Fearless Creative Leadership

Chris Hirst is the Global CEO of Havas Creative - they describe themselves as the world’s most integrated advertising and communications business. He’s also the author of an award winning book, No Bullsh*t Leadership. Which means he’s given a lot of thought to the art of leading a creative business. So much has been written and said about leadership. Libraries full of thinking and advice. Strategies and objectives and theories and case studies and oceans-full of best practices. We humans are complex beings. Biological entities fueled by emotions and very often willing to make decisions and take actions which, even after a moment’s thought, work against our own best interests. No wonder that the Doomsday Clock is set at 100 seconds to midnight. Leadership requires you take people on a journey. From where we are today. To a better version of tomorrow. A lot of attention gets paid to your definition of the destination. Justifiably so. After all, to slightly misquote Alice in Wonderland, if you don’t care where you’re going, any road will do. But as Chris points out, the other end of the journey, the honest acknowledgement of where you are today, is often missing, for fear that someone will be upset or offended or will judge the progress so far as inadequate. Honesty about the challenges you're trying to overcome is where leadership begins. Without that honesty, at least two things become true. First, every time you think you’re making a decision, you’re making it through a distorted lens. Which means it’s not a decision at all. It’s a guess. And second, if you won’t trust yourself with the truth, why should anyone else trust you? So, trust yourself and start with truth.

Edited highlights of our full conversation. Chris Hirst is the Global CEO of Havas Creative - they describe themselves as the world’s most integrated advertising and communications business. He’s also the author of an award winning book, No Bullsh*t Leadership. Which means he’s given a lot of thought to the art of leading a creative business. So much has been written and said about leadership. Libraries full of thinking and advice. Strategies and objectives and theories and case studies and oceans-full of best practices. We humans are complex beings. Biological entities fueled by emotions and very often willing to make decisions and take actions which, even after a moment’s thought, work against our own best interests. No wonder that the Doomsday Clock is set at 100 seconds to midnight. Leadership requires you take people on a journey. From where we are today. To a better version of tomorrow. A lot of attention gets paid to your definition of the destination. Justifiably so. After all, to slightly misquote Alice in Wonderland, if you don’t care where you’re going, any road will do. But as Chris points out, the other end of the journey, the honest acknowledgement of where you are today, is often missing, for fear that someone will be upset or offended or will judge the progress so far as inadequate. Honesty about the challenges you're trying to overcome is where leadership begins. Without that honesty, at least two things become true. First, every time you think you’re making a decision, you’re making it through a distorted lens. Which means it’s not a decision at all. It’s a guess. And second, if you won’t trust yourself with the truth, why should anyone else trust you? So, trust yourself and start with truth.

Jill Kelly is the Global CMO of GroupM, the world’s largest media investment company. The journey that brought her to this powerful position has been complicated and has forced her to confront threats both real and imagined. It has been said that if you stand in a group of randomly selected people and ask everyone to place their fears in the center of that circle, most of us would choose to take back our own. If that’s true, it’s because our own fears have become so familiar to us that we have learned to live with them, sometimes even to empower them, in case confronting them reveals an ever greater terror - that we were right to be afraid. That the monster in the attic is real. Fear is a foundation of the human condition. Without it we would not exist as a species. But the fear that fills today’s society, the fear of individual irrelevance, has become so powerful that it threatens to wash away everything else that matters on the human journey. Kindness. Compassion. Empathy. Respect. And love. The only path away from the abyss is leadership. And that is the hero’s journey. The willingness to resist the herd mentality and forge another path. That journey is always hard. But it becomes impossible if we decide to accept our own monster in the attic without resistance or challenge. Because when we start to accept our own fear, when we allow it to join us, unchecked, on our journey, only one thing is certain. That the time it will show up is when our back is turned and we are facing the real threat. I cannot promise you that you will ever conquer your monster in the attic. But I can promise you that every day you stare it down, you weaken it. Even time you shine a light on it, you expand what is possible. For yourself and for others.

