Celebrate Work by Playing All Day

Labor Day is approaching this weekend (in the US, anyway) and for many of us it’s simply a chance for a 3-day weekend. Travel, parties, a final time in the swimming pool, or maybe just some relaxation…it’s a nice passage from summer to fall (which doesn’t actually start for another 3 weeks, but whatever).

But Labor Day began as something more: a celebration of the working class’ hard work that built our modern economy. And maybe, as we enjoy our days off, it would be good to reflect a bit on why we have those days off.

As our economy continues its shift from industrial-based to knowledge-based, the face of the working class may change, but it still exists. For you, in the creative fields, your Creatives represent the working class. They may have college degrees, they may have fancy certifications, they may carry portfolios rather than filling out job applications, they may never break a sweat, but in a knowledge economy they are the working class, and that’s worth thinking about.

You might want to take this opportunity to reflect on your relationship with your Creatives. Think about who they are and what they’re trying to achieve for themselves, and evaluate how that fits into your company’s plans. See what concerns they have, not just inside the office but also what sorts of things on the outside might affect their work with you. Examine your own performance over the last year -- have you learned anything? Do you handle problems better? Are you able to see opportunities more easily? Does your leadership meet their needs, and does their followership meet yours? If you see some things that might need fixing, well, go ahead and start fixing them.

This isn’t to say you should cancel your plans for the beach and instead go into a cave and meditate on your existence for three days (unless that’s what you already planned to do). We here at LeadingCreatives.com have our own plans for the weekend involving the 212 area code. But in addition to enjoying the time off this coming weekend, give your own labor situation some thought, whether at home or at work or wherever. If you pick a point during the year, every year, when you take stock of your leadership and your employees, well then, you’ll do it at least once a year. That may be the bare minimum, but it’s better than nothing, yes?

Keep Your Folks Open to Change

Change happens, perhaps more so in creative fields simply by the nature of creativity. Creatives may be more open to change than others by virtue of their innovative temperament. But they still develop habits, and if things pop up that require a change in those habits, that change can still be rough. So if you can, keep your Creatives in a frame of mind that leaves them open to change. Such a culture of flexibility isn’t natural; it can se a few things to help encourage it.

The foundation of an organization’s culture comes from its strategy, which can be expressed and developed in a strategic plan. You should have a plan that recognizes and accommodates change. The goals and objectives in your plan should acknowledge the need for flexibility and demonstrate the importance of a human capital development program that encourages adaptability. With this as your basis, you can build a workforce that’s more flexible.

Make sure you recruit people with the mindset you’re looking for. This will come through more in the interviews than in resumes. Try to get a sense for how potential employees deal with something new before you bring them in.

In addition to recruiting, look at retention having long-term employees provides for more in depth knowledge, but such employees can often be more settled in their ways. Ask yourself if you want to have mostly long-termers, short-timers, or some half-and-half mix.

You also need to be willing to let people go if you find they can’t keep up with the demands you place upon them. “Seniority” should not equal "guaranteed employment” if they simply can’t -- or won’t -- do what you need them to do.

Try to keep as flat an organizational structure as possible, with the fewest possible leaders. You’ll often find that people in authority are the most resistant to change because they’re afraid their authority will disappear -- and it just might.

Try to keep your budgeting as flexible as possible. Yes, you need some stability there so you can plan your resources, but you also need to be able to shift those resources when changes demand it. Striking that balance isn’t easy, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.

Businesses that don’t change to meet new conditions around them are more likely to miss opportunities or succumb to challenges, and ultimately fade away. Creative organizations are particularly susceptible to this, since the whole reason they exist is to create new things, and failing to do so makes them irrelevant. A culture that accepts the need to change is not automatic -- if anything, resistance to change is the default human condition. Take some steps to make change easier, because the alternative is to just make things harder on yourself.

Get Yourself Organized

One critical element of leadership is management. While leadership and management often get confused with one another, management is really more of a subset of leadership. In order to lead your Creatives well you need to manage your resources effectively. One of the most important resources in the creative world is time, and if you aren’t organized, you’ll waste too much to ever truly be successful.

Very often, projects that don’t get done on time might as well not get done at all. An advertising campaign for Valentine’s Day does no good if it’s ready in time for Easter. A newspaper’s graphic design layout needs to be ready by deadline. Hairstylists make a living not only through the types of services they provide but also through the number of clients they see, so having one client in the chair all day generally means a net loss. You not only need to keep your Creatives organized, you need to keep yourself on track as well.

