Professional Writing

I know from personal experience that the best way to learn about something is to teach about it. But that's not always possible. It can be tough to get out and find the time to teach a class. It can be even tougher to find a willing audience.

Another option, though, is writing. When you write, you don't need your audience sitting in front of you. In fact, you can get many of the benefits of teaching regardless of whether anyone's reading.

There are a lot of great benefits that come from writing, especially if you do it on a regular basis, though you can still get a lot of advantages even if you just write occasionally. Writing forces you to stay current in your field, so you're not suggesting ideas that have already been overtaken by new ones. In doing so, it also encourages you to be thinking of new ideas yourself, so you can present interesting original thinking rather than just writing about others' concepts. The feedback you get on your writing can spark even more ideas, serving as a virtual brainstorming session. Finally, from a broader professional perspective, you have the opportunity to share your thoughts with your peers and advance your field...just don't give away ideas to your competition that let them get ahead of you!

Of course, regular writing also improves your most basic communication skills, and that's never a bad thing.

One last point: professional writing offers a way to advertise your firm at no cost to you. And it does it in a way that shows you not only know what you're talking about, you're also not lacking in self confidence.

How do you get out there and write? Well, while you could write a book, that probably shouldn't be your first project. Look for professional magazines and journals in your field that accept unsolicited articles and essays. You could also look at writing a regular column about your particular field for a local newspaper. And of course, the easiest way to break into publishing: write a blog.

There are lots of things you probably shouldn't be doing during work hours, but professional writing isn't on that list. Don't feel guilty about taking time to do this during the day. You're improving your skills and advertising your business...both of those are pretty important for any successful firm.

By the way...all of these ides apply as well to your Creatives as they do to you. So encourage them to give this a shot, too.

Let's Pause for a Moment

A lot of points in this blog have, over time, suggested you do things for your Creatives, such as:

creating the best possible working environment;
empathizing with them;
providing a variety of working options, such as telework;
setting clear objectives and offering careful feedback;
limiting the time they spend in meetings;

All of these, and other suggestions, may sound like you're coddling your workers.

Wrong.

The focus here is not on doing everything you can to make their working life easy. Rather, it's on doing what you can to get their best efforts from them.

Your goal is profit maximization, and how you get there isn't as important as getting there (quick note: getting there ethically IS important). So, figure out what it takes to get the most out of your Creatives at a cost you can afford. Many of the ideas discussed in this blog cost little or nothing, except your time, and that's what you get paid for anyway, right? The real problem most people have with putting this effort into creating the best conditions for results is that it's simply an uncomfortable situation for those who aren't used to it.

You grew up hearing tales from parents and grandparents about what the working word is supposed to be like. You've seen movies and TV shows with the "normal" office environment. But what was right for them, or what's right in fiction, isn't necessarily right for you and your firm. Modern work has some different requirements and opportunities, and creative work is different from bureaucratic or industrial work, so if you find a suggestion is outside your comfort zone, that's OK.

Some people say "work isn't supposed to be fun...that's why it's called 'work.' " But if you have a choice between employees who hate coming to work, and employees who enjoy (or, at least, don't mind) coming, well, which group do you think is going to give you the better effort?

It's possible to go overboard, of course. When the emphasis is on fun over work, when you focus too much on taking care of people's desires and not enough on making sure they do good work, then you're missing the point. An enjoyable, nurturing, professional environment is a means to an end. Work can be fun, but it's still work, and you should expect your Creatives to approach it professionally in return for the work you're doing as a leader. Perhaps the doggy day care and in-house massage therapists might be a little over the top (but Google does stuff like that, and they aren't doing too badly these days). Bottom line: work can be enjoyable, but it IS still work after all.

