too. If you don't, well, then, you may need to focus your resources more sensibly. It's important to create a good working environment, but not at the expense of your true goals.

A travel magazine that doesn't have money for travel is headed out of business, or at least will find itself becoming a mediocre enterprise that doesn't stand out on a crowded newsstand. Your Creatives need resources to do what they do, and you need to find a way to get them. Maybe they need a lot, maybe they only need a little, but you need to know what they need and get it into their hands.