Physically Fit

There are a few entries that I think bear repeating every now and then, such as this one on the importance of physical fitness. Fitness activities can help keep the creative juices flowing, give people the energy to work hard, and lower your firm's health care costs. Good fitness among your Creatives can increase revenues and decrease costs, which according to my calculations means higher profits for you. If you want those benefits, you should consider helping people achieve their fitness goals.

And I'm not just saying that because I ran the Hong Kong Marathon (again) yesterday.

Divide and Conquer

You've got a project coming due. The task requires multiple skills to get it done and numerous eyes to check the different parts and make sure they fit together. Because you're such a great recruiter of talent you've got a collection of Creatives who can tackle any challenge. They're all very talented in their primary skill and they know enough about what others do that they can function very smoothly as a team. With these folks working for you, how could you possibly screw it up?

Well trust me, it's easy. Just because you have the right people doesn't mean they have have the right leader.

When you have multiple people on a project you need to be the traffic cop that keeps them from running into each other. With all these talented people you need to make sure they know who's responsible for what so they put there skills to use in the combination that's best for you. Without a proper division of labor, you'll never accomplish all that you're capable of achieving.

A friend at a graphic design firm offered a good example. Tasked to create a website for an online retailer, a group of Creatives needed to handle background design, product presentation, textual contact, payment systems, and other artistic and practical matters. A good team was in place, but their boss had an unfortunate tendency to go back and forth with people individually, talking to them not only about their specialty, but about other aspects of the project as well. There had never been an effective "kick off" to the project, so nobody was really sure how they should divide up the work. When the boss talked to someone about some aspect of the project, that person figured it meant they were somehow responsible for it. At various times there were different versions of the site floating around as different people thought they were responsible for different things, and no one knew quite what was expected of them. The end result was a missed deadline, a website that required way too much debugging, and a visual experience that was unlikely to draw in new customers or attract repeat business.

How can you avoid this?

First, have a good start to the project by bringing the group together -- whether in person or electronically -- and spelling out the desired result of the project and a clear division of labor. Make sure people understand who's responsible for what. Encourage collaboration, but make it clear who is accountable for different aspects of the work. Get your people off to the right start.

Once the work is underway, make sure you stick to those lanes that you set at first. Don't go running off to Person A to ask about Person B's work, and don't be bouncing ideas off Person B that you should be discussing with Person C. Don't confuse your Creatives...they have enough to worry about.

If you find you need to make a change once the project's underway, then by all means do so. But if you do, you need to make that clear to everyone. Otherwise, you're liable to have multiple versions of a product being created, and the final result won't be as good as what you could have done if you'd kept everyone on their proper path.

You generally have enough work to go around; if you don't, you might have too many people working for you. Divide it up, task it out, then let people do what you've told them to do.

You can still screw up the project, but at least it won't be for this reason.

What Do You Want to Work On Today?

Google has a well-known policy of requiring it's Creatives to spend 20% of their time at work on projects of their own. This isn't designed for employees to do outside work on company time, but instead is supposed to be something good for Google, something outside the norm, something original.

Of course, Google is not the only major company to do this, nor is the tech sector the first to give it a try. 3M started its "15% time" policy in the early 20th century as it produced consumer goods. Genetech, a biotech firm, encourages its researchers to pursue their own initiatives. There are plenty of benefits to companies that stem from encouraging personal work.

The obvious, and most direct, benefit to your company comes when your employees work on their own projects and someone comes up with a great new product. The classic story in this realm is the invention of Post-Its, and Google likes to tell the story of how Gmail came about in the same way. You just might get something really great if you let your Creatives be creative beyond the boundaries of their normal workload.

You can get better employees out of the deal, too. Personal projects allow them to flex their creative muscles and learn new things that could open new avenues for your firm. You want your Creatives to be creative, and allowing them to take their own initiative will lead them to be better performers for you. Do you really want a bunch of employees who wait around to be told what to do???

The effect on your employees can be pretty dramatic. The opportunity to work on independent projects is a great recruiting tool. It shows you trust your employees, demonstrates a culture of autonomy that will be appealing to the best Creatives, and sets you apart from other employers. It's great for retention, too, as it contributes to a positive environment where people are happy to work. It won't solve all your human resource problems, but it can be a very positive factor.

Sure, you should have some oversight, not just to make sure people aren't goofing off, but also to grab onto a good idea as it's emerging. Figure out what kind of arrangement you want to have with your Creatives, make sure everyone understands it from the time they're hired, and then try it out. yes, small firms might feel like they don't have the capacity for this, but in the long run, it might be the most productive thing you do.

Who Owns What?

This is not legal advice. I'd have to have a law degree and be a member of the bar to offer that. And I'm not. So for legal advice, contact an attorney.

(The above is a disclaimer, which is a legal device. I'm allowed to use that, even though I'm not a lawyer. I think.)

Intellectual property is a major concern for Creatives. The output of creativity is often something new and original, and many of these outcomes require protection with a patent, copyright, or trademark. Hairstyles might not, and your company's strategic plan doesn't, but logos certainly do, and you better protect that new video game, too. The question for you is: who owns the property?

You might think the answer is simple, that the company owns it. Obviously, that's the basic scenario we think of: employee works for company, employee creates something, company owns it, end of story.

But there are lots of exceptions and alternative scenarios. Does a university own something a professor creates if the funding came from an outside source? What if Creatives work on projects on their own time? What if you're working with free agents rather than full-time employees? What if...what if...what if...

It's better to ask these "what if" questions early on before problems arise. As part of your contract with your Creative you should address the topic of intellectual property. Both of you need to agree to the rules of the game, and also have a system in place to resolve issues that fall outside those rules.

For more on this, visit the US Patent and Trademark Office (where a lot of my friends happen to work). And of course, think about getting advice from an intellectual property lawyer. Don't just rely on blogs to fix this kind of issue.

The Importance of Fitness

Every now and then I think it's worth linking back to a previous entry, such as this one on physical fitness.

And I'm not just saying that because I set a new Personal Record in yesterday's Marine Corps Marathon.

Places and Spaces

An article in the Wall Street Journal at the end of last month posed a question to a panel, asking which cities are most likely to attract young people. The Top 5 they came up with included:

Washington, DC and Seattle (tied for first)
New York City
Portland (Oregon, not Maine)
Austin

You might want to take a look at this. Why? Well, not because you should be focused on recruiting and hiring only young people. That's not just a dumb plan, it's also more than a little illegal. BUT, these places tend to be popular younger people because they provide an invigorating environment, the sort of place that supports and encourages creativity. It's not age, in this case, it's location, location, location. When you're looking for Creatives, you might want to be looking for the sort of people who'd be attracted to cities like these.

So, how can you make this information work for you?

Well, first, you might want to locate your business in one or more of these cities. If you're a big firm with offices in many places, or if you're small but mobile, consider relocating to someplace like one of these.

If you don't feel like moving your firm to the favorite-city-of-the-week, consider hiring free agents from these cities. Look for the people who've moved there to take advantage of what the city has to offer and see if they might be right for you. Just because they live there doesn't mean they have to work there...that's the beauty of free agency.

