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Maximizing People Power
- 1. Hello.
- 2. MAXIMIZING PEOPLE POWER TOM HOPE, UCF MARKETING
- 6. I had an incident today that I wanted to make you aware of. I’m highly allergic to red ants. As I was getting out my car this morning, I was bitten by several ants. I told the parking services attendant that was there and he said that he knew it was a problem and I should wear sneakers next time instead of sandals like 75% of our student body. I can’t believe that UCF knows that this field is crawling with red antsand you just don’t care. I had an incident today that I wanted to make you aware of. I’m highly allergic to red ants. As I was getting out my car this morning, I was bitten by several ants. I told the parking services attendant that was there and he said that he knew it was a problem and I should wear sneakers next time instead of sandals like 75% of our student body. I can’t believe that UCF knows that this field is crawling with red ants and you just don’t care.
- 7. What do these have in common?
- 8. (we don’t have one)
- 9. (we don’t have one)
- 10. I had an incident today that I wanted to make you aware of. I’m highly allergic to red ants. As I was getting out my car this morning, I was bitten by several ants. I told the parking services attendant that was there and he said that he knew it was a problem and I should wear sneakers next time instead of sandals like 75% of our student body. I can’t believe that UCF knows that this field is crawling with red ants and you just don’t care. (nope)
- 11. Yes.
- 13. Hire well. Blur job boundaries. Invest in people. Everyone’s a marketer. Really. WHAT WE’VE FOUND
- 21. POINT 1 Hire well.
- 22. HR secrets of the Mafia
- 23. A great interview is a great recruit.
- 24. [classified ad]
- 25. The Bad Apple SLACKERS JERKS PESSIMISTS
- 26. The worst team member is the best predictor of team success.
- 27. play
- 28. play
- 32. Talent
- 33. POINT 2 Blur job boundaries.
- 35. Creative Production Accounts Web
- 36. Present at Chamber of Commerce luncheon Remove offensive Facebook comment Check compliance with state vendor regulations Understand interdepartmental politics Meet with trademark lawyer Know NCAA rules on photographing student athletes Get school policy on home school transcripts Brainstorm program to connect university partners Allocate media budget
- 37. Build deep expertise on some subjects, but general awareness of others.Be redundant.
- 40. Crazy ideas NO JOB DESCRIPTIONS? SMALL ON PURPOSE? CUT YOUR BUDGET IN HALF?
- 41. POINT 3 Invest in people.
- 44. The soup can’t be hotter than the pot.
- 45. POINT 4 Everyone’s a marketer. Really.
- 46. One-tenth of 1%
- 47. Councils DESIGN MARKETING WEB
- 51. Hire well. Blur job boundaries. Invest in people. Everyone’s a marketer. Really. SUMMARY
- 52. QUESTIONS?
- 53. CLOSING
- 54. Thanks.
Editor's Notes
- Hello. I’m Tom, the Creative Director for UCF Marketing. We are the third largest campus in the nation, 53,000 students, located in Orlando, FL.I’m going to talk about getting the most out of people when times are tough. I’d like to start by showing you a few things that might not seem to have anything in common.
- This is our online UCF stock image collection. Searchable keywords, login accounts. This cut our calls about photography to about zero.
- Our TV commerical
- And finally, this is a note from a student informing us he was going to sue UCF because he stepped in an ant mound in a temporary parking lot we had set up to handle overflow cars. And this is the customer service letter sent in response.
- What all of these things have in common is that none of them were done by the right person.
- Our photofile isn’t maintained by our department photographer (we don’t have one), it’s done by one of our print designers.
- The video wasn’t done by our department’s dedicated videographer (we don’t have one) it was done by one of our account executives.
- And can you guess if this customer service response was written by our customer service team (nope), it was written by me, a guy who went to art school
- So why are we having people do work that, at first glance, isn’t even remotely related to their job descriptions? Are we so strapped for cash that we all have to wear 18 different hats? Well, yes, but it’s not just that. It saves money and makes our jobs more interesting.
