Filed under: Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Colleagues, Confidence, Contribution, Creativity, Culture, Easter, Leadership, Management, Mischief, My Fatherhood, Parents, Perspective, Privilege, Process, Professionalism, Provocative
Today is the last post until the 7th April, thanks to Easter.
As many of you know, I’m not religious in the least – but if there’s a holiday in it, especially a holiday with a justification to eat the stuff I don’t allow myself to consume at any other point of the year, I’m all in on it.
So before I get on with today’s post, I wish you all a happy chocolate eating period … let’s be honest, with the shit going on in the World right now, we deserve whatever can make us happy for a few minutes.
Right … so let’s get on with things shall we>
There’s a term that states:
“Ask for forgiveness rather than permission”.
I get why … because however open minded a company may claim they are, most only want to operate within the narrow guidelines they’ve always followed.
That’s why, if there’s something you want to do that you know challenges convention – it’s better to do it and apologise later [regardless of the outcome] than ask first and likely lose the chance forever.
I have decades of experience of doing this – and have the written warnings to prove it [haha] – but what enabled me to get away with it was this:
1. I always had/have a logic driving my actions. Even if others didn’t/don’t quite agree with it – there is a reason that drives my desire to do something commercially and creatively original, interesting and/or different.
2. Whatever I did never crossed any legal, moral, financial or commercial line. I may be a nightmare at times, but with a family of lawyers, I’m not a total idiot.
3. Regardless of the outcome – good or bad [and more often than not, it was good. Eventually – haha] I always came clean to my boss. The reality it I knew they’d always find out eventually and it was far better to own it than be owned by it.
4. For most of my career, I’ve worked with/for bosses who I deeply respect and who I knew not only understood who I was – and had hired me because of it – but shared a similar belief of pushing things to explore new things. Not for wreckless or egotistical reasons, but out of pure creative, cultural or commercial curiosity. [Albeit they tended to be more considered, deliberate and discerning in their choices than me]
And it’s this last point that I’ve come to realise is one of the most important and valuable things any employee could ask for. In fact I’d go one further, I’d say I regard it as one of the most important factors when looking for a job.
Right now, it appears too many managers are more focused on managing up rather than lifting their people up. Caring more about how they look to their bosses than enabling their teams to develop, grow and lead in such a way that their worth to the organisation is blatantly apparent.
On one level, I get it.
Times are tough out there and you don’t want your future placed entirely in the hands of others actions and behaviours – except that’s the whole point of being a manager. Or at least in my book it is.
As I’ve said many times over the years, I believe the role of a manager is to help their people embrace and grow their talent in such a way that when they leave – as we all do at some point – they have more opportunities than they ever imagined having and that when someone wants to hire them … its as much for who they are and what they do as it is there’s a role that needs to be filled.
Does that always happen? No.
Has it happened more often than not? Yes.
Now I should point out I am not claiming any credit for what people have gone on to achieve – they did it with their own talent, experience and work – but I am saying that is the driving force behind how I approach my job … how I’ve always approached my job … and how I hope my colleagues see me approaching my job.
Put simply, working towards what they’re working towards or putting them in positions of opportunity where they have the right to say “no” to something rather than it being decided for them by someone else.
And if that sounds selfless, it’s not.
Because fundamentally, if they do well, I do well.
It’s how I demonstrate my worth to the people who are evaluating my worth. Because I believe there’s more value in liberating my teams potential than supressing it so only I look good to the powers-that-be.
To be honest, I’m worried this is all coming out the wrong way. I’m not trying to big-up my management skills – at the end of the day, the only people who can evaluate if I’m any good are the people who work with me. The point of this post is more about the commercial and professional importance of elevating people’s potential rather than simply focusing on elevating their productivity.
Sure, everyone has a job they have to do.
Sure, everyone has standards and ‘quotas’ they have to hit.
But my view is you achieve much more than that if you let your team grow rather than just makie them work more. And faster.
It’s why I passionately believe my job is far less about giving the team permission, and far more about giving them protection.
Protection from others judgement.
Protection from others attempts to control.
Protection from others formulaic approaches that never led to anything great.
All underpinned in the knowledge you’ve set the right values, standards and rigor that will guide their choices and decisions for every challenge or opportunity – even if things don’t end up going quite as anyone hoped or planned.