Both of these points get at your recruiting strategy. Very often, a firm's recruiting strategy tends to be either too narrow or too broad. Sticking only to your home city, a narrow strategy, limits your pool of potential Creatives, while going to broad, and searching, say, nationwide, can leave your recruiters overstretched and not able to do a very detailed job. So use this information to tailor your recruiting efforts.

There are other cities the panelists discussed that didn't make the Top 5. If you're not getting anything worthwhile from looking into the cities listed above, consider some of the runners-up.

Where you work can help determine who works for you. Your recruiting strategy needs to consider which locations are desirable for the kind of people you want, and what it is that makes these places so great. Then find the right location for recruiting, and hit 'em hard.

Loyalty is Important, But...

...make sure it is smart loyalty.

One suggestion we've made for dealing with the recession is to try to keep your workforce on, since if you cut them now you're probably going to have to hire them back later when things get better, and you'll have a better relationship with them if you keep them engaged throughout this period.

Having said that, you may feel like you must let some people go if your firm is to stay in business (As Caiphas and Mister Spock taught us, "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few...or the one"). Or, you may simply feel someone's not pulling their weight, whether in good times or bad, and it's time to let them go. Either way, you're going to have to deal with the conflict inherent in loyalty.

You hope for loyalty from your Creatives, and so in turn you must demonstrate it to them. People who do good work for you deserve to be treated fairly and respectfully, and if they work hard for you then you should try to keep them in the job. The basis for that loyalty, though, needs to be something important to the firm. Ideally, you should be demonstrating the strongest sense of loyalty based on performance and potential rather than simply on longevity and seniority.

Unfortunately, the later criteria often become most important. A colleague in Asia told me that his firm is preparing to lay off as much as 20% of their workforce in December (I tried to explain the "that's just not right" aspect of laying people off right before Christmas, but I don't think it resonated as strongly there as it would in the U.S.). However, the CEO has identified one person who absolutely will not be laid off because "he's been here so many years."

Now, it's nice that this employee has been with the firm so long, but is that really relevant? The real question should be what he's doing for the firm. You'd like to think someone with that much longevity is a contributor, but it might simply be that they knew no one else would hire them because they're so bad, so they managed to stay on. Do you want to be cutting skilled people while holding onto somebody for the simple fact they've been around a long time, regardless of their abilities? If so, that's a recipe for trouble.

That's not merely a hypothetical situation; in this case, the employee in question not only doesn't do much, but also, since learning of the CEOs decision, now does even less because he knows he can't be fired. Removing his external motivation to do good work leads him to be an even less productive employee.

If you want to consider longevity in your layoff decisions, fine. Just don't make it the only factor, or even an important one. While you want to be loyal to individuals, you also need to be loyal to the firm as a whole, and keeping individuals who aren't as talented doesn't satisfy that need. Reward those who do well and you'll end up rewarding the whole company instead of just a few individuals who may not even deserve it.

Is it Time for a New Immigration Nation??

American immigration policies after World War II were designed largely to help people get out of Communist countries and other authoritarian nations and into the United States. In addition to seeming like simply the right thing to do, it benefited the U.S. by allowing people from those countries to come here and then send word back to their friends and families about how good life was in a democratic society. Once some members of a family came to the U.S. their family members back home would have priority for immigration, the goal being to keep families together as much as possible and enhance the public diplomacy value of immigration.

Keeping families together is a worthy goal, and helping people out of bad situations and bringing them to better ones certainly has morality on its side. But should either of those currently be the main focus of our nation’s immigration policies? Given that the Cold War ended nearly 20 years ago, and a new knowledge economy has erupted in which companies benefit from having a variety of perspectives and backgrounds, wouldn’t it make sense to have immigration policies that support bringing talented workers into American companies? There are lots of ways in which opening up employment to more foreign Creatives is good for both your company and the nation’s workforce as a whole.

First, employers benefit from having more potential employees from which to choose. Limiting the firm to only Americans means that to fill all your spots you may have to take people with lesser skills than you would get if you had a broader pool of recruits. Having more choice helps you get what you want.

And, given the cross-border nature of many creative industries, having an international perspective makes you more competitive. Whether you need to understand other cultures because you have clients there, or simply want multiple perspectives shaping your product, you will benefit a lot from the new ideas your foreign Creatives can bring you.

This attitude helps the U.S. workforce in the end. Many people will say “why hire foreign Creatives when you have Americans looking for work?” But protecting American workers from foreign competition for jobs removes some of the motivation for excellence. Having competition leads you to work harder, and the American Creative workforce as a whole could benefit from that if immigration policies made it easier to bring foreign workers into your firm.

Much of my interest is driven by personal and professional relationships. I have a good friend from Vietnam who has been here for his senior year of high school, his bachelor’s degree, and his master’s. After 7 years of American education, why wouldn’t we make it easy for him to stay instead of putting so many obstacles in his path? There’s an English teacher I know who’s from Taiwan, and got his master’s in the U.S., and he’s likely to have to head back home after 5 years of working here. Two Singaporeans I know have been to school here and are doing cancer research and software development, but if they want to stay on permanently we make it difficult. Why, why, why would we send such individuals away if they can make strong contributions to our society?

I would like the U.S. to continue to be the strongest economic powerhouse in the world, and so I would rather see these talented individuals contributing to U.S. companies and the U.S. economy rather than working somewhere else. Why do we continue to turn away or send back talented and ambitious people, who in many cases have already taken advantage of an American education and who could fit right into our society as contributing members? While other nations actively recruit foreign talent -- including, it should be noted, adventurous and ambitious American Creatives who are actively seeking new challenges -- does it make sense for us to be going in the opposite direction?

When Every Day is International Employee Day

There are people who will tell you that you should focus your hiring efforts on Americans, especially during bad economic times. But your purpose as a leader is to create the best workforce possible for your company, not to run a jobs program. If the best talent comes from overseas you should take advantage of it. Having a successful company has more of a positive economic impact than does providing jobs or less talented people, who may keep your firm from achieving its potential.

Some governments have contributed to industries, including creative fields, by shaping their immigration policies to bring in people with different backgrounds. For example, for years Singapore’s Ministry of Labor has had an office whose function is to help recruit foreign talent. They’ve recognized that employing skilled people is good for business, regardless of where they call home. One possible explanation for Singapore’s top innovation ranking in a survey earlier this year may be the contributions of their foreign Creatives, rather than the dominance of their homegrown talent.

Now, you can’t create government policy (not directly, anyway), but you can design your own. Expand your employment base by looking outside the U.S. You might consider recruiting overseas, and if you do you’ll need to talk with an immigration lawyer about requirements you face when employing foreign workers. Our current immigration laws make this a much bigger hassle than it needs to be, but it's worth it to find the best Creatives...after all, when you need unique talents, you can't guarantee that the personwho has them will be from your country, so don't limit yourself to domestic employees.

