Keeping the Creative Director Awake (And Other Business Objectives)
8:30 a.m. on a Tuesday: Far too early for the Creatives who stayed up until 1 a.m. the night before. Honing their craft did not generally occur between 9-5.
Still without fail, the morning meeting commences around a ping pong table. Under normal circumstances, the blood might pump with a vigorous game. Instead, the ping pong table in this trendy office doubled as an affordable conference room table. Team players in the room awkwardly pulled up chairs, where elbows barely reached the table edge. Those in the middle found their pens and laptops soon tangled in the net.
There were plenty of reasons to “pull away” from the table, literally. From both an attention and a physical perspective… it just didn’t work. Within minutes, proof of this fact emanated from the head of the table, where the Creative Director sat.
Inability to pull up close enough and actually work at the table gave a “pass” to those otherwise expected display leadership. The Creative Director’s eyes grew heavy, as the nearby Project Manager expounded upon dull matters of deadlines, delivery and client expectations. A few moments later, the eyes closed and the head slumped to the side. The head proceeded to bob for the next 8 minutes. In the 9th minute, when the droning finally ceased, thick breaths remained as the only sound in the room. Thankfully the Technology Director broke the awkward sounds of slumber with their own narrative.
Did the Creative Director deserve to be at the head of the table, disrespecting the whole group with his snoozes?
Maybe, maybe not.
To be sure, the meeting material stretched and lingered, dry as the cinnamon challenge. The unlucky team member speaking through the siesta found themselves enriched with a new lesson learned. Unless you’re presenting Creative, Creatives are not interested. Least of all, are they interested in project plans. For heaven’s sake, speak your team’s language!
But was the Creative Director’s behavior acceptable? Seemingly so, since witness of the group and possibly related peer feedback never led to any substantive change. Most mornings the scenario repeated, until “keeping the Creative Director awake” simply became one of many unwritten Business Objectives. It seemed a reasonable goal, fitting of an often unserious place, where the group might’ve just preferred a game of ping pong to start their day. But alas, the websites still needed to be built.
So then, how DO you keep attention?
First, if Creative Directors are made responsible for presenting, there’s a pretty good chance they’d stay awake. Pop in a couple agenda items to present Creative, with bite-size project plan snippets in between, and you may meet your new Business Objective.
Second, in hindsight (with the benefit of empathy gained over many future years of experience), you might just purchase a daily double espresso for the poor fella. After all, he was a single dad with young kids at home. Imagine a vomiting youngster, disturbing his slumber between the irreplaceable golden hours of 1-6 a.m. The Project Manager would’ve been sleepy too.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.
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