Last week, we talked about how I attempt to gather all my “parts” before I enter into a high-stakes conversation, especially if there’s potential for hurt feelings or nuance that might be missed. I do that because I need my analytical mind, spidey-sense, bridge-builder people skills, and hard-nosed business skills; I need all of them…
I got a lot of feedback from my emails last week about the value of account managers, and it’s clear that there’s quite a bit of confusion about what the job of an agency Account Manager is! With a big caveat that there are a LOT of different AM job descriptions out there, here’s what…
Most creative agencies have two halves of their business. One side is the people who “do the thing” – they might be artists and writers, or developers, or analysts, but the value they bring is in their skills. They work the magic! On the other side, there are the Account Managers. The account managers are…
Things with this new client have been going along great. You had an excellent strategy session and laid out a whole marketing plan for them. They were bought in – now you are into implementation. The work you’re doing for them looks terrific, right on track. Then the phone rings. The client wants to go…
I started life as an engineer, designing aerospace control systems. When we would start to design a new system, the first question we’d ask is, “If this project fails, what happened?” We’d look for the riskiest, most uncertain part of the problem and try to solve that part first. If we could solve the hardest…
Would you rather have a thousand leads or ten good leads? How about a hundred candidates for your open position, or two perfect candidates? Do you want to create fifty logos for your customer’s rebrand or one great one? In each of these cases, the answer is easy – no one wants quantity; we want quality….
You’ve got an underperforming team member, and it’s been bugging you for a while. Maybe you’ve addressed it with her, and perhaps you’ve just been hinting around, but it’s gotten to the point where you need to do something about it. If you don’t, it’s hard to see how they are a part of your…
I got an email from a CEO recently that said: I have been dealing with issues in the team this week, and it dawned on me that there doesn’t seem to be a single person on our team who meets expectations. I’m not sure if anyone in our organization has ever met expectations! I can’t…
My father had what many would say was a very successful career. He graduated from college with an Industrial Engineering degree and went to work in a management role in a factory. But he wanted more from life than that, so he entered a part-time MBA program that led to a job with (what was…
I got on the phone with a client this week; this is what I heard… “We’re busier than we’ve ever been, we’re booking more projects, bigger projects, and more of them with our ideal clients, that’s the good news!” “The bad news is all that new business has really impacted our culture! We’ve canceled most…