Do you know that feeling when creativity strikes? You feel inspired and passionate, and great work seems to just flow effortlessly from your fingertips. But, chances are, you’re also familiar with the other end of that spectrum. You feel totally stuck. The creative juices aren’t flowing and you feel like you don’t have a single nugget of inspiration to cling to. Creativity can often feel impossible to grasp. When things are good, they’re really good. But when they’re bad, they’re downr...

When it comes to leading your marketing team, you want to remain somewhat visible and involved. You don’t want to be that faceless person who doles out instructions and then forces your team members to fend for themselves. You’d like to be viewed as an active resource and a trusted advisor. But at the same time, you’re worried about swinging too far in the other direction—being so heavily involved that you cross over into that dreaded micromanagement territory. You know that if yo...

The general trend these days is toward open office plans, where cubicle walls and office doors don’t impede communication. In fact, the International Facility Management Association reports that 70% of offices in the US now have an open floor plan.  But tearing down the walls so we can yell across the room at one another doesn’t necessarily improve collaboration. In fact, a study in Finland found that employees on average waste 21.5 minutes a day getting distracted by overheard conversati...

What's the one main challenge for anyone trying to create a world-class creative team? Finding the time to develop the team into an internal powerhouse that can compete with external agencies for the best and most inspiring work.  . According to a 2016 Paychex survey, 53% of employees claim they left their previous jobs because their "employers didn't care about employees," and 29% left due to "lack of skill development."    . On top of that, survey responses from the 2014 In-House C...

If you ask a number of people what success looks like, somebody is sure to mention climbing the proverbial ladder. After all, that’s become the norm in corporate America. You continue grasping rung after rung until you reach the top—which is usually a point when you’re leading and managing others. But here’s the problem with this: not everybody wants to be a leader. Some people are much happier focusing on their own work, without being bogged down with all of the meetings, logistics, an...

Pulling together a team with all the right skills to market your business should be the hard part - not how they actually work together. The bad news is that this challenge happens far more often than you would think. But the good news is with the right tools, you can turn around your team’s productivity issues and thrive... There are dozens of tools out there for every facet of marketing team productivity, but in this article, we’ll just look at the top tools that every member of you...

You place a lot of emphasis on keeping your employees happy — well, at least you like to think that you do. You offer plenty of paid vacation time and emphasize adequate work-life balance. You encourage team members to voice their opinions and share ideas. You even keep the office kitchen stocked with snacks. But, are you missing something? If you don’t have an effective way to adequately recognize and reward your team members for their hard work, then the answer is yes — you’re mis...

There’s something that’s slowly but surely sucking the life and motivation out of your workforce. And, no, it’s not the fact that your break room coffee is a little weak. So, what is this mysterious epidemic that’s destroying your team’s productivity and morale? Answer: A lack of engagement. An unengaged workforce comes with a significant cost—quite literally. Gallup estimates that actively disengaged employees cost the U.S. up to $605 billion each and every year. And, even further,...

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.” ~ Unknown While there’s some disagreement over who that impactful quote should be attributed to (sources range from Henry Ford to Tony Robbins), there’s no denying that the message holds some weight. Yet, far too often, leaders and managers instruct their teams to stick to the same outdated process—all while expecting different results. Work processes are the glue that holds things together and e...

Picture this: a team is working on a large report together. Everyone is assigned individual pieces to get done by a certain deadline. Everything's in place and on schedule. However, the team member responsible for the content of the first two sections starts running behind. “No big deal!” she thinks to herself as she nonchalantly flips through her calendar. “I’m only going to be a couple of days late.” In the grand scheme of things, she assumes a handful of days is no sweat — so sh...