One of the topics I recently researched for an organizational behavior class covers managing your boss. The premise of managing your boss, or managing “up” deals with cultivating a trusting relationship with your immediate supervisor.

When good managers manage down, they give their people a clear understanding of what’s expected of them, a basic script to work from, and an understanding of the time they have to accomplish their work. In doing this, the manager ultimately creates a work environment in which there is mutual support, mutual trust, and genuine lines of communication.

When a subordinate (or manager) manages up, they should first have a good understanding of both the other person and themselves. One should use this information to develop and manage a healthy working relationship; one that is compatible with both people’s work styles and assets, is characterized by mutual expectations, and meets the most critical needs of the other person.

Managing up is easier than it sounds. Here are some starters…

• Appreciate your boss’ goals and pressures
• Know their strengths and weaknesses
• Learn their personal and organizational objectives
• Adapt to their preferred style of working
• Know how they like to get information
• What are your boss’ needs?
• Do they strive on conflict or avoid it?

Essentially, it’s all about communication—those who don’t communicate effectively with their superiors, for example, won’t be able to win support for pet projects or promotions for subordinates… they also aren’t likely to be included in helping make important decisions or weigh in on strategy. Learning to adapt to the boss’ preferred way of doing things actually helps you maintain control of your career… once you have that skill you’ll never need to feel apprehensive about working for anyone.

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Get Personal With Your Customers

“Keep your customers engaged in your brand. Create a buzz and keep your customers talking about your brand. If treated properly, they’ll do a better job advertising your brand than any planned campaign.”

Tweets, Inc.

“If you’re going to invest time in getting your customer base to recognize your company’s presence on twitter- keep it up. Your customers will recognize your disinterest in maintaining you account more negatively than if you never made the commitment at all.”

Avoid In-House Burnout by Getting to Know Your Customers

“Get out of your cubicle and get to know your customers so you can see first hand how you fit into the bigger picture, and why in-house design is so valuable to a company.”

Customer Retention > Customer Acquisition

“Joseph Jaffe (of JaffeJuice.com) explains how through things like customer service, customer experience, dialogue, a proper listening/response strategy, brands can show that they care about their customers.”

Inevitably, I needed to move that printer/scanner/lava lamp after I tamed my cords. I thought about it for a while and came up with this solution. Here’s what you’ll need…

Pick up yourself a pack of cable tie mounting bases, some plastic zip ties, and a few carabiner key chains. You can buy everything online or you can pick everything up at your local Home Depot/Lowe’s.

Crawl on behind your desk, shelf, or credenza and start sticking the cable tie mounting bases in the path that you to want your cables to follow. Then zip-tie a cheap key chain carabiner to each mounting base. Finally, put all of your wired gadgets in place, and “clip” the wires into the carabiners. Use one, use ten- it’s up to you (and how messy your cord situation is).

The beauty of this system is that it’s both temporary and permanent. The sticky backs on the mounting bases are sticky enough that the weight of your cables aren’t going to separate them from your furniture (or wall), and the carabiner allows you to “clip in” or “clip out” wires as needed. Granted, there are a ton of cable management solutions out there, but this is what worked for me (and there’s not a stray cord in sight behind my desk).

Delphine Hirasuna at @issue shares the story of how our country’s flag came to be, and how branding standards were finally adopted.

“By 1912, when the nation had 48 states, Congress decided that enough was enough. It adopted the graphic guidelines that are in place today. When we consider the history of the American flag, it is a miracle that the Stars & Stripes has become so iconic and recognizable when it ignored every rule of how to build a strong graphic identity.”

In any event, now that the application/admissions process is over, I’ll be performing a site re-design over the next week. Please pardon the mess as I do some house-cleaning and hopefully get back to a more regular posting schedule.

Rome wasn’t built in a day; if it was, I would’ve hired their web team.

The Elements of Content Strategy is an excellent compliment to my experience in creating content for various media channels. Here are some of the key takeaways from the book:

1.) Good content is appropriate for the user and for the business. Content is most appropriate for users when it helps them accomplish their goals, offering them precisely what they need, exactly when they need it, and in exactly the right form. Content is most appropriate for the business when it helps the business accomplish its goals (ie. improving sales, improving service, or reducing costs).

2.) Good content is useful and user-centered. Make a plan; know what you want to accomplish with your content. Perform research on your users- who are they; what kind of information are they seeking; do they go anywhere else to find this information? Your research will pay dividends and help you to curate your content to fit the needs of your users. Also, make sure your user can figure out what to do (navigation) and don’t alienate your users by publishing self-absorbed content.

3.) Good content is clear. Organize it!

4.) Good content is consistent. Use a style guide, adhere to branding standards, and monitor your voice and tone.

