Two words I dislike personally, and dislike even more professionally.  I try not to use them if at all possible.  Generally speaking… a term such as these is so absolute, it doesn’t really end up applying often in the recruiting industry.  Instead, I am a big fan of reading tea leaves, tarot cards, crystal balls, rain dancing – whatever pops your cork.  Often times these methods are quite accurate; sometimes frighteningly so.

That said, in my line of work, when working with human beings (and I’m going to brake my own rule to say)- there is ALWAYS room for error, and we should NEVER assume.

The savvy networker, Liz Ryan recently wrote an article called “Underhanded Ways Hiring Managers Say They’re Not Interested.”  Basically it describes the various ways a hiring manager tells a candidate “no” without actually saying that word. In my opinion, her thoughts veer a little too near the “always” and the “never.”

————————————————————————————————————————————————–

Here’s where we differ:

Hiring Manager Says: “We’re going to look at some other candidates.”

Ms. Ryan’s  translation:  Sometimes they tell you that you’re one of three or five or some other number of candidates in the pipeline. That’s fine. It’s reasonable for a hiring manager to consider a number of people before making a hiring decision. The big red flag is when the hiring manager or the HR person says, “We’re going to look at some other candidates.”   Wait–you’re going to go find some new candidates, after you’ve interviewed me? That’s a sign to get out of Dodge. For whatever reason, you’re not their cup of tea.

My take:  With unemployment being near or over 10% – the client holds the cards in this market.  If the position isn’t a 911 fill (recruiter speak for ” I need this person 2 weeks ago!”) then they have the time, and the right – to be choosy with the talent pool that they have in front of them.

Hiring Manager Says: “We also have some qualified internal candidates.”

Ms. Ryan’s thought:  If you were a hiring manager, who would you look at first: the people who already work around you every day or strangers who responded to a job ad? You’d look at your internal candidates, of course. You’d talk to those people, and if you wanted to hire one of them, you’d never place a job ad. When you post a job publicly, you’re proclaiming to the world that you’ve already ruled out whichever internal candidates applied.

That’s why, when you’re into a recruiting process and you hear, for the first time, “You know, we also have some qualified internal candidates,” it’s time to cut and run. If there really are internal candidates, it’s a huge disservice to those folks to not make decisions about them before bringing in outside people like you.

And an ethical employer owes it to you and other external candidates to make up their dang mind about internal applicants before wasting your time. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

And Me: Especially in larger organizations, HR folk are often required to post internally, and cxv bn those talent need to be vetted the same way that your resume does.  Sometimes internal candidates pop up at the last minute.  Don’t sweat it – if you are the right talent, you’ll get the job.

If the Hiring Manager Says: “You’re still in the running.”

Ms. Ryan Reads this as: If anyone from the hiring organization says this to you, that’s your cue to bail. This is the professional equivalent of your sweetheart saying, “You’re awesome, but I think we should both see other people, too.”

I think: It’s summer. People are on vacation.  More than one person needs to give buy in before a final decision is made.  Life is in session.  Budgets need to be approved and procurement is holding up the process.  Any number of things can illicit this response.  Our time frame and sense of urgency isn’t always the same as the hiring manager.

If you hear: “We need to decide what kind of person we’re looking for.”

Ms. Ryan Thinks: This is the mealy-mouthed manager’s way of saying, “Whatever kind of person we’re looking for, it ain’t you.”

She’s close. I think: This is a peeve of mine. I prefer that the hiring manager knows what they want before they begin the search. Sometimes once in the search – they realize that what they thought they wanted and what they actually need are 2 different things – so this makes complete sense.

And LAST, if the Hiring Manager says: “We’re going to sit down and discuss all of the candidates next week.”

Ms. Ryan understands this to mean: Imagine that you’re a hiring manager with a big, expensive problem to solve. (If you didn’t have an expensive problem, you’d never have gotten approval to fill the position.) Imagine that the perfect person shows up, someone you know could solve your problem and let you sleep at night instead of tossing and turning. Can you imagine saying to that person, the one you desperately want on your team, “We’re going to sit down and discuss all of the candidates?”It would never happen. “We’re going to sit down next week” not only means “We’re in no rush to hire you” but also means “We don’t mind telling you that none of us would burst out crying if you decided to move on to other opportunities.”

I think: Again – a lot of the hiring process is a matter of timing.  Maybe they are bullshitting you. Maybe they aren’t. Bottom line, and I tell talent that I meet this all of the time: Trust your gut, follow your bliss.  Have faith. Leap, and the net will appear.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————

As a headhunter, recruiter, placement advisor, and part time shrink, I have heard it all. Sure – sometimes the client or HR manager will run you in circles instead of giving you a firm “thanks but no thanks”. For me, I prefer the direct approach. It’s in my east coast blood -I can’t help it.  Unfortunately, not everyone has a broken filter like me and they end up taking the less direct approach.  I’m not saying that Ms. Ryan is completely off base on her thoughts above…. I am saying that there are two sides to every story.

