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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

The beauty of your Creative team is that their brains work differently from legal, accounting or HR.  It’s beneficial to approach training programs with appreciation for and awareness of the differences so you can target the training to the Creative audience.  A general course targeted for the masses with linear and tactical examples will be [...]

Managers can improve or destroy an employee’s performance by up to 40% . Therefore it’s extremely important that managers are focusing their efforts on the most meaningful activities when spending time with direct reports including building deep relationships with each team member.

Some people spend their Sundays with The New York Times. Others peruse Barron’s, The New Republic or Vanity Fair.
Me? I read the Grand Rapids Press. It helps me keeps up on western Michigan’s happenings and headlines. Without it, I’d never know that The Doobie Brothers would be playing Meijer Gardens this summer. Or that there’s [...]

If you provide a great career opportunity and pathway for your team members, you promote a more stable workforce, a higher performing department, lower personnel costs, and a happier culture.  These all improve your ability to attract better talent and better work opportunities over time. Enough said…we’ll need another post to quantify all of that!  [...]

When I first started consulting with creative services organizations I brought a “manufacturing “ mindset which I was anxious to apply to the undisciplined creative world. I knew the organizations I worked with could be much more efficient and productive if only they would apply the many process learnings I had gleaned from the manufacturing [...]