Larry D. Lauer

Circumstances this week caused me to reflect on what I have learned about leading and managing the work of creative professionals. I recalled strong feelings of fear that my peer colleagues might not like what my staff just produced, and would think less of me. Or, important trustees, or donors, or community leaders, might react badly to what they saw, and that my professional judgment would come under question.  Getting comfortable with executive level marketing and communication pressures takes time.

I learned the hard way that creative people cannot be micro-managed.  To do this turns off their creativity, and renders them unproductive.  Likewise, if they work without guidelines, the result will be no results at all.  So, what should you do?

First, you should establish a creative team-building process up front that clarifies general expectations and guidelines. Second, you must accept the challenge of constantly educating your colleagues and target audiences about how your profession achieves long-term results. 

You can give editors and writers a set of branding themes that you want reinforced in feature stories over time.  You can also ask them to give you a heads-up on anything controversial so you can collaborate in advance on “approaches” to the story.  In this way, you build a relationship based on respect.   Then, you should not feel a strong need to edit the editor’s or writer’s work.  Glitches will occur, but even those that seem major will have minor long-term effect.

You should give artists plenty of information about each piece’s communication objective, as well as known expectations of intended audiences. This should be done long before they ever sit down at the computer.  Good designers can then come up with good ideas to consider.  If they start to design too soon, their work inevitably will be off the mark, and not effective.     

You should identify what communication materials exist primarily to promote only positive stories and people. These are referred to as “vanity” publications.  And you should also identify those that require journalistic integrity in order to establish broad audience credibility… usually this list includes the university magazine. It’s important for these audiences to understand that they might not always like what the writer reports, but credibility only comes with a measure of editorial independence.

It is not easy to manage creative professionals. It is not the same as managing a group of office workers. It requires leading by making expectations and guidelines clear in advance, by supporting and explaining the work of creative writers and artists, and by educating colleagues and important audiences on why you go about your work the way you do.