As creative leaders we are often dismayed by our internal clients’ lack of understanding about our process and needs. They think “small edits” can be returned in two minutes, compliance reviews are either optional or take only a few hours, and that vendors should be able to return printed copies within 24 hours of their [...]

The recent announcement of IBM’s acquisition of Unica prompted me to think about the current landscape of options for automated workflow systems and how it keeps changing.  For some companies, their history has included many acquisitions and changes in ownership, while others have been providing workflow solutions to the marketing communications market for decades.  So, [...]

Large corporations accept certain beliefs at face value. Among them is the myth that in-house organizations can never be as good or as responsive as outside agencies/vendors, particularly creative services groups. It is a daily battle to overcome the built-in prejudice against internal creative organizations.
As with most corporations, internal support groups are under intense scrutiny [...]

Across the past few weeks, creative executives from more than 40 in-house creative departments from the Washington, D.C., New York, Philadelphia, Dallas, and Atlanta metropolitan areas joined us at CreativeExecs Roundtable meetings to discuss measuring, reporting, and structuring for effectiveness and efficiency…

Discussion topics for the CreativeExecs Roundtables are based on polling of attendees and prospective attendees. With three out of five of the summer Roundtables complete, we are seeing demand to discuss an omnipresent challenge of Creative Services leaders: career paths for creative staff. This common challenge pulls at the heart strings of creative leaders, because [...]

Sharing information with people is an everyday event in the business world.  The challenge for most Creative Executives is to communicate in a way that allows their team to hear and understand. Business folklore has it that communication can be broken into three creative categories; the dance, the music and the lyrics.  No one knows [...]

Time tracking in creative services is necessary in order to monitor utilization and productivity. Last month we published a blog about the benefits of time tracking, but also pointed out it’s no one’s favorite activity. Let’s examine some of the ways time tracking can be implemented and how to make it an integral part of [...]

As the economy struggled across the better part of the last decade and developing nations proved able to take on business services in addition to production tasks, outsourcing and offshoring conversations and activities increased. Business leaders looking to take advantage of the cost savings have asked their business unit heads to identify opportunities to offshore [...]

Throughout my career I have spoken to hundreds of creative leaders who have been challenged with finding the right Interactive Designer for their department. Hiring Interactive Designers is challenging because of the diverse and constantly evolving job descriptions, skill sets, and career paths that are associated with the role. And while on the surface two [...]

Whether you’ve recently inherited a team or you’ve been working with the same core group for several years, it’s likely your team is a mix of rock stars, steady performers, and underperformers—otherwise known as “A”, “B”, and “C” players. It’s important to have a healthy mix of “A” and “B” players on a team [...]