How do you keep your Creatives focused on the work at hand rather than just enjoying the fun stuff? That's largely a function of recruiting motivated people who see the benefits of your work environment, providing your expectations, setting a proper example yourself, and providing honest feedback. Don't read this blog and get the idea you're supposed to treat your Creatives like children...the deserve your respect and attention, but they also need to be providing you their best work in return. Always remember that latter point, and do your best to keep the expectations on both sides in balance.

Memorial Day

Today is Memorial Day in the U.S., when we honor fallen servicemembers.

If you want to learn something about leadership today, I suggest reading this.

Empathy

Empathy is that quality by which you can understand others' perspectives and feelings, and for a leader that's pretty important. When you're leading Creatives, and have a pretty diverse workforce, it can also be pretty challenging.

Your employees have skills theyre most interested din using or developing, problems affecting their personal and profesisonal lives, ambitions and goals, and plenty of other things going on that are unique to them. For you to make the best use of your employees -- getting their best work from them, keeping them motivated ad enthusiastic -- you really need to understand how they view the world and what's important to them. You can't just look at what's important to YOU, you need to figure out what's important to THEM. Through the lens of their individual perspectives you can get a better idea of which skills they're most apt to use, what problems are affecting their ability to do a great job, what it takes to keep them interested and striving forward -- in short, you really need to understand things from their point of view.

It's helpful for you to have a diverse workforce, but that also eliminates the "one size fits all" approach of dealing with your employees. It's harder to step into someone else's shoes if you don't understand them. And since everyone's different -- and among Creatives, differences are often the only thing in common -- you're going to have to work extra hard to understand their point of view. Some of that will come though in direct conversation, so don't be afraid to talk to your Creatives about things beyond the office. Some will come through observation, so take note of what they're doing when they seem happiest, and watch for problems from outside the office that creep into the workplace.

This isn't all just a bunch of hand-holding, touch-feelyness...this is about doing what you need to do as a leader to help your Creatives turn out the best possible product or service and maximize your profit. If you were on an assembly line you'd worry about the quality of the ingredients that go into your final product. When you're leading Creatives, you need to think just as carefully about he qualities of your most important ingredient: your people.

Strategic Planning is a Skill

I've been thinking lately about who should be doing strategic planning in a firm, and I've kind of reconsidered my earlier views on the subject. While I still believe you need a diverse group of people with some degree of involvement, I've reconsidered exactly what role that group should have.

There's a sense in many organizations that strategic planning should be done by everybody. That is to say, rather than merely having some input about their specialty, lots of people should have a decision-making role in what the final plan looks like. In small companies everyone sits around a table and comes up with a plan, while in larger firms, every department has a representative at the table. But is this really the best way?

You wouldn't bring an untrained, inexperienced person in off the street to do graphic artwork, or interior design, or certainly not your hair. So why would you take someone untrained in strategic planning and expect them to do it? Strategic planning is a skill like any other and it should be done by people who are prepared to do it.

I've had to lead strategic planning efforts a couple times. The first time around, we did the "everyone has a seat at the table and a veto on the final product" way, and I spent the first month teaching all the departmental representatives about strategic planning. That set us back quite a bit, and some people still never got it. The process ended up taking a year, when it could have been done in a few months, starting as we were from scratch.

The next time around, rather than reconstituting that group, I ran the effort myself, but went out and got inputs one-on-one from the different departments. One person, the big boss, had veto power over the final version. We still addressed everyone's specific requirements, they still participated in the process so they felt their needs were represented and we got their buy in, but the whole process went much faster. Everyone was satisfied with the final product, and individuals felt like they'd been listened to rather than being pushed into something over their heads. They were happier now, because let's face it, if they wanted to be strategic planners, they'd be doing that rather than their specialty.

Bottom line: strategic planning is important, too important to be left to amateurs. It's a skill, like anything else your firm does, and it requires people who know what they're doing. You need information from throughout your firm but you don't need people who don't know what they're doing in a position to mess up the process. Let a professional put these inputs into a coherent whole.

