Whilst contemplating my future, it’s hard not to consider the past.
I’ve worked in ‘coal face’ consultancy for the best part of 25 years, and have experienced agencies large and small, here in the UK and overseas, growing and shrinking, privately owned and financially backed, technically minded and fluffy front end. It’s not a particularly planned course, but one that has afforded me plenty of observation and experience in the myriad ways that agencies are run, teams motivated, projects won and growth managed. Some of these observations and experiences come from having tried it myself for a good number of years (and with that all the mistakes that one invariably suffers), and – as you would expect – plenty of lessons learned along the way…good and bad.
As much as I’ve been attempting to ensure that any next step I take doesn’t drop me back into the murky cess pool of overwork and frustration, I’ve similarly been thinking about the things I’ve seen and the first hand experiences I’ve had, that I would wish to address or eliminate if I ever found myself back in the agency world again.
Much of this ain’t rocket science, and it’s not some secret sauce I intend to habour for myself. I guess you could call it a set of self observed guidelines that I’d like to think I’d have the wherewithall to implement should circumstances permit. Some of it – as you have come to expect from me – is just a good old fashioned rant at what I think are silly practices or modes of working.
Anyway…as always, in no particular order of importance…
1. Strategic Innovation.
If I had a pound for every creative website that started with “We are an award winning, strategic innovation consultancy”, I’d be a wealthy chap.
It’s become the defacto “Once upon a time…” introduction to any creative business, but these words are now just dead air. They smack of the way we used to say “www” before every website address in the Noughties. Pointless and unheard.
Words and phrases like ‘strategy’, ‘innovation’, ‘design thinking’, ‘agile’, ‘collaboration’…all simply fall like lumps of coal out of the mouths of countless sales pitches and “Why we are different…” diatribes. I genuinely feel sorry for clients looking for a creative partner to work with. Can you imagine how many times they must have heard this tripe from different shaped versions of creative people? I reckon they should do with these words what many students did whilst watching ‘Withnail & I’. Every time they had a drink onscreen, you take a drink…see who lasts longest. It would add a certain edge to any client meeting and a resounding ‘Bingo’ at a key point in any meeting!
These words have been so overused that they now simply mean nothing. Like tissue paper in the ocean. Limp, lifeless and disintegrating. I think honesty has to be the way forward. Honesty combined with an ability to listen and connect with a client. By virtue of what we do, shouldn’t we all be innovative, strategic, collaborative and flexible? Before this, did you create obvious, commercially limp work in a silo without listening to anyone?
Nope. Well…I’d hope not.
2. Succession.
Every business I’ve worked in has struggled with this, and not one has – to my mind – succeeded in ensuring that the business continues in the best way possible. Founders either load up a chasing generational protegé (or three) with the expectations of company ownership, or they doggedly forge on to finally find an investment partner.
As someone who has set up a business myself, I know only too well the sense of commitment and one’s own self that is inextricably born of that business. How could I possibly ever expect someone else – no matter how talented or apparently agreeable – to share that same sense of utter commitment? The best you can expect is that the next in line shares some of what you believed in and has their own vision and direction that isn’t simply a continued trajectory. To my mind, you simply cannot expect to successfully hand over a business – to the next generation – of the size that most creative businesses achieve. I’ve seen it attempted several times and it has failed over time without exception.
If it does transition as expected, you are left with a ragbag assemblage of ‘old timers’ who expect things to be done the way they’ve always been done, ‘dreamers’ who want everything to change and ‘climbers’ who wait down the dark ‘metaphorical’ alleyway, waiting for their time to strike. The only real beneficiaries are the departing owners I guess? My view is that a creative business should be run for the ‘now’. Constant expectations of future growth and ambition are contradictions to good work. Find great people to work with and work with them right here, right now, to create exemplary solutions. Don’t load them up with “One day Rodney…” promises or dangle carrots that they simply are not interested in. From what I’ve seen of talented creative people, very few are motivated by staying somewhere for donkey’s years just to sit at the top table – particularly millennials! There has to be more to it.
Most renowned bands have a ‘purple patch’ creating phenomenal music. They kick out 3 brilliant albums and then disband when they all start annoying the shit out of each other. There are notable exceptions I’ll grant you, but I’m interested to know what would happen if you ran a business for only a finite amount of time and just did the best bloody work you possibly could while it worked. Accept it when it finishes. I’ve always had huge respect for the guys at Airside who simply walked away from the business at its peak. Remove the elephant of succession from the room altogether.
I could talk about this all day but I think I’ll leave it there …for now.
3. Loyalty earned not expected.
Loyalty is hard to get. You have to fight for it.
