Speaking
Over the years, I’ve developed many great presentations that I’ve presented to conferences and organizations, large and small, across the United States as well as Canada and the UK. My topics are customized for the following specific target audiences:
- › established small to mid-size design firms (great for AIGA members)
- › principals, project and account managers
- Project Management
Life Cycle–fromProject Management
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- Client Interaction Roles–fromStaff Organization
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Presentation Topics
Best Practices Any Design Firm Should Know
This session will highlight the top best business practices that are the foundation of truly successful design organizations. These best practices cover organizational structures, staffing strategies, pricing, client management, and marketing. After working with hundreds of leading creative/design teams for 20 years, I’ve compiled a list of smart business strategies that define successful firms. This session will be very broad in topic, but provide very practical, actionable strategies that can easily be implemented.
Stronger Leadership, Stronger Business:
Staffing and Managing your team for success
Wondering how to leverage and build your firm’s team and better optimize creativity, profitability, and operational systems? During this session, you will learn organizational and inspirational management systems and structures that ensure a motivated and dedicated team. Understand the difference between strong leadership and management and how these skills are critical to a successful design team. Includes recommendations on organizational structures and team roles and why effective account and project management strategies improve teamwork and staff morale.
Effective Proposal and Pricing Strategies
Insight and expertise on writing winning proposals and creating smart pricing strategies that help you get paid what you’re worth. Learn how to write winning proposals that effectively communicate your services, qualifications, voice, and vision. This session will teach you the steps needed to pre-qualify clients, define objectives, communicate project parameters, and ways to customize your proposals. Discover common mistakes and ways to structure and communicate project information and pricing structures to capture your client’s attention and interest.
Managing Projects and Clients for High Impact
This session will focus on common client/project management challenges and explore key communication tools and strategies that build and nurture long-term, mutually rewarding client relationships. You’ll be guided through the entire relationship cycle; from the development stage through to the end of a project, with a clear focus on high-level best practice communication strategies that facilitate and improve seamless client and project management processes.
Managing Different Generations and Behavioral Types
The session will define some well-known generational and behavioral types, from “generation Xers” to the millenial/younger generations, from “followers” to “leaders”. Attendees will learn how to identify a few common types and customize their organizational structures and management styles according to each type’s unique challenges and opportunities.
Must Have Clauses for Creative Contracts
This session will focus on why contracts shouldn’t be written by lawyers and what their real hidden purpose is. Hint: It’s not to protect you in court! The session will also highlight important yet unexpected and often overlooked clauses you must have in any contract.
Creative Briefs:
Aligning Expectations and Measuring Results
What is a creative brief? Why do you need one? When do you write one? As a consultant to creative teams, I am on a mission to help corporations, designers, marketers, and strategists improve how they collaborate to develop smartly crafted creative briefs that achieve results. Typically, creative briefs are typically repetitive, long-winded, over-reaching efforts and, at worst, a manifestation of corporate politics and insecurities. However, the best creative briefs provide a clear set of expectations and define measurable objectives to guide the progress and success of a project. As an added benefit, the creative brief and the development process work together to support the value and power of thoughtful, strategic design to achieve creative results-driven solutions.
Moderating Panel Discussions
I can also moderate or participate in panel discussions on a range of topics related to professional practices, including, but not limited to: business models, operational structures and systems, organizational staffing structures and systems, proposals, project, staff, and client management, etc.
Topics for In-House Creative/Marketing Teams
Cohen Miller Consulting, the separate consultation practice I co-lead, focuses on the needs of in-house corporate or institutional creative and marketing teams and offers its own range of consulting topics. Customized for in-house teams, these topics include, but are not limited to:
- › organizational and staff management structures & strategies
- › work segmentation — aligning people, process, and priorities
- › funding structures — chargebacks/cost allocation systems
- › operational and in-process metrics
- › the redesign and refinement of your operating processes
Upcoming Events
01.26.12 // 3:00-4:00pm
Managing a Cross-Generational Creative Team
Sponsor: In-House SchoolHOWse Series
Fee: $41.40
to pre-order: mydesignshop.com/product/
Managing a creative team that contains designers of widely varying ages doesn’t have to be a communication nightmare. This webinar focuses on the core qualities of three generations — Baby Boomers, Gen Exers and Millennials (or Gen Y) — and explores the inherent challenges of managing each group. The goal of this session will to explain the context in which your employees respond in the workplace, so that you can improve communications and mitigate potential cross-generational conflicts. You’ll leave this session with information that will teach you:
- › key characteristics and styles of each generation
- › cross-generational management skills
- › tips on effectively communicating with each group