- Like all of you, we have a small group and are asked to do a lot. We can’t pay what the private sector pays. And we have limited resources. So we need to think hard about how to get the most out of what we do, where our energies are best spent and how to keep people excited about working here. And we have to demonstrate to our superiors that we are capable of doing more than bookmarks and flyers. Which is to say, we want to show the people with the power to fire us, or lay us off, that we are indispensable.
- [Hire well] You get great outputs with great inputs. Period. [Blur job boundaries] spreading the load increases the knowledge base and prevents us from putting all of our eggs in one basket. Our department can’t grind to a halt if someone leaves. [Invest in people] You decrease the likelihood of that happening by rewarding initiative. It’s obvious but worth mentioning: People who do the best work are not motivated by monotony. They want more responsibilities and new challenges. And if they don’t get that, they eventually find it elsewhere. You don’t want the people who thrive on sameness. [Everyone’s a marketer. Really] And finally, marketing in an organization is not just what the 12 people in my department do.
- I arrived at UCF in March of 2005.
- At the time the department consisted of my boss, the newly hired director of Marketing, Terry Helms, an admin asst, me, a part-time designer, and 3 student interns, the interns seemed to do a majority of the work. There was a writer. There was another individual, but I’m not entirely sure what she did. She had given notice before I even arrived.Around my second day the designer asked to speak to me. She asked me, “what is your vision was for the department?” I said “I want to be the worst designer here. I want to hire people better than me. I want to create an environment that fosters creativity And together we’re going to raise the standards of the work we do. And I think we’re going to have fun doing it.The next day she quit. SLIDE: remove designerOne month later the interns graduated and left Now to be fair, I think we were only the 6th largest university in the nation at the time.
- It took about 6 months, but we started to sketch out what the department was going to look like
- This is really the blueprint here. Except the Admin quit. But this, oh and the AD quit, and we relied on freelancers and interns. But basically this it it, really an ad agency model. Creative people to actually produce the work. Production management to make sure deadlines and budgets are met and an Account staff to act as liaison to internal clients, the client’s advocate when talking to us, our advocate when with the client.
- These AE positions are often paid for in part or in whole by the department they represent. They form the relationships that must be there to succeed.
- This was it for about a year, as time and budgets allowed we added more to the AE team, the freelancers and an intern went full-time, a designer became the AD for web (the first time the UCF M had any say in the web, the PM got an assistant and the Editor, the last member of the original department retired and was replaced by a copywriter.
- This is where we are today. Now we have a dedicated web group…of 2. I call Roger Code Guy, because who really knows what the hell web people do, they’re like mechanics. You just say, “OK, if that’s what needs to be done”This works for us. Is there anyone here with a similar set up?
- In retrospect, I am so grateful to that part-time designer who quit on my second day. Because I was going to have to fire her.
- I joke that early on we looked to organized crime for inspiration. We hired like the Mafia, where it’s really tough to get in. But once you’re in, you’re in for life. Who here has actually tried to fire a state worker? Then you know what I’m taking about. You have to live with them forever. I’m convinced it can’t be done. This was our attitude as we started rebuilding the department: “Let’s save ourselves a lot of grief, and put our energy into the recruiting and hiring, not the training and retraining.”
- We actively sought out people, through colleagues and pro orgs, and encouraged them to apply.
- We never relied on just the classified ad, because we were going to miss out on those people who would never apply because they think it will be an unchallenging, bureaucratic government job, and we’d get a ton of people who were hoping it’s an unchallenging, bureaucratic government job. We were willing to wait for he right person. We interviewed for a writer for two plus years, opening and closing a formal search multiple times, until we found the right person.It’s the people that make all the rest of it possible. If we didn’t have people with talent and brains, we weren’t going to do strong, effective work, no matter how many job systems or marketing strategies were in place.
- As important as getting good people is avoiding bad people: slackers, jerks, and pessimists. We tend to think of the group as dictating individual behavior, but an interesting study by sociologist Will Felps that was profiled on the radio show This American Life found the opposite: the worst team member is the best predictor of how any team performs. One applicant, when asked Why UCF? Replied “Beats workin’ as a greeter at Wal-Mart”
- The worst team member is the best predictor of how any team performs. There are certain people who, when they leave the office, it’s like a weight has been lifted. We can relax.
