Fearless Creative Leadership

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? Joanna Coles 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.

Vicki Maguire is 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.

Malcolm Poynton is the Global Chief Creative Officer of Cheil Worldwide. In the early weeks of the pandemic, Malcolm got stuck in New Zealand while his family were in London. He experienced first hand one of the very best governmental responses and learned some leadership lessons that I suspect will prove timeless for all of us. What's your intention and what is the greatest obstacle to that? Leadership means knowing the answer to both. And then getting your ego out of the way.

Mae Karwowski is the Founder and CEO of Obviously. They describe themselves as a team of best in class marketers and technologists who are obsessed with pushing the cutting edge of influencer marketing. When your company's success depends on creating and maintaining virtual connections, how do you keep your own company physically connected when the world is pushing us apart? Effectively solving that problem has been behind the success of almost every business that has increased its value and reputation in 2020.

Rich Bressler is the President, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer of iHeartMedia and iHeartCommunications. iHeart is both a highly creative and a highly complicated business. The company has 13,000 employees in the United States, spread over 150 offices for 850 radio stations. Add to all of that the realities of a global pandemic and a historic civil rights moment and you create a multi-layered leadership test. In an environment crying out for certainty, how do you encourage experimentation and individuality? How do you produce original thinking and innovation? And how do you create room for listening in a world filled with sound?

Justin Spooner is the Co-Founder of the London-based consultancy, Unthinkable Digital. Justin knows more and thinks more than anyone I know about how people learn and how they connect. In a world that has moved mostly online, that understanding has become essential not only for our business success but for our humanity - and increasingly for our sanity. Like all great conversations, I learned a lot from this one. And have applied some of the revelations to the problems faced by my own clients. So, what do you need your people to understand and what problems do you need them to solve? And, how are you teaching them that?

Frank Spotnitz is the Founder and CEO of Big Light Productions. They're a London and Paris-based production company. Under Frank's leadership, Big Light has produced a number of high-end drama productions including Amazon's Emmy award-winning The Man in the High Castle, Ransom, The Indian Detective and three seasons of Medici for Netflix. He has also co-created the new drama series Leonardo, which he talks about during our conversation. Frank was also executive producer of The X Files. Writing or co-writing more than 40 episodes, he shares three Golden Globes for Best Dramatic Series and a Peabody Award and was Emmy-nominated both for writing and Outstanding Drama Series. I'm fascinated by the role that stories play in shaping society. They affect our personal lives, our politics and our businesses. And I've never met an impactful leader who couldn't tell a compelling story - about their vision for the future and why it matters. What's your story? And how do you tell it?