This Old In-house: Bad Boss, Classless Client Criteria
Bob Sutton worked up a checklist with staff at LinkedIn and Guy Kawasaki a few years ago to help determine if a prospective hire was likely to be a problem boss. The resulting list below builds on the...
View ArticleINside Track: The Poison Ivy Paradigm
. . So I didn’t listen to my wife. She warned me as I was stepping into our overgrown flowerbed to yank out offensive weeds, that there might be poison ivy in the green mess that the garden had become....
View ArticleINside Track: When Not To Be A Change Agent
. . I was listening to a therapist on the radio the other day talk about relationships. He emphasized that one of the most important behaviors that contribute to a successful marriage is the ability of...
View ArticleWord UP: Think & Believe
. . When communicating with your clients, managers or coworkers, your choice of words is as critical as any font, layout or color pallet you may use on a design assignment. With that fact in mind,...
View ArticleThis Old In-house: Don’t Be A Dog
With all due respect to my dog, Georgie, whom I love dearly, the canine behavioral model (as in Pavlov’s) is not one that serves in-house designers well – yet we engage in it every day. Like the...
View ArticleLast Minute Projects…Accepting the Reality
By Jackie Schaffer Most in-house creative teams suffer from 80% of the same challenges—just some suffer these challenges more so than others. Some of those common challenges are: Projects that never...
View ArticleAd Grads and The New Path To Success Part 2
By Shannon Stull Last month I began a two-part article about why working in-house is a great opportunity for recent ad grads. In part one, we covered reasons why this could be a good move, such as:...
View ArticleAfter the Deluge (Looking for a Connection and Finding Many)
I’m sitting here in our local Public Library because it's the only place in town that has lights, heat and WiFi. Our house is cold and dark as we’ve been left in Hurricane Sandy’s wake without any...
View ArticleGoing Up?
How many of you have your elevator pitch ready? No? Shame on you! Over the years, the elevator pitch has become increasingly important as an key component of the in-house designer’s toolbox, especially...
View ArticleJust Show Up!
Years ago I participated in a 360-degree assessment. Peers, colleagues, management and direct reports all had the opportunity to anonymously tell me how I was doing. And based on their responses, I was...
View ArticleDear In-House Diva...
Dear In-House Diva, I am an in-house designer at a very well-known retail fashion company and I’m constantly being asked by my internal clients to do personal design projects for them. I don’t mind...
View ArticleClose Encounters of the In-House Kind
Life is all about relationships. With your parents, kids, spouse, significant other, boss, co-workers. And if you manage them well, hopefully you’ll keep “therapist” off the list. As an in-house...
View ArticleThe Power of 3
For many years now I’ve been fascinated by the number 3 and how it seems to have an important and powerful place in our culture—at times even magical. Think about it—the Holy Trinity; Goldilocks and...
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