In some ways, it’s a bit like being a parent.
Where your role is to teach your kid how to think about handling a situation, rather than what to specifically do.
Or said another way … trusting their judgement, rather than trying to control it, even if they do something differently to how you would have approached it.
Of course people need to earn that trust – as I need to earn it from them – but believing in their ability has to be the starting point, because if you don’t, not only are you failing to create the conditions where they will even ask for permission, you’re creating the conditions where they’ll be too frightened to do anything different in the first place.
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Clients, Colleagues, Comment, Communication Strategy, Community, Confidence, Conformity, Content, Context, Contribution, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Differentiation, Distinction, Education, Effectiveness, Equality, Experience, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Marketing Science, Otis, Parents, Research, Respect, School, Standards
As many of you know, Otis has dysgraphia.
For those who don’t know what that is, it’s a condition that means – while his capacity to learn is the same as everyone else’s – the way he learns is different.
I’ve written about how his school has tried to accommodate him and how grateful we are for that, but the reality is – understandably – most schools are designed to cater to the masses, not the edge … so as much as Otis did well, it still meant he was being taught [and measured] to a standard more than his potential.
Anyway, this year – because he was due to change school having turned 11 – we decided to take the plunge and enroll him in a specialist creative school that follows an educational model that has been specifically designed for kids who have ability, but learn differently.
I am massively against private education, but within minutes of walking in – I got very emotional because I knew this is what he needed. What would help him thrive. Not to be better than others, but to be better for himself.
Within a few days of attendance, he proved we were right.
On about the 3rd day, he came home and told us why he knew this school was right for him.
It wasn’t because there’s only 90 kids in the entire school
[when previously there were 70 just in his class]
It wasn’t because the building feels more fun ad agency than place of studious education.
It wasn’t even because it’s next to a beach which the whole class goes to every day.
No, it was this: He doesn’t need to charge his laptop every day.
Now you may think that means he’s not doing much learning … but you’d be wrong. In fact, you couldn’t be more wrong.
You see, at his old school, all he ever did was use his computer.
Part of this was because dysgraphia affects your ability to write with a pen, so he did everything on a laptop. But the other part of this is because his teachers – in a bid to keep him busy while also needing to give attention to the rest of the class – gave him endless worksheets to fill in.
In essence, his education was more about data entry than learning.
That’s not a diss, we understand the situation they were in and were very grateful for the genuine interest in trying to help … however in just a few days, Otis has discovered what education really is about … what it really means … how it really feels.
And while he has stated he finds this harder … he’s not just happy about it, he’s happy about how he’s being encouraged to approach it.
Learn not follow.
Think not repeat.
Experience not reference.
Inclusive not exclusive.
Engaged not left to type.
Which is why the fact his computer only needs charging once-a-week rather than everyday is so noticeable and powerful.
Not just to him, but to his Mum and Dad as well.
It reminds me of the time I was doing a project for Coca-Cola in Indonesia.
We’d launched the Open Happiness work and I’d been sent to Indonesia to talk to kids about what optimism meant to them.
I remember talking to some kids – about 15 years old – when one of them took me to the other side of the street and pointed into the distance.
All I could see was a skyline filled with tall buildings and cranes that were building even more tall buildings so I asked him what I was supposed to be looking at.
“The cranes”, he said. “I’m seeing my future being built in front of my eyes”.
I loved it. I loved how they’d just communicated something pretty fluid and morpheus in a way that suddenly was clear-as-fuck. Something I didn’t just understand, but felt … while somehow also ensuring I was very aware of the context, conflict and challenge they’d gone through leading up to that point.
Like with Otis’ and his use of the battery % on his laptop to help me truly appreciate the journey he’d been on, the comment about the cranes made a lasting impression on me.
Which highlights a really important point.
People very rarely connect, project, express and see meaning in things in ways that reflect how we want them to communicate to us.
That doesn’t mean they lack ability, it means we lack the ability to translate them.
Some of that’s because we’ve become an industry that values convenience over nuance. Some of that’s because we’ve become an industry that values answers over understanding. Some of that’s because we’ve become an industry that values the functional not the emotional.
