There is SO much more to question asking (and answering) than we realise. As the owner of a creative agency whose purpose involves understanding our clients better so we can help them create better marketing…asking questions is one of the most important skills we have.
How we ask questions and how we listen, can entirely change the answers we receive.
Last week we had a 3 day team retreat, and it was amazing and inspiring and difficult and challenging and we did things wrong and we did things right. As a team, we read the book Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar…
“I just trust my gut”, you think. You hire someone you feel right about, and reject to the ones you don’t. A new prospect says and does a few things which feel dodgy, but seems like a nice guy, so you take him on as a client anyway. Many weeks or months later something happens and you think, “I knew it. I KNEW IT.”
Right, you’re going to be serious now. You’re going to focus your energy and attention on marketing a bit more (maybe this is your 2021 plan). But you know marketing always gets put off. You plan an hour or some time to “do marketing” and then you get emails and messages and phone calls and
This week is the American holiday of Thanksgiving. As a dual British-American citizen, it’s still a holiday I celebrate here in Scotland, and it really is one of my favourite holidays of all. Because the premise is: things are (or have been) very hard, so you gather together with family, eat good food and lots of it, and you give thanks for it all. For the food, the family and friends and tribe, and all the good things you’ve received or experienced even through the hard times.
I’ve been having various levels of back pain for the past seven weeks. (Just in case you don’t read the full note: don’t worry. I’ve seen a doctor, several physios, and am doing the work, and it is getting better. It’s just slow. That’s sort of the point of the note.) When it first started,
Not long after I set up PF, I identified what I saw as the core foundational “pillars” of the company. Things I personally stood for and what I wanted the agency to stand for, too. Those are creativity, integrity, generosity, and rest. (For a while there was one called “service”, but I decided that was less of
I believe all humans are creative. It’s a quality we all have – innately from being humans – no matter what our role or job or how we perceive our fit into society. I believe a creative God created humans, and we reflect that creativity and have these creative qualities from long before we even know anything about ourselves. And as a qualified accountant myself, who then set up a creative agency to support and help accountants, it took me many years to realise those two things were the beauty – and conflict – of this agency I run.
We don’t like change. No matter how we dress it up, even when sometimes it can feel adventurous or exciting or bold or brave, there’s still a part of us which is uncomfortable with any change, and therefore resists it. Some of us are more like that than others. Or perhaps what I mean is,
You know what’s more dangerous than a really sharp knife? A dull one. This week I was chopping walnuts with my favourite red kitchen knife, which my sister gave me for Christmas years ago. Probably more years than I even realise, because lately it hasn’t been chopping as cleanly and I kept thinking, “I’ll need