5.) Good content is concise. Don’t waste the time of your users- especially on the web. Learn what your users need and publish that.

6.) Good content is supported. Update factual content once it’s no longer useful. Also, cite your resources.

“Content people” work for the users. As a content strategist, you can help your teams and clients communicate more effectively by introducing tools like clearly documented editorial workflows, editorial calendars, and content customized for audiences and channels.

“Messages” are high-level ideas you want to transmit directly to your users. These messages aren’t taglines; they’re there for internal use and will act as scaffolding for your content, supporting and shaping the content you actually produce. Look at it from the perspective of rhetorical appeal:

• Core idea: “Our academic programs are strong.”
• Rational appeal: “Most of our programs are nationally ranked, and 70% of our graduates go on to pursue maters or doctoral degrees.”
• Emotional appeal: “Apply here to study with the most inspiring professors.”
• Reputation-based appeal: “We are the most selective university in the state, and our faculty offers an unparalleled reputation for excellence in their fields.”

Define your project. What are you doing and why? Know your stakeholders; interview them, and find out the following:

• Business goals- overarching aims that an entire organization tries to achieve
• Tactics- specific requests like, “clarify the navigation”, or “make it easier to find X”
• Requirements- immovable objects like launch date, budget, and staffing
• Project objectives- ie. “Change our website to reflect our new organizational focus on education.”
• Success- know what it means for your project, and then figure out the best way to achieve it

Do you have a channel strategy? Use what you’ve researched about your users and your and your business goals to figure out the best way of getting your content to your users. Delivery channels to consider are: the website itself, micro-sites/topical sites, blogs, newsletters, social media, webcasts, podcasts, videos, online magazines, mobile apps, third-party apps, whitepapers, ebooks, and special reports.

Evaluate (research, testing, and traffic analysis). Design (communication strategy, proposals for features, and plans for creating content). Execute (writing and revisiting content, set up publishing workflows, and aggregating content).

Buy Elements of Content Strategy by Erin Kissane at A Book Apart.

Cambridge, MA’s HubSpot, is promoting this week as Marketing Transformation Week. Since the Internet has transformed the way people purchase, connect, and learn, HubSpot has dedicated this week to showing marketers how the Internet can transform the way that they connect to, learn from, and engage their customers.

The process is simple; through various digital marketing methods, HubSpot provides companies the tools they need to amplify their digital presence, and get found organically through online searches. Once that happens, HubSpot helps these companies analyze the data they collect to improve their online sales processes.

First, HubSpot helps companies get found by creating and optimizing their online content. This can happen through blogs, social media, content management, SEO, or email. Second (and now that HubSpot has connected the company to their customers), it’s time to convert those leads to sales. Through landing pages, lead nurturing, CRM integration, and e-commerce integration, companies now have the tools to keep their customers coming back. Lastly, HubSpot provides their customers with data analysis tools to see where their web traffic is coming from, who is viewing their content, and who is sharing their content; this creates closed-loop marketing ROI.

The main focus this week is getting marketers to transition out of using expensive (both in time and dollars) traditional marketing methods like trade shows, cold-calling, and direct mail. HubSpot is encouraging marketers (whether they be agency-side or internal) to adopt innovative, traceable, digital marketing methods. It all makes sense- if you run a company, do you know exactly how many people are watching your TV ad, or reading your print ad in the Yellow Pages? Through digital marketing, you can know exactly how many people your content is reaching, precisely when it’s reaching them, and who they’re sharing it with.

Consider the following:

• 79% of adult Americans use the Internet
• 10.3 Billion searches are conducted every month on Google
• The average Internet user views 2,750 pages a month
• 1 of every 8 minutes spent online is spent on Facebook
• Twitter’s active users generate 90 million tweets per day
• 70% of the search engine links users click on are organic, not paid
• Tech trade show spending decreased by 46% in 2009
• Over 200 million Americans have registered for the Federal Trade Commission’s “Do Not Call” list
• 91% of users have unsubscribed from an email marketing/newsletter list they have previously subscribed to

The marketing landscape is changing rapidly. Marketers are shifting their advertising dollars to digital campaigns that organically reach people through multiple online channels. Shifting your marketing mix to allow for an inbound approach will let you connect with your customers on a personal level. Through these interactions, you can cultivate these customers to be advocates for your company/product/service, and ultimately create a word-of-mouth (or tweet-of-mouth) buzz for you. Isn’t it about time you transformed your marketing?

The above statistics were referenced from HubSpot’s slide deck, It’s Time to Transform Your Marketing.