Here’s some information about information about information. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.  It’s meta information… like in the title and it’s EVERYWHERE.  It’s a trip when you think about it.  This entry was written for 52’s blog by Brian Belefant whose link to more info is included in the body.  Thanks Brian!

A picture used to be worth 1,000 words. But thatʼs no longer enough. When I import a picture into Aperture, I can append it with 52 meta tags –– words that describe everything from the focal length I shot  it at to its copyright.

This may seem fairly benign, but when youʼre sitting in the Newark Airport for five hours waiting to make a connecting flight –– as I am –– you have lots of time to explore implications.

My first notion is to think of it in economic terms. What used to be worth 1,000 words is now worth 1,052. Thatʼs a five percent rate of inflation, or deflation, depending on whether youʼre talking about the pictures or the words.

Words about pictures is only one thing, though. I write a blog (www.60secdirector.blogspot.com). Recently, I had a slightly uneasy feeling when I found out that people were blogging about my blog.

Sure, itʼs flattering. But some of the blogs that blogged about my blog have larger readerships than I do. Isnʼt that weird?

And then thereʼs the part about the information itself. My blog provides information –– itʼs bite-sized lessons on directing for aspiring filmmakers. But when someone blogs about my blog, theyʼre providing information about information.

Meta information.

And what about twittering, googling, facebooking, linking, tagging, and all those other verbs that didnʼt even exist 15 years ago, but now have infected our language to the point that theyʼre better understood than concepts that many would argue contribute more to our body of knowledge? Can you distinguish between “continuous” and “continual”? I canʼt. I used to know the difference. Now I have to look it up. But I can tell you how a blog is different from a tweet. Does that mean information about information supplanting information itself?

(Okay, bad example. “Continuous” and “continual” are words about information. But you get my point.)

Wandering around the terminal for the fifteenth time, I pass Starbucks. They have nine different words to describe coffee mixed with milk. And Iʼm not even talking about sizes or the adjectives you can apply to fine-tune your purchase, like “wet”, “dry”, “no-foam”, and “extra-hot.”

Outside Hudson News, thereʼs a huge poster for ʻLuckyʼ. An ad for a magazine dedicated to shopping. Or to put it another way, an ad for a collection of ads and information, much of which, Iʼm sure, refers to other information –– books, other magazines, movies.

If you buy the magazine, they put it in a plastic bag with pictures of magazine covers on it, presumably to advertise their availability to the other passengers waiting five hours to make a connection. Hudson News recruits you to disseminate information about information about information.

Inside Hudson News, my eye is drawn to a particular book. ʻPreciousʼ. Based on the movie ʻPreciousʼ, which was based on the book ʻPushʼ.

Huh?

A book based on a movie based on a book? They should make a movie about that. And if it does well, they can turn it into a book. And so on.

A couple more hours of introspection and I realize that all of this is inevitable. The information age is, after all, about information. And now that there’s so much of it, someone has to devise ways to make sense of it all.  More important, to make money off of it.

Speaking of money, remember back in 1971 when Nixon took the US dollar off the gold standard? Okay, me neither. But it was big news back then. Suddenly, a dollar wasn’t a proxy for a specified amount of a certain metal; a dollar was worth, well, whatever you could buy for it. Dollars went from being currency to information –– a representation of our consensus about objectsʼ and servicesʼ relative worth.

Thatʼs pretty analogous to the situation weʼre in now with information about information. If information is gold, then information about information is dollars, yen, pounds, pesos, and all the other pieces of paper that represent agreement not only about the relative values of commodities, but about each other.

I donʼt know if that blows your mind, but it blows mine. Especially when you extend the analogy to the explosion of options, derivatives, credit default swaps, tranches, and myriad other ways that money has been parsed since it stopped being money.

As they finally start boarding my flight, I realize that weʼre standing on the shore of a vast, unexplored continent of information about information and Iʼd be lying to you if I told you that a five-hour layover in Newark gave me the insight to see what itʼs going to look like once we get past the beach. All I know is that change is coming. And once it comes, there aint no going back.

And then I think, you know what? Someday, someone a couple of generations younger than me might find himself with five hours to kill while waiting to board a “flight” over the continent of meta-information. And maybe heʼll realize that once again, the landscape with which heʼs familiar –– the land he can comfortably soar over, recognizing the patterns that seem so perfectly obvious from 30,000 feet up –– is about to be supplanted by an entirely new paradigm of understanding.

