One of the most frequent questions I get from other creative directors or people on their way up is, “What is the one piece of advice every good creative director should have?” My answer is simple: Invest in your people. Your team will be the ones that help you complete the day-to-day tasks and assignments that need to be knocked out to address client challenges. Your team is your go-to group when you need to get a job done after hours. Your team also has your back when people may question the direction of the creative product that your team is producing. The size of the investment you put into your people can determine the amount of success they, and in turn you, will have.
Investment on the Front End
You need to invest in your people on the front end; whether it’s from your first day leading the department or when a new team member first joins your team, don’t wait until they have proven themselves. You must make the time, get the funds, or take the opportunity to invest in them as soon as you can. When you do, you are showing them that they are important and that you are making a commitment to their development. This goes a long way to gaining their loyalty.
Some creative leaders worry that putting time, money, and training into team members just makes them more attractive to other agencies or studios. Although it seems counterintuitive, you really can’t worry about that. Your goal is to build the best possible team. You can’t be effective if you are worrying about whether they are going to leave and take your time, money, and talent investment with them.
On the optimistic side, your investment will result in better trained, better equipped, and more motivated creative team members who appreciate the investment you have made in them and reward you with great work. On the pessimistic side, you might train someone who takes off for another company as soon as there is an opportunity. Chances are if they are that eager to leave, you may be able to see that before you make any significant investments on your part. If they take off after you have invested in them, let them go and wish them well. You can take solace in the fact that you are helping to put better creatives out in the world.
One of the things that gives me the most pride is seeing my creatives—whether they were my students or members of my team—being promoted into leadership positions and accomplishing great things.
Invest Your Time
One of the easiest ways to invest in your people is to actually give them your time and undivided attention. As creative directors or creative leads, our time is a precious commodity. We are constantly jumping from meeting to meeting to present the agency’s creative work to clients. You will be pulled into internal meetings to go over strategy and check on project progress. You will also attend staff meetings, birthday and office celebrations, and random unscheduled meetings. In addition to all of these, you will also need to try to find time to work on your own projects. In the end, it leaves little time for your people to connect with you.
There is never enough time to do everything you want or need to accomplish from day to day, and sometimes week to week. You will need to take control of your calendar and carve out some time for your team. I have reserved specific blocks of time on my calendar every day, every week so my team can have access to me. These 1-1/2 hour blocks are marked as busy on my daily calendar to prevent people from scheduling or requesting meetings when they look at my schedule. This allows me to ensure that I am present and available to my team.
Making a standing appointment that no one can schedule meetings into is a great way to reserve time for your team so you can address issues, brainstorm, provide praise, obtain updates on projects, and so on. Your team needs to feel supported and guided so they can create great work. How do you do it? The following are tips that can help you give your team the time and input they deserve.
Roll Out
Face-to-face interactions in the office are typically the easiest ways to meet with your creative team. Sometimes, however, the best way to be inspired and to inspire others is to get the heck outta Dodge. Leave the office and find inspiration away from the office. For instance, you could
Hold walking one-on-one meetings
Plan team retreats involving outdoor time
Organize a staff lunch in a local park
Schedule ideation sessions in a botanical garden or another scenic venue
Take your team to a museum and discuss the art you see that inspires all of you
Be Generous, but Honest
When it comes to investing time into your team to help the department’s creative output, it will be effective only if you are giving them great input, advice, or direction. When talking with your team or individual team members, be respectful, open, and honest at all times. When someone does a great job, talk about what went right and celebrate! Be generous with praise. Everyone likes and needs validation for creativity and hard work. Don’t forget about the failures, however. You must address them as well. Failures can teach us quite a bit. Take the time to discuss the ideas that simply didn’t work in a supportive and encouraging way with the goal of learning from them and making the next project more successful.
