|
How do managers who are used to working with corporate employees in three-piece suits and wing tips deal with
the company's more creative types-those software engineers, copywriters, scientists, and art directors who tend to show up at work on bicycles, in
tennis shoes and blue jeans, with dogs?
Some managers may decide, in the interest of peace and harmony, to keep their creative divisions as separate from
the business side as possible. Integrated genetics Inc. took a different tack and living up to its name, integrates its business and
creative division. The $5-million bioengineering company in Framingham, Mass., devised a strategy "to prevent the scientists from becoming
an esoteric group shut off from the company", says Pat Connoy, Vice-president of sales and marketing. Each Friday, one of the scientists gives a
presentation to the company at large, on subjects ranging from his own in-house work to a new development in biotechnology. Once a month an
employee from the selling, marketing, or administrative side takes a turn speaking to the scientists on anything from finance to strategic planning.
The company also runs a weekly in-house work in detail to the administrative employees. "The formation of corporate cliques, with their own
little cultures, is a danger at companies like ours." says Connoy
|