- Good people is a bit vague, What I specifically looked for on the creative side was the Basics. Good typography (The marketing side I can teach, but I’ve personally found typography the toughest to teach, it requires the most finesse. If they don’t have it, we didn’t hire them. I don’t have time to teach someone something they should’ve learned in school),
- composition, conceptual thinking etc and work ethic. My job is primarily motivated by laziness, I am, as any manager should be, looking to delegate. A professor of mine said If you can’t delegate to ‘em,why did you hire them?
- My friend Larry says, “The harder you work the more talented you become.”I’m fortunate to work with talented people, but my sense is talent is not immutable, talented people work harder. You’d think it would be the opposite, they’re talented, so they can coast, but they actually work harder. They set a high bar for themselves and are willing to take risks and are comfortable wearing a lot of hats.
- There is something very misleading about this org chart, its clean delineation of roles. It should probably look like this:
- Example: This is a list of things required of me in a week, which all fits under the title Things They Didn’t Cover in Art School.
- When I worked in an agency and we needed photographs, we hired a photographer. Here, we buy a camera and give it to a designer. And that designer gets an intern from our photo program and they go on shoots, and devise a method to charge other departments, which buys us more equipment. He maintains the photofile. Then he teaches another designer how to do his jobWe didn’t cover that in art school, either.
- The side effect of all of this is better work. I’ve given this talk the unfortunate title Maximizing People Power (I was pressed for time), but it could just as well be called Maximizing Creativity
- There is a school of thought that is actually against job descriptions, that thinks that employees should be made aware of the general goals of the department and it’s up to them to get there. And I think there is some wisdom in this. If people are confined to a box, you’ll stifle new ideas. For us, we have a standing goal to promote UCF and connect people. There are certain duties assigned to people, of course, but the end state is the same. We try to promote a culture that is not about what fits in our job description, but what makes sense. I figure if we can align an individual’s interest with the department’s needs, then we get better solutions quicker. An even crazier idea is that more people and bigger budgets do not necessarily lead to better or more efficient work. In economics its long been understood that there is diminishing productivity as you add more people, because it requires more coordination and management. And I’ve heard many creatives say, “you want more creativity—cut the budget in half” Innovative thinking is free and it actually flourishes under restriction. If you ask people to name ten white objects they often come up with as fewer than if you ask them to name ten white objects in their refrigerator.
- Losing good people isn’t just a drag, it’s expensive. In business they say a search for a replacement employee can cost up to half of that employee’s salary. That person leaves, someone else has to do the work, maybe you have freelancers or do overtime, you’re less efficient and productive, you have to take more time away to set up a search and interview and do all of the paperwork. At my university, a fast track search will still take 3 months from the time of the first job post to the time the person actually works their first day. Investing in good people is literally an investment.
- In an environment where budgets can get slashed and there may be no raises or promotions or conferences, where people can sometimes feel invisible to the university at large (unless something’s gone wrong), the creativity can’t only be of the marketing kind it needs to extend to the management of the people doing all the hard work. Providing a work place where people are valued and can speak their mind and grow professionally, varying assignments, offering flex time, Our creative team meets periodically to critique our work (including mine) visit art galleries or watch a film, or--heaven forbid--draw. Besides stress play also spurs creativity. Periods of non-directed exploration.I talked a bit about blurring job boundaries, and that’s an investment too. Rewarding initiative. We do what we can to create an interesting workplace, vary assignments. That’s a form of professional development. Some work is not necessarily “reputation-defining” but it does exercise creative muscles, such as work for the Theatre Department.
- It’s obvious but worth mentioning: People who do the best work are not motivated by monotony. They want more responsibilities and new challenges. And if they don’t get that, they eventually find it elsewhere. You don’t want the people who thrive on sameness.