Maybe heʼll think back to us and think, “How charming they seem now, those early pioneers who forged into the unknown and tried to make sense of it.”

Put that in your blog. Just, you know, please be sure to spell my name right.

It’s a pretty quick read so I buzzed (literally after that much sugar) through it.  After reading Dan 3.0’s description I set back in my chair and said, out loud which made everyone’s head swivel, “huh.”

What a brilliant thought.  Ask the people!  Not a new idea for sure…  today IS the 90th anniversary of women’s right to vote, you know.  I think the novelty of the idea is in how the feedback is used.  In the below companies, it seems to be used directly… not really edited or diffused, or at least minimally so.

Then I start thinking about the what-if’s.  What if 52 incorporated some form of this?  Like, um, events.  We ask folks what they want to see, or learn about, or who they want to hear from.  Then…. we do it!  Again I say, “huh.”  OR… and this is kooky so bear with me… but what if a “gig” is posted.  Say a client needs a poster with xxxxxx copy on it, and xxxxxxx graphics incorporated, to be used for xxxxxx application, and whatever else we know.  Then  if you want to work on it, you do, then upload your work directly to that client’s ‘profile’ for them to review. Then, in the end, if the client uses your art, you get the “prize.”  In this case probably money.

Ok, I’m sure there are major flaws in this 35 second idea but really though, sometimes it’s tough to get started in a field, or a new city once you’ve moved, or even if you wanted to change careers.  Something like this could provide a break-in chance.

“Huh.”  These are just my sugar flooded braincells banging together.  Here’s the article originally posted on Spring Wise.  Thoughts?

Five Businesses That Look to the Crowds for Content

by Stefan Grimm and Jim Stewart

Tapping the crowd for creative input can provide a double-sided benefit for businesses: first, it unleashes a huge resource of ideas, often at little or no cost. Second, it’s a powerful marketing tool, providing information about who potential customers are, and about what they like. Here are five recently spotted enterprises that make use of content from the crowd:

1. NAMING FORCE — Naming Force crowdsources name ideas for businesses, websites, and products. Clients sign up for a package of suggestions and provide a brief description of what they want named. The incentive for the community of namers is a cash prize of USD 100-500, paid by the client to the person whose idea is chosen. If the client doesn’t like any of the suggestions, they’re refunded the prize money. (Related: Name This.)

2. OPENFILE — Plenty of news sites carry content penned by readers, but the subjects themselves tend to be chosen by the editors. Toronto’s OpenFile turns this model on its head: content is written by the site’s staff, but the story suggestions come from readers. The idea is that this collaborative approach to newsgathering will uncover stories that traditional journalists might overlook, and generate content that better suits the local audience. (Related: Spot.us.)

3. HELP ME DECIDE — The makers of the Help Me Decide Facebook app argue that people trust recommendations from friends more than other advice found online. Accordingly, the app allows users to get decision-making advice from their social network. Users post a question—about anything from relationships to purchasing decisions—and then invite suggestions from people on their network. (Related: Hunch.)

4. LISTENER DRIVEN RADIO — Ohio’s Listener Driven Radio makes a set of tools to help broadcasters become crowdcasters. Using LDR, a radio station’s listeners can provide real-time feedback about what they’re hearing—dynamically influencing the station’s playlists. They can use the station’s website, Twitter or mobile phones to rate songs and make requests, and this information is fed into a weighting system for the station’s music library. (Related: Songza.)

5. DAN 3.0 — Taking the idea of consumers influencing what’s being broadcast even further, online show Dan 3.0 launched this month. It’s about a young man called Dan Brown, who for one year has allowed his audience to control his life. Viewers can submit suggestions and vote online on what they want Dan to do. Suggestions so far include writing a letter to the US president, and visiting a viewer on her birthday.

Unfortunately 52 isn’t involved in this at all.  And unfortunately the tour doesn’t stop in THIS Portland.  But anyone can submit  and I know of a bunch of folks that should!!  Plus, I have a sneaking suspicion that 52 NYC will represent when the tour makes a stop in Brooklyn.

Many of you may have already heard about this, if you haven’t here’s the deal:

Thousands of sketchbooks will be exhibited at galleries and museums as they make their way on tour across the country.

After the tour, all sketchbooks will enter into the permanent collection of The Brooklyn Art Library, where they will be barcoded and available for the public to view.

Anyone – from anywhere in the world – can be a part of the project.

To get more information or to enter (do it… I would if I were extremely talented like you) go here: SketchbookProject

No One Nos: Learning to Say No to Bad Ideas written by Whitney Hess

No. One word, a complete sentence. We all learned to say it around our first birthday, so why do we have such a hard time saying it now when it comes to our work?

