A replay of my conversation with Scott Morrison, formerly head of marketing at Levi’s, Activision and Diesel, at the Fifteen Seconds Festival about leadership, creativity and how we approach our work and careers.
SHOW NOTES:
http://thecrazy1.com/episode-23-leadership-my-talk-with-scott-morrison-at-the-2016-fifteen-seconds-festival/
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A replay of my conversation with Scott Morrison, formerly head of marketing at Levi’s, Activision and Diesel, at the Fifteen Seconds Festival about leadership, creativity and how we approach our work and careers.
SHOW NOTES:
http://thecrazy1.com/episode-23-leadership-my-talk-with-scott-morrison-at-the-2016-fifteen-seconds-festival/
FOLLOW THE CRAZY ONE:
Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook
What's going on everybody, and welcome to the 23rd episode of The Crazy One podcast. As always, I'm your host, Stephen Gates. And this is the show where we talk about creativity, leadership, branding, design, and a whole host of other stuff that matter to create a people. So for those of you who are my loyal subscribers, you're getting this show on the week of Thanksgiving here in America. For those of you who are not my loyal subscribers that are maybe finding this and we'll say, May or June, all I can say is where the heck you've been, you've been missing out on all the fun. But in either case, I may be crazy, but even crazy, needs a vacation. And so for the week of Thanksgiving, every year, my wife and I traveled to Spain. And we do it with a curated group of different friends and we go to go see some of the most creative, some of the most fun, some of the most inspiring people that I know, to recharge our batteries to get some new ideas and to spend some time with the people who start out as friends but ever so quickly become family. And I think that truly is the spirit of the holiday. That's what it is. We all should be doing is recharging our batteries and spending some time with the people that we love. But it also means that I wasn't really in the mood to drag this microphone and all this recording equipment all the way to Europe. So for this week's show, we're going to do something a little bit different. And we're going to share something else that happened in Europe and happen a little bit earlier this year at the 15 second festival that took place in Graz, Austria. For those of you who've never heard of the 15 second festival or you've never heard of Graz, Austria, I would highly encourage you to check out both of them. Graz, Austria happens to be the hometown of Arnold Schwarzenegger, a very scenic fantastic little town about two hours south of Vienna. And the 15 seconds festival is probably one of the best kept secrets of all the creative conferences that are out there. It takes place in June for two days in this little town and it really becomes the epicenter of creativity in Europe. You get speakers from fantastic places like IDEO and Hyperloop, and Mercedes, big sponsors from Google and IKEA and others. They come together to have part TED Talk part Maker Faire part just creative jams. session. It's a fantastic place. I had the chance to speak there last year and I will go back every single chance that I get. But this year, I also had the chance to meet somebody who was pretty spectacular. And his name is Scott Morrison. And if you don't know who Scott is, you really need to go onto Twitter and you need to follow me to check him out. Scott was the account director Wyden Kennedy who worked on Nike, he was the head of marketing at Levi Strauss, at Activision, as well as at diesel. And across all of those roles, has done some pretty spectacular work, and is somebody who I can easily say, brings just as much power and authority and energy to the stage as I do. If you ever get a chance go onto YouTube. look him up, he goes under the title of bringer of the boom, which initially made me kind of snicker and roll my eyes but I'll tell you what, after you see him talk, it's a really good description. But what this was was Scott and I sat down for 15 seconds festival to do just that, to have a fireside chat and have a conversation, to talk about creativity and leadership and the things that matter to us. It was a conversation I absolutely loved. It's a conversation that's like so many of the ones that I have with him. It's why I even find myself being drawn back to look for his advice and his insights. But I wanted to share it. It's only about a 15 minute conversation. I didn't want to make it too long. But like I said, I didn't want to leave those of you who are driving over the river and through the woods to grandma's house with nothing to listen to while you do it. Because we all know that friends and family are fantastic, but in a lot of cases, they're like Vegas. After three days, somebody's got to leave. So I wanted to share this conversation. I hope you enjoy it. And we'll be back next week with some whole new content for now. Me and Scott Morrison from the 15 seconds festival in Graz, Austria. So my name is Steve Gates. I am the head of global design for Citibank.
Unknown Speaker :I'm Scott Morrison and I have two business what's called the boom what's called thing sprint. But the heart of everything I love doing and I feel most passionate about is how do you get creative, creative teams together to create brilliant stuff? And how do you inspire people, whether they're internal or whether they're at To write to really problem solve in really different and interesting ways.
Stephen Gates :Yeah. And I think, you know, it's interesting. I grew up with a dad that was a creative director, I learned typographic on like a 700 pound cast iron letterpress, so I think well, right. So I think some people will say like they're born to be designers. I actually was, I've been a paid designer since I was 12. So it's been interesting for me, I've spent about equal parts of my time in the ad agency side as well as the client side. Never thought that I'd end up being the guy who ended up working at a bank. But I think you know, it's like, if you ever what you hear we want a place that you think you can change the world and a place that desperately needs creativity, go go work at a bank, go to the bank.
Unknown Speaker :We all kind of careers mirror a little bit in that respect, because not that I work at Bank now. But I spent equally my my first part of my career was an ad agencies. And the beauty of ad agencies for me, but especially the time was kind of early 90s was the level of creativity was just It was a time when everyone was pretty fearless. Because I think now, I mean, you can be more creative now than ever before. But there's always a new channel. Back in that day, it was like there weren't the channels. So you had to think even more about actually, we don't want to do a TV ad. What does it look like? What can we do what's more interesting and more creative? So you had to problem solve in a completely different way. There was like, beautiful constraints of three media right to choose from. And then I flipped, I stayed in advertising for a while. And I thought, actually, it's all great strategy in the creativity. But what does it look like to be on the client side of the business, right? So I went over to client side and the thing for me was I was willing to work for businesses that I knew at their heart were really creative problem solving. And they were, I talk a lot in leadership about positive disruption. When you're when you're a good crazy leader, you're just creating positive disruption for people. And that's the environment. They work. And I was at Levi's and Activision and diesel right, and they all had the heart of it, something that was quite visceral, it was like, we're either about being only the brave or around being original and everything that we As a brand and a business was always about that, so everything we did internally and everything we did externally, was always about the vision and the creativity that sat in the business. Yeah,
Stephen Gates :I think, you know, I did a really similar thing of working with agencies. But for me, I kind of became like the fixer. So I had American Airlines when September 11 happened. I had Exxon Mobil wind about these happen, light hearted, fun stuff. But I think that it was that same thing where I saw a lot of the creativity was going over to the client side. And it was interesting for me, just going from the agency side where creativity is the heart of the house. It's the reason for being whenever you go work, I spent 10 years of star hotels, building brands like W and St. Regis. And now at Citi, they're just as creative, but what they produce is something different. So I think as a leader, you have to understand, how do you succeed? What's the structure? Where does that go? But I think it's the same thing about, you know, really being that disrupter and kind of loving and kind of owning being the one who can kind of be crazy. I often joke that I'm I always think my job is Be the first guy to run up the hill and get shot. Not killed, but shot shot. Because I think you know, if you're the first one to do it, it's amazing how many people will run after. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker :there's a great video actually I saw recently, which is a bit about creativity, but it's about there's a guy dancing at the festival, right? And he's the only one dancing. And it's all about, you know, kind of make creating a creative movement, right? There's one guy just dancing on his own. And then another guy jumps up, and he starts dancing, and then all of a sudden people start seeing them dancing, why they dancing, and everyone chops in and then before you know, you've got about 200 people around him dancing. But you're right, you know, I am over telephony start off with a story by
Unknown Speaker :many, many years ago, I was
Unknown Speaker :asked