Another option is telework; Malaysia, for example, has become a great source of software development talent, but often the workers still live there, which allows them and you to avoid immigration hassles. One oft-touted advantage of such a program is that it's cheaper for you, as Creatives in other countries can often be hired at lower salaries, but I'd suggest you not focus on that. You should pay your employees what they're worth, and if that means they're making more than their local peers, well then, good for them!!

In days of old the knowledge economy, unlike service industries and manufacturing, may have seemed limited to domestic employees,but that's simply not the case anymore. As other countries have seen, opening your doors to foreign Creatives can lead to some very positive economic outcomes. If that's true on a national level, then you can bet there's some truth to it on a company level too. Look for the best talent, not just the best American talent, if you want to be successful.

Don't Get Cocky in the Recession

The US government reported this week that the unemployment rate has reached 9.7%. It’s worth noting that the rate only includes those people still looking for work; if you add in those who have given up looking, it’s certainly a bit higher. Leaders and managers may see themselves in a position of “employment dominance” created by a weak labor market.

Think twice, though, before adopting this attitude yourself. When it comes to Creatives, you still need to be careful about losing them.

First of all, remember that the most talented Creatives will always have other options, and the most talented ones are the ones you want to keep. Firms are still hiring, headhunters are still calling, and the Creatives most attractive to others are the ones you most want to hold onto. Adopting an attitude of “hahaha, I’ve got you now!” is just going to encourage them to go out the door.

Next, consider that a weak labor market in the US doesn’t equate to a weak labor market everywhere. Asia is bouncing back out of the recession, as are some European countries. Creative talent is increasingly mobile, ad if opportunities arise in other countries, your employees may jump. Don’t think an overseas move is out of the question…more and more people have an interest in trying out life in another country, perhaps due in part to the explosion of university students who are studying abroad and realizing just how cool it is to live somewhere else for a while. And of course, there are always telework opportunities with overseas companies, too.

Finally, rather than seeing this as a chance to consolidate power over your employees, you should instead view it as a chance to beat out your competitors. Many companies’ weaknesses will surface during a recession and they will grow weaker. You should use this chance to increase your market share and strengthen your firm for the day when the economy recovers. You should be trying to come out of this downturn with an improved position, and for this you need a motivated, high-quality workforce.

If you view your work as a power struggle between you and your employees, then you have a problem. Hopefully, that’s not your attitude, and if it is, then you really need to change something. Don’t look at a recession as a chance to make yourself stronger relative to your employees. No general ever won a battle by using a lull in the fighting to hammer is own troops rather than hammering the enemy. Use, don’t abuse, this opportunity.

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.

Digital Nomads

Last Sunday's Washington Post offered up a front page article on "digital nomads."

We've talked before about telework and the benefits, as well as the challenges, it offers. The concept of digital nomads refines that a bit, suggesting that your teleworkers are spending more time out of their homes and in coffee houses, parks, ornate hotel lobbies, and other spots that strike their fancy.

The proliferation of WiFi in public places during the last few years has made it possible to stay in touch while working, which was always one of the challenges to telework. If you needed to communicate, or work online rather than just on your own laptop, you needed that connection, which often meant staying home. As WiFi has expanded in commercial spaces as well as open spaces, your teleworkers have more places to go, and now are even starting to find like-minded people with whom to associate during the day. There's an interesting advantage here: you can't normally pick your co-workers, so if you don;t like them you're still stuck with them, but you CAN pick whom you choose to meet up with at the local Panera Bread shop.

So, there's a big benefit: your Creatives can choose their surroundings, not just the physical structure but the people surrounding them, too. This can help overcome the boredom of sitting in the same little cubicle day in and day out. They can also pick a place appropriate for their mood of the day, someplace that shakes them out of a bad emo sense so they can get some good work done, or some place that complements their feeling of excitement about a project. Whatever they're looking for, they have more choice, and that's a big factor in the quality of life in a job.

The nomad life also overcomes one of the big problems associated with telework: the lack of clarity between work-life and home-life. Working at home means you're always surrounded by your work, and it's tough to stop thinking about it; that was tough for me as a PhD student. But by moving around to different places they can have a definite starting point and ending point for their workday.

Getting out of the home and finding other people also helps those Creatives who feed off the energy of a crowd rather than doing their best work solo. While some people prefer quiet, others prefer background noise or talking with others throughout the day, and as the article pointed out, informal groups are forming at some nomad spots that may be recreating the office environment but in a way that's more supportive for certain employees.

There are still challenges associated with telework, of course. In addition to the increased security issues that come with working in public places you also need to make sure your Creatives have the tools they need to be mobile if you agree that's a good option for them. But as the advantages of telework become more obvious, in many fields it gets harder and harder to say it's a bad idea.

So take a look, and see if it's right for you.

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.

Does the Know-It-All Really Know It All?

I have a co-worker who started in our office about a month ago as a strategic planner. The number of people who don't want to work with him grows with each passing day. he's turning people off through both his know-it-all attitude and a lack of knowledge and understanding about what we do -- frankly, that's a deadly combination. Our boss knew he had a reputation like that before he arrived, but didn't do anything to address it. Unfortunately, he put him on a project that requires pretty detailed knowledge about how how programs work in order to develop a brand new program. Now we're all paying for it with frustration and lowered morale.

How might you, as a leader, deal with something like this? It's going to be a problem for you -- surveys among business leaders are finding the perception that young workers are arriving with over-inflated senses of their own importance. Though often attributed to millenials' upbringing, let's be honest: we were all like that, weren't we? I mean, this is really nothing new.

It poses a potential problem for you, perhaps more so among Creatives. You have people with unique skills who have been told how talented they are, and who may have a strong sense of "pride of authorship" when it comes to their work. It's easy for them to come in and assume they'll quickly be in a position of authority because many of them have been told for years that that's their destiny.

They can just seem annoying at first, but it turns into a serious problem when these folks try to change the way you operate. Change is good, when it leads to improvements, but if someone doesn't understand why you do things the way you do, then how can they know their proposal will be an improvement?

It's better, and easier, to prevent this problem than it is to fix it later. When you get a new employee, an education program is a good idea. They should understand your corporate history, so they know how things got to where they are now. They need to know about responsibilities in the firm...who does what, and why? They need to be clear on where the firm is heading, from the broad vision down to their particular tasks. Only when they understand why you do things the way you do should they be offering ideas for change.

But what if you didn't prevent this, and they start causing problems? Let's look at that Wednesday.

The Leadership Impact of Outsourcing

Outsourcing to free agents is common for creative firms, and more and more authors are encouraging it. Similar methods, which tend to be less expensive but carry more risk of intellectual property loss, include peering, sharing, and using ideagoras. Companies that can effectively collaborate outside their firm gain a huge advantage: they increase the creative talent available to them at little cost. It's tempting to reach out and take advantage of the huge talent pool that exists in the world.

But while creative talent can be gained this way, there's a cost in terms of leadership talent. The cost is felt in the long run, but your short-term actions can put you on a path toward that cost, a path from which you might not have an escape.