Guilt. Fear. Pressure. Doubt. As we grow up, we begin to learn that not doing what others expect of us can lead to all sorts of negative consequences. It becomes easier to concede to their demands than to stand up for ourselves and for what is right.

Need to no

As a user experience designer, I have made a career out of having to say No. It is my job to put an end to bad design practices within an organization before I can make any progress on improving the lives of our customers. And it’s rarely easy.

• My client says, “I want to build a spaceship!” I say, “No, we need to make a kite.”

• My client says, “We need to keep that space blank for my next genius idea!” I say, “No, we’ll find space for your idea once you have one.”

• My client says, “I want this done tomorrow!” I say, “No, it will take a month.”

I am a human brake pad.

Each one of us brings an area of specialization to our projects, and it is our responsibility to exhibit that expertise. If you don’t know anything that no one else on your team knows, then it’s probably time to walk away. But if you do, it is your duty to assert that capability and share your knowledge for the betterment of the final product.

Mahatma Gandhi said, “A ‘no’ uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a ‘yes’ merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.” As people who create stuff with the hope that other people will use it, it is outright cowardly for us to protect ourselves before defending the needs of our users.

When to no

When I’m incredibly passionate about something, I tend to be stubborn. And when I recognize a problem, I’m not one to keep it inside. As a result, I have had some situations with teammates and clients in which I have been rather abrasive with my delivery of a no. Fearful that I won’t be heard or understood, I have overemphasized my position to the point that people don’t hear what I said but how how I said it.

Having been made aware of this issue and given the opportunity to fix it, I can freely admit now that it was getting in the way of my ultimate goal—helping people. As practitioners in design and development, there are many common difficult situations in which we may find ourselves, and there are tactful ways to handle them. Perhaps you will recognize a few of the following.

Citing best practices

When you’re hired to serve a specific function on your team but are asked to do something you’re not comfortable with, often the best way to say no is to simply educate the other on best practices.

Kelly Andrews, owner of 1618design, recently received a client request to remove a quick e-mail-only mailing list signup from their site in favor of a full-page signup form.

Fearing that this would significantly decrease their number of subscribers, Andrews informed them that it is common practice for websites to include a quick subscribe since most people don’t want to spend the time filling out a form. A simple but powerful business case: The shorter option “would allow for immediate capture of interested people,” he explained. And they were sold. They hadn’t considered that before, but once they had that information, it armed them with the power to make a better choice. “The client was happy with the decision,” Andrews said. “She thanked me for being an expert and educating her instead of just doing what was asked.”

Data reigns

When Samantha LeVan worked as a user experience designer at Corel, she was surrounded by a large team of engineers who were also accustomed to doing design. Most of the time, they had really interesting ideas that LeVan enjoyed riffing off of, but now and then they got stuck in the details and LeVan would have to make her case.

In one particular design, one of the engineers insisted that a drop-down component was necessary for the selection of three options. LeVan urged that three radio buttons would be more appropriate, but the engineer was unconvinced. The disagreement went on for a few days before LeVan realized that she needed data to support her case.

She turned to the CogTool—a UI prototyping tool that automatically evaluates the effectiveness of a design based on a “predictive human performance model”—developed at Carnegie Mellon University. The results showed that expert use task time was dramatically reduced with radio buttons over drop-downs. Seeing the facts, the engineer relented.

“Your opinion won’t matter,” says LeVan. “It’s important that you prove your point with numbers.”

Pricing yourself out

Sometimes the best way to say no to bad design is not to take on the project in the first place. When Charlene Jaszewski, a freelance content strategist, was recently asked to help a friend’s brother with a website for his concrete company, she knew he had a limited budget but expected that she could help him limit the scope.

“Besides wanting ‘flying’ menus on each and every page, in a different style for each page,” Jaszewski recounts, “he wanted huge orange diamonds for the menus on the front page, and to top it off, he wanted a custom-made animation of a concrete truck on the front page and in the sidebar of every other page—the barrel rolling around with the logo of his company.” Now that just gives me shivers.

Jaszewski advised that his customers would be more interested in some relevant content, such as a portfolio of his previous work, but he was convinced that he needed lots of flashy extras to impress his visitors. And he wouldn’t give up.

Not wanting to overtly turn down the work, Jaszewski contacted animators and Flash designers, and came back with a price that was five times the business owner’s budget. He demanded a lower price, but Jaszewski just apologized and said that that’s what she would have to pay the appropriate people to do the work. Unsurprisingly, he took a pass, and Jaszewski later found out that he’d been trying to get his dream site built for the past eight years. Happily, she wouldn’t be the one to give it to him.

