4) Showing the most courage in times of success and taking chances when things are going well is the best way to ensure that you will lead, not follow. Having been in the industry for more than thirty years, I have seen many cycles, and one of the most apparent is that creativity tends to thrive at the point at which the green shoots of recovery emerge from the ashes of economic recession. After a period of consolidation, creative complacency follows. Then, as the next inevitable economic downturn arrives, there’s an air of panic, followed by the desperate attempt to cling onto the status quo. The cycle of creativity comes after the realization that the inability to change will profoundly affect your business. Having the courage to make changes at the height of your success will not guarantee eternal riches, but it will mean that you are looking for opportunities and points of relevance way ahead of your competitors.
5) My role used to focus on building teams of the brightest and best in creativity and technology, creating an environment in which they feel motivated to deliver their best work and then making our clients aware of that work. Nowadays, this last responsibility is a lot more complex. My focus is much more heavily weighted towards trying to understand who represents a potential client, uncovering what challenges they face and exploring how can we work together to find a creative solution. This, in turn, requires us to build teams in different ways. We are no longer assembling teams with the goal of finding sufficient work in the market to feed them; rather, we are examining particular challenges first and then adding new skillsets to our already brilliant teams that unlock their full potential.
Of course, I believe that we are uniquely positioned to create maximum value for our clients. But I am aware that as the old silo model breaks down and new players build different capabilities, our clients will be competing for some of our traditional work, and we will be competing for some of theirs. The ability to create genuine value and convey that to the person writing the check will be more critical than ever to maintain a thriving creative business.