Applauding professionalism

Last week I was with a group of some of the most professional individuals with whom I've ever worked.

We had a tough assignment: follow a difficult customer's personal direction in an important demonstration that we could, in fact, meet his specific requirements for portraying his product. We had tried before, and the results were extremely successful, we believed, but the work had failed to reflect our customer's personal taste and preferences.

So this time around our team memberrs subjugated their considerable talents to meet a markedly different set of criteria.

Giving you details about the differences of opinion and all-'round (even my own) stubborness isn't the point of this post. Rather, I want to celebrate the professionalism Anne Cassity, Lyn Rollins and photographer Michael Back brought to the job.

Here's a photo from one of our end-of-day dinners.

That's Lyn front left; Anne is the third from the left; Mike is sitting directly across from me, his pinky in his mouth a la Dr. Evil. The entire team was great. But these three were remarkable.

As I said to them, far too often in our industry we celebrate "the work, the work, the work is all that matters."

No. Working with people you admire for both their talent and their professionalism is what really matters. I reminded them that we don't save lives; we create marketing communications. So it's really not the work. It's the spirit with which it is created that is important. And believe me, this was one good-spirited group.