Shifting focus from what to who

In April 2009, Lynne Polischuik, an independent user experience designer, was hired by an early stage startup—a private photo-sharing web app—to act as project manager to get them to launch. The product was intended to be an alternative to Facebook for parents who desired private groups of friends with whom to safely share photos of their young children.

Because the team envisioned the product as appealing to all members of the family, they wanted people of all ages to be able to use the app—including children and elderly grandparents without e-mail addresses. To allow for this, they developed a login system that relied extensively on cookies and technological trickery to provide secure access without requiring the user to enter credentials. Things were constantly breaking, and as a result, no one could log in.

Polischuik felt she had to step in. “I ended up making the argument that they needed to design not for extreme edge cases, but for the more probable, and revenue generating, ones,” she explains. “Would someone who doesn’t have an e-mail address be savvy enough to want to share images and photos on the web? Probably not.”

To sway the team, Polischuik took a step back and did some user research to develop personas to guide their decisions. Once the team was refocused on who they were really designing for, they were able to move forward more strategically. As disagreements in execution came up along the way, she would do a few quick usability tests of the proposed idea, and let the team see with their own eyes how their prospective customers struggled. By reframing the argument away from their opinions and demonstrating the negative impact on the user, the opposition was quickly defeated.

How to no

Last October while on the phone with Harry Max—a pioneer in the field of Information Architecture, co-founder of Virtual Vineyards/Wine.com, (the first secure shopping system on the web), and now an executive coach—I complained about having way too much on my plate and desperately needing someone to give me a break.

He made me realize that it was actually I who was to blame, taking on more than I could handle by not protecting my time, and recommended that I read The Power of a Positive No by William Ury.

The book changed my life.

Ury proposes a methodology for saying no “while getting to Yes.” He argues that our desire to say no is not to be contradictory, but rather to stand up for a deeper yes—what we believe to be true, right, virtuous, and necessary. And that instead of making our defense a negative one, we can frame it in a positive light that is more likely to lead to a favorable outcome.

The following may sound really corny, but bear with me. It has completely transformed how I handle conflict and decision-making.

The structure of a positive no is a “Yes! No. Yes? statement.” In Ury’s words: The first Yes! expresses your interest; the No asserts your power; and the second Yes? furthers your relationship. For example, you might say “I, too, want prospective customers to see our company as current and approachable, but I don’t feel that a dozen social media badges at the top of the page will help us achieve that. What if we came up with a few alternative approaches and chose the most effective one together?”

He advocates not for just delivering your no in that manner, but also preparing for it and following through on it in the same way. Without a plan and without continued action, your assertion is a lot less believable—and a lot less likely to work.

Some of the most powerful takeaways from the book just might help you when it comes time for you to fight the good fight.

• Never say no immediately. Don’t react in the heat of the moment, or you might say something you don’t really mean. Things are rarely as urgent as we believe them to be, so take a step back, go to your quiet place, and really think through the issue at hand. Not only will your argument be clearer once you’ve had a chance to rehearse it, but it’s more likely the other will be ready to hear it.
• Be specific in describing your interests. When saying no, it’s better to describe what you’re for rather than what you’re against. Instead of just maintaining a position, help the other person to understand why you are concerned and what you’re trying to protect. You may just find that you share the same goal, and can work together to find the right solution.
• Have a plan B. There will be times that other people just won’t take your no for an answer. So you’re going to need a plan B as a last resort. Are you going to go over the person’s head? Are you going to prevent the project from moving forward? Are you going to quit? By exploring what you’re truly prepared to do ahead of time, you’ll have considerably more confidence to stand your ground and you won’t be afraid of what might come next.
• Express your need without neediness. Desperation is never attractive and won’t get you anywhere. Present your case with conviction and matter-of-factness. Does your assertion cease to be true if the other person refuses to agree? No. So don’t act like it does. Needing the other to comply makes you look unsure and dependent, diminishing yourself and putting them in a position of power.
• Present the facts and let the other draw their own conclusions. I’d venture to guess that most of the time you’re working with people who are pretty smart, pretty logical, and pretty well-intentioned. Perhaps they just don’t have all of the information that you do. Instead of telling them what to think, it is more useful to provide the necessary facts on which they can base their own judgment. Sometimes allowing the other person to feel like the decision was partially their own will help you get your way.
• The shorter it is, the stronger it is. Pascal famously said, “I wrote you a long letter because I didn’t have time to make it shorter.” The longer the argument, the sloppier and less well-thought out it appears. You don’t need five reasons why something won’t work; just one good one will do.
• As you close one door, open another. Don’t be a wet blanket. If you strongly believe that something shouldn’t be done, devise an alternative that the team can get behind. You aren’t helping anyone—let alone yourself—if you simply derail the project with your objections. Being a team player instead of a contrarian will help build trust and respect for your ideas.
• Be polite. Ninety-nine times out of 100 we’re talking about issues of mild discomfort and dissatisfaction of our users, not life-or-death issues. There’s no reason to raise your voice, use inappropriate language, or cut anyone down. When you do, you prevent people from hearing the essence of what you’re trying to communicate. So keep your cool, be kind, and give your teammates and clients the respect they deserve. Just because you might understand something that they don’t doesn’t mean you’re a better person than they are.