Edited highlights of our full conversation. Jill Kelly is the Global CMO of GroupM, the world’s largest media investment company. The journey that brought her to this powerful position has been complicated and has forced her to confront threats both real and imagined. It has been said that if you stand in a group of randomly selected people and ask everyone to place their fears in the center of that circle, most of us would choose to take back our own. If that’s true, it’s because our own fears have become so familiar to us that we have learned to live with them, sometimes even to empower them, in case confronting them reveals an ever greater terror - that we were right to be afraid. That the monster in the attic is real. Fear is a foundation of the human condition. Without it we would not exist as a species. But the fear that fills today’s society, the fear of individual irrelevance, has become so powerful that it threatens to wash away everything else that matters on the human journey. Kindness. Compassion. Empathy. Respect. And love. The only path away from the abyss is leadership. And that is the hero’s journey. The willingness to resist the herd mentality and forge another path. That journey is always hard. But it becomes impossible if we decide to accept our own monster in the attic without resistance or challenge. Because when we start to accept our own fear, when we allow it to join us, unchecked, on our journey, only one thing is certain. That the time it will show up is when our back is turned and we are facing the real threat. I cannot promise you that you will ever conquer your monster in the attic. But I can promise you that every day you stare it down, you weaken it. Even time you shine a light on it, you expand what is possible. For yourself and for others.

Deirdre Findlay is the Global CMO of Condé Nast. In that position, she’s responsible for all of the company’s consumer-driven revenue. She took the job in January of 2020, and faced by an industry in transition and a world in chaos, has dramatically grown the company’s subscriber base, as well as the affiliate and commerce revenue. More than that, the company has held onto its new-found audiences, even as we start to leave our homes and reconnect with each other in person. Like every leader, she’s responsible for producing business results at a time when the employer-employee relationship is being entirely rewritten. If you’re leading a business that depends on unlocking the power of creative thinking and innovation for your success, you know that talent acquisition and talent retention have always been critical. Most people think that’s true for one reason. Hire the best talent and win the game. For many companies, their strategy for finding and keeping the best talent came down to this: Pay them, praise them, promote them, and prioritize them - especially when it came to handing out the best opportunities. If that’s still the cornerstone of your thinking, you’re already falling behind in the race for game-changing talent. Today, as a leader, it’s not just the job you’re selling, it’s the journey. The journey you’re taking the business on. And the journey you’re offering everyone who works for you. One of self exploration and personal development. A journey to discover what they can do and who they can be. You’ll still need business plans and financial performance metrics to determine who you need to hire and what you can afford. You’ll still need visions and missions, job descriptions and benefits packages to open the door to the right people. But if you want to close the deal and ensure the best of them stick around long enough to make a difference, you’ll need two things that most leaders don’t know how to measure. Empathy and interest. Which means, as Deidre said, getting comfortable with balancing the work and balancing the people.

Edited highlights of our full conversation. Deirdre Findlay is the Global CMO of Condé Nast. In that position, she’s responsible for all of the company’s consumer-driven revenue. She took the job in January of 2020, and faced by an industry in transition and a world in chaos, has dramatically grown the company’s subscriber base, as well as the affiliate and commerce revenue. More than that, the company has held onto its new-found audiences, even as we start to leave our homes and reconnect with each other in person. Like every leader, she’s responsible for producing business results at a time when the employer-employee relationship is being entirely rewritten. If you’re leading a business that depends on unlocking the power of creative thinking and innovation for your success, you know that talent acquisition and talent retention have always been critical. Most people think that’s true for one reason. Hire the best talent and win the game. For many companies, their strategy for finding and keeping the best talent came down to this: Pay them, praise them, promote them, and prioritize them - especially when it came to handing out the best opportunities. If that’s still the cornerstone of your thinking, you’re already falling behind in the race for game-changing talent. Today, as a leader, it’s not just the job you’re selling, it’s the journey. The journey you’re taking the business on. And the journey you’re offering everyone who works for you. One of self exploration and personal development. A journey to discover what they can do and who they can be. You’ll still need business plans and financial performance metrics to determine who you need to hire and what you can afford. You’ll still need visions and missions, job descriptions and benefits packages to open the door to the right people. But if you want to close the deal and ensure the best of them stick around long enough to make a difference, you’ll need two things that most leaders don’t know how to measure. Empathy and interest. Which means, as Deidre said, getting comfortable with balancing the work and balancing the people.

