Letting Go of the Credit

As I get older I realize I've spent my entire career surrounded by A-type personalities, alpha people. In my early days at Ogilvy and Lowe, before political correctness ruled, getting your idea through was a fight to the death.As was getting the credit for it. Credit still seems a big deal in ad agencies, an important driver of endeavor. But there comes a point for some people where personal credit becomes too small a satisfaction and people look for bigger victories.When I first started supervising work, I enjoyed the ego boost of being put in charge of others. But, to my surprise, I got an unbelievable buzz out of them doing well.And I remember being shocked when I would see creative directors put their name on an award-winning ad under "creative director" and then also alongside the writer under "copywriter." You're either the creative director helping people -- writers, art directors, whoever -- to do a great job, or you're writing it yourself. If you're doing both then you're no creative director. If you're still obsessed with taking credit, then you're not yet what John Collins calls a "Level 5 leader." In his book Good to Great, Collins begins his chapter on Level 5 leadership with a beautiful quote from Harry S Truman: "You can accomplish anything in life, provided that you do not care who gets the credit." This is a thought of such simplicity and yet such profound wisdom that you can stare at it for an hour without entirely plumbing all the positive consequences you would accrue by living by it.Nowhere is the fight for credit hotter than in the hunt for advertising awards.Here are just some of the battles as bemoaned to me by an award-winning creative director: Working out the correct categories to enter; gauging the mind-set of a particular jury (Cannes people will be quite different from One Show people, etc.); working out the kind of stuff juries are voting for this year; finding out what area of a client's account is less important to the client's business and may not be so closely supervised, allowing greater "creative" latitude; going through sheathes of random ideas lying in the bottom drawer to repurpose them for an existing client; selling them to that client as a favor after the main project is over; and finding the money to shoot them at the agency's expense. Little of this is to do with a client's true business. All of it is to do with credit. Not exactly compatible with Level 5 leadership.Normally this wouldn't matter much, a normal ad agency creative department being home to all manner of foibles and peccadilloes, with rampant egos and desire for credit being pretty minor ones. But, of course, we live in far from normal times. I'm not going to bore you (any more than I have already) by reversing over what we all know (or should) is an ever-changing, highly complex marketing/consumer landscape.Personally, I take a very simple view of this landscape. In a word, it's Help! I look for help anywhere and to hell with the credit. Because in doing so, the terror fades.Frans Johansson's marvelous book The Medici Effect is highly inspiring. He came to speak at a recent IPG Diversity Council meeting. His book is all about the enormous power of "intersections," the coming together of things you wouldn't normally think of putting together to create amazing solutions that could never have been arrived at otherwise. Sounds precisely what 21st century clients need, no?But the whole thing is a non-starter if that old serpent "the desire for credit" starts to rear its ugly head. If the traditional ad agency creative department is the ceiling, then we're not going to be shooting for the stars.Today when my partners and I think about solutions for clients, I push to assemble diverse talents with the aim of being the dumbest guy in the room. Everyone should try this. It's incredibly liberating and energizing. I get a real kick out of it. It should be available as therapy. (Meanwhile, I'm sure that the alpha male inside is taking the credit for this somehow anyway: hey, Level 5 doesn't come easy to creative people!)You know what really helps? Getting older. Having children. Previously unbearably fuddy-duddy things like mentorship start to make personal and business sense. Personal success somehow doesn't seem enough any more.As you get older you start to see how much is down to luck. If you're really lucky, you start to understand that you can still be incredibly hungry without having to eat those around you. All of which, if allowed, can begin to change the most traditionally trained, narrow-minded, award-obsessed, egocentric, seemingly superannuated individuals into great leaders for the new communications world. After all, these are people who have survived years in the jungle and are repositories of all kinds of knowledge, craft skills and resilience.Yes, getting older is highly underrated. But that is definitely another article.Mark Wnek is New York chairman and chief creative officer at Lowe. He can be reached at Mark.Wnek@loweworldwide.com.

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Letting Go of the Credit

Mark Wnek

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Mark Wnek