The problem here is that somewhere along the line, you need to be developing the future leaders for your firm. While you may feel comfortable in a leadership position today, someday you're going to want to advance, retire, or go work at Starbucks, and someone should be ready to step in. If you outsource the majority of your work then no one is left within your firm to build up experience and observe how your firm functions, key ingredients to a successful future leader.

Now, you might say "I'm not going to worry about developing leaders internally -- when I need future leaders I'll hire them, rather than selecting from my own pool of in-house Creatives." Fine. But if, as some authors are cheerleading and advocating, the wave the of future is external collaboration, then where exactly will those leaders be coming from? If no one is developing internally, if the emphasis is on free agent work and peer-to-peer collaboration, then who's going to be grooming future leaders? Obviously, not all business will be done this way, but as more and more of it is, the pool of effective leaders will shrink in the future and to find someone you'll have to pay through the nose to get them.

You're also hurting yourself in the near-term if you shift to an external collaboration business model. You benefit from having people who understand your corporate history, who know where you came from, how you've evolved, and what's worked in the past as well as what hasn't. You're not going to get that by reaching too much outside. External collaborators simply don't have the necessary knowledge of your unique history. Hiring people by the job is useful for that job but can hurt you when it comes to integrating different aspects of your work into a moneymaking whole.

How do you get the benefits of external collaboration without hurting your leadership? Consider keeping a core group of employees. Think of them as your regular team while outsiders serve as "reservists," called up only as needed. Develop that core group, not only with training in their creative field but also in terms of leadership. Give them incentives to stay with you if their performance is strong, and replace them if it isn't.

Also consider developing regular relationships with particularly strong outsiders, whether free agents or unpaid collaborators. Help them develop a better understanding of your firm. Not only can they provide some of that necessary foundation from the outside, they might also be a good pool of potential leaders, who have the benefit of already knowing a lot about your company.

New business models, such as those emphasizing collaboration with outsiders, can be very effective if you use them right, but can drive you out of business if you go overboard with them. You need to look at your industry, your competitors, your customers, and your own company's goals to understand how far to go when looking for outside talent. Moderation, as in many aspects of life, may be the best idea. Make sure that in your quest for Creatives you don't ignore your very real leadership needs.

Social Recruiting

There's no simple prescription for recruiting Creatives, but there's one general guideline you can use: go social.

The big job boards like Monster and CareerBuilder are still in business and still provide a lot of opportunities for you to get your job requirements out there and search resumes for active job seekers who might be right for you. But, as a recent article in Business Week points out that one reason those sites are getting better is that they are having to improve to face the competition posed by social networking. Some social media let you get the word out faster, and to a more targeted population, than the big boards offer.

LinkedIn is a prime example. Already focused on professionals, the Business Week article points out that most users are currently employed, making them "passive job seekers." You can use your own networking on there to seek out potential hires, but LinkedIn offers recruiters some interesting package deals for searching through resumes and profiles and contacting likely prospects. For younger, less established workers, look to Facebook to provide you a presence. Companies can set up groups for their employees, which allows potential hires to talk with current job holders, and they can also set up company profiles that are specifically designed for recruiting. Even Twitter is coming into play...as people hear about job opportunities they have been known to tweet about it, putting the word out to their followers who can then resend it to all those following their feeds. If you're looking for millenials, who seem addicted to the "always on" perspective, social networking offers some particularly great opportunities for finding them and allowing them to find you.

For less experienced employees or freelance Creatives, don't forget Craigslist. Ideally, your ad should have a link back to your company website so you don't leave a potential recruit without any information other than the text in the ad. Also look at freelancer sites like eLance and SoloGig.com. Once again, these allow you to target the kinds of employees you're seeking better than the big boards do.

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal had a similar article that also discussed the use of the career pages on company websites. (subscription required). Successful recruiters are making their career pages more interactive, providing more information in a visually interesting way to grab a recruit's attention and keep it long enough to get some information out to them, enough info to make them want more. This can be used in conjunction with social ads...contact them through LinkedIn and pull them back to your page with video testimonials from other employees about how great it is to work with you, that sort of thing.

That last point is key: use multiple methods. Don't rely on just one. For too long recruiters had only the big job boards, which are still good, but which aren't enough when you're competing against other firms for that relatively small number of Creatives who have the specific talents you need. remember, too, that Creatives want to work for someone, well, creative, and they won't be impressed if you're still recruiting the way you did back in the '90s.

Diversity for a Reason

Now, I’ll be the first to say you shouldn’t do things just to say you’re doing them. Unfortunately, a lot of leaders that say they embrace diversity may be saying that simply because it’s what they think they’re supposed to say, without really managing diversity within their workforce in order to improve their firms. But if you understand what diversity means and how it can help you, you’ll discover just how powerful it can really be.

Diversity doesn’t just mean having a mix of men and women, or having people with different skin colors or different religions. What it really comes down to is having people with different perspectives. The point is not to meet some random quota, but instead to bring a range of viewpoints into your firm which can help you understand a broader cross-section of consumers, or provide a wider range of ideas for your firm. Factors like gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, economic class, marital status, education…all of these contribute to one’s perspective on the world, so finding a mix of these attributes can offer you a diverse mix of inputs to your business as well. Without diversity in your workforce you’re more likely to keep working along a narrow path, missing opportunities as they arise because your focus is so limited. In creative fields, that can spell death for a company.

When you’re hiring, try to look beyond the obvious features that signal diversity and instead listen to your potential employees during the interview process to see what they can bring. While asking questions that are too personal is a no-no, listen carefully to how they respond to the questions you do ask to see what they bring. If they offer a perspective that sounds different from what you’re used to, that should be a point in their favor. Expand your recruiting beyond the "normal" places to increase your chances of broadening your corporate perspective. For that matter, expand your recruiting beyond that which your competitors do, so you have a chance to pick up some of the talent they miss.

So in the end, that doesn’t mean you should try to set and meet quotas of so many men, so many women, so many gay, so many straight, so many Asian, so many Latin American…well, you get the point. What you should do instead is create a corporate culture that is open to all these different groups, that actively seeks out new employees from a variety of sources, and that makes use of these various perspectives, so you’re able to attract new employees, hang on to them, and get the most benefit from them.

Don’t celebrate diversity just because a bumper sticker told you that you should. Celebrate it because it’s good for your creative business. And remember that “celebrating diversity” doesn’t just mean having a statement about it in your employee handbook, it means nurturing a culture that sees diversity as the norm and takes full advantage of it.

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.

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?

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?

Living Overseas

A recent study by the American Psychological Association found a relationship between creativity and living overseas.

It's not totally clear from the study which leads to which. That is, does living abroad help develop creativity, or are creative people simply more likely to try living overseas?

But it seems likely that those who've lived overseas have had a chance to sharpen their creative skills. First, by living in another culture they've been exposed to new ideas and different ways of thinking. Creatives with a stronger foundation like that are in a better position to develop new ideas for you that set you apart from your competitors. Second, they've learned how to adapt, and that ability to fit into a new culture will help them as they take on diverse projects for you. Lastly, they've realized there's not just one way of thinking out there...even if they were raised in a pretty homogeneous environment, their experiences overseas have helped them see new ways of addressing familiar issues, and helped them realize they don't always have the right, or the only, answer. There are probably plenty of other advantages to this sort of background.

