Fearless Creative Leadership

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.

Marc Pritchard is the Chief Brand Officer of Procter & Gamble. He focuses every day on being useful to the people around him. And that allows him to see the world through an invaluable lens. Theirs. 2020 was complicated. But, 2021 is going to re-define the word. For the last year, the playing field has been level. Everyone stayed home. But as vaccine rates increase and cases decrease, the questions about who returns, when they return, and what they return to, become ever more complicated. On one extreme, there are already reports in the press of companies implying that they will terminate anyone who won’t come back into the office once they are vaccinated. At the other end of the spectrum, some companies are giving up millions of square feet of office space and creating entirely new expectations about what working will look like. In the middle of all this sits the leader. Whether you go back fully, partially, or not at all, there is one measurement of success that will provide the foundation on which all other measurements will sit. Are your people engaged? Do they care, are they inspired, do they feel included? There will be many, many ways to make sure they do. And even more that would guarantee they don’t. At that point, the only question left to answer would be a simple one. Who will be leaving first? The people who feel left out. Or the leaders who left them out.

Adam Bryant is the Managing Director of the Americas at Merryck - a leadership advisory group. Adam is also a noted author, and before joining Merryck, was a writer and journalist for the New York Times. He is perhaps best known for his column, the Corner Office, in which he interviewed over 500 CEOs. He is an extraordinarily astute observer of leadership. The last year has, in many ways, brought us to the future faster. We have seen and solved problems that 12 months ago we could barely imagine. We have reacted and responded and adapted, perhaps further and faster than at any time in the history of humankind. And as we begin to emerge, blinking, back into the light, those attributes will be necessary for some time to come. But sitting above is something else. An ability that all leaders need and which too few demonstrate. The ability to define where we are going and how we will know when we get there. On May 25, 1961, John F. Kennedy said this. “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.” Vision. Mission, KPIs In 31 words. JFK had been dead for 6 years when success was achieved. Where are you taking your business? How will you know when you get there? And are those answers so meaningful that people will pursue them long after you have left the building?

Susan Credle is the Global CCO of FCB. 2020 blew up the leadership playbook. Suddenly there were no rules. There was only you and how you chose to lead. It was the year when it became obvious who the real leaders are and who had just been wearing the robes. The leaders that have risen from the experiences of the last 12 months have done so because they showed up with openness, with honesty and with courage. They were vulnerable. They were human. Being human is an element of leadership that often gets lost in the conversations about missions and strategies and metrics. You need those things. But you need to be human first.

Welcome to Season 3, which we’re calling, “Leading The Future”. We’re living in an unprecedented time. An epoch in which the collision of science, technology and humanity is changing everything we thought we knew. How do leaders lead when none of us have ever been here before? This week’s guest is Joanna Coles. She has been an observer and shaper of society and culture for most of her professional life. She has worked for some of the world’s most iconic publications. The Spectator, The Guardian, The Times of London, she has been the editor of Marie Claire and of Cosmo. And the Chief Content Officer for Hearst Magazines. Today, she is the Chairman and CEO of Northern Star, an investment vehicle that has just agreed to acquire Bark Box, a subscription service for dog lovers, in a deal that values the startup at $1.6 billion. She sees the world through multiple lenses and that is a skill every successful leader is going to have to develop in the months and years to come.

Today’s guest is Vicki Maguire, the Chief Creative Officer of Havas London.  Vicki is clear about who she is and she’s driven to create an environment in which people can be authentic. She’s also clear what it means to be authentic. We talked about what 2020 has taught her and which of the changes will stick around into 2021 and beyond. What have you learned from this year? And what do you want to be true 12 months from now? Good questions on which to start a brand new year.