Let's Go Dragonboating

We've talked before about the dangers of mandatory fun. But even though putting your Creatives into required social activities can be a bad idea, there's nothing that says they shouldn't do stuff together outside the office if they want to. The trick is to find something interesting and interactive, and when you're leading Creatives, "interesting" may involve more thought than normal.

The office picnic is a common social event, but even though it's interactive, much of the interaction comes through organizing, setting up, and cleaning up...hardly the funnest thing in the world. Some people turn instead to local sports leagues, but for your Creatives such things as softball and hockey may be a little too...ordinary.

So why not suggest something different? If you're looking for a sports activity, consider something outside the mainstream. How about getting a dragonboat team together? Maybe your employees prefer staying on dry land, so how about a kickball team? If you can get into a league or a local tournament of some sort, you'll find that someone else does most of the organizing, leaving you with something fun and a little different.



A common event in military organizations is "the staff ride," where all the folks in a unit will pile into buses and head off for a day to some place of historical interest. How about doing something similar, and relevant to your field? Like, heading off on a road trip to Fashion Week in New York? Something that's fun AND can contribute to professional development...hmmm, that's got a few benefits you might want to take advantage of.

The point of all this is, if you want to use "outside of work" stuff to motivate and energize your employees, and if they're up for that, then you're going to need to be creative for your Creatives. If you want people thinking creatively at work, remember that's not a 9-to-5 style of thinking. Putting people back into ordinary, and boring, situations can end up sucking the creative life right out of them.

Recruiting for the Long Haul

A high turnover rate among your Creatives can cost you a lot, and not just in terms of money.

There's a lab with which I work sometimes that recruits people with the expectation they'll only be there for a few years. Even though this lab does cutting edge work, it's located in a somewhat remote location. While that's OK for young people right out of school, it's not quite as great when they start having kids and are worrying about their future potential in their field. So, they have a lot of young scientists with only a few years of experience, and the leadership is OK with that.

There's a monetary cost associated with that kind of turnover. The costs associated with the recruiting effort, plus any up front expenses (moving costs, signing bonuses, etc) get repeated regularly. But there's also a cost in terms of future leadership. Today's leaders won't always be around, and the lab is shooting itself in the foot if it doesn't try to develop new leaders from within.

So, when you're recruiting with a long term view, what do you look for?

Well, first of all, you need to look for qualities beyond technical skills and demonstrated creative ability. Before you start reviewing resumes, build a list of those qualities you'd like to see in a leader. You may be recruiting your future replacement, so think about what's worked for you and what hasn't. When you're interviewing applicants, be looking for signs of those characteristics, and focus on those people.

Next, recruit in a way that encourages longevity. Offer incentives that go beyond immediate rewards, like signing bonuses. Look instead at deferred incentives, longevity bonuses, or advanced training and education with a commitment to stay with the firm for a period of time. If you give people an incentive to leave (like the military does when they offer college tuition benefits to new recruits), they'll leave. If you offer them no incentives at all, they will stick around only until they find a better deal. But if you offer incentives to stay, they're more likely to stick with you.

Not every new employee is destined for leadership, and you shouldn't apply this recruiting style to everyone. But you need to consider it when designing your recruiting plan. Creative firms have demanding requirements when it comes to leadership, and it's harder to find a good leader by getting a senior person off the street than it is to find one by nurturing one on the inside. Identify your future requirements that need to be met now -- and remember, grooming a leader can take years -- and recruit now in a way that will help you meet those needs down the road.

Measuring Creativity

As a leader you need to be able to evaluate your employees' work so you know what works and you can improve upon what doesn't. Measuring creativity, however, is hard to do. It's easy to know how many cases a detective solves or how many widgets an assembly line worker makes, but measuring how creative or innovative someone is...well, that's tricky.

A recent survey by the Boston Consulting Group sheds some light on this issue. Though their definition of innovation is a bit broader than what we expect our Creatives to do, the survey results are still interesting. While 73% of their respondents agreed they should be measuring innovation, only 46% said they were doing so, and even fewer were satisfied with the measurement being done.

