Category: Leadership

Why 2018 Is The Year Of Employee Experience

For the last several years, Customer Experience (CX) has been top of mind for B2C (and, increasingly, B2B) marketers, with smart companies devoting time and energy to deeply understanding how to optimize each engagement a potential buyer has with their brand and create a seamless experience from first touch to last that exceeds expectations. Those …

4 Tips For Giving More Constructive Feedback

Whether it’s a performance review for one of your direct reports, the latest logo redesign mockup from your in-house agency or even just a friend’s request that you take a look at her resume, everyday opportunities to provide feedback are plentiful. Offering truly useful feedback, however, is both an art and a science. If you …

Why Smart Marketing Leaders Spend Money To Save Time

A recent piece in The New York Times proclaimed that researchers have discovered it’s possible to buy happiness. The catch is that you need to spend your cash on time-saving resources vs. material goods. To wit: “Researchers surveyed more than 6,000 people in four countries and also ran an experiment, giving people $40 for two …

How To Win Champions, Influence Colleagues And Impress Clients As An In-House Leader

To prove our rock star status at work, creatives have to get a little, well, creative. It’s much harder to calculate the value of our typeface choices than it is the ROI of a new software purchase. It’s easier to say why a company needs engineers than why we need graphic designers to redesign the …

How To Delegate Like A True Boss

Being good at delegation can be the difference between leading a productive team of enthusiastic, motivated employees who feel valued and trying to manage a disorganized burned-out group where some members feel overburdened and others feel neglected. Your team’s productivity and happiness depends on how well you’re able to structure their workload and play to …

How Time Tracking Can Help You Become A Better Team Leader

Time tracking gets a bad rap, conjuring up images of workplaces where the clock takes precedence over the individual employee and doing more in fewer hours, no matter the toll on workers, is of paramount importance. Once you’re able to get past any knee-jerk negative associations, however, there is real value in time tracking, especially …

Etsy’s Randy J. Hunt On Creativity, To-Do Lists And The Tools He Can’t Live Without

In addition to his role as VP of Design at Etsy, Randy J. Hunt is an author, sought-after speaker, startup entrepreneur and big thinker in the world of design. We caught up with Randy last week to talk about his creative process, his design philosophy and the tools he can’t live without. Do you have …

Debbie Millman On Why Creative Leaders Need Courage More Than Confidence

Debbie Millman is a designer, artist, author, educator, CMO of Sterling Brands and host of Design Matters, the world’s first and longest-running podcast on design. As President Emeritus of AIGA, one of five women to hold the position in the organization’s 100-year history, and one of the most influential designers working today as named by …

AWeber’s Mike Smith On How To Manage Your Team, Your Time, And Your Personal Creative Passions

Mike Smith is an-house creative with a passion for high-quality design and a knack for branding. He first realized his love for graphic art in middle school and has been nurturing it ever since. We caught up with the art director at email marketing company AWeber late last year to talk about growing his career in-house, managing …

How To Cultivate A High-Performing In-House Creative Team

Amanda Froehlich is the Creative Operations Manager at Saint-Gobain, a multinational manufacturer of high-performance building and construction materials. She has more than 20 years  of experience in the advertising and marketing industry, with a focus on building, leading and developing award-winning creative teams for several of the world’s largest corporations. Naturally, we wanted to pick …