Some of that’s because we’ve become an industry that values what the clients want to say more than what the audience want to hear. Some of that’s because we’ve become an industry obsessed with the ‘science’ of marketing, not the people it’s for. But most of it’s because we’ve become an industry that places greater value on audiences repeating a specific set of words based on our communication than having them express its impact on them through their individual feelings, emotions and behaviours.
My son … and that kid in Indonesia … not only helped me understand what education and optimism meant to them in ways that no focus group or data set could ever achieve, but they gave me access into their world.
How they see it.
How they interpret it.
How they live within it.
How they cope inside of it.
How they hope to experience it.
The more we open our eyes and ears to what is going on in our audiences world – rather than focus on what we want them to specifically repeat in their world – the more we not only can make a bigger difference to our clients in the work we create, but the more our clients will make a bigger impact on the people they need.
Or as my friend Andy once said:
“Just because someone repeats what you want to hear, exactly as you want to hear it … doesn’t mean they believe a fucking word of it”.
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Apathy, Attitude & Aptitude, Class System, Colleagues, Communication Strategy, Consultants, Contribution, Corporate Evil, Creativity, Culture, Effectiveness, Leadership, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Meetings, Music
There’s a company I work with that has 14 employees.
Of that 14, 4 are specialists and the remaining 10 are very smart, informed, experienced, generalists.
And they make US$100 million dollars a year.
PER YEAR.
Part of the reason they make so much money is the speed in which they make decisions.
Sure, with only 14 people, it’s much easier to achieve that … but that’s not the whole story behind their success.
Because while all their competitors employ 5+ times the amount of people as them [even though their revenues are a fraction of theirs] the driving force behind their speed is down to 3 things.
1 They understand who they are, what they believe and what they do.
2 They only hire truly exceptional talent with experience proven over years.
3 They trust their team so they can make decisions with minimal consultation or debate.
Or put even more simply:
Opportunities don’t get delayed, diluted, dismantled or discarded by ‘heirarchy management’.
And the result of this trust, taste and experience?
They’re not only regarded as one of the most influential and highly regarded companies in their field across the entire World … they’re viewed as being the most successful company in the history of their category.
Hopefully it is obvious why I say this …
But if it’s not, this quote from Dave Trott – I think – sums it up.
I have to be honest, I can relate to this … and what makes this even worse is I’m one of the lucky fuckers, because I generally only work – and have only worked – with clients and colleagues who have the taste, experience and ambition to do what it takes to create good, interesting and original shit day after day after day.
Which begs the question, what the hell is it like for so many others?
I swear the problem is too many companies care more about building empires than producing excellence.
Where the prize is quantity not quality.
Size rather than craft.
KPI’s over creating real change.
Pride in conformity rathe than standards.
And so we end up in this situation where we have countless levels of middle management … where each one dilutes whatever is in front of them to ensure they don’t risk being negatively judged by the level above.
Empowered to only ever say no and never yes.
Resulting in opportunities being killed by either a thousand comments or delayed by a thousand meetings.
Which is why productivity has little to do with which operational model you embrace.
Nor does it matter if you operate with a flat-org structure or an agile approach …
If you want to be killer rather than filler, collapse the layers and elevate proper talent.
No wonder the brilliant Simon Pestridge once told me:
“Middle management want to be right …
… but [good] senior management want to know how to be better”
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Comment, Contribution, Creativity, Culture, Details, Pretentious Rubbish, Process, Professionalism, Reputation, Respect, Systems
Over the years, I’ve had people call me ‘unprofessional’.
Never for the work I produced, but for how I have approached the work.
Whether it’s the way I’ve dressed.
Whether it’s the way I’ve proved a point.
Whether it’s the way I’ve asked a question.
Whether it’s the way I’ve countered an objection.
I should point out this never came from people you would think could take exception to it.
Over the years I’ve found myself in the ridiculous situation of presenting to – and working with – some of the World’s toughest and best CEO’s and CMO’s, be it Richard Branson, François-Henri Pinault, Phil Knight, Elizabeth Warren, Myley Cyrus or even James Hetfield.
And not one of them had an issue with me. Not one.
