It’s so energizing to work with people that are excited about what they’re doing. People who start their day psyched to see what’s in store for them. People who are wide-eyed and eager for new challenges.

I feel bad for people that aren’t wired that way or aren’t in the right situation to expose that part of themselves. Everyone should figure out their passion and then find a job that allows them to do it.

Yesterday I was able to spend my day with a new Engauger who couldn’t seem more thrilled to be starting this chapter of her career with us. And at the same time, while we were in Ohio, almost our entire office in Atlanta was showing their enthusiasm and excitement for a potential new client.

Everyone should be as lucky as I am to work with such inspired and contagiously energetic people.

#thanksguys

I have this really annoying tendency as a manager. I’d say 9 times out of 10 its initially met with annoyance and a deep sigh.

But I’d also say that 9 times out of 10, it works. The other 10% of the time the person walks away likely thinking that I’m just an a$# that can’t or doesn’t want to help them. And I know people that have fallen in that 10% have quit because of it, even recently.

So be it.

Here’s the gist: I fail to believe we don’t have control over our destiny. I won’t believe it. Every part of me believes that if you want something to change, you can change it. Especially when it comes to your job.

Entrepreneurs, or at least the successful ones, have this mentality already. I’m currently reading the biography on Jobs, which is amazing by the way and putting the fanboy in me aside, I think everyone should read it. Its so clear that Jobs never thought anything was impossible and never accepted that answer from his teams.*

But I also don’t believe that this ideal should be limited only to entrepreneurs. It’s why I wrote a while back, “How to be an entrepreneur with a job“.

Perhaps an example would better explain what I’m talking about. Assume this story to be completely fictional.

Brian leads a department of specialists within our organization. The group is a very important part of our business, but its not the only part and Brian feels like the rest of the company doesn’t appreciate what his group brings to the table.

“I can’t believe we weren’t involved in that project! How could they be so ignorant to not realize that if we had been involved, the project would have gone much better? I just don’t think this company appreciates what our group brings to the table”, he says to me.

Now at this point I have two possible directions to go. I could join in with him, bitching about how dumb everyone is for not realizing how much his group brings to the table and vowing to go and make sure everyone started using them immediately.

Instead, what I prefer to do is put it back on Brian to figure out how he can change the current status quo. How can he make sure that the rest of the company understands the value that his team brings? How can he help them see that they will be more successful if his group is involved?

“I shouldn’t have to do that”, is the typical response.

“Why not? It’s not the rest of the organization’s job to sell your services. Its their job to do great work. And they do great work by looking at their available resources and using their experience and knowledge to put together the best idea. If they aren’t aware of how beneficial your group is to helping them do that, they’re not going to use you”, is my typical response.

See, if I can get Brian to think this way and understand that he can affect change, the result will be far greater in the end. First, there’s the “teach a man to fish” idea that if he can overcome this obstacle on his own, he’ll be more likely to overcome the next one on his own. He’ll begin to control his own destiny and stop seeing “obstacles” and start seeing “challenges to overcome”. There are no obstacles, Neo.

But the real benefit in this example is that Brian will have to prove why his team is invaluable to the rest of the organization. He will show them how they’ve been successful in the past. He’ll show them why working with his group is going to help them be successful. That is a far better way to get them to involve his team than the boss running around forcing them to try to use them.

Or, he’ll simply quit.

* To be clear, I am not nor will I ever compare myself to Steve Jobs. He really did push people to do what many at the time thought was impossible. And he also beat the hell out of everyone that worked for him in order to do it.

Environment is an important part of a great place to work

Recently a friend passed me an article that listed characteristics that make a great place to work. Instead of reading it I decided to make my own list. I’ve done this in the past, such as with this post: The 12 keys to being excellent at anything. It’s a fun exercise.

