Career

Screw best practices. Why marketers should try new things fearlessly.

Screw best practices. I really mean it. Well, mostly, at least.

We hear the phrase a hundred times a day, no matter what field we work in. IT, sales, marketing, finance – everything is about following best practices, taking a “best practices approach,” learning from industry best practices, blah blah blah blah. So when should you use best practices in marketing – or anywhere else – and when should you march to the beat of your own drum? What’s so wrong with going the proven way to begin with? Read More…

Top creatives share how they deal with negative feedback

In America, you’re brought up believing everything you do is inherently great. Your teachers in art school or advertising / journalism / creative writing probably heaped so much praise on you that you are still picking pieces of it out of cracks and crevices years later. And then you enter the advertising world, where the hardest part of your job is taking feedback – brutal, murderous, sobering (or more likely addiction forming) critiques of the thing you hold most esteemed in your life – your creativity. How will you survive? Here’s how I do it, with tips from other top seasoned creative pros.

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Back to school anxiety isn’t just for kids: Why parents panic at school time.

I’ve heard the term back to school blues for years, and remember the small feeling of impending doom somewhere deep in my core as the first day of school approached each year.

As a parent, I see it in my oldest daughter, who starts second grade today, too.

What I never expected – and can’t find much help for online, either – is that I would still have back to school anxiety myself, more than a decade after finishing my last college courses and approaching twenty years since high school graduation. I’m filing this post under “Career” because what isn’t more impactful to your career than your stress levels? Striking the right work / family balance is a critical component of job advancement and personal growth – so being aware of your stress triggers and how to manage them is critical.

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Is your job description holding you back? Or are YOU holding you back?

Thanks, @willsansbury, for a killer tweet this morning:

“If a job description doesn’t let you deliver the max value you can to your company, the job description is wrong. Period. Tear down silos!”

My current role – and really, the past couple roles I have been in @ BMC Software, are testaments that Will’s advice is on the up and up. I regularly hear friends and peers / coworkers talking about how stuck they feel in their roles. And maybe they truly are – maybe their front line managers aren’t paying close enough attention to the strengths and weaknesses of their direct reports and paving the way for people to grow.

But it’s often not that simple. Many employees are afraid to operate outside of the narrow confines of a job description, or take the initiative to try something new on their own.

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