You should be guiding your Creatives, not really leading them by the hand but instead tracking their work and making sure it gets done. Know the goals, deadlines, and potential obstacles inherent in the assignments you give them. Keep an eye out for emerging problems so you aren’t surprised. Help your Creatives with scheduling -- perhaps set the due date and then work backwards, setting milestones along the way. When they send you something for your review or simply as an update, keep track of it so they don’t have to keep resending stuff to you. Believe me, that’s a pain, and it slows them down.

Good communication is key. Don’t make people tell you something twice, and don’t get into the habit of repeating yourself. Organize your e-mails as they come in; your mail program allows you to create folders, and rules for sorting mail, for a reason. Reply to e-mails and phone calls as quickly as you can -- perhaps, instead of dropping everything every few minutes, you might set aside a little time every hour or two to respond. Try to limit unnecessary communication -- don’t say in three e-mails what you can say in one -- but deal quickly with people instead of leaving them hanging.

If you need to meet with people about their work, keep the meetings short and to the point. Have an agenda in mind, even if you don’t feel you need one on paper. If you’re meeting with someone, don’t let other people walk in and interrupt you; an open-door policy is a good idea, but don’t let it be abused.

Keep a record of your Creatives’ accomplishments and problems so you can provide them with regular feedback. You can do more than just help them along with their current projects -- with good feedback you can help them develop and improve so they need less assistance in the future and can move along more quickly while still turning in great work. But if you don’t keep track of the good things and the bad, it’s hard to have a meaningful feedback session.

Handle your Creatives’ administrivia when you can. Have a system in place to deal with getting them the supplies they need, taking care of human resource issues, arranging travel...if you’ve got the support stuff organized, they can do the creative things you hired them to do.

Creative projects are often on a deadline, and even those that aren’t are best done quickly rather than being drawn out over time. The key to speed is organization, and as the leader you’ve got the most organizing to do. You can keep your Creatives on track by being on track yourself.

Follow Through

You’d think that, if someone assigns a project to an employee, that leader would want to follow through and ensure it actually gets done. But that’s not always the case. Too often projects seem to fall through the cracks.

But you and your Creatives are only successful if your projects are completed. If you start something, see it through to the end. Now, “the end” could be the accomplishment of what you set out to do, or it might be the termination of that project somewhere along the way, but however it turns out, don’t leave your Creatives hanging.

Unfortunately, it’s not all that uncommon for projects to get started, but then not advance. Sometimes you start getting into it, but then the resources you need aren’t available. It helps to have a defined budget and know in advance what you’ll need. In some cases, you might have the financial or material resources, but that most slippery of resources -- time -- isn’t available because you just have too much going on. You need to have a reasonable estimate of what the project requires and your own capabilities before taking on something new. If there’s a lot going on, you as the leader might have the time to follow up on what your Creatives are doing, and they might interpret this as a lack of interest, subsequently deciding notto worry too much about this since you’re obviously not. So, even if you can’t spend a lot of time watching things, at least check in every now and then so your Creatives know they should continue. Finally, your folks may have trouble getting started because of some challenge at the beginning, and if they never get going the project is likely to die on the vine. Don’t just assign something and then turn away; make sure it gets going and builds a little momentum.

You’ll find, on occasion, that you start something, only to have to stop it along the way. Not every project your people start is going to make it through to successful completion. For instance, if you find you’ve taken on too much, you may have to kill a lower priority project, or at least put it on hold until you can put real effort into it. You might also find that you just don’t have the resources, or maybe the technology you need isn’t mature enough. If so, then stop until you can do it later (if you can). And of course, if you’re working for a client, they just might change their mind and ask you to cancel. Regardless of why you might have to quit something, it’s important to clearly terminate the project making sure everyone knows it’s stopped so you don’t have people working on it when they’re no longer supposed to.

Creative resources are finite, particularly time. So, you need to use them wisely. Finish those projects that should be finished, cancel those that need to stop. Don’t just pause somewhere in the middle. Make sure your Creatives know what’s expected of them and help them follow through to the end, one way or another.

Changing of the Guard

Everyone works for someone...that’s a good rule of thumb, anyway. So even though you’re in a leadership position, you most likely have someone, or several someones, above you. Every now and then those faces will change, and you need to be ready when they do.

