Ask yourself this question
Why do you do what you do? If the answer is money, then go ahead and plan to sell. Every decision you make should be with that in mind. However, if what gets your blood pumping and your brain dancing is the work or the people or the saving of beloved brands, you can create your world to suit you. And the people, the work and the compensation are enough—and enough is good.
Side with the whole of humanity
Solidarity should be seen as shared human existence, not something that merely defines a particular nation or ethnicity or religion or political party or fanbase or any other circle that can be drawn to indicate who’s in and who’s out. In business, the trick is to inspire teams and business units while being aligned with humanity as a whole.
Focus on anything other than you
Self-focus quite naturally leads to individualism and competition that result in anxiety, insecurity, FOMO and worse. The opposite is being other-focused. In leadership terms, the decisions that the ego drives will be the worst decisions you make. Protecting your self-interest or control is not leading, it’s arranging people and things for your benefit. When you are making “other” the focus—the good of the whole, the health of the company, department or team—that’s when you are, in fact, leading.
Be daringly honest
It’s easy to say and do the right thing in the days of wine and roses. It’s also relatively easy to avoid the unpleasant sit-downs, to pass them off to someone else or to not say what needs to be said. And it takes practice to engage in hard conversations and come away feeling at peace. This is a skill worth developing: to be daringly honest with someone, but simultaneously full of compassion for them. If you can do this, you can come face-to-face with anyone, even your true self.
Separate the complainer from the complaint
We love a fighter—someone taking on the system. We applaud the aggressive cause warrior, fueled by passion and a vision of a better world. And then there are the complainers. The grumblers. But don’t weed them out just yet. They could be what Adam Grant calls “Disagreeable Givers.” They might seem tough on the outside and aren’t afraid of pushing back or being critical, but underneath it their hearts are in the right place. That makes them quite valuable to an organization. This is one case where understanding intention matters. Learn to probe what’s behind the criticism. That’s precisely where complainers are exposed.
See all the winners of Ad Age's 2021 Small Agency Awards here.
Unleash—don’t control—creative
God is a creative. There are 400 different species of beetles. That’s a creative for ya. Once He created them, He couldn’t cull it back to 399. That’s the dead giveaway. Now, if God had a creative partner, a CD, a strategist, a couple of account types, a few layers of clients, and some qual and quant, He’d likely still be working on Round 2. Want to make your mark for all eternity? Don’t control creativity. Unleash it. Cling to “what if we” over “yeah, but.”
Solve uncertainty the way you always have
People who are starting or who own an ad agency are afraid in uncertain times. We know. We were born a month after the dot-com meltdown of 2001, and a few months before 9/11 took the whole global economy down. But 20 years later, moment-by-moment, the way forward was the same. What is uncertainty but merely something to be solved by Time plus Creativity? Which is to say, it follows the exact path of every assignment you’ve ever done. So, take a breath. And get to work.