Make ’Em Laugh
What kind of manager are you? Are you a stuffed shirt who seldom finds things funny? Are you laid back and approachable? While I don’t advocate for trying to be the “stand-up comedian” type of boss who cracks jokes about everything, humor is an important part of a highly creative work environment (Figure 12-1). Humor can strengthen relationships, reduce stress, and make it easier to address tough subjects. Let your creative team know it’s okay to goof around a little, and trust them to recognize when it’s time to get down to business. Just make sure the humor is appropriate for professional interactions and isn’t offensive to anyone.
Figure 12-1. While you don’t have to be a stand-up comedian, you do need to have a sense of humor
Invest Your Money
Investing money into your creative team can be difficult. You struggle to determine how to best invest the limited time that you have and how to effectively spread yourself among your team members to ensure they have everything they need to proceed. Do you invest small amounts into your entire team or larger amounts for a select few? It’s a difficult decision to make. In a perfect world you would be able to invest resources in all of the members of your creative team, but in reality there are limits. On one hand, you want to be fair and give everyone an opportunity to increase their skills and knowledge. On the other hand, you only have so much money to go around and you want to invest it wisely. I suggest you require anyone who receives an investment of funds for training to reciprocate by sharing what they learned.
Consider the following scenario: You decide to send a designer to a national design conference that is well known for the types and caliber of breakout sessions. Many attendees return to their jobs fired up about what they learned. A good way to have your team members provide some payback for these opportunities is to have them conduct “lunch ’n learn” sessions with the rest of the team. It is their responsibility to create presentations and share what they learned with the rest of the team.
Having the team members conduct a session to share their new knowledge is a great way to receive a return on your investment because they will return with renewed enthusiasm for the job and be able to share that excitement and knowledge with their coworkers. Be sure to inform your creatives that they will be required to conduct sessions in advance. If they know there is something required of them, they are more likely to try and get as much as they can from the conference/training sessions they attend instead of viewing them as a free day out of the office or a free trip to another part of the country.
Invest Your Expertise
Investing your expertise in your team can have a profound effect on their performance and their attitude. If you are willing to share what you know with your team, you are sending the message that you believe in them and want them to be the best possible creatives they can be. Sharing your knowledge, skills, and experience with your team can also have a positive impact for you because there is no better ROI than seeing the light bulb turn on when a new insight or skill is received and utilized by one of your team members.
How can you share your expertise? Have you ever had a junior art director attend a press check with you? Ask them to meet you at the print shop, introduce them to the press person, let them follow along as you review the press proofs and make adjustments. It is your opportunity to show them what you’re looking for when you review proofs. You can explain to them how color adjustments are made on press. You can also ask your print partner to show them how they mix up spot colors. You could also ask for a tour of the print shop. This is a great chance for your team member to learn about this part of the creative process and get excited about what they do. It’s also a great opportunity for you to teach them about some of the biggest mistakes designers make when it comes to print jobs and press checks.
Don’t get me wrong: nobody wants to hear about the “good ol’ days” of design and printing. While it may be interesting to share war stories about complex projects or all-nighters once, they don’t want to continually hear about them. Share your knowledge in ways that don’t sound like you’re comparing what’s going on now with how you did things back then. Don’t brag about how your previous work or employers were superior in ways that are lacking in your current gig. Keep that crap to yourself and work on investing your expertise in positive insightful ways.
Benefits of Investing in Your People
It’s sometimes difficult to rationalize why you should invest your time, money, and expertise in your people. There is a concern that you are making your team members more marketable to other agencies or studios. That’s true. There will always be people who move on to what they perceive as greener pastures (Did I just make a country reference? Pastures?! Whut?) or who follow the money tree, not realizing how good their current situation is. There will also be people who understand how fortunate they are to have a job and a creative lead who is willing to invest in them. The people described in the latter scenario are the loyal creatives who make your investments worthwhile.
The reality that you have to face is that every member of your creative team can benefit from a solid development program. The problem with team member development is that it’s something that’s easily pushed aside because of the pressures of meeting daily challenges. Some days you might feel it’s hard enough to make it through the day without having to think about team development. However, I firmly believe that as a creative leader, you owe it to your team to make time to help them develop.