Good to no

By taking pride in your work and upholding your role on a team, you will help to create a positive environment for all involved. No doubt other people will follow in your footsteps, and each person will become more responsible for themselves and for the greater good of the project. You’ll be seen as more professional, more authoritative, and more reliable.

Also consider the possibility that you may be steamrolling over other people’s ideas, and they’re too afraid to speak up. One of my favorite sayings is: “God gave us two ears and one mouth to use in proportion.” Let this be a reminder not only to say no, but to be willing to hear no, and to encourage others to do the same.

John, a brilliant writer and good friend of 52, contributed this piece in December of 2009.  How do you think these methods have stacked up so far in 2010?

I thought up a wish around Christmas 2008. (You remember, this was when the economy fell into a well, only to crawl out in an algae-soaked stupor around mid-year.) By the end of 2009 I got some of the stuff I hoped for: Cool projects. Money. And I made some great new relationships with passionate professionals. I was lucky. But some things never came. That’s the era we’re in.

IMHO, 2010 isn’t going to be the year of getting back to the big getting that we sometimes enjoy. (My stimulus package is pretty much BOGO at the supermarket.) Sure, Obama’s president. I have hope. But the economy remains iffy. Building brands will be fun but no less exacting than 2009—given lean budgets, challenged clients and the speed of change. But you’ve got a great secret weapon. It’s called: an idea.

If I, you—we—do nothing this year but die for our ideas or the ideas our brand teams come up with, you’ll make it to 2011. People will admire you. Will want to work with you. And if you play it right, they’ll pay you well. What’s truly thrilling is how powerful ideas can be now. As in: effective, gorgeous, persuasive, cash-generating, transforming, life-building, whatever.

This year, the best ideas won’t only be what’s said. You’ll also see outrageously great ideas in the how, where, when and to whom. And it doesn’t take premium budgets anymore. What’s different is media fractionalization, consumer say-so, dispersed technology and digital access are all so in place that Davids can slay Goliaths all day long. As a creative or client, if you can think and explain things, you now have more chances than ever to put the rocks—the great ideas—in David’s slingshot. Anybody can now advance any brand myth of any size to anyone. Including giving all the rocks to consumers and letting them build myth. Each of us has control—limited only by our ideas and our desire to die for them so they’ll come to life.

We’ll kick around some samples of great ideas soon. And, some ways to decide if an idea is good. But for now, when time and times are tight, you’ll have to be firm to get more good ideas on the table. Noodle more. Scribble on the bus. Or before a movie starts. Get up 30 minutes earlier and empty your first, fresh thoughts over coffee. Walk outside more and let your mind wander. Reject. You’ll get a better pile of ideas or executional angles because you’ll be editing out the bad ones that would’ve otherwise survived because you didn’t put enough time into it.

It’s really about giving yourself more permission to play. Then use yours other skills to fight for your ideas. And you’re going to fail at times. Failing is heart-wrenching, especially if you hate to lose. But it doesn’t cost you anything other than time to come with up an idea that might fail. So why not die trying to succeed? You’ll have more fun. And you’ll increase your odds of having your ideas be good, be chosen and be effective. That’s where the rewards are this year (rather than the big checks we saw in 2006-2008)—and how I plan to play.

Independent writer/CD John Malarkey spouts his worldview from Portland, Oregon.

In two days one week I had meetings with three management level people that have seen the cultures of their employers, creative agencies in town, shift dramatically away from employees and toward the bottom line and/or a founder(s) arrogant vision.

This is an all too common mistake that companies make. With many local agencies being founder-based it can set up challenging dynamics when it comes to establishing and growing culture. It takes a healthy ego to start a company. As your company grows, at some point it becomes your employees that are growing and sustaining the company, not the founder(s). This is a realization that many either do not make, or do not believe. To successfully grow and maintain growth founders need to empower their staff and maintain a positive employee-driven culture.

Ego’s can often get in the way of this because, after all, the company grew around the founder(s) so they are always the key component. Not true once a level of growth has been obtained.