If truth be told, I think they quite liked the fact I was ‘me’ … to the point I presented to Phil Knight wearing Birkenstocks and then I was sent some Nike’s that had been adapted into a ‘birkie’ for me. [which I sadly lost in one of our country moves]
No, the people who labelled me as unprofessional were almost universally ‘middle-men’ … people who thought their position in a company meant they could dictate how people acted, not just presented.
[The exception to this was Anthony Kiedis of RHCP fame, but as I have documented many times – given how much of a prick he is universally acknowledged to be, I take that as a badge-of-honour rather than a personal slight. Plus the others in the band were lovely]
Anyway, the point of this whole rant is that it seems professionalism is becoming more and more about appearance and process adherence than the standard of the work and the rigor that went into it.
Don’t get me wrong, ‘presentation and process’ has a role to play … but when the people who are the most focused on it tend to be the people who’ve never made anything significant with it, you start to think they maybe use professionalism as a label to hide behind rather than a standard of work to live up to.
But here’s the other irony …
Often the companies who claim to bang on about ‘professional standards’ the most, are the ones with the most questionable behaviors.
And while that could lead me to talk about companies like McKinsey …
Or the financial institutions and their complicit, self-serving actions relating to the Sub Prime Mortgage bullshit …
I thought I’d highlight something else …
This.
Seriously Linkedin, why – of all the images you could have created to represent ‘a new job’ – did you choose this?
It makes Google’s logo look like it was designed by Picasso, rather than – arguably – Stevie Wonder.
But at least Google’s has charm and charisma. And represented who they [once] were …
But this?
What the fuck does this represent?
I’ll tell you … a company who loves to talk about professionalism but increasingly behaves in ways that are the antithesis of it.
A dumbing down of standards and behaviors in an attempt to gain increased popularity.
Hell, even Microsoft’s ‘Mr Clippy’ is arguably less offensive given that had an alleged degree of usefulness associated with it.
Empashsis on the word ‘alleged’.
Which is why if anyone ever questions your professionalism in the future, reply with “you’re welcome”, because you’re not only likely doing something right, you’re doing something they never could or that anyone in their right mind would ever aspire to.
Filed under: 2025, A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Ambition, Aspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Career, China, Clients, Colenso, Colleagues, Comment, Community, Context, Contribution, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Curiosity, Effectiveness, Emotion, Environment, Family, Fear, Honesty, Hope, Imagination, Individuality, Katie, Love, Loyalty, Luck, Management, Martin Weigel, Metallica, Miley, Mr Ji, Paula, Perspective, Planes, Planning, Relationships, Relevance, Reputation, Resonance, Respect, Standards, Strategy, Success, Wieden+Kennedy
Once upon-a-time, I hired a head of planning for NIKE at Wieden Shanghai.
They’d come to my attention via a colleague who’d worked with them in the past.
On top of that, they had a good pedigree of work and – just as importantly – they loved sport.
I was excited to welcome them into the team and everything was good … until it wasn’t.
One evening, I received an email saying they’d thought about it and didn’t want to do it.
I understood the cold feet, they were US based and I was asking them to move to China … but we had spent a lot of time discussing this and they had assured me they were up for it.
And they probably were – when it was theoretical.
Everything is fine when it’s theoretical.
The problems always lie once you move to reality.
What bugged me was this person refused to get on the phone to discuss it. They sent their email and in their mind, that was the only correspondence they were going to enter into.
Was I pissed?
Yeah, initially I was … because we’d invested a lot of time and effort into helping this person get a good taste of what the opportunity was, what life was like here and what we’d do to make their move as easy as possible. Add to that, I always take huge responsibility when bringing people over from another country and it all felt like they had just wasted our time a bit.
But by the emorning, I was fine with it.
In fact, I was bloody happy about it.
Because if they didn’t want to come to us, I sure as hell didn’t want them to be with us.
Now I appreciate that may sound cold as hell – and I was grateful they made the call before they actually moved here – but I haven’t got the time to waste on people who aren’t excited about what they could be doing and learning and who only want to repeat or surround themselves with the stuff they know and have done.
We used to have a lot of those people apply to be at Wieden Shanghai.
Same with Colenso, albeit to a lesser degree.
People who want to work at the agency, but don’t want to move for it.