I can imagine what you’re thinking: “Yeah, yeah. It’s easy to talk about it. It’s hard to put it into practice.” Or you might think, “Sure, I agree. I’ll get to it next week or as soon as we finish this RFP/TV shoot/branding campaign/etc.” Don’t just give it lip service, keep thinking about it, and never actually do anything. Make it a priority, or ultimately your agency or studio’s product will suffer. It will suffer because your product will never evolve. You will be stuck providing the same thing over and over without any development or advancement while other agencies who evolve with changing times win the accounts you covet.
So, enough of the soapbox. Here are four reasons you should invest in your peeps.
To Attract and Keep Great Creatives
Agencies and studios that offer a great development system to potential team members are very attractive places to people searching for new jobs or opportunities. Creatives want to work where they feel creatively challenged and are able to enhance their skills. What creative can say “no” to working in an environment when they know up front that their employer is dedicated to their advancement? Once they are onboard, employee development is a great way to help retain your team. They appreciate that you value them enough to invest in them.
How does a development program entice new creatives to join your team?
It’s a benefit. Current and potential employees will see the development program as an added benefit to working in your place. In the days of creatives evaluating employment options by more things than just salary as a way to determine whether they want to work somewhere, having the added benefit of professional development gives you a competitive advantage over similar jobs and salaries.
It creates loyalty. Investing in your team fosters a sense of loyalty among the members, which in turn creates a sense of loyalty to the agency/studio as a whole. If your creative team feels a sense of loyalty, they are less likely to quit. If they know that you are willing to provide training and development, they will feel important and valued.
It builds your reputation. No matter what you think about privacy and keeping things on the down low, people talk. If you have a reputation as a good creative leader, one who is dedicated not only to doing great work but also to ensuring that your team has opportunities for development, the word will get out. Creatives at other agencies or studios will hear about the dedication you have to your team, and you will build a rep as a great creative leader.
It entices good people. Development will attract a larger pool of potential candidates to hire from when you have job openings. The development opportunities you offer to your creative team will be an added benefit that will entice good people to work with you. You want a creative who is dedicated to improving not only their craft but also themselves. Remember: you want to work with giants.
Soapbox
In regards to developing your team’s skills and making them more marketable to other agencies, there are some things you should consider. People change jobs for a variety of reasons—more money, better benefits, relocating to another city, starting their own company, and so on. I have worked at agencies where if someone left for another agency, management took their departure as a personal affront. They would lash out verbally with snarky comments to those left behind. This behavior is unnecessary, unfortunate, and uncalled for.
I have also worked at agencies where management makes it a positive experience when a team member leaves. They understand that it’s not necessarily a reflection on their agency or management style; rather, it’s about the person who is leaving exploring a new experience.
Some agencies even have a revolving-door policy. I call this a Boomerang Program. They leave the door open for their personnel to come back if the job that they left for doesn’t end up being all they hoped it would be. They allow their employee to go off and experience new things at a new job. If the new job doesn’t live up to their expectations and there is still an opening, the agency allows the employee to come back. There are benefits for both parties involved with a Boomerang Program. For the employee, they are able to come back to a familiar place with friends and coworkers. For the agency, they get to fill an opening with someone who is experienced and doesn’t have to be trained. It also helps support a fantastic office culture. When valued employees know that they can take a chance to explore another opportunity and return if it doesn’t work out and there is still an opening, it helps elicit a sense of loyalty and security with the agency. (Big shout out to Frank Guerra, Beth Wammack, and Carey Quackenbush at GDC Marketing + Ideation in San Antonio for modeling their Boomerang Program! Check them out: www.gdc-co.com .)
To Make Your Creatives More Capable
You want to have team members that are capable, not only as creatives, but as members of the agency/studio team as a whole. They should become familiar with the day-to-day business and the clients. With employee training and development, you are helping them grow into a stronger group that can handle more responsibility, which in turn results in a better creative product, improves communication between team members and clients, and frees you up to focus on other duties and responsibilities.