This can help you when you're recruiting new Creatives. The study's authors wrote:

Knowing that experiences abroad are critical for creative output makes study abroad programs and job assignments in other countries that much more important, especially for people and companies that put a premium on creativity and innovation.

So, regardless of which way the causality arrow is pointing, looking for employees with overseas experience can help you identify those with a stronger creative bent.

Of course, if you're going to look for people with this background, then once you get them you need to take full advantage of it. But that's a discussion for another time.

Happy Songkran!!

April 13-15 is the celebration of Songkran in Thailand. A new year festival, it is also celebrated in Laos and Cambodia at this time, unlike Chinese New Year (known as Tet in Vietnam), which is a lunar new year celebration in late January or early February.

So hey, since it's a holiday in Southeast Asia, why not give your employees a holiday??? Is it possible you might have some Thai/Lao/Khmer Creatives in your firm who might like to spend the day getting soaked with water with their family?

A recent article in Diversity-Executive magazine points out that many firms are bad at cross-cultural communication within their own firms. In fact,

Organizations tend to lose out on the opportunity to capitalize on a variety of business impacts — such as improved recruitment and retention and having access to new ideas and business practices — when they don’t carefully navigate intercultural workplace issues.

So, even though it seems like taking an extra holiday might cost you money, think about how much money you might be losing by not taking that holiday, and generally ignoring the diversity within your workplace.

Creatives With an Accent

There's a growing debate in the US about hiring foreign Creatives. In many industries, particularly in the technology fields, a lot of innovation is being led by foreign talent. With the economy in the toilet, and with unemployment rising, there's an argument being made that there's no need to hire foreigners when there are so many Americans looking for work. On the other hand, a smart company hires the best talent it can, and if that talent is from outside the US, then so be it.

Currently bouncing around Congress is the "Stopping Trained in America PhDs From Leaving the Economy Act of 2009." Known as "the STAPLE Act," the idea behind it is something like stapling green cards to the diplomas of PhDs in science, technology, and engineering in order to give permanent residency to foreign students who earn those degrees. In the last couple decades so many American students shifted their focus away from science and technology and into finance and such (and we can see where THAT'S gotten us), and the slack has been taken up by foreign students coming here. For many years those students stayed here but more recently they've seen opportunities back home that weren't there before. Rather than continuing to make it difficult for them to stay, there are those in Congress who'd rather encourage them to stick around. Other discussions currently taking place involve the possibility of increasing the number of H1B visas for professionals, and figuring out what role work visas should play in free trade agreements.

At the other end of the spectrum are those who think we should take care of our own citizens first, making sure every qualified American has a job before hiring foreigners. Rather than increasing the quota of H1B visas, these visas should be suspended for now. The argument is that there are plenty of qualified people here, so the original argument for having H1B visas -- that Americans are studying finance instead of computer science and therefore we need people from overseas -- has gone away. We're already seeing this in the financial sector, where firms that receive federal bailout money have limits on hiring foreign workers, and there are plenty of people who say this concept should be expanded nationwide.

There's a certain logic to this, IF you view employment as something that should be provided rather than earned. For me, though, I tend to come down on the side of those who want to improve our immigration system and, in the process, make it easier for foreign Creatives to come and for foreign students to stay. US firms will do best if they hire the best talent, regardless of where that talent comes from. If Americans have trouble competing against foreign Creatives, then the Americans should make themselves more competitive. That's how capitalism is supposed to work.

Innovation and creativity are not limited by man-made national boundaries. Reducing our potential labor pool will hurt firms' performance and slow down the economic recovery. We can't just create Creatives overnight, so we should be looking for those who have the skills we need. Imposing new barriers to foreign Creatives and focusing on individual employment at the expense of the broader economy hurts everyone. It's better to bring people in and keep the jobs here than to outsource work to foreigners working for overseas companies. In the long term, welcoming those 85,000+ temporary workers every year can help, not hurt.

If you don't want to hire foreign workers, then don't. But taking that option away from others is a bad idea.

Social Capital

Every firm requires capital, and there are a number of different kinds. There’s what we think of as financial capital, of course, consisting of the monetary and physical investment needed to get a firm going and keep it operating. Then there’s human capital, which we generally think of as the skills and abilities of our employees and leaders, the intangible resources needed to perform the company’s mission. But one that often gets overlooked is social capital, and it’s worth understanding this concept so that, as leaders we can try to develop it in a way that most helps our business.

What is social capital? Essentially, it’s the accrued benefit of the relationships between people. As your employees trust each other, as they develop customs and protocol for interaction, or as relationships get defined informally, the path is smoothed for better dealings among your employees, or between your employees and you. Social capital is like a lubricant that allows the “machinery” of your business to work more easily. In a people-dominated field such as a creative industry, rather than, say, a manufacturer, social capital is very, very important.

How social capital manifests itself will of course be different in different firms. In smaller companies it’s more important to have good relationships between individuals, whereas in bigger firms it might be more useful to focus on relationships between different departments that have to cooperate. When individual work is the norm the relationship between leader and Creative is key, whereas in team-oriented work the relationships among Creatives tends to be the dominant concern.

The benefits of strong social capital are easy to see. People who know each other are more likely to help each other, rather than dropping everything to meet a stranger’s request. Employees who understand each other’s abilities can work together without a lot of supervision. When Creatives trust their leaders to take care of them, they can focus less on administrative concerns and more on their creative work. When leaders trust their employees, they spend a lot less time double-checking their work. Informal rules of conduct that are developed by employees are more likely to be followed, because they come from within rather than being imposed by bosses, and such rules allow for better interaction because people know what’s expected of them and what they can expect of others. The culture in a firm with strong social capital tends to support the firm’s work.

Purposely creating strong social capital is tricky; it’s better for relationships and customs to develop naturally. Still, there are things you can do to guide its development. Have a comprehensive orientation for new employees, and actually, try explaining some of your corporate culture as early as the interview process so potential employees know what’s expected of them. Encourage your Creatives to get to know each other, whether in the office, through company functions (while avoiding mandatory fun as much as you can) or through remote means if your employees are scattered around the country or the world (a company Facebook group, used actively, might be one way to do this, or perhaps an e-mail newsletter that keeps employees informed about what’s going on and what others are doing). As you see customs or informal relationships emerge, watch to see if they will help the business. If so, encourage them; if not, consider trying to nip them in the bud. That last point is important…negative social capital hurts, so if you see things happening that can hurt your company, look for ways to avoid them.

A Harvard professor named Robert Putnam wrote a now-classic book a few years back entitled Bowling Alone : The Collapse and Revival of American Community, which talks about the reduction in association between individuals and how American society faces a loss of social capital as a result. In his follow-up book from 2004, Better Together: Restoring the American Community, he shows how new forms of association are making their way into American society. Leaders would benefit from these books, as they offer ideas about society on a large scale that can be tailored for the “society” of your company. There are new methods for association that Putnam doesn’t think much of, including social-networking sites and other Web 2.0 tools – the sorts of things your Creatives will be very familiar with – and you should consider how to use this tools to enhance associations and increase social capital within your company, depending on your particular situation. Another good source of thought can be found in the simply, and aptly, named Social Capital.

