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Professional Development
Measure Twice.
To know me is to know how much I value preparedness. Not to say I do love a good embrace of intuition, but deep down, I do believe that even the most successfully sporadic of reactions, declarations, ideas, etc. stem from experience and a subconscious preparedness. And that the best creative comes from a perfect balance of tension and ease.
As a creative and creative leader, this preparedness manifests in small but impactful ways. Usually the evidence is squirreled away as private ‘internal’ documents, emails or scribbles. Over the years, as I casually update my portfolio, I find myself respecting more and more those relics of process and thought. They represent my interest and dedication in ensuring that the team has what it needs to succeed and thrive. It’s a practical foundation for an ease-ier, more beautiful creative outcome.
The following are a snapshot of notes, thoughts, experiments assembled in the spirit of gaining an understanding of creative structure and freedoms and growth. And yes, the blue monotype thing is my Steve Jobs outfit thing.
Leveling Up
When I began at a small boutique design studio, I joined a close-knit team. About 80% of the agency consisted an outstanding, young creative team (specializing in graphic design, concept, motion and digital) many who had been there for 5+ years.
In the interview process, I had learned that the studio was eager to grow, and my role was to work with the long time Creative Director to set up structure and processes, as well as deliver elevated creative work.
The challenge was to maintain the friendly and creatively prolific culture while creating a review and leveling system that encouraged a more objectively fair and growth-oriented decisions and relationships.
Inspired from my days of teaching, I developed a rubric that defined simple expectations for roles and job levels. In putting this together, I was able to align our leadership team on big picture needs and goals and put into action our agency’s strategic purpose. Folks on the creative team were encouraged to use this beyond review season or when promotions were being discussed as a way of self-evaluating. I was impressed and surprised at the results of self-evaluations compared to the manager-evaluations: they were nearly always the same.
The outcome of this was enormous. It minimized personal bias, and while there’s no metric I can cite, my observation was that individual growth sky rocketed. The creative team was able to take ownership of their own growth and understand exactly how what they needed to focus on in order to achieve their goals. The team grew exponentially and was better equipped at taking on larger, more collaborative jobs.
Link here.
The crossroads of Cannabis and Google Sheets
To the naked eye, The Greenroom appeared overnight. It was a rare opportunity, an internal project being thrown into the lime light at the nation’s largest flower show. The original idea shared with me was to put some ipads on a table and make a sign.
That wasn’t going to fly with me. Knowing resources and dedicated personnel were limited, I got to work proving that we could actually build something pretty memorable and impactful. The interns and I saddled up, and wore the hats of Researchers, Project Managers, Writers, Brand Designers, Fabricators, Industrial Designers, and - later - total cannabis experts. (TBH, prior to all this, the only thing I knew about cannabis was The Guy’s phone number).