To measure your Creatives' job performance you need to find something that's not only measurable, but also relevant. Look for outputs and effects of their creativity, not something that just shows how many hours they put into their work, but more importantly, how well that time was spent. Some possibilities, depending on your field, include:

Client satisfaction: does your Creative meet their clients' demands for creativity?

Awards or other peer evaluations: how is their work regarded by others in their field?

Repeat business: do their clients keep coming back for more work, or do they refer new clients to your firm?

Revenue growth: does their creativity turn into cash inflows?

Patents: are your Creatives developing new things or just improvements on old ideas?

New products: are they stuck in a rut or are they coming up with something original?

How you use these measurements is pretty much up to you. You can set specific targets, or just monitor trends. Whichever way you go, though, you need to clearly set expectations up front. Measuring results, and then defining your standards, can lead to a setting of standards specifically designed to meet the results you already have. As the leader, you need to be able to explain why these are the appropriate criteria for measuring creativity. Some measurements may be qualitative rather than quantitative...instead of being numbers-based it might be a case of "I know it when I see it." That's OK, but again, you need to be able to explain your criteria in advance.

As for using incentives to reach these standards, or enforcing them if they aren't met...well, that's a conversation for another time.

More on Left and Right

I'd seen this clip before but just realized how it helps explain the difference between left brain and right brain approaches.

The video is by a group of students at Temasek Polytechnic in Singapore. While the Singaporean education system seems mostly geared toward memorization and repetition, Temasek is different in that the school's focus is on the arts. (a good friend of mine is a graduate and he tells me the spirit of entrepreneurship there is quite high). Anyway, some students did a little music video a couple years back, and how you view it can give you an idea which side of your brain is dominant.



If you're intrigued by the visual imagery, the cinematography, the dance, the references to films, and the original ways they found to express this song, you're probably looking at it more from a right brain perspective. You're considering the creativity.

If, instead, you watch it and think about all the logistics involved in doing this entire 4-minute video is a single continuous take -- how do you get people to pop out at the right time, how do they coordinate from one end of the building to the other, what happens if someone sneezes -- then you're more analytical, and viewing this more with the left side of your brain.

But if you just think it's cool and you're going "yay, go students!," then you're probably in balance. And that's pretty much where you want to be.

Right Brain-ed-ness

Author Daniel Pink was featured on Oprah Winfrey's show this week, discussing his book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future (I intend to get a copy and will plan to review it here this month). One of the things I found surprising is that the book is 3 years old, so it's hardly just a promotional tour. Someone, somewhere, thought Mr Pink has something to say in this book that's worth listening to. Perhaps they're right.

Pink talks about how the "right brain" skills, which tend to be the more creative ones, are becoming more important to our economy that the more logic- and reasoning-oriented "left brain" ones. The reason for this, quite simply, is that we can outsource a lot of the left brain stuff, whereas the right brain ideas are more unique, and thus cannot be replicated as well by others as the more common, and more repetitive, right brain skills.

This is an intriguing idea that suggests an evolution in the skills necessary for business. When the industrial revolution came around, the ability to run an assembly line was pretty important. Later, as we moved into the information age, we found we could outsource physical production to other countries -- who had pretty much caught up to us in that arena -- and focus here on the more "professional" functions, such as accountants, lawyers, and financial specialists. There's a big concern in the US that we've lost much of the ability to manufacture things, and instead have focused on "manufacturing" money, and of course we are seeing the effects of that emphasis now. Many of these same folks say we need to step back and refocus on the more mundane left brain skills we used to find important.

But what if that's the wrong direction? What if, instead of going backwards because of a mistake, we're supposed to go forward and focus on something new? Has the time come to start outsourcing some of those white collar tasks as well, so we can focus on something different? What happens to our business models if we should indeed be looking forward to a new way of thinking?