To Keep Creatives Engaged
Bored creatives leave. Once they become disgruntled, they either end up leaving or producing poor work: plain and simple. They will become negative and sloppy and there is a very real possibility that their attitude and behavior will disrupt the overall team. Your investment in their development is a way to keep them engaged at work and help keep boredom or dissatisfaction from creeping in.
To Save and Earn Money
Believe it or not, creatives that receive your regular training and have opportunities for development can save you money. They become more efficient and proficient with their skills and complete work assignments quicker and more accurately. This results in increased output, which is good for your bottom line. They are also a positive influence on other team members.
Investing in Your Future
The time you put into team development has a definite impact on your level of success in the future. As you plan or develop a plan for creative team development, you should ask yourself several questions:
What kind of leadership will I need to provide to my team?
What will my clients need from their creative team?
What does the agency need from the creative team?
What will my creative team need from me?
What industry changes are on the horizon?
What can I do for my own professional development?
You must think ahead and determine what the answers to these questions are. You have to plan for the future because any development you’d like to provide for your creative team won’t happen without it. Look at the opportunities that you are willing to put some of your budget into. Some of the technologies that are being taught and utilized today may not be the technologies of tomorrow. What do your creative team members want and need to learn?
Stay alert to comments made by your team. Often times, they will tell you what they feel they need without actively verbalizing it to you. If you really listen to them, you’ll know what type of training they’d like to have. Keep ahead of the curve and show your creatives you are dedicated to their professional development.
Motivating Your Creatives
When you motivate your creatives, you will find it has a snowball effect on the entire agency/studio. People talk. I guarantee, the processes and programs you put in place for your creative team will have a positive impact on the agency/studio as a whole. The better each creative team member is, the better their output is, and the better the agency as a whole will be.
You want to cultivate a culture that inspires creativity. After all, that’s what we’re selling. When you do this, you will motivate your team members to offer a greater number of quality ideas and increase the team’s chance for success. How do you do this?
Give timely and honest feedback on new ideas. Idea generation takes time. It’s not as it we have ideas floating around in our heads waiting to be released through a pressure-release idea valve. Your creative team needs to know their creativity is valued and they need opportunities to enhance their skills and nurture their creativity.
Reward collaboration. You will notice that some of the best ideas start as a spark from one team member and are built on by others. Because creativity is an iterative process, your creative team members need to be motivated to work together. Acknowledge everyone involved in the process to encourage future teamwork and fuel creativity.
Celebrate well-considered failures. Sometimes even the best ideas will fail. You need to be willing to take risks and push creative boundaries to reap the rewards of innovation. In all honesty, being creative involves taking a certain amount of risk. Creatives who play it safe are producing things that have worked for them in the past. That is one way to quickly get yourself replaced. If you want your team to take risks, you must motivate their creativity and reward well-thought-out ideas, even when they lead to failure. Sometimes less-than-stellar ideas lead to really great ones. Even if they don’t, celebrate the effort. When you do, you send a message that you’re rewarding the willingness to try and improve, and that taking risks is part of the creative process.
Knowing how to motivate employees is not easy. In your role as a creative leader, one of your most important tasks is to take care of your team and keep them in top creative form. By making this a priority, your team will continue to produce outstanding work and remain loyal to your agency/studio.
In a Nutshell
How do I sum up this chapter? It’s easy: Taking care of your creative teams is one of the best ways to guarantee success. You must ensure that they feel valued and appreciated or they can’t do their best work. When you believe in and invest in them, their confidence and willingness to push the creative envelope during the creative process will increase.
As a creative leader, it’s your task to keep your creative team motivated. When you can keep them motivated they will produce their best work. The way you do this is to show that you are willing to make investments in their professional development. Devote time to your team. From an altruistic standpoint, you can feel good that they will grow and develop their skills. From a selfish standpoint, knowing that you’re making your creatives feel happy and valued will give you a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. Awww… Isn’t that sweet?