A change in leadership has a number of effects. The first you’ll run into is a transition period, when you better expect that no new decisions -- at least, nothing important -- will get made. There may be a gap between the departure of your old leadership and the arrival of the new, and even if the timing is seamless, there’ll be a period during which the new leadership is getting its feet on the ground and learning about your busness. Even if someone’s been promoted from within, they still have to get used to their new position, and that’s going to take a little time. If you’ve got anything important that needs to get approved, it’s a good idea to take care of that before this transition period starts.

You can make this process go faster by putting together a “transition book” or some similar means of communicating what you do to your new boss. Include examples of your department’s work, info on your Creatives’ backgrounds, some explanation of your objectives and functions and how they all fit into the firm’s overall goals...basically, let them know what you do, how you do it, and why.

Preparing in advance for the transition does more than just getting you through that phase more quickly; it can also help make sure you continue to exist. New leaders sometimes take a look at the organization and start making structural changes. You can save yourself a lot of grief if you’re prepared to explain why what you do is necessary and why you need to resources you have. Remember that what seems like common sense to you might not be so obvious to your new leadership, so try to take their perspective instead of just your own when preparing.

You might also look at the transition as an opportunity. If there are things you’ve wanted to do, but you’ve been blocked by past leaders, then this may be a chance to make some changes. Prepare your case for change and be ready to present it early on. Don’t push the issue right out of the gate, but set the stage for it when you meet with your new boss early on and then make your pitch soon after, once they start feeling comfortable making decisions but before they’ve gotten set in their ways.

However you view the problems and opportunities associated with new leadership, you’d be wise to start preparing as soon as you know change is coming. Don’t wait until a new boss arrives to start getting ready for the change. While it’s helpful to know something about that new boss, since that will help you get ready in a way that’s appropriate to the situation, you can get the basics of your transition together even before you know who’s coming in. If you wait until they arrive then you’ve waited too long, and when it comes to transitioning to new leadership, you really don’t want to leave stuff to chance.

Controlling the Use of Teams

Some people just aren’t happy unless they’ve got a whole team of people assigned to a task. But your use of teams needs to be balanced against the requirements, and the culture, of your firm.

The proper use of teams is one of the trickiest aspects of leading Creatives. In the right circumstances, organizing your Creatives into teams encourages a kind of synergy that provides results far beyond what any individual could accomplish. But under the wrong conditions, insisting on group work can hurt not just a particular project, but your overall organizational culture as well.

When you assign someone a project, ask yourself what they need to be successful. If an assignment requires multiple skills sets to be integrated in a complementary fashion, then yes, you should consider forming a working group to bring all those skills together. In advertising, for instance, the copywriter, the artist, the marketer, the client account manager, the lawyer...all of these have a role to play, and its generally better to get them together from the start rather than doing the work piece by piece.

But if all your Creative needs is information from others, then you should consider having them run solo and simply collect the inputs they need from others.

Why? Well, much of it comes down to the issue of control. When you have an individual working on something, they decide what the end result looks like and then pass it up to you for approval. When you form a team, though, everybody in that group gets a vote. It doesn’t come to you until everyone’s reviewed it and approved it. This not only slows down the creative process, it also leads to mediocre results as the group tends toward the least common denominator in order to gain consensus and move on.

Frankly, you often don’t need this. Creating unnecessary hurdles for Creatives stunts their innovation. If all you need from other people is information, why give them a say in decision making? Don’t create hassles for yourself when you don’t need them.

Insisting on teams can also affect your Creatives’ morale, and their interest in doing good work. A colleague of mine used to work for a boss who ended every assignment with “now, you’re going to need a working group...” “The implication,” says my colleague, “was that none of us were capable of accomplishing anything on our own. I don’t think that’s what he meant, but the message that came across was that he didn’t think much of our abilities.” As a result, a lot of the more motivated people left, leaving behind a group of employees who preferred not to accept responsibility. If you want a successful creative firm, these aren’t your ideal employees.

So be judicious n your use of teams. Don’t let a working group be your default position. If you can, let your people do the work you hired them to do, and maximize the creativity coming up from the ranks to you.

Save the Politics for November

Some people see a leadership position as a chance to inflate their ego, maybe make up for something that was missing earlier in life. Or maybe they find it easier to get satisfaction from the relatively easy method of playing office politics than from actually doing something productive. Whatever their reasoning,you should avoid being one of them. Because these people suck.