My view is that you have to take a few bullets in order to demonstrate that you are the kind of person that warrants loyalty. How can you realistically expect someone – bar their first few graduate years of desperate self proving – to give themselves to your cause and constantly deliver creativity, passion, diligence, empathy and graft, without proving to them that you are deserving of it? The days of simply expecting someone to be loyal because they have a job is folly – no matter how significant or ‘famous’ the name above the door.
Some need you to prove you can still sketch or think to the required level, rather than simply directing from afar. Some will need you to support them in a tricky situation to know that you won’t let them fall. Some simply need you to be aware of days when they might be a bit off colour and you tell them to bugger off home and recharge. Different horses for different courses.
You can’t simply be the older guy who has “done it longer than you”. Roll your sleeves up, get stuck in and show that you are as relevant to their work as they are to yours.
Mutuality.
I’ve read it countless time on the walls of clients corridors I’ve visited, but it’s a good ethos. It’s not quite a ‘flat hierarchy’ approach, but it’s a respect for everyone’s inputs as valid, no matter what their level.
4. Equitability?
I wasn’t even sure if this is even a word, but I’ve looked it up and it is. Go me.
I like what it stands for. Making sure that everyone is treated fairly and rewarded for their efforts.
In real terms this would mean ensuring that everyone in the business has a stake in its success, in a way that best suits them. This could mean share ownership, or direct influence in key decisions or an ability to define how they contribute that best reflect their talents or life goals.
There are many sides to fairness and equitability. Most agencies trade on salary enticements or share options but often as back room deals rather than transparent incentivising opportunities. I’ll admit that this might only really work with a smaller business (although John Lewis seems to make it work) and you’ve got to be careful that the people you work with are aligned with these principles, but I think the idea of ‘overt’ equitability is an interesting one that – if done correctly – could be a huge motivator and catalyst to better work and creative delivery.
I might also be talking utter poppycock.
5. Intolerance of ineptitude.
One thing I find hard to stomach is the acceptance of consistently below average work. I don’t just mean ‘a bit off the pace’, I’m talking about the ongoing sub-par delivery from individuals who consistently shift all the heavy lifting to their more eager, more conscientious colleagues. People who cruise and keep their head below the radar, just enough to avoid giving those with enough power, enough reason to show them the door.
I think it’s incredibly eroding to creative team morale (or any symbiotic team for that matter) to have an individual or two simply clocking in and out and not supporting the efforts of the rest of the team, but wallowing in the reflected glory of others’ hard graft.
I’ve seen it in most places I’ve worked and I’m sure we can all relate.
Now I’m certainly not advocating getting rid of people who do their job and don’t go above and beyond, as many people have tricky lives to juggle and can’t always be the full fighting machine every day, but it’s the lackadaisical rot that I abhor. The everyday laziness and assumption that they are immune to corrective action…which in many places they are – sadly. I also don’t want to infer a pseudo ‘Lord of the flies’ approach to rooting out these creatures, but I would want to ensure that those that work hard, listen and grow are justly rewarded whilst those that don’t are not given immunity, no matter how ‘nice’ they appear to be.
6. Sustainability.
This is going to sound terrible, but I think the word ‘sustainability’ is losing its impact, moreso because every single well meaning, design startup is using it to describe their ethos and approach.
Now before you start throwing rotten (fairtrade) produce at me, let me be clear that I think sustainability is incredibly important and should be top of every client agenda. However, this needs to extend further than launching a kickstarter using starch based plastic and a reusable ‘cartridge’.
Sustainability principles are key to ensuring that we – as guilty parties to the growing landfill, finite resources, climate change and decreasing biodiversity arguments that are raging – do the right thing when we advise our clients down a route we’ve had a hand in crafting or creating. It can’t simply be a hashtag used to describe a funky new creative business.
This stuff is hard. Really fucking hard.
Designing a bike frame from bamboo canes is one thing, but attempting to influence a global FTSE500 business to halve their carbon footprint is quite another. The key to sustainable thinking and influence lies in the very early vestiges of a client briefing and project discussion. Fundamentally shifting the business model, changing the success criteria, challenging the principles whilst ensuring you really understand the impact of your suggestions on the profitability of that business and the infrastructure it’s probably spent decades developing and finessing.
I’m as guilty as any of letting this ball drop all too many times over the course of my career, blaming clients or budgets or circumstance for a lack of thinking.
This stuff should be legal. It’s our moral obligation to do our best for the planet and for our children who get to inherit the shitpile of a planet we are slowing destroying – whether they like it or not. But please don’t add it to your list of ‘services’. It’s too fundamental to be a menu item.
7. Title fudging.
I touched on this in a previous article.
The recent shift in titles and the way we have yet again sub-divided and sliced our industry into little boxes that we can comfortably inhabit and yet – at the same time – confuse the hell out of our target clients, is astounding. It’s hard enough to explain what a Product Designer did to a guy in the street beforehand, but I now struggle to define what a Product Designer is, and I’ve got a degree in it.
