Fearless Creative Leadership

Edited highlights of our full conversation. Jenny Just is the Co-Founder of PEAK6 Investments. She's been described as the most successful business woman you've never heard of. A recent study by the World Health Organization reveals that working more than 55 hours a week causes a significant increase in premature death. If that's true, it's just one more reason why leaders should make decisions faster. And why they need to create an environment in which it's easier for others to make decisions faster too. What's the reason that decisions often take too long to get made? Risk. Risk of failure for sure. But also, and no less importantly, the risk of being wrong. The human fear that is often hidden behind a carefully designed wall of over-analyzed data and needlessly complex strategies. What's worse than being wrong? Allowing risk to prevent you from discovering that you might be right.

Charlie Cole is the CEO of FTD. As you're about to hear, Charlie is a high energy leader. Relentlessly positive, endlessly optimistic. He took over a bankrupt company in the early days of a pandemic. He put together an executive team that only now, a year later can he spend any time with in person. Charlie discovered something brand new about himself in the middle of all of that. That he has a breaking point. Every leader does. And thinking of yourself as a servant will shorten the time it takes for you to discover yours. Are you in service? Yes. To the change you want to create in the world, and to providing the business with what it needs to reach that goal. But you are not a servant. You have agency and free will. Oh, and you have one other thing. Access to the levers of power. When a servant pulls the levers of power, it's called a revolution. When a leader pulls them, it's called a decision.

Edited highlights of our full conversation. Charlie Cole is the CEO of FTD. As you're about to hear, Charlie is a high energy leader. Relentlessly positive, endlessly optimistic. He took over a bankrupt company in the early days of a pandemic. He put together an executive team that only now, a year later can he spend any time with in person. Charlie discovered something brand new about himself in the middle of all of that. That he has a breaking point. Every leader does. And thinking of yourself as a servant will shorten the time it takes for you to discover yours. Are you in service? Yes. To the change you want to create in the world, and to providing the business with what it needs to reach that goal. But you are not a servant. You have agency and free will. Oh, and you have one other thing. Access to the levers of power. When a servant pulls the levers of power, it's called a revolution. When a leader pulls them, it's called a decision.

Dave Gilboa is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Warby Parker. Warby Parker is a twenty first century business. A case study in what purpose driven, values based, agile, innovative and disruptive looks like. At the beginning of 2010, the company didn't exist. Mid-way through 2020, it was valued at $3 billion dollars. They have given away more than 8 million pairs of eyeglasses, offering the gift of sight and changing the lives of people around the world. Books have been written about the strategic steps they have taken to grow this business. But I wanted to understand the personal journey that led to him starting this company and how he, his co-founder Neil Blumenthal and their senior leadership team are adapting to the challenges of our new world. What guides them today?

Edited highlights of our full conversation. Dave Gilboa is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Warby Parker. Warby Parker is a twenty first century business. A case study in what purpose driven, values based, agile, innovative and disruptive looks like. At the beginning of 2010, the company didn't exist. Mid-way through 2020, it was valued at $3 billion dollars. They have given away more than 8 million pairs of eyeglasses, offering the gift of sight and changing the lives of people around the world. Books have been written about the strategic steps they have taken to grow this business. But I wanted to understand the personal journey that led to him starting this company and how he, his co-founder Neil Blumenthal and their senior leadership team are adapting to the challenges of our new world. What guides them today?

Andy Nairn is the Co-Founder of Lucky Generals, who describe themselves as a creative company for people on a mission. Andy has been named the top brand strategist in the UK for the last three years and has also been named one of the top 5 creative people in world advertising. Andy has just written a book called Go Luck Yourself, which discusses the role luck can and should play in unlocking creative thinking and innovation. During our conversation, he tells a story about Quincy Jones. Quincy Jones has won 28 Grammys during his career and been nominated for 58 more. He believes that luck is an essential element of the creative process. In fact, so deep and omnipresent is his commitment to luck that inscribed on his studio wall is this - "Let God walk through the room." You may or may not be religious - I'm not - but this sense of making space for some other force during the creative process resonates with me. It is reminiscent of Elizabeth Gilbert's reminder in Eat, Pray, Love that the ancient Greeks and Romans believed that creativity was a divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source. And it is familiar to me in that my best work comes when I am willing to be less in control. And then, it is not just inspiration that comes, but a force that takes over to such an extent that sometimes I don't remember the act of creating. Maybe you've experienced something similar yourself? The art of fearlessly leading creative thinking and innovation has many components. But this idea of allowing luck into the equation doesn't come up very often. And never by design. And yet, by its very definition, creating time for the unpredictable, light for the unseen, and opportunity for the accidental, must be part of any business that depends for its success on the ability to discover the new. So if you find yourself running from meeting to meeting, brief to brief, financial statement to financial statement, maybe stop for a moment and ask yourself whether you've left any room for luck. And if not, why not?