Office politics take different forms. Some leaders try to advance to higher positions. Others try to get more resources for their departments, not so much to do more with them as to simply have more than everybody else. Some are setting themselves up for another job somewhere else. And some simply have nothng better to do.

They don't help. Worrying about that kind of nonsense distracts you from the company's business, but worse, it distracts the people around you, too. Your employees suffer because they're trying to do good work and they don't get any top cover from you becaue you're focused on yourself. Your peers suffer because they have to deal with your childishness and try to keep it from interfering with their work. Your leaders suffer because they can't trust you to report accurately and objectively. Overall, the whole firm suffers from office politics.

Creative firms in particluar suffer because they require an environment that supports creativity and innovation. The negativity associated with office politics sucks the creative energy out of a group, wrecking everyone's focus.

Now, let's not be naive. Office politics are a normal fact of life. There will always be "those people," and sometimes even good leaders need to fight for their people. You need, though, to keep it to a minimum, and not play into it someone else's ego. If you're focused on inflating your ego rather than inflating your profit margin,then a leadership position probably isn't right for you.

Bean There, Done That

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that coffee shops in New York are starting to limit the use of free wifi by customers who aren't buying much, and who are instead likely to be taking up so many tables that paying customers can't find a place to sit, and so go elsewhere. In "No More Perks: Coffee Shops Pull the Plug on Laptop Users," (subscription required) writer Erica Alani discusses the problems small cafes are having and some of the steps they're taking to increase revenue without alienating their regulars. She writes:

Amid the economic downturn, there are fewer places in New York to plug in computers. As idle workers fill coffee-shop tables -- nursing a single cup, if that, and surfing the Web for hours -- and as shop owners struggle to stay in business, a decade-old love affair between coffee shops and laptop-wielding customers is fading. In some places, customers just get cold looks, but in a growing number of small coffee shops, firm restrictions on laptop use have been imposed and electric outlets have been locked. The laptop backlash may predate the recession, but the recession clearly has accelerated it.

The original point of free wifi was to draw in customers who would then buy coffee, pastries, maybe lunch...keep people there for a while and they'll order more stuff, but make them pay for wifi and they'll go elsewhere. You can see the difference: Starbucks requires either payment to them or a T-Mobile account, so it's more of a "finish up and go" place for most people who need online access, whereas Panera Bread has become a popular spot for digital nomads.

But that hasn't quite worked in all cases. Cafes that offer free refills on coffee find people going through cup after cup, but only paying once. Even those places that don't have a refill policy, but also don't have a "buy something or get out" policy, are liable to have people sitting there all day long. These places -- especially the independent coffee houses more so than the big chains -- are looking for ways to keep wifi users there doing off-peak hours while getting them out of the way of the lunchtime crowd.

This can be an issue for you if you've adopted some of the new ideas for structuring your workforce, such as relying on free agents, or for flexible styles of working such as telework. Many of these folks, not using an office, are liable to be the ones taking up space at these coffee shops. They need to be aware that the tide had turned and they may no longer be welcome to use someone else's business as their day-long campsite.

What can you do? Consider purchasing online access, whether through a mobile account that's used at coffee shops, airports, and other public places (T-Mobile comes to mind), for your full-time employees. You might write into your free agents' contracts that they must have a reliable source of internet access, so they can't use "I got kicked out of Pike's Perk" as an excuse for not getting something to you on time. (Pike's Perk, by the way, would never do that because they are totally cool, and if you live in Colorado Springs you really should visit them sometime)

Your Creatives should identify spots other than private businesses where they can set up shop (libraries are great for this sort of thing, often having free wifi access, plus lots of resources called "books"). There's also, of course, home, but the reality is that many independent workers try to get out of the house to work. If they're going to use coffee shops, suggest to them that they actually buy food and drinks there, not just once a day, but throughout their stay. As a business leader yourself you can surely understand the profit needs of those businesses, so take a positive step toward helping them out.

One of the things I found surprising about the online article was the Comments section -- it was overwhelmingly in favor of the coffee house owners. Though a few people commented that owners seemed to be paying the price for a successful marketing tactic, many other writers were suggesting ways to weed out revenue-reducing customers, keep the regulars, and increase profits. It's nice to see people realize that, while it's been possible to get something for noting, that's really not the way the universe normally works. What you need to do, as a business leader, is make sure your employees find something that works for them, and ultimately, for you.