As someone looking to work out how to re-enter the professional landscape I am genuinely perplexed by what to call myself. I defer to my first point about ‘strategic innovation’.
My hunch is that we need to start with a bit more honesty and straightforwardness.
I do understand that there are people who necessarily specialise in fields such as ‘human factors’, or ‘user experience’ at a psychological level, but the ever fragmented approach to skill silo-ing is – in my humble opinion – destroying the polymathic approach to genuine problem solving to the levels that we increasingly need problems to be solved in this ever complex world.
I’ve seen both sides of this equation. The one where the smaller team or individual is expected to wear many hats and deliver the whole, versus the ‘hot potato’ throw of research, to insight to innovation to UX to ‘design’ to technology to engineering to human factors…Whilst there is no doubt that the latter dives deeper into each pool (given the increased levels of specific expertise you can command in separate teams), it is typical that the pools rarely connect with the levels of fluidity required of a genuine solution.
I also know that this frustration is often shared by others in different teams and there is a genuine desire to flatten the silos and just work together as a multi-disciplinary soup of talented thinkers, doers and solvers – each with a certain sets of skills that can be amplified to suit the problem at hand.
I like the term ‘creative problem solvers’. I’m not an ‘electronics engineer’ or an ‘industrial designer’ or a ‘human factors scientist’ – I simply solve problems creatively to satisfy the brief. That’s the fundamental kernel of what the client needs…surely?
Many of you who have read previous articles I’ve written know that I love the 7’s rugby team analogy. Everyone can run fast, tackle hard, throw and catch the ball with aplomb, but within that team there are people who are better at kicking, scrummaging, tactics, leadership and mindgames. After all this time, I still think that this is as good a structure for an agile, adaptable creative problem solving team as any I’ve seen.
8. Don’t say you are better. Be better.
Please don’t tell me you are an award winning, industry leading, game changing, sabre rattling, category challenging group of punks, but then deliver work that is – at best – pretty good.
I get that you need to make some noise in this message clogged world we live in, but despite all the flag waving and dick swinging, can we just promise that we will do our best bloody work? Really good work. Work that has been properly thought through, and if it hasn’t, be honest about it.
And when we do that work, let’s let others judge how good it is, not us.
I’ve found myself in numerous situations where I’ve had to bend the truth about how much time and effort went into something or that I’m particularly proud of something when I know we could have done a much better job of it. In some cases it doesn’t matter or the client can see right through you…to the extent that you don’t get any more work. But as I’ve stood back and taken some time to reflect, I get more determined than ever to ensure that future work should be the best it possibly can be and that the relationship with the client should be as honest as humanly possible. Period.
I know this sounds like really obvious stuff – why wouldn’t you do the best work and why wouldn’t you want to be honest with your clients? Yet the reliance on moderately above average work and the detachment or vilification of the client by many in the design industry (despite protestations to the contrary) is rife. Every project that I look back on with pride are those that satisfy those two points.
The best possible work and an honest client relationship.
9. Eat. Sleep. Don’t Fucking Repeat.
I’ve always pushed back against a ‘defined’ design process.
I agree that solution finding needs to take an approximate course, from ambiguity to clarity, but I’ve never liked the idea that there is a formula to any design project. Do this, then do that, then voila.
Principles are ok. An approach to thinking things through. A openness of mind. An inquisitive nature. An obsession for detail. All healthy. But please don’t assume that the way you solved the last design brief is the way you plan to solve this next one. Sit down and have a really good think about stuff before you career headlong into the abyss.
It often stems from laziness or fear of change. It worked at one stage but the world and the creative landscape has changed beyond recognition in the last decade alone so don’t assume what you did still works now.
It might, but equally it might not.
Don’t be afraid to adapt and change to new techniques, new tools, new approaches, new thinking but blend these with your already learned skills and methodologies to create a recipe that works for right now. It’s odd, but given that larger agencies would most likely be a melting pot of a greater range of skills and methodologies (where everyone can learn from everyone else), I’ve often seen the greatest instance of repeated process for the sake of it.
Such a shame.
Apologies…this one was quite ranty. It’s stuff that resonates with me at a fundamental level and I make no apologies for the vitriole that may come across at times. It is meant with good grace and an intention to aim for better solutions in a world that is often far too obsessed with spin and rhetoric. It is incredibly idealistic and I fully appreciate that to achieve all that I’ve described involves a whole raft of complexity, politics and nuance. I’ve been all too guilty of failing in many of the above throughout my agency career so far, and I’m not particularly proud of that. The ability to look back offers an opportunity to understand how to improve and how to do things differently should circumstances permit.
It’s also not at all exhaustive and I’m sure there are many more points that I’ll want to make once I click publish. Hey ho.
Bravo if you’ve made it to this point. Now go enjoy a frothy coffee!
