The World’s Top Female CEO

Halley Suitt introduces herself as the owner of the blog Halley’s Comment, the CEO and publisher of Top Ten Sources, and the recent purchaser of Style Feeder. She explains that Style Feeder allows you to create a wish list of items that you want to purchase and items that you will purchase. The items can be bought at different places and RSS will deliver them to you. Halley asks for feedback from programmers and developers so she will know how they feel about her newly purchased site.

Halley speaks about creativity and how to manage it. She tells the audience that she has programmers, developers, and bloggers and asks how does she get them to be creative and at the same time manage them creatively? She thinks there is a disconnect between the creativity and management. Halley thinks creative companies can succeed with Web 2.0.

Click to Play

Halley asks if you have a creative leader how do you compensate them? Are you burning them out or are you giving them ways to be inspired? She gets feedback from the audience in regards to the questions. They come up with ideas such as limit the numbers on the team so communication can be open and let the team choose their physical work environment so they will feel at ease where they are working and not like it is a dungeon. Listen to your employees and give them feedback. Let them know they are an important part of the team. If they start to whine then they have lost interest.
Halley talks about a book called The Whole New Mind. The MFFA “the masters of fine arts” and they say it is time for the NBA “the numbers people” to move over because the creative people are going to be running the teams.

Halley speaks about a book by Richard Florida called “The Rise of the Creative Class”. It examines creativity and its effects on economic development. She says it is a political book about immigration problems and that by not bringing diverse people in they are going elsewhere and they are taking their creativity with them and it can be an issue.

The audience gives referrals on books and essays from authors such as Fred Brook’s, Paul Graham, Tom DeMarco, and Timothy Lister. They say that the best way to build successful creativity in the work place is to hire great programmers and developers who know what the are doing. Let them be creative, Teach them new things, and they will become more valuable. Leave them alone so they can do their work without constant interruptions. Let them hire other employees because they will not tolerate working with someone who does not know what they are doing. Keep them up to date on things, let them know about deadlines, be honest with them and let them know they are valuable to you. They said by doing so, the employee’s will pay you back 100 fold. The audience said the worst thing you can do to a programmer or developer is to let them become bored. The audience said a good developer and good manager are not the same thing and don’t make the career path of a programmer into a manager. They agreed that is a bad thing unless they are good at that.

Other Media Formats: AVI | MP4 | MP3 | FLV

 Podcast Video: Download

Need a new domain name? See why GoDaddy is the #1 domain registrar worldwide. Now with your domain registration, you'll get hosting, a free blog, complete email system, and much more! Plus, as a listener of The Chris Pirillo Show, enter code CHRIS1 when you check out, and save an additional 10% on any order. Get your piece of the internet at GoDaddy!