(a quick side note: today marks the 150th entry on LeadingCreatives.com. When The Simpsons hit 150 episodes there was a big hoo-hah about it, but here at LeadingCreatives.com we tend to go for little hoo-hahs.)

Tell Them What You Want, Not How You Want It Done

You can't do everything yourself, and you shouldn't have to. Your Creatives need to focus on creating while you focus on leadership. If you have 20 people working for you, can you worry about all the details that each and every one of those 20 are dealing with? Of course not. You need to stay above the trees rather than down in the weeds.

Which means, when you give someone a task, you really shouldn't be telling them how to do it. Tell them what you want them to produce, but don't dictate how they should produce it.

It's hard sometimes for leaders to let go. When you've come up from the "worker bee" level it's easy to slip back into that role, especially when you're getting started at the whole leadership thing. It's natural to return to something comfortable, especially when we're facing new challenges. For Creatives it's especially tough, because you have a style and a certain set of skills and you know how you would do something, so when you see your employee doing it differently it may grate on your nerves. But accept it as simply something different, not something bad, and realize that when you were at that point in your career your boss (assuming you had a good one) stepped back and let you develop your skills, so you really should do the same.

One thing that will help calm you down is if you have a diverse workplace and recognize the benefits of that. After all, if you were directing every little detail yourself the work would be based only on your style, but if you allow different people with their own ideas to move forward, you'll see a lot more great concepts emerge, and that's good for your firm. Take advantage of the breadth of ideas your Creatives can share.

Along those same lines, realize that with a good workforce you shouldn't have to be looking over their shoulders all the time. Trust your people to do what they're employed to do. Either you've hired good people who can do the work without a lot of supervision, or you've hired incompetent people and, well...that was dumb.

It helps to create a climate where your Creatives know what you expect and you know what skills and ideas they bring. This helps to avoid a lot of bad surprises and will make you feel more comfortable about letting go of the reins and allowing them to move forward on a project. We often want to get involved with the details because we feel no one can do it quite like we can, or as well as we can, but if you know what they're capable of, and if you know they know what you want, you'll realize they can do it just fine.

One of the most aggravating things for a Creative is to have someone dampen their creativity by being very specific in how they want things done. Don't be that boss. You hired Creatives, now let them be creative.

Keep Your Focus

It's tempting to focus on your process.

Business books and business leaders spend a lot of time addressing the need for process improvement. And of course, that's because the process IS important, contributing to the quality of your final output and affecting the costs you incur as you produce it.

While you're improving your process, though, you need to remember why you're doing it. It's easy to get caught up in improvement for the sake of improvement and lose your focus on your ultimate result. As you work to improve your business practices or your organizational structure, be sure there's a reason for doing so, and make sure what you're doing contributes to that reason.

Consider the example of Best Buy and the Geek Squad. Best Buy bought Geek Squad, a small computer customer support company, and integrated it into their corporate structure. Geek Squad is huge now, you'll find them in Best Buys everywhere. Much is made of the Squad's style of dress and their lingo, and they're known for their innovative management methods, such as communicating between stores through online games. The Squad is a cool bunch of geeks and their customer satisfaction ratings are through the roof, all of which is good for Best Buy.

The Best Buy/Geek Squad integration is touted as a case of a company incorporating unique processes, breaking through corporate bureaucracy to take a new approach. But try this: go into a Best Buy store and find a retail associate who can help you decide which router is right for you, or which printer you should buy. How does that work out for you? If your luck is anything like mine you'll find someone who can tell you where they are but can't give any advice on which is best for your needs. I'm sure there are some very knowledgeable sales associates working at Best Buy, but overall, the innovation found in the Geek Squad hasn't translated into better performance by the retail staff. And retail, of course, is their main focus.

Now, it could be that Best Buy wants to shift their focus from retail to service, and if so, then Geek Squad can lead the way. But they're still building big new stores, and I don't see any sign they are planning to move from sales of electronics to servicing electronics as their primary moneymaker.