Too much emphasis on the bottom line can kill culture. Employees want and need to know that the company is making money and they will get paid, but it generally is not what motivates them daily. What motivates the typical person in the creative industry is whether they made a difference through good work, good creative, good service to clients and co-workers, not that they brought a project in under budget and made the company some extra bucks. That’s for management to worry about and for management to monitor and communicate in a strategic way. Staff communication should never focus on the bottom line. It has to be addressed of course, but cannot be the focus of every message. If it is, it is just a matter of time before employees begin to think of themselves as just another cog in the wheel, a step on the assembly line.

Once this occurs, your culture is gone. Employees will begin to look for other opportunities that will enrich them. Quality of work will begin to suffer: why put in that extra effort when you are just another cog? And once the quality begins to suffer, you run the risk of losing clients. If that happens, things start to spiral out of control quickly.

Building the company back up, changing perception in the recruiting landscape, and patching the culture are now the biggest challenges. When really, it would have been much easier and more sustainable to have paid more attention to the care and feeding of the culture to begin with. Because a funny thing happens when the culture is healthy people perform better, feel empowered, and produce strong results. Which, not coincidentally improves the bottom line.

Unpretentious, relaxed, quirky, and fiercely independent, Portland’s creative community is very much on the down low in terms of nationwide visibility. Even though our agencies consistently garner national awards, and our boutique agencies produce some of the most original advertising, marketing, and creative material anywhere. But people are beginning to take notice that Portland is truly a dynamic creative hub.

Young creatives fresh out of college and art schools flock here. Talented people with established names and businesses in larger markets are moving to Portland for quality of life reasons a smaller city with outstanding arts and culture, diverse and urban with great planning, respectful of the environment, and with some of the best food, wine, and beer in the country. In a word, Portland exemplifies livability. Often they’re also bringing their high paying clients with them who positively impact our economy.

Major companies already recognize the city’s wealth of creative talent. Nike is a homegrown powerhouse that has forged a long-term advertising partnership with Wieden and Kennedy. Adidas has their North American headquarters here. This competitive atmosphere also helped raise the profile of local companies such as Columbia Sportswear. Now a new wave of companies is drawn to Portland for its talented creatives and energized setting. Nautilus, Keen Footwear, And Icebreaker all come to mind.

We’re seeing this exciting new wave of talented people in our own practice. At 52 Limited, we’re working with creative and inventive people from many places and backgrounds: art directors from New York, designers from Minnesota, copywriters from San Francisco, fashion designers from Los Angeles to name a few. As a creative resource company, we’re able to match highly talented individuals with our best businesses. We work diligently to ensure success at all levels. Our growing creative base has made this an easier task. Success breeds success. The more outstanding our industry becomes, the more Portland shines as a creative center.

Still, with all of this talent and all of this great work, why doesn’t Portland have the national recognition of L.A. or Chicago? Certainly agencies like Wieden & Kennedy and Sandstrom Design are doing high profile international work and being acclaimed for it. Unfortunately, most of our best work goes unnoticed outside of the Northwest. Our small shops and boutique agencies lack the marketing clout and bold-faced bravado to push their products to a higher level of recognition.

But maybe smaller and quieter is better in the long run. Do we really want to be like L.A. very talented but lacking in proportion, balance and livability? We cherish our unassuming nature, and we hardly revel in the bling bling of everything. Maybe, though, we could use a little push. Perhaps we need to blow our own horns more, attracting attention to our work with just a bit more panache. We can keep our vibrant, independent Portland aesthetic but join together to coax ourselves more noticeably upon the national stage. The challenge, of course, is how to do this. Who will step up and take us to that higher level? Self-promotion certainly has its merits! Everyday fascinating and imaginative ideas originate in the Portland creative community. We just would enjoy more people knowing about them.

I was recently in Paris, where one day walking out of Gare du Nord train station I was able to come out of a serious sugar coma long enough to notice something; Parisians like fonts! Don’t get me wrong. New York works in no other font than Helvetica, and we heart NY for it. Paris though doesn’t play favorites, and has a neon letterpress of imagination to prove it. It’s as if the gleaming glass cases of croissants weren’t enough, and they just had to put the word patisserie in just the right font, with just the right kerning, to have you floating in on a trail of steam and butter… Wait, before I start thinking I’m writing for Food and Wine I should get back to the subject at hand…

Kerning. That’s a big word for a copywriter. It’s also one of many that I think we should be saying and talking about with our art directors as we write. Maybe it was the lights, or the language or the fact that I am totally and unabashedly in love with carbs, but I swear I walked into cafés based just as much on what was on their windows as what was in them.

For the rest of that trip anything I wrote on my laptop I chose a font for and tried to use kerning. I knew full well that most, if not all of those pieces would end up differently, but it helped me to find the right creative space from which to literally view them.

