Give Them What They Need

I talked last week with a freelance photographer in Malaysia who specializes in travel photography. He has done quite a bit of work for travel magazines, heading out mostly around Southeast Asia to provide a new perspective on familiar places, and he has a talent for helping you see a place as if for the first time, no matter how many times you might have been there.

But he has not done any work for the magazine in months, nor does he expect to any time soon. The reason? The magazine drastically cut the funding for daily expenses on trips, to the point that he would have been paying for much of the trip out of his own pocket, wiping out a large percentage of what he would make from the assignment. He cannot afford to take a week away from other potential gigs in order to take one that will not make him any money, no matter how much he would enjoy it, so the magazine is losing out on his talents.

A travel magazine without money for travel? Come on.

When it comes to resources you need to be a smart manager, and among those smarts is a sense of priority. When your focus is on creative output then your first priority needs to be to get your Creatives what they need — maybe not all that they want, but at least what they need — to create. A graphic designer needs software. A hair stylist needs styling products. And a travel photographer needs travel funding.

Your Creatives bring talent. As a leader, it is YOUR job to provide the resources they need to use that talent.

You will need to plan in advance with your Creatives so you understand your goals and they can figure out what they need to achieve them. If your salon plans to offer the Chi hair straightening technique from Japan, then you need to pay for that training; if you do not see it as part of your offerings, then maybe you do not shell out the $3000, or whatever it costs these days, simply because your stylist thinks it would be cool to learn. Figure out what is necessary to meet your needs and focus your resources on that. As more resources are available, then you can do the lower priority things.

Try not to waste resources on unnecessary administrivia. If you are throwing out a bunch of letterhead and ordering all new stuff simply because you are changing the font at the top (and yes, companies do exactly that), you are wasting money that could be better spent on your creative output. When you find yourself asking your Creatives “did you get the memo about the new format of the TPS reports?,” you need to rethink your priorities. Put your resources into profit-making output rather than bureaucratic needs. That is not to say you never spend money on in-house stuff that is necessary but not profit-making (like IT support, for instance) but it DOES mean you do not create unnecessary bureaucratic requirements that suck up resources.

Watch out as well for the “fun but not needed” stuff. Do you still employ an in-house chefs, run a doggy day care, and provide massages on demand? This stuff is nice, and can create a better atmosphere for doing creative work, but in the current economic environment it might not be affordable…in any case, if you are scrimping on the stuff you really need in order to provide the stuff that makes things nicer, your priorities are out of whack. Some places can get away with this; Google is famous for it. But if you had Google’s revenues, you could do it too. If you don’t, well, then, you may need to focus your resources more sensibly. It is important to create a good working environment, but not at the expense of your true goals.

A travel magazine that does not have money for travel is headed out of business, or at least will find itself becoming a mediocre enterprise that does not stand out on a crowded newsstand. Your Creatives need resources to do what they do, and you need to find a way to get them. Maybe they need a lot, maybe they only need a little, but you need to know what they need and get it into their hands.