As a leader, you might want to think about what you're outsourcing. Do you keep your accountants, lawyers, business analysts, public relations, and other administrators in the home office, while sending your creative projects out to people around the world whom you've never met? If so, perhaps you might want to shift your resources...rather than looking for cheaper Creatives, maybe you should be looking for cheaper bookkeepers. It's easier to replicate these more bureaucratic tasks than it is to find new right brainers, so perhaps these latter folks are the ones you should be cultivating.

Naturally, many people look at such things as "either/or" -- either have a right brain focus OR a left brain one. Bad idea. Effective leadership is rarely about "one or the other" but instead about "the right mix." Look carefully at the skills that are going to add the most value to your firm, and determine where you can get what you need. Then push your resources in that direction. Striving for the right balance is tough, and requires careful monitoring because requirements change, but hey, that's why they pay leaders the big bucks, right?

Keeping Your Folks on the Payroll

This little tale isn't about leading in a creative field; it's just about leading. It happened to a friend this week and I thought it was worth sharing.

My friend works for a major government contractor, and the contract was up for renewal last week. Unfortunately, the government office for which they're working dropped the ball on their administrative requirements, and they didn't run all the paperwork in time, so the contract expired last Friday. It'll get taken care of, and the contract will restart, but it could take a week, or it could take a couple months. The contractor doesn't know, the government doesn't know, and the employees don't know.

So, last week, the contractor told the employees on this team not to come to work as of Monday, and that they had two options: they could take vacation days, or they could take unpaid leave. They would not, however, get moved to other projects within the company, so there was no paid work for them to do. They also would not get laid off -- which would allow them to collect unemployment insurance -- and then rehired once the contract was approved by the government.

Naturally, some of the team members started looking for new jobs on Monday: temp work, internships, and new full-time jobs. It was a stressful time, as people of course have bills to pay, and there's all kinds of uncertainty about when things will restart. Things were looking pretty bad.

Then, Monday night, my friend got a call. Nobody knows yet how long it will take to get the contract through the approval process, but the contractor has decided to pay the team members out of its overhead accounts. So now, they don't go to work, and they get paid anyway...a pretty good deal, and about a 180-degree change from what was happening 24 hours earlier.

What happened? Well, the company obviously realized they were going to lose these employees, because of course they couldn't just sit around waiting without an income. In the event that happened, then even when the contract renewal was complete they wouldn't have any employees trained and ready to carry it out, which could cause serious problems for the contractor. Of course, some employees might still return, but their morale would likely be pretty low and they'd probably jump to another job as soon as they found one, given that this company doesn't seem too concerned about their welfare.

In a situation like this, where you've got a temporary reduction in your workload, you need to make a decision about what to do with your employees. It's a tough call. Obviously, if your revenues drop, it's hard to keep paying employees the same amount, because after a long enough time, you'll run out of money. However, if you can absorb a short-term loss, you might avoid a long-term loss when the opportunity for more work returns but you no longer have a workforce capable of doing it. Your decision will turn on whether this is truly a temporary situation, or a permanent change in your market. If it's temporary, and you can find a way to keep your employees on the payroll, you need to do what you can to make that happen. It's not just a nice thing to do -- loyalty is important, never forget that -- it's also good for your business.

Oh, and my friend? Well, he's looking for a temp job to pick up a little extra money, since he's headed off to grad school in the fall. So yeah, the timing on all this was pretty bad for him -- looking for a new job when you'll only be around until August isn't cool -- but now it's turning out OK. Fortunately, he had a lot of good karma saved up.

Looking for Challenges

Last year the National Academy of Engineering got a project going called the Grand Challenges for Engineering. The idea is an interesting one: "create a list of the grand challenges and opportunities for engineering facing those born at the dawn of this new century." The Academy solicited the input of scientific and engineering experts as well as the general public.

