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TBWA NY layoffs today.
Who’s all-in on BitCoin?
Layoffs at Omnicom shops today?
Who’s negotiated severance? Any tips?
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Getting involved and adding to conversations in a building / productive way never hurts. Making your team feel valued, getting involved in culture initiatives (or starting something if you see a gap / need).
Lifting up more junior colleagues feels good and side benefit - makes you feel more like a team player / indispensable. People forget how clearly junior members see what’s going on, how much they know, and talk -and they aren’t junior forever. Many times someone I had a great working relationship when they were junior, put in a good word years later when I was testing waters at a new agency etc.
Sounds obvious and Pollyana-Ish - but doesn’t hurt, and distracts you from job security anxiety.
Hope that’s helpful !
Weeding out who is wrong is difficult. Once they get in the organization, your goal needs to be to nurture them as well. Into someone better. It is hard to say you're bad, therefore you don't deserve my attention... in fact if they are bad, they probably deserve more attention! There are so many reasons why this is needed... one of them being you picked them, so you deal with it. Another being a PIP is really to help someone, not to give their career a funeral.
I would say someone bad needs to given less power. If they were brought into a position of power, then yes, needs to be weeded out or moved to a position with much less power.
Frameworks. Putting how-tos together to be delegated to others.
Career coaching, not just on a quarterly basis.
Facing the clients to define what the deliverables should look like. Others will put it together but you set the tone on the work.
Pitches. Bring the best in class practices to pitches.
Exploring the unknown or new practices in your discipline. You will stay ahead of the fame for your team and share that knowledge with them.
This is exactly what I would have written had I not been too lazy to write it.
I feel like I just discovered a twin or something.
You talk bs and buzzwords, disappear from the office at random times for lengthy periods, rarely do any actual work while yelling at people to assert your authority, and then take a CCO job at a consultancy.
Does the consultancy start with a V? 👀
The CDs and SVPs in my agency usually don’t do anything and then throw people under the bus for errors. This smokescreen usually works for a while until employees realizes the Emperors have no clothes. Then we all look for other jobs and clients wonder why turnover is high
I try to make myself look as busy a possible. Pre COVID, I was always walking around as quickly as I could, often checking my phone at the same time. I’d arrive late and leave early for meetings because my calendar is wall-to-wall. I’d never hang around for more than one drink cause I’d have far more important things to do. I’ll review work quickly but send the feedback just before bed to make it look like I’m working late. Oh, nearly forgot, I trawl celebrated new work and email links to the team and tell them we should be making stuff like this.
Hahahah this is spot on.
Having climbed the ranks, I would say some of the things we do, we can't share. Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean nothing is happening.
I've seen senior folks laying off others ,while my senior folk didn't lay off anyone. Now he is gone, we know he was actually defending us behind our backs, making the P&L work so we don't have to lay off anyone.
Thank you for taking the time to write that out! Very interesting
My senior team does jack, but I'd love it if they actually took an interest in the direction of the office / company. Bring some thought leadership, motivate people and give them a goal to work toward, experiment with new process where old ones are failing, audit practices to see where improvements can be made, elevate employees -- you know, the stuff senior leadership should already be doing.
Reminder: be nice to everyone. You never know if you’ll end up in a sit where you are depending on a past working relationship. This mindset has never failed me with previous junior and senior coworkers :)
Thank you for actually delegating and not micromanaging. It’s much needed! I think the best thing higher-ups can do is focus on the things their employees don’t have time for or don’t have oversight over. Like fighting for good opportunities and new clients, building the culture of the agency, and overtly letting it be known that you’re a resource that employees can turn to for anything.
Oh, it’s a whole other game at that point. You’re managing a team, all the good & challenging that comes with that. If you’re a good leader, you’re mapping career paths, helping them along, and having regular one on ones.
Then there are the C-suite stakeholders & clients. If you piss me off, we can talk about it and move forward. If I piss them off, I’m going to be fired.
Advocating for your team and their needs, mapping process, stakeholder comms, guiding excellent work. We just delegate the “doing” of the projects. There’s a lot more that happens on the other end.
The good ones in creative leadership have actually done the jobs of those they manage and are able to step in and help when needed.
Don’t trust a Creative Director who was never a junior designer.
Can confirm.
My expectations for leadership: keep learning new skills so you can stay in the forefront and help lead the agency into the future because we cannot keep doing things the same way as before. Understand how other agencies are evolving - are they doing something we should take note of?
Identify problems that clients across the board are facing and then help lead the agency in developing tools or ways of working to help solve those issues that are within our control.
So basically don’t just push paper and help evolve your agency model.
Also, cultivate the relationship with the clients that are the decision makers.
ADD VALUE. Review pieces of work and input on ways to make them even better without blowing up the process — and take the initiative/ offer to help vs. dishing out more work to jr level people. The worst people in leadership blow stuff up too late in the process OR bring absolutely nothing at the table in terms of thinking. If lower level people think you’re smart and want your feedback / approval on things, they’ll respect you.
You should be touching everything you oversee in some way, and that will influence the overall outcome of the team.
The value is that outcome making everyone nice and happy, including bosses, clients, subordinates, and yourself.
It's like leading an orchestra or some other such analogy.
When I was in that position, I was leading the biggest piece of business at the agency. There would be a dozen or so active projects at any given time I’d have to be overseeing. So many meetings. And lots of client time. It was surprisingly busy.