Umber Ahmad is the Founder of the rapidly growing bakery, Mah Ze Dahr. Her journey from banker to baker has been told before by everyone from Martha Stewart to BuzzFeed to TIME Magazine. Umber was a guest in the early days of this podcast in June of 2017. Over the last few years, I’ve come to know Umber well and in full disclosure I’ve worked with her both formally and informally as she launched and began to grow her business. When the pandemic hit us all like a tidal wave in March of 2020, I wondered how Umber would keep Mah Ze Dahr afloat. A business that depended hugely on a single brick and mortar location in Greenwich Village didn’t seem to have much future as her customers fled New York and the city turned into a post apocalyptic landscape of deserted streets and shuttered storefronts. Twenty months later, Mah Ze Dahr hasn’t just survived, it has thrived. That single location has turned into four, and her online business has doubled. The leadership instincts on which the business is growing were honed in Umber at an early age. It is too easy to think of leadership as an abstract, intellectual, and even academic construct. It is not. Leadership is the most powerful change agent on the planet - this one or any of the others that we attempt to occupy in years and generations to come. Leadership is most visible when we are confronted by the twists and turns that life brings us. Coronavirus has been a series of hair-pin bends on the side of a mountain, and many so-called leaders have climbed into the back seat and clung on for dear life. When faced with these moments, we quickly discover whether we are a leader in name only, or whether we are willing to confront the challenges of whatever lies ahead. Whether we hit the brakes and stop, or whether we accelerate through the curve and head for the future.

Edited highlights of our full conversation. Umber Ahmad is the Founder of the rapidly growing bakery, Mah Ze Dahr. Her journey from banker to baker has been told before by everyone from Martha Stewart to BuzzFeed to TIME Magazine. Umber was a guest in the early days of this podcast in June of 2017. Over the last few years, I’ve come to know Umber well and in full disclosure I’ve worked with her both formally and informally as she launched and began to grow her business. When the pandemic hit us all like a tidal wave in March of 2020, I wondered how Umber would keep Mah Ze Dahr afloat. A business that depended hugely on a single brick and mortar location in Greenwich Village didn’t seem to have much future as her customers fled New York and the city turned into a post apocalyptic landscape of deserted streets and shuttered storefronts. Twenty months later, Mah Ze Dahr hasn’t just survived, it has thrived. That single location has turned into four, and her online business has doubled. The leadership instincts on which the business is growing were honed in Umber at an early age. It is too easy to think of leadership as an abstract, intellectual, and even academic construct. It is not. Leadership is the most powerful change agent on the planet - this one or any of the others that we attempt to occupy in years and generations to come. Leadership is most visible when we are confronted by the twists and turns that life brings us. Coronavirus has been a series of hair-pin bends on the side of a mountain, and many so-called leaders have climbed into the back seat and clung on for dear life. When faced with these moments, we quickly discover whether we are a leader in name only, or whether we are willing to confront the challenges of whatever lies ahead. Whether we hit the brakes and stop, or whether we accelerate through the curve and head for the future.

This week, I’m going to talk about one of the driving forces affecting modern creative leadership. Vulnerability. And the journey that some of the world’s most creative and innovative leaders are taking to bring all of themselves to their roles.

Jan Jacobs and Leo Premutico are the Founders of Johannes Leonardo. They describe themselves as a creative and effectiveness agency who exist to create a world of courageous brands. However you define the company, they’ve demonstrated exceptional courage and produced relentless creativity for 14 years. Their starting point for both comes not from leaning in but stepping back. In years to come, historians will write about this period as one of unprecedented change. An epoch that separated what came before from what is still to be defined. Today, we live with two new realities.  Yesterday was an unreliable indicator of what today became. And tomorrow, anything is possible. Leading a business that thrives in that kind of environment has become exponentially more challenging than it was even six months ago.  ‘Everyone stay home.’ That created a level playing field that is now officially over. Now comes the hard part, redesigning your company so that it can win when there are no rules, no norms, no references, no comps and no best practices. Now, leaders are really going to have to lead. Which makes Leo’s recognition of listening as a creative act, an invaluable building block in the road to the future. If you’re listening to this podcast, I’m willing to bet that your company is filled with brilliant minds. Listening to them to get help with the answers is a good place to start. Listening to them to get help with the questions is even better. And makes whatever you come up with, not only original, but a competitive advantage.