My thoughts on the 12 characteristics of a great place to work:

1. A clear vision and identity. Employees want to know where the company is pointed, what the company believes in and what everyone is working toward.
2. Honest leadership.
3. Provides “flexible” growth for employees. As an employee of a company, you should have the ability to change career paths if you’ve proven you’re a dependable, hard-working and passionate person.
4. A culture of collaboration. Collaboration creates better work, better results and better culture.
5. As little politics as possible. While politics are always going to happen in a work environment, great companies have very little of it and work hard to stomp it out when it creeps up.
6. Promotes meritocracy. Simply put, if you show that you are going to do great work, your career will grow accordingly.
7. Open communication. Great places to work are open about how the company is performing.
8. Craves honest feedback from its employees.
9. A fun atmosphere. I’ve always felt that if people are going to spend most of their waking week at the office, it should be a fun environment. When people are having fun, they work together better and they produce better work.
10. Filled with passionate people. Companies that only look at resumes and experience when hiring are far less successful (IMHO) than ones that hire people that are passionate about their work and the industry. I’ll hire passion over experience any day.
11. Approachable leadership. The more people feel open to talking to their leadership, the more problems will get solved and the more job satisfaction people will have. It’s one of the reasons I prefer not to have an office.
12. A great environment. A fun, open, energetic and creative environment can make a big difference in the overall atmosphere of a company.

Ok, what did I miss or where do you disagree?

Introducing the new engauge.com. Hope you like it as much as I do :)

In Silicon Valley, a startup that has $5,000 in revenue from customers is typically worth less than the startup that has zero revenue. Likewise, a startup that has launched and has 2,000 users is worth less than the startup that hasn’t launched yet and has zero users.

The reason for that is simple. When there isn’t a basis for measuring a company, your mind can still imagine just how amazing that company can be. It’s the difference between meeting someone and saying, “Wow, I bet a ton of people will love using this thing you’re building” and “Huh, you’ve been live for three months and you only have 2,000 people using this?”

When you can start to measure something, you can start to put it in a box and assign a tangible value to it, even if its inaccurate. We like to be able to put things into context and measure them against other things we’ve seen or had experience with.

This is why I’ve come to this conclusion:

The best thing about digital marketing is that you can measure it.

The worst thing about digital marketing is that you can measure it.

Digital marketing still gets a pittance of the marketing budget at most companies. Social gets a fraction of that, and mobile gets an even smaller fraction. And why? Because marketers want the proof that they should move more budget to digital because they think it should be possible to tangibly show that proof. But its not.

What’s the difference between someone sitting on their couch and seeing a preview for a new movie on their TV and that same person scrolling down their Facebook wall and seeing a friend of theirs post how much they loved that same movie? Which do you think is more “valuable”? I think most people would agree that having your friend say that a movie is good or bad is far more influential to your decision of whether to go and see it than the commercial for it. Yet today, I’d guess that marketers spend 100x more on the TV spot than they do on their social strategy for movie premiers. And I might be undershooting that multiple.

Why does this happen? Because supposedly you can show the ROI with digital.

The fact that you can measure aspects of digital should only be a bonus for why you’d focus more attention and budget there. I’m as big a believer in the power of measuring and analyzing digital activity as anyone. We like to say its why we have a “U” in Engauge. But we shouldn’t let measurement be the reason we don’t do digital. That’s crazy.

Yesterday at the iStrategy conference, Engauge’s Executive Creative Director, Adam Albrecht, made the comment that “TV is the invitation to the party”. His point was, no longer is non-interactive media “the party”. It used to be. But now we have this area called digital where marketers can interact with, converse with, learn from, and influence their customers, and that is where the real party is.

Today, marketers spend 85% or more of their budgets and attention on the invitation…because they think they can’t prove the ROI of digital yet. And that is a shame.

Meetings, in general, suck. They suck time out of your day, they suck your energy…they just generally suck. And not because we all don’t have the best intentions but because the entire model is flawed. I’ve written about ways I think meetings could be better, with the number one fix being: DON’T HAVE MEETINGS!

Of course sometimes meetings are necessary and that’s why I’m excited to read this book, “Read this before our next meeting.“  I listened to a podcast by Mitch Joel where he interviewed the author, Al Pittampalli.

Already sent the sample to my kindle. Hopefully I’ll get to it before our next meeting so it doesn’t suck quite so bad ;)

I personally think that in the future, WE will be the media. Instead of brands spending tens of millions of dollars to advertise about their new product, they are going to instead spend those dollars sending the product to people, certainly a lot of influential, klout-popular blogging-type people, but also a ton of real people, and simply ask them to tell their friends their thoughts.

Think about it.  Spend $20 million to get your new product on TV and billboards with the hopes that a few people see the message 3 or 4 times in order to recall the product and possibly buy it at some point.  Or, send out a million products to actual people (assuming the manufacturing cost of the product is around $17 and at most you’re spending $3 on shipping) and let those people spread the word. The average Facebook user has 130 friends or more…you do the math. And after you do the math, consider the difference between a billboard telling you great a product is vs. your friend.