Oh they say all the right things.
They complain about all the right things.
But then you realise they don’t want to change any of the things.
They prefer to be a blame thrower rather than an opportunity grabber.
I find that bonkers … especially for strategists … but it happens more than you could ever imagine. People only focusing on what they lose rather than all the things they gain.
And you gain a lot. In every single possible way.
But that’s not what this post is about …
Because the person I hired to replace the person who walked away, was the brilliant Paula Bloodworth.
THAT Paula Bloodworth. The fucking weapon of strategy and creativity.
A person with a reel that is better than entire agencies, let alone strategists.
And while I take absolutely no credit for all she has gone on to achieve, I do express my gratitude to the person who pulled out the job.
Had they not done that, Paula would not have entered my life … and given she is one of the most important people in my life – not as a colleague, but a full-on friend – that is something I feel eternally grateful for.
In many ways, my job at Colenso followed a similar story.
They’d hired a CSO from Australia, but before they could move, COVID happened and they realised they didn’t want to leave where they were.
It was at that point, Colenso saw I’d been made redundant from R/GA and – having almost got together in 2015 – they put in a call.
Had that not happened, I’d likely still be in the UK or back in the US … rather than at a place that is increasingly more special to me with each passing year.
‘Accidental Luck’ is everywhere …
Hell, we’re in talks with someone who embodies this on steroids.
Where they sent a VERY speculative email at the very moment a candidate we were talking to, pulled out.
OK, it helps they’re talented and have a ton of potential we see and can/will grow … plus there’s the good fortune we have a new client who is not only based in the very country they’re from, but also works in the same category they’ve been focused on for the past few years and they want to become what they want have always wanted a brand in that category to be … but suddenly a person we may never have known – let alone hired – could be someone we get to call a brilliant new member of our strat gang soon.
Hopefully.
For fucks sake, hopefully, hahaha.
[And if they don’t, they don’t – we all move on – however the real lesson they need to understand is what I write about next in this post … that is if they read this blog, which they don’t. Which is another sign they’re smart … haha.]
Which goes to the point of this post.
We can plan our careers to within an inch of their life.
We can study and follow the latest theories and systems.
We can spend time looking at every possible permutation.
We can demand every part of the job is described in minute detail.
Hell, we can even write 20 Linkedin posts a day, every single day.
But none of that – absolutely none – matters as much as being ready to act when the opportunity strikes.
Yes, it’s nice to think you will always have companies come to you.
Yes, it’s nice to think you will always have options and choices.
But often, the best thing you can do for your career is be ready to go when someone else isn’t.
If I am being honest, I owe pretty much everything I have ever done to the fact I’ve always been willing to move to wherever the best opportunities was located and then work my ass off to make great things for them.
Or said another way, if I heard of something exciting [and credible] was on the table, I was on the plane.
No if’s.
No buts.
No umming and ahhing.
I was sprinting towards it.
Doesn’t matter if it was an agency in China, an artist in America or a fashion designer in Italy … if it is interesting, intriguing and scary-as-fuck, I am there.
Now of course I appreciate not everyone has the ability to do this.
I also understand that ‘moving countries’ for a job has become infinitely harder.
And I get that there are occasions where opportunities can turn into fucking nightmares.
[Though that’s very rare as long as you stick to the rule that is detailed a bit further below]
But this isn’t really about your willingness to move countries – though that can help – it’s more about your hunger to go after what excites and interests you …
That doesn’t mean a role has to be perfect.
Frankly, when companies say there are no faults, that is ALWAYS a red flag … it’s more about whether the opportunity excites you and if the company and the person who will be your boss have a track record of consistently doing good shit. Maybe not pulling it off every time, but always pushing to do interesting things and having a on-going history of doing it.
It’s how I ended up working at Wieden … which definitely isn’t perfect.
It’s how I ended up working with Artists … who definitely aren’t perfect.
It’s how I ended up working with amazing creatives … who definitely aren’t perfect.
It’s important, because for all the good things the Bloodworth’s, the Weigel’s – and dare I say it – the Campbell’s have achieved, one of the biggest reasons for it is whether it’s a boss, a team, a company, a client or even a creative opportunity … we never, ever, ever look a gift-horse in the mouth.