- And look at yourself. Study after study has shown, people don’t leave jobs for money. You know the saying, “Workers don’t leave companies, they leave managers.” Allow some feedback on your own behavior. Take classes. Who here has at least one person under them but has never been required to take any management classes? Most people don’t. You manage people because you’ve been there the longest, or have some technical expertise, but that doesn’t mean anything. It’s like teaching, it is a different skill entirely. I’ve seen incredible designers who couldn’t teach anything, and horrible designers who are able to articulate and animate their subject perfectly.An honest manager knows that when someone leaves, the manager has failed, either to hire correctly, or manage correctly.
- There’s a saying that marketing is everyone’s job. How could it be any other way?
- One-tenth of 1% represents the size of the marketing department in relationship to the rest of the university’s employees. For print that’s one designer for every 2,500. For web it’s one for every 10,000.There is no way we can service the entire university, we have to get assistance from other people.
- We started a Design council the first year I was here, made up of the actual people who put together communication materials (mostly update college websites or do conference materials for faculty). This has been the most effective way to guide implementation of the brand. Because none of these people are required to do what I say (they all report to their respective deans) I’ve had much more success using these meetings to softly present what we’re doing. We get more buy-in when it’s presented as an idea we’ve discussed than something that’s imposed from above. People get a thrill in rebelling against things imposed from above, it’s one of the few ways they can exercise their power. This group usually sees university marketing initiatives before anyone, I listen and take their feedback, we have a show and tell. Sometimes people just want to complain (all designers complain about the same things: oblivious client, no budgets, no respect). Sometimes it’s just valuable to get to know each other’s faces. They know whom to contact for resources. We also have Marketing council for people a bit higher up the totem pole. They get weekly e-mails showcasing a project, so we can share ideas (you might use this for your thing). It also advertises our services, subtly. And there’s finally a web council.
- When we started an online newsletter, well we have one writer, so we gave logins to individual departments to post their own stuff.
- But it’s not just designers that do stuff, secretaries do, faculty recruit, etc. So we have periodic brand classes, using our most handsome team members. We share the history of the university, graphic standards, marketing dos and don’t. It’s a great way to disseminate our message, but maybe more importantly you run into the unlikeliest people. I always say make friends, not newsletters. You get a pulse of what people are concerned about and I’ve learned a lot about how the work is received internally through these meetings, and even the hunger among employees to feel proud of where they work, to understand what it’s about, where it’s going. They don’t always get that from the administration. And those people also meet people they never would bump into normally.
- [Hire well] You get great outputs with great inputs. Period. [Blur job boundaries] spreading the load increases the knowledge base and prevents us from putting all of our eggs in one basket. Our department can’t grind to a halt if someone leaves. [Invest in people] You decrease the likelihood of that happening by rewarding initiative. It’s obvious but worth mentioning: People who do the best work are not motivated by monotony. They want more responsibilities and new challenges. And if they don’t get that, they eventually find it elsewhere. You don’t want the people who thrive on sameness. [Everyone’s a marketer. Really] And finally, marketing in an organization is not just what the 12 people in my department do.
- My fear in preparing this presentation is of course that I’m probably stating the obvious for a lot of you. In fact, having talked with many of you, I’m sure you could give a similar presentation with your own insights on management that you’ve learned through the years. But what I also thought was, even though these may be simple prescriptions, available to anyone, they are often quite difficult to implement and very easy to forget. Too often our philosophy of management falls victim to the demands of real-world deadlines and we are reduced to working project to project. We don’t have time for a birds eye view because it’s all we can do to keep our head above water. So my hopes for this presentation are very modest: think of this like a trip to the chiropractor, you just need an adjustment.
- Take these strategies less as a radically new way of thinking than as a reminder of what you already know: that the most valuable asset is not your viewbook, your graphic standards or your Twitter account. It’s your people. This strange group, almost randomly assembled, who might never cross paths in the normal course of their lives. We often have little in common personally except that we get a paycheck from the same place. But we’re together now for about half of our waking day. It is a fact we spend more time with our co-workers than we do our own family. That time can be spent meandering or frustrated, or it can be an opportunity to grow and create. I know what I vote for.