Though this example addresses customer service, that doesn't mean it's not applicable to you in your creative field. Whether your mission is to produce hairstyles, video games, or advertising, you need to stay focused on it. If you want to change your mission then change it, but don't say you're moving in one direction while making changes more suited to another. This isn't to say you shouldn't make improvements in areas beyond your primary mission -- Best Buy's purchase of Geek Squad has improved the company's reputation, which can help increase sales -- but you should do that in addition to, not in place of, your main area of focus.

Happy National Day

In honor of Singapore's National Day celebration on August 9th, we'll be taking a 3-day weekend here.

(ok, we're not based in Singapore, but any excuse for a 3-day weekend...)

Tiny Frogs

A friend who works in Singapore sent me the following little story which has a couple good lessons in it:

There once was a bunch of tiny frogs,
...who arranged a running competition.

The goal was to reach the top of a very high tower.

A big crowd had gathered around the tower to see the race and cheer on the contestants...

The race began...

Honestly...No one in the crowd really believed that the tiny frogs would reach the top of the tower.

You heard statements such as:

"Oh, WAY too difficult !!"

"They will NEVER make it to the top!!"

or:

"Not a chance that they will succeed. The tower is too high!!"

The tiny frogs began collapsing. One by one...Except for those, who in a fresh tempo, were climbing higher and higher...

The crowd continued to yell, "It is too difficult!!! No one will make it!!"

More tiny frogs got tired and gave up...But ONE continued higher and higher and higher...

This one wouldn't give up!

At the end everyone else had given up climbing the tower. Except for the one tiny frog who, after a big effort, was the only one who reached the top!

THEN all of the other tiny frogs naturally wanted to know how this one frog managed to do it?

A contestant asked the tiny frog how he had found the strength to succeed and reach the goal?

It turned out...That the winner was DEAF!!!

Never listen to other people's tendencies to be negative or pessimistic. All the accomplish is taking away your most wonderful dreams and wishes away from you...the ones you have in your heart!!!

Always think of the power words have. Because everything you hear and read will affect your actions!!!

Therefore:

ALWAYS be...POSITIVE!!!

And above all:

Be DEAF when people tell YOU that you can not fulfill your dreams!!!

So, yes, there are some things you should take away from this little tale.

First, ignore people who tell you that you shouldn't have the dreams you have, or who try to convince you that you can't do something without giving you a pretty good reason why not.

Second, as a leader, remember the power that your words have. If you discourage your Creatives from pushing boundaries there's a good chance they'll fail. Something I learned as a professor was that if I set high expectations my students would meet them, but if I set low expectations, they'd meet those just as easily.

The final lesson is, don't learn the wrong lesson from tales like this. My friend's boss told him, "this means, if you aren't willing to learn and improve, you should commit suicide." He might be reading a bit much into this.

Lose the Gossip

Gossip doesn't do anybody any good, and does plenty of ill for your workplace. Careers get damaged, teams get wrecked, and people's attention gets diverted from their work. For Creatives, who really need to be thinking about what they're doing, gossip gets pretty distracting.

You may think it's fun to go to the person with "the dish" and see what's up, but remember, anyone who gossips TO you will gossip ABOUT you.

The first step in limiting gossip is to create a culture of mutual respect. Discuss this with employees, emphasizing the positive atmosphere of your workplace and the benefits of working with people you respect. Don't present it as "be nice or you'll get fired" but instead put it in a positive light.

Be sure, of course, that if you're talking that talk, you're walking that walk. Don't be publicly negative, try not to criticize people in front of others, and don't be a gossip yourself.

If you have an employee who's spreading gossip, step in and make the point that it's unprofessional. You don't need to do it in a harsh way, you could even try to make a little joke about it, but get the message across that it's unprofessional. Let them know that nothing hurts your workplace quite like employees who act like they're 12 years old. Anything that makes them think about what they're doing should help.

If it doesn't stop then pull them aside one-on-one and be more direct. You don't have to be threatening, but let them know they're disrupting the organization.

If they still don't stop, then consider if you can let them go. As a leader you don't need to give people an infinite number of chances...once you counsel them directly on their conduct then they know what's right and what isn't. At the same time, you need to consider the uniqueness of your Creative's skills and balance the problems they're causing with the benefits they bring to your organization.

An important thing to keep in mind is that you should never make personnel decisions based on gossip. If you hear "so-and-so said..." don't just take that at face value. be sure to get all sides of the story.

Working with a bunch of outgoing Creatives can be a great thing. Just make sure that outgoing-ness is used for good, not evil.