I can also see a future where companies pay you to write a review, good or bad. You’re already seeing this with startups and companies like ExpoTV (great company btw). Imagine a movie comes out and they take the $20 million budget from above and give 10 million people $2 to write a review of the movie (video or text) and share that with their friends.  Is that not a better way to spend that money?

When I talk like this to people, particularly people that have a lot of marketing and advertising experience, it kinda freaks them out and I get a ton of reasons why it won’t work, most of which are very valid.  But I love the debate because it really challenges everything we believe about marketing and advertising today.

So…let’s debate!

I’m a big believer in giving people the benefit of the doubt. When a person is upset about an action from one of their peers, their first reaction should be to find out why it happened. Expect that your partner had the best intentions and either made a mistake or had a reason for doing what they did. Those that immediately resort to yelling and screaming instead of giving the benefit of the doubt to their partner, well, they don’t last very long at my company.

It’s unacceptable for me to behave that way. It’s unacceptable behavior from my co-workers. And it’s unacceptable behavior from customers. Life is too short.

There was a time in 2002 that DP and I, our 5^th employee at Spunlogic and easily one of the top five people I’ve ever had the privilege to work with, were at a client’s office for a review of the website the team had been working on for months. All indications were that the meeting would be a review of our progress to date and a discussion of any last minute changes that needed to be made before launch.

We had been working mostly with the marketing staff but this meeting was with the CEO and his head of marketing. It was our first meeting with the CEO and we were eager to show off the new site. We had sent over an email the day before with the link to the new site for him to review.

As he walked into the small conference room, with his head of marketing on the side closest to the door and DP and I on the other side facing them, I could immediately sense something was wrong. Perhaps it was the hostile way he entered. Or the redness in his face. Or the yelling we had heard outside the conference room minutes before he entered.

There is really never a reason to scream at someone. Unless maybe at a Lakers game.

“I’m not going to mince words. I can’t believe how irresponsible your agency is. You should be ashamed that we’re paying you for this work! We’ve lost several months and have to start all over because your agency is so incompetent! There is no way we’re paying for this s$#tty work and I’m going to sue you for what we have already paid.”

Then he stormed out of the conference room, leaving me, DP and his co-worker sitting there, mouths wide open, completely shocked. DP was visibly shaking, most likely wanting to beat the guy down in a Royce Gracie Jiu-Jitzu move.

I didn’t know what to do other than try to calm DP down and ask the marketing lady what had just happened. I was too young and early in my career to do the right thing. I should taken DP and left immediately. No matter what the situation, you shouldn’t allow people to treat you that way.

But I wasn’t experienced enough to know how to handle the situation. Fortunately, five minutes later the CEO walked in and said he apologized. Seems someone had sent him the wrong link. Instead of looking at what we had been working on, he was looking at the existing site that was still live. In other words, the same site that we were hired to redesign.

We awkwardly laughed it off and had the meeting we intended to have. We finished the project. They never paid the final bill, not because they were mad but most likely because they were a poorly run company with a leader that can’t control his emotions. I’m sure most everyone at that company wished they worked somewhere else.

The lessen I learned from that was to only work with good people, either internally or externally. I’ve since parted ways with clients many times that treated my staff poorly, often far later than I should have. Life is far too short.

I’m on the lookout for A+’s to bring to Engauge right now. We’re hitting our stride as an agency and growing at an amazing clip, and I’m going to need more A+’s around here to help lead us up that hill. Luckily, we have a LOT of them here already, which is why we’re blowing up.

Skill sets? Roles? Background? Less important than being an A+. If I find an A+, I’ll hire them and then figure out what they should be working on.

What’s an A+? Glad you asked.

- Someone that always rises to the challenge.

- Someone that you can count on and trust. Doesn’t mean they won’t make mistakes, we all do, but will make less mistakes than others and when mistakes are made, they take care of it.

- High passion for what they’re doing.

- Lots of positive energy. Gotta be positive.

- Has an entrepreneurial mindset.

- They never get comfortable ;)

Anyone that knows an A+ or two, please send them my way. Since A+’s are usually modest, referrals for these rare birds are best. Anyone can say THEY are an A+, but when someone else puts their reputation on the line to tout a person’s A+edness (that could be a word), that’s a big sign to me. Email me at jeff.hilimire AT gmail.com if you know of anyone I should talk to.

Thanks!