How do leaders lead when none of us have ever been here before? This week, I'm going to do something a little different. Some people have suggested that every few weeks they'd like me to put a broader context around what I'm learning about leadership, both from these conversations and from my own work. How do the leaders who are best at unlocking creativity and innovation in the people that work for them, do that? So, let's start here. What is leadership?

Greg Lyons is the Chief Marketing Officer of PepsiCo, North America. Greg and I spoke during the CMO spotlight series on Cannes Lions live back in October and I was struck by his willingness to share his own journey. Greg lost his wife, Andrea in December of 2016. Before she died, she gave him and their two children three pieces of advice. There is nothing more important than family and friends. Your health is critical. And spend time doing what you love. We are shaped by what we live through. And what all of us have lived through for the last 14 months will change us forever. There is no going back. And how we go forward will depend on how we see ourselves and how we are seen. Leadership, particularly in companies that depend on creative thinking and innovation, requires that we look forward, relentlessly and urgently. The status quo is poison. Where are we going, is oxygen. If we are to convince people to take that journey with us, we will need to understand that they arrive in front of us different than when we last saw them in person. They will be closer to their family and friends. Their health will matter more to them. And they will care more about doing what they love. Some have been close to illness, perhaps death. Others will wish that parts of the last year could become permanent. Some will be thrilled to be back out in society. Others terrified. Leading the future will ask that we know and care about the people that work for us on a deeper level than we did before this pandemic. The question, how are you, will need to wait for an answer and that answer will need to matter to us. We must make progress while we are rewriting the rules. And the winners will be those businesses that are led by people who are empathetic. Genuinely, truly empathetic.

Nils Leonard is the Co-Founder of Uncommon, the London-based Creative Studio. They were just named Agency of the Year by Campaign UK. He believes that, "Good things happen to people who do stuff." He's got enviable energy. And he's in a hurry. He's not alone in that. Most leaders are in a hurry. Sometimes constructively. Sometimes not. People are really going to be in a hurry this year. They already are. To go back. To move forward. To not get left out. Those instincts can take over. Progress becomes everything and the quality of that progress becomes secondary. Sometimes, it even becomes a nuisance. Nils told me that he slowed down earlier this year. He was diagnosed with COVID-19 and ended up in hospital. Suddenly what was important became clearer. Some things became even more so. Some things dramatically less. It's human nature to be in a hurry. We want to make progress. It's how we've survived as a species. And making progress is critical to leadership. It's how we keep our people interested. But progress is relevant. It requires context. From where to where? And why? Take away that context and you have no way to judge what is important and what isn't. In that sense, context is the leadership equivalent of a hospital bed. Only less frightening. What are you doing today and why? How are you making progress?

Heidi Hackemer is the Executive Creative Director of OATLY! North America. She is intentioned and reflective. Leadership used to be exerted through command and control. Identify the levers of power and pull them. Rely on that today and you'll soon discover if your company is built to unlock creative thinking and innovation. If people do what you say, it's not. Original thinkers aren't interested in being told what to do. They want to be convinced. Which means that the key to successful leadership of the most talented people depends on a fundamental requirement. Do they trust you? Leading the future is going to demand that of leaders like never before. When are we in the office, when are we not? Who's vaccinated? Why are we doing this? What will make us successful? Add to that, the fact that each of us arrive in this moment having lived through an entirely unique version of this shared trauma, and the complexity of what we face is unprecedented. We have no history, no evidence, no data to help us make the decisions we are about to make. We have only trial and error. And our instincts. If we want people to follow us, we're going to need them to trust us. And unlike creative thinking and innovation, trust is a finite resource. Use it up and it's gone.