I’ve been fortunate enough to do some work for restaurants, and I think that this concept works especially well for menu writing. Let’s take the word Crème Brûlée and a description, put them in a very normal font in bold and italics, and kern them in different ways.

The examples above are a 20 point font unkerned, 4 points expanded and 4 points/6 points expanded respectively. In the text that is kerned to 6 points expanded, we can begin to see certain words “pop.” When written with key words in mind, this could be an effective way to produce a kind of subliminal SEO. Fonts are more for our own inspiration than anything else, but even still the results are two fold:

1. Even if by osmosis, these choices affect your decisions as you write.
2. You will began to have a common vocabulary with your art director

I don’t think we always give enough weight to a common creative vocabulary. Have you ever seen someone who’s not a drummer try to explain to a drummer what the intention for a piece is? It’s a pathetic exercise that ends in slobbering, babbling and convulsing. With this in mind, find the time to get to know the basics of design with your art director and use it in your writing. Your words will thank you for it.

For more from Andy visit: www.andrewryoung.blogspot.com

Wasting time. It’s something we all do pretty well, but invariably feel pretty guilty about, especially when bills are piling up, work’s bearing down, and-frankly-we’re not getting any younger. What’s your diversion? Craigslist? Cupcakes? Yacht Rock? Fantasy football? Pinot Noir? Roller derby?  There’s always something we’d rather be doing than sitting in a cubicle, staring at a screen.

As a freelance music writer in LA a few years ago, I scored a job interviewing bands for a living. For a lifelong music fanatic, this seemed like a dream scenario, but my enthusiasm eventually sagged when I realized was just another Hollywood hack, writing fluff copy to sell widgets in the form of MP3s.  One day in particular sums up my experience: I was sitting at a desk (after sitting in traffic for hours), being reprimanded over the phone by Liz Phair for not writing good interview questions. It broke my heart, because I loved Liz Phair, but at the same time, I thought she’d become a complete sellout. The problem was, I couldn’t ask her why she’d sold out, because I would have gotten fired. But wait-They couldn’t really fire me, because I was never even “hired” in the first place… But I’d been sitting at the same desk for two years!

So I finally split town, moved to Portland, and took up the most unlikely hobby I could imagine: surfing. It was a head-clearing, mind-opening, finger-numbing, humbling, exhausting, thrilling waste of time that was the exact opposite of work. After my first ride, in a smelly wetsuit on a lopsided old board, I was completely hooked.

At home I read everything I could about surfing. I discovered a surf blog based out of California http://novicesurf.blogspot.com/ (the only one I could find) and devoured it religiously with coffee. Then, I decided to start a weblog of my own called Sissyfish, as a way to record my weekly adventures through journal entries, sketches, photographs and even some half-assed poetry.

The blog became an obsession and a distraction, giving structure to my scattered creativity. As a frustrated illustrator, I now had an endless amount of exciting subject matter to draw from. Miraculously, Sissyfish also reenergized my writing, giving me a bullshit-free zone to express myself in. It loosened me up.  And people started visiting. The readership grew from my mom and a few friends to ten strangers, to hundreds of visitors a day. One night I was at a restaurant and the waiter asked me if I was “that guy with the surf blog.”

Around that time, I met with the folks at 52 Ltd. and showed them a portfolio that was the result of a newfound awareness of my creative potential. It was a box crammed full of writing samples, illustrations and photographs. Brooks rubbed his chin and wondered out loud where I’d fit in. Then, we spent the rest of our meeting chatting about our shared love of surfing.

A week later, Brooks called and told me about a new Portland outdoor apparel startup called Nau. It turned out that the first web presence that the company wanted was a blog.  Called The Thought Kitchen, it would cater to the brand’s emerging community of artists, athletes and activists. I showed the creative director-who also happened to be a surfer-my own blog and offered a few insights I’d learned in my two-year experience as a blogger: Always use good images. Keep entries short and sweet. Invite dialogue from readers. I was hired.

My former gig as curator of Nau’s blog was the best thing I’d ever been paid to do.  My responsibilities included facilitating online conversations about the outdoors, art, sustainability, design and sports like surfing. I was encouraged to include drawings and photos and to write like I do on my own blog-honestly and with personality.

Call it “micro-marketing,” “niche branding,” the actualization of Web 2.0 in e-commerce, or whatever. I think my mom described it best when she’d insist, “Do what you love.” Those sentiments were echoed in a campaign by New Belgium Brewery: “Follow Your Folly.” Theirs is beer. For some, it’s porn. Mine is surfing. It was a waste of time that unlocked my creative spirit and made me a more complete and satisfied professional.