In creative firms we tend to focus on human capital, looking at the technical skills our employees bring and the style of thinking their education provides. But very few Creatives are going to be completely independent, so it’s important to look at those interactions and figure out how we can make the best use of them. Understanding what social capital is, why it helps, and how to develop it, gives you an additional form of capital your competitors might not have.

Brain Waste

Last month Diversity Executive magazine reported on a recent study regarding the job experiences of immigrants to the US. The researchers found that 1 out of 5 immigrants with a college degree is underemployed, based on their past experience and education and their current working situation. The study by the Migration Policy Institute "found that one in five immigrants — instead of working as scientists, engineers, doctors, lawyers — find themselves working as taxi drivers, maids, construction workers and jobs that require no education," which is a waste of a large pool of talent. The authors found two reasons -- language barriers and a lack of professional networks -- that bore the bulk of the blame.

In creative fields you should consider reaching out to this talent and taking advantage of it. For one thing, foreign Creatives offer a different cultural perspective, which often leads to different ways of thinking and an improvement on your firms's creative and problem-solving skills. It isn't just a matter of using them to reach foreign audiences or clients...I've found, in a course I'm currently teaching in Singapore, that even when they're looking at issues involving the US, simply having that different perspective allows them to see opportunities and challenges that those raised in a Western culture might not. Secondly, immigrants come from a variety of educational systems that emphasize different approaches to problems and ways of thinking, which can complement your American-schooled employees. Finally, while good Creatives tend to be highly motivated about working in their field, many immigrants bring an extra motivation...they've gotten here, they've got a shot at doing what they've wanted to do, so they're going to work hard to take advantage of it. My friends who have come to the US from other countries find that, in many cases, this is the first chance they've had to pursue what they want to do and succeed on their own merits, and they're going to take advantage of that opportunity.

If you're not actively recruiting overseas, but instead are considering those who've already come to the US and are now searching for jobs, you're going to want to do some outreach. Don't wait for them to come to you, because as the report's authors pointed out, they often will have trouble finding you. Instead, go looking for them! Place recruiting ads in foreign language magazines. Use the professional networks that DO exist, limited though they may be sometimes, to try to reach out to talented immigrants. Use the social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, and remember, there are versions in languages other than English. If you have foreign language speaking employees already, have them help you out, but if that fails, go outside the firm and get someone to read through profiles, blogs, and other online resources for finding folks whose talents meet your needs.

As an employer, you can't afford to have your workforce go unfilled, but you also can't take people on just to fill spaces...you need the best. Sometimes, those best may be hard to find, but in the end, it's worth the effort to put together the sharpest team you can. Talented, motivated people are going to waste professionally, and that doesn't help anyone.


Get the complete study here.

Physical Fitness

Ever notice how there are more people outside your office on bikes during lunch hour than during commuting hours? Do your employees talk about distances in “K’s” rather than in miles? Do your Creatives ever show up on Mondays with tales of their weekend kickball exploits rather than a recap of the NFL game they watched? If so, then maybe you’ve got employees who value physical fitness. And if so, you should encourage that.

Encouraging physical fitness in the office should be common sense for leaders. Too often, though, we tell employees to do that sort of thing on their own time. But there are benefits we accrue when our Creatives are physically active and in good shape, and we should be willing to invest in that.

First, the obvious financial benefits: lower health care costs, and less sick leave taken. Many insurance companies will offer you lower rates if you have active fitness programs. Also, the less your employees get sick and actually use their health benefits, the fewer increases you should see in your premiums. Healthy employees lower your costs, and since a lot of creative work involves sitting around, then you can help improve their health by creating opportunities for activity.

For more qualitative benefits, consider how better physical fitness can improve your Creatives’ job performance. Physical activity can help recharge their batteries, providing a break away from work that lets them come back re-energized rather than getting bored by continuous work. Creative work is mentally taxing, and a break for physical activity helps them keep their edge. You also have the opportunity here for some bonding and team-building (but avoid making it mandatory, or creating the sense that they’re expected to be involved if they want to get ahead). It’s amazing how much those team practices or the shared experience of a marathon can bring people together. Finally, consider the effect on employee loyalty: they care more about a company that cares about them. Showing you have your employees’ health as a priority goes a long way toward increasing your employees’ interest in working for your company.

So, how do you do this? The easiest way is to just make time available for your employees to engage in physical fitness. If you’re in a traditional office setting, make it a policy that time spent on fitness during the day counts as part of their working hours. Some companies take that farther and subsidize gym memberships; check with your local gyms about corporate programs. If you have a snack room, make sure it’s stocked with healthy fare as well as Skittles (does anyone but me still eat Skittles?). Health promotion seminars and classes on smoking cessation and alcohol intake can help prevent problems that will be more expensive if they require rehab programs paid for by insurance. Speaking of which, talk to your insurance company about rate reductions in response to health promotion, and if they aren’t willing to work with you, look for a company that is.

Taking things outside the workplace, look into sponsoring employee teams in community leagues. Look for annual community events like a dragon boat festival or AIDS Walk, something people can prepare for and accomplish together. Running and biking clubs provide an ongoing means of fitness with the occasional competitive event. At a minimum, it’s nice to acknowledge employees’ achievements outside the office, so congratulate people on events that are important to them.

Health promotion and physical fitness help your bottom line, so don’t be afraid to put some time and other resources into it. Your employees are likely to turn in better work as a result, plus you may save some overhead costs, so don’t force them to do it outside of work where they have other competing priorities. The benefits you gain from better health and fitness among your workforce should outweigh the costs you incur.

And I’m not just saying that simply because I ran the Hong Kong Marathon yesterday.

Some Hiring Trends in the Coming Year

Following last week's discussion of how to hire without creating hassles for your potential employees, here's a list of seven likely hiring trends for 2009, as suggested by Matt Ferguson, CEO of CareerBuilder.com, and their implications for you. The statistics come from CareerBuilder's annual Job Forecast survey

Increased Pay

The reality is, no matter what kinds of benefits you offer or how you go about recruiting, you often end up paying more rather than paying less. In addition to providing attractive salaries to new recruits you need to keep your current employees satisfied. 66% of employers in the survey plan to increase salaries for their current employees while 1/3 estimate they will raise the starting salaries they offer to potential hires his year. While people will understand the reality of a bad economy, they also know it affects them personally as well as affecting the firm, so cutting salaries often isn't an option, nor is keeping salaries low while your competitors raise theirs.