Consider doing something like this for your firm. What big, unsolved challenges do you see in your industry? How about just within your firm? As you continue to provide a product or service, can you also be looking beyond your immediate requirements toward a wall that has yet to be scaled? Can you take that creative brainpower that's working for you and develop answers to the challenges you face?

Where would your suggestions for great challenges come from? Well, some will probably come from you, say, from your experience in the field, or from your professional reading, or from your interaction with other professionals. Some ideas will of course come from your employees, and you should pay close attention to these, because these are the ones they're probably going to be most interested in tackling. You could also solicit some from your customers. After all, their demands are the ones you're currently meeting, so get an idea from them about what they will likely be looking for in the future.

One critique of the project is that there's no context, no real guidance when it comes to identifying the challenges, and so the suggestions seem to be all over the map. Coming at this from the context of your industry, your firm, or a narrower specialty within your firm, should provide you some focus and allow you to come up with challenges that are suitable for your Creatives.

Once you have some suggestions, make sure to include them in your strategic planning. Try to put some resources against them...Google had the idea of requiring its workers to spend a percentage of their time working on projects outside their day-to-day, so see how you can allow your Creatives to allocate time to work on these new challenges.

Maybe it seems crazy to go looking for new challenges when you already have plenty to do. Still, if you do it within reason, it can be a very good thing for your firm. You don't have to save the world with a project like this, but you will still end up doing something to keep you Creatives interested in the job. You'll give them a chance to do something new, which is what Creatives enjoy, and in doing so you give them a good reason for staying with you rather than changing jobs. So take a look beyond your Inbox and see what opportunities might be out there. You never know...in addition to finding an interesting challenge, you might also start working on something that will be profitable for your firm in the end. And that's not a bad thing, either.

The Makeup of Your Workforce

Whether your workforce is large or small there are some qualities you want. We've talked about them at various times in this blog but it's worth trying to pull them together in one place to describe your ideal group of employees. Not every one of your Creatives will have all of these; the idea is to get the right mix of these factors throughout your workforce. Obviously, if you have a larger firm you've got a better chance of finding all of these, so the smaller your firm, the more you'll have to work at getting it right.

First of all, you're looking for Creatives that are young at heart, though not necessarily young in age. After all, if you go discriminating based on age you're going to be in pretty big legal trouble not to mention just being morally wrong. But really, age is just a number. What you need are people who are enthusiastic, self-motivated, hoping to try new things and planning on making a difference in their field. As a matter of fact, far from hiring only Creatives who are young in age, you'll ideally have a mix of ages to give you different levels of experience. The goal here is to have employees who aren't set in their ways, but who instead are still interested in doing something innovative.

You should also look for people with an education. That education might not be in their particular creative field, but having an education provides a strong foundation for innovation. One of the best graphic designers I know earned his degree in biology, while a great hairstylist double-majored in biology and psychology. Education isn't just about the specific classes someone takes, it's more about learning how to think in different ways. Even if your Creatives don't have a university education, they should at least have some formal training in their field. Study helps your Creatives further develop, and learn how to best use, their natural talents.

Another factor to look for is overseas experience. As we've talked about before, people who have lived overseas tend to be more creative. Whether that's because they lived overseas, or they lived overseas because they're more creatively focused, is unclear. Either way, it's a useful indicator. That could include foreign workers coming here as well.

Finally, you need people who have strong individual abilities they can bring to a team. Finding people who can work equally well on their own or as part of a team can be tricky. You need Creatives who can work well on their own, who have developed strong skills. But in most cases, a single Creative isn't what you need; you need to combine a number of people's skills. At the same time, you don't want employees who are totally dependent upon others.

Again, remember that not every employee is going to have all these qualities; what you need is a good mix. But the smaller your firm, the fewer employees you'll have to spread these requirements across, so each employee will need to have more of these attributes than is the case in a larger company.

And of course, these are just a few things to look for; there surely are more. Any thoughts?