One of the best bosses I had was a guy called Chris Jaques.
He was great for a bunch of reasons – his leadership, the faith he put in his people and his overall inspiration.
However one of the other things he did was cultivate an atmosphere of ‘we’re in it together’.
I’m not talking about senior management towing the line and then demanding everyone follows suit … I’m talking about getting everyone from the receptionist up, knowing what the goal and the plan was, and what role they needed to play to make it happen.
[I’m not saying the receptionist is the lowest rung of an agency, it’s just to demonstrate a point so put your knives away]
And here’s the thing, Chris’ skill was appreciating details made success.
Sure the big things mattered … but how people worked together, interacted together, collaborated together was everything to him.
Don’t get me wrong, he didn’t adopt some crowd source, everyone-can-have-a-good-idea type of bullshit – there was definitely someone driving the overall goal and approach – it’s just he understood that when everyone knew what they were doing, why they were doing it and what it was all leading up to, a more seamless process occurred, exemplified by the fact people were encouraged to make slight tweaks to things if they saw the process/goal was either going off course, or able to be improved.
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“If you think you can do it all on your own, you’re either God or an idiot.”
Roger Campbell.
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This sort of approach has been well documented in the book ‘Nudge‘ [it’s also one of the key reasons behind Toyota’s meteoric rise, especially given they come from a country whose culture is literally the relentless pursuit of perfection] which is why I am continually surprised when I hear companies mandating a none-negotiable, stringent approach &/or process when there is countless amounts of evidence to suggest effectiveness and efficiency can be dramatically improved when you embrace, inform and empower the actions of the people around the process, not just in it.
Guess what I’m saying is, if you’re in adland and you want to improve your odds of success – you could do a lot worse that just making sure you’re nice to the people throughout the agency – because there’s a shit load of people and steps between writing a great brief and making an awesome ad.