Flexible Work

Some leaders are looking at flexible work arrangements that allow employees more freedom in the office and can reduce costs. these can be a great recruiting tool, and can also help your bottom line. The Job Forecast reports that 31% of employers plan to provide the following options for workers this year: alternate schedules (70%); telecommuting (48%); compressed workweeks (40%); summer hours (19%); job sharing (13%); and sabbaticals (7%). If you can cut your overhead -- such as utilities, office rent, transit subsidies -- or if you can reduce employee time and pay without reducing the size of the workforce (in other words, keep your employees on but with less time on the clock, in a manner you both agree with) then you can ride out the economic downturn and come out OK at the other end.

Green Policies

In tough economic times employers often have to turn to alternatives to salaries as recruiting tools. One such alternative is an emphasis on "green jobs" or "green policies" in the workplace. You might make an effort to take on projects that are designed to support environmentally-conscious efforts (ad campaigns, for instance, or providing strategic planning support to environmental non-profits). If that's not feasible in your particular field, consider developing environmentally-friendly policies for your workplace, perhaps involving energy usage in the office, carpooling and ridesharing, or other things that potential recruits will appreciate. Creatives often have an interest in environmental issues, so do yourself a favor (and, frankly, do the world a favor)and investigate these options.

Recruitment Innovation

Matt Ferguson notes in his article that recruitment budgets tend to shrink in hard times. But in order to compete in the marketplace you still need talent, so you need to find new ways to recruit effectively without raising spending more on recruitment. We're really talking about finding more efficient ways to recruit, and in the case of Creatives, efficiency and effectiveness really can co-exist. The hiring managers in the CareerBuilder survey, though, didn't seem very innovative; only 7% of those who reported a likely drop in recruiting budgets, for instance, said they planned to use social networking sites. These can be free (or, at least, pretty inexpensive) tools for reaching exactly the kind of people you want to reach. I know I've looked for a few employers on Facebook that I expected to find, only to see no presence there. How about YOUR firm? Traditional tools still work, but you might consider shifting the balance in favor of nontraditional, and low-cost, methods.

Retaining Older Employees

The CareerBuilder survey showed that 17% of employers will likely rehire retirees from other companies, while 12% expect to offer incentives for their baby boomers to stay with the company longer. There is something to be said for experience, and if you have older employees who are still innovative and have not fallen prey to the "we've always done it this way" attitudes, you should hold onto them. Be on the lookout as well for Creatives retiring from other firms who might be useful to you. The US military in the last few years has started acknowledging that forcing people to retire when they're highly experienced may fall within the definition of "a dumb idea," and you should consider if that's true for your firm, too.

Diversity

Increasing the pool of potential recruits will help you attract and hire top-quality Creatives without necessarily having to increase the salaries you offer (if this doesn't immediately make sense, go open any economics textbook to the page defining "supply and demand"). Your recruiting practices may not be overtly discriminatory, but you may be missing out on opportunities to attract talent if you don't make a specific effort to reach out to a variety of ethnic groups, age ranges, and other communities. Reach out to schools in economically disadvantaged areas...if some aspects of talent are natural rather than learned skills, then the problems associated with education in challenging neighborhoods may not be as great a factor as in other fields.

More Freelancers or Contract Workers

Free agents will play an increasingly important role in firms that are trying to reduce costs without cutting employees or otherwise reducing their capacity. According to CareerBuilder, 28% of hiring managers expect to use these workers in 2009. If you can work with employees only when you need them you can save a lot on health care, pension costs, office space, insurance, and other overhead. Free agency is a natural fit for many fields where Creatives are needed for specific jobs but might not need to be on the payroll all the time.

You may not be planning to increase your workforce right now, but if you can, you should. many of your competitors will hold off for now, so take advantage of their slowdown to try to speed up. Creatives aren't one-size-fits-all, so you should be looking now for people who are right for you, because they may not be available tomorrow. If you don't snap them up, someone else just might.

Hiring Without Hassling

It's easy, in a bad economy, to think that you as the employer have the upper hand. It's often true that the job market will be sluggish enough that potential employees seem to need you more than you need them, and it can be easy to turn into a tough guy during the hiring process. Best advice: don't do that.

In the first place, if you're hiring, it's because you need people. And if you're smart, you want the best people (or at least, the best people you can afford). In creative fields you are often looking for specialists with unique skills, so those who are the best and are the perfect fit for you will also be in demand by your competitors. Putting people through a condescending hiring process is likely to turn them away and into the arms of other firms. Good Creatives just don't need the hassle, and you may not have as much power as you think. And it doesn't help you to get a bad reputation as an employer, either.

Depending on how the job market is, you may still get them to sign on, but then you have to wonder about their loyalty. If they feel they're being treated poorly even before they begin work then they'll bolt as soon as they have the chance...if you don't seem to respect them then you can't reasonable expect loyalty. It's likely they'll still be looking for a new job once they're with you and you ca bet that as soon as another opportunity turns up they'll be out the door.

What are some ways in which a hiring process can be bad? Well, confrontational interviews are an easy example. If you consistently challenge an applicant's resume or question their skills, or perhaps put down a former employer of theirs, tat sets a bad tone for any future working relationship. Displaying any kind of negative attitude about your firm ("only the strong survive here") makes them wonder if they really want to work there...many people would rather keep waiting for a good-though-less-than-perfect job than take something that's reported to be bad by the folks who already work there. Even something as simple as not responding when a resume or application comes in can be a bad thing. Unless you're getting thousands of applications it really doesn't take much effort to just shoot out a "we received your application, thank you for your interest" e-mail. I recent;y applied for a new position to start later this year but didn't even get a reply for two months that they'd received my resume (whether or not I'll get called for an interview I won't know for "a period of weeks") and to be honest, by that time I'd pretty much put this place out of my head. Creatives with unique skills often have opportunities out there despite the current economic problems, so don't think you can treat them with a lack of simple courtesy and expect them to still want to work for you.

That's not to say that a tough hiring process isn't appropriate, but it needs to be relevant to the job. Many Creatives appreciate a firm that can do things a little differently, in a way that demonstrates something about their corporate culture. Google's use of an algorithm posted on billboards that applicants had to solve and Microsoft's unique, out-of-the-box questions ("How would you move Mt Fuji?") are tough but fair.

Being a jerk just because you think you can, however, is not. So play nice during your hiring process, or you're going to lose out on some creative talent.

Let Them Do What You Hired Them to Do

You spend a long time figuring out what kinds of employees you need and what skills they should have. You expend a lot of energy recruiting just the right people. You invest a lot of money in training and professional development. And then you use them for something completely different.

Seems silly, huh? Unfortunately, a lot of companies end up doing just that.

In some cases, leaders and managers use their Creatives for related tasks. Hairstylists find themselves doing the assistant's work of prepping a client rather than spending time actually doing hair. Code writers end up providing unofficial "help desk" support around the office. Graphic artists create ads for the company rather than doing work for clients. It's a pretty natural thing; bosses look and say "if you have these skills, then you should also be able to do that." But just because somebody CAN do something, doesn't mean they SHOULD.

At other times, Creatives get pulled off their work to do administrative tasks. Doing inventory, setting up conferences, managing the budget, making travel arrangements...yes, they need to get done, but do they need to get done by someone you've hired to do something completely different?