“The in-house designer is the person who connects his or her employer to success by creating original, well-thought-out, informed communications for the organization and who manages time, budget, and other resources in ways that best benefit the organization.” (p. 25)

“You have to remember that designers are often viewed with suspicion because people don’t understand what we do. We stare at a blank piece of paper, the wheels are turning but are not visible, and then the work comes out. On the other hand, everyone likes to ‘be creative,’ to get involved with what we do. But you often find out that what they really want is control. IF you can show people that you are still listening to them and what they do, no one gets freaked out.” (p. 32)

“Too many companies treat their design departments like production houses: all hands, no brains… it’s a bit like McDonald’s… this creates a pretty joyless existence for the designer. At some point, the order-after-order mentality has to be changed. Co-workers have to be shown, through the designer’s actions, that a much better product- and sometimes, better price and schedule- can be delivered.” (p. 38)

“Becoming known as ‘the authority’ is accomplished through building trust relationships with people. That’s one of the enormous benefits of working in in-house design- the opportunity to develop long-term relationships. But simply being friendly is not enough. You must show that contribution to the larger organization is not only important, but crucial to everyone’s success… The key is to show that you have the other person’s best interests at heart, as well as those of the company. You are a partner not only to those around you, but to the company as well.” (p. 41)

“Trying to describe what a designer does- how the creative process works- to a left-brained person is like trying to capture water in your hands: it slips away faster than it can be studied. A cup is much more practical. Similarly, when talking about design with non-creative types, focusing on practical, non-artistic issues also works better. In this way, the actual, swirly nuances of creativity (that with which only the designer is interested) are kept out of the conversation, and focus is placed on the end goal (which everyone is interested in).” (p. 52)

“You also have to show yourself to be the expert: others may have opinions, but you have the actual working knowledge to get things done correctly. Back up your expertise with the information that only you have access to, such as your past training, color forecasts, design books and magazine articles, design seminar notes, design blogs and sites, and trend surveys. Such sources remove personal biases, and they introduce an outside ‘expert’ to the conversation, in the event that you aren’t being regarded as such.” (p. 58)

“No matter what you are presenting to a client, it is crucial to go at the proper speed. Think evolution, not revolution.” (p. 90)

“In any in-house design department, you are only as good as the value that is placed on your from higher up. -Mira Azarm” (p. 136)

“…we are not artists sitting around in berets waiting for inspiration. We are not here to make things pretty. We are here to help solve problems. We need to be involved early and strategically.” (p, 140)

“Get the right kind of feedback. Because people are much more prone to complain than they are to compliment, most of us learn to dread the word ‘feedback.’ It has a negative connotation, though, that it really doesn’t deserve. As most leadership and business methods training will tell you, feedback is a gift, whether it’s good or bad….” (p. 158)

“Transform negative criticism to positive feedback:

• When this sort of feedback arrives at the wrong time, ask the other person if you can talk about this later, when you can better focus on the concern.
• It’s up to you to translate what exactly that person is trying to say. Clarify what the person is saying by restating his words: ‘You don’t like it because of what specifically?’ Stay calm, don’t get defensive, and thank the other person for their input.
• Listen, listen listen.
• Ask the other person what he thinks should happen next. Stress ‘we’ as opposed to ‘I’. Keep the problem-solving process one of teamwork.” (p. 162)

Get a copy of In-House Design in Practice for yourself at Amazon.com.

Lupton’s book takes a look at every aspect of typography, from the history of letterform, to using grid systems with today’s page layout software. Peppered into the text are “nerd alerts” and “type crimes“, keeping the book a very engaging and interesting read for a student or an experienced design professional.

In fact, Lupton has even published the contents of the book at her site, ThinkingWithType.com, complete with how-to guides, lectures, exercises, and demos.

Here are a few of my favorite passages and notes from the book:

“Combining typefaces is like making a salad. Start with a small number of elements representing different colors, tastes, and textures. Strive for contrast rather than harmony, looking for emphatic differences rather than mushy transitions. Give each ingredient a role to play…” (p. 54)

“Typography helps readers navigate the flow of content. The user could be searching for a specific piece of data, or struggling to quickly process a volume of content in order to extract elements for immediate use. Although name books define the purpose of typography as enhancing the readability of the written word, one of design’s most humane functions is, in actuality, to help readers avoid reading.”

“Make the shoe fit, not the foot. Rather than force content into rigid containers, create systems that are flexible and responsive to the material they are intended to accomodate.” (p. 218)

“Design is an art of situations. Designers respond to a need, a problem, a circumstance that arises in the world. The best work is produced in relation to interesting situations- an open-minded client, a good cause, or great content.” (p. 219)

Thinking with Type (Second Edition) by Ellen Lupton is on sale at Amazon.com, and while you wait for your book to arrive, take a look at the full content of it at ThinkingWithType.com.