Large companies and small ones are both guilty of this. Smaller firms often use employees for different tasks simply because there's no one else available and the work has to get done. For startup firms this might be acceptable, but to really be successful you're going to have to reach the point where you have an adequate support staff that helps your Creatives do creative work. You may not want to take over every support task from your Creatives but you also don't want them spending much time on non-creative (and usually, non-revenue-producing) functions. Larger firms often use people for unrelated tasks because they don't have enough "real" work for them to do, and they want to get their money's worth, but if you're paying people to be creative and then using them for administrative work, can you really say you're getting your money's worth? If you have more Creatives than you have work for them to do, you need to generate more creative work for them by increasing your emphasis on business development, or consider outsourcing during surge periods rather than paying full-time people for part-time work.

The whole point of hiring creative talent is to turn out a unique product that is better than what your competitors offer. It's hard for your Creatives to do that if they're focused on something else.

Telework

You know a concept has really taken off when its undergoes a name change. Now that "telecommuting" has become "telework," that must mean it's mainstream.

The name change makes sense, of course. You're doing your work via the telecom, not going anywhere. But I digress.

There are a number of advantages to having your employees work offsite. For instance:

You can get more work out of them Currently, I spend 90 minutes a day commuting by bus and train. If I could get those 90 minutes back, I'd be willing to give an hour to work and keep 30 minutes for myself.

They're in a better mood They're not dealing with "post commute" fatigue in the morning and their not watching the clocks they don't miss the bus in the evening. Creatives do better when they're not stressed unnecessarily.

They can follow their own work habits, not someone else's Creatives are very individualized. Some prefer to spread 8 hours over 12 hours, some prefer to get it all done in a bursts of energy, and others would rather work late into the night so they can watch Ellen during the day. Telework helps avoid cramming everyone into the same working style.

Employees save money And everybody's good with that. Gas prices aren't going to go down until, oh, never, so keeping people off the roads keeps money in their pockets, and they like that. And if your firm offers transit subsidies to get people to use public transportation, well, now you can save on that.

It's good for the environment An article a couple weeks ago reported that 1.35 billion gallons of gasoline could be saved each year if everyone who could telework did so 1.6 days a week. That's good for Mother Earth, and it resonates with many of the people working for you.

It lowers your real estate costs Office space is pretty expensive, and you can cut back on it dramatically if people are working remotely. If there are times when they have to come in, some firms have gone to hoteling and will have offices and conference rooms available, albeit on a smaller scale.

There are some potential problems with telework. For many traditionalists, these problems provide enough reason not to do it. Of course, that's because they haven't tried to find a way around them:

Out of Sight Some managers are concerned that, if they can't see their employees, they may not be working. The trick here is to focus on your employees' output without worrying what they're doing every minute of the day. And frankly, if you don't trust them, what does that say about your working relationship?

Group Work Some work needs to get done in groups. Very often you'll have teams that need to come together and hash things out. Some of that can be done online, of course...iChat and Google Docs can help bring work together even if the people don't come together. Providing a central office where people can come together or making use of telework sites or libraries as meeting points can get a group together when it's needed then allow it to disperse when solo work is better.

Individual Working Style As we noted above, everyone has their own style, and for some, that style is working in a group. Some do it because it makes it easier to slack off if there are others around to talk to, but for some Creatives they feed off the energy of a group of bright people working hard together. You need to tailor the office style to your employees' requirements...don't implement a really great idea only to see productivity fall off.

Information Sharing and Security In the office you "hopefully) have a network with good security. Bouncing around with telework, though, each individual is largely responsible for their own information security, and not all of us are experts. This can be a real problem, so you should invest in a security consultant to help you out.

Separating Work and Home This is a biggie, and it's one reason you'll get pushback from some employees. I know that when I work in an office I like to turn that off when I get home. I think if I teleworked it would be different, but I'd need a room set aside at home that was for work only, so I could close the door and get away. Still, when I was a grad student I mostly worked at home, and it was hard to turn it off...it seemed like the work was always there. Some people will just keep working and working when the work's always in front of them...a good friend of mine had his computer in his bedroom and would work the strangest hours, and far too many of them. For those who need the separation, either offer an office or find a separate site like a telework facility.

For a lot of creative industries telework has become, if not the norm, at least accepted and often expected. Artists and designers who can sketch anywhere and photographers who always carry a camera are already used to the idea of working any place.

For many bureaucracies, with set working hours or regular interface with customers or other organizations, telework has not been warmly embraced. But even in the US government there are exceptions...the Patent and Trademark Office, which has some very smart people examining the work of true Creatives has one of the most flexible work plans of any government agency, and it works very well for them. If even the government can make something like this work, surely you can consider it yourself.

IT Should Empower Workers

A presentation by Bill Gates earlier this year, highlighted in a Wall Street Journal blog, suggested that leaders haven't done enough to empower their workers. The point was made that up until now most business software was designed to help managers track information more than to help workers better use information. The Journal blog reported that

Gates said that the next wave of productivity will come from technology aimed at making information available to workers and helping them communicate.

What he's getting at here, to a large degree, is technology to support collaboration. This is obviously useful if you use telework as a business practice, particularly when workers are scattered around the world, but it's also useful even if you're in the same office.

Gates gave a demonstration of Sharepoint, a useful collaboration tool produced, of course, by Microsoft. Now, I've been in an organization using Sharepoint and we had a lot of trouble getting it to work properly. One thing to keep in mind is that a new system like this is likely to require an investment in training...otherwise, you're just buying a bunch of software that will sit there unused.

Google Docs offers another opportunity to make information available for real collaboration, not just review. I've been involved with some non-profit groups using Google Docs to send around proposed bylaws, collect information for a race, and review and submit budget information. We are scattered around the Washington DC area so trying to meet up in person wasn't feasible, and the single point of contact had better things to do than deal with 40 separate e-mail trails.

Getting these tools is easy enough; getting people to use them is another matter. At a recent government offsite, in a discussion about internal communication, I heard a number of older managers (sorry to be ageist, but they've all been around a while) say that they wanted hard copies passed around the office. When told that they could simply print out an attachment or e-mail if they want a hard copy, one manager said "I don't want to have to hit the print button every time I want something!" Okaaaaayyyyyyyy...how do you deal with that? To some extent, you can train people and allow them to see the benefits emerge during their training. But really, the best way to encourage acceptance of new IT tools is to introduce new ideas one at a time, but consistently, thus helping create a culture where new methods are the norm. Trying to institute a wholesale change at once is typically a non-starter...going from a "read file" full of paper copies of things people should be reading to a Sharepoint system is simply not going to cut it. "IT acceptance" is as much a part of your organization's culture as any other value.

We are starting to see more and more IT tools that encourage, rather than discourage, collaboration. We hope that our Creatives will be open to new ways of doing things but the default response to change is often "no." The truth is, most workers will say they want to be empowered but when it actually happens it makes them nervous. Addressing that is more of a cultural issue than a technological one, but now that the technology is coming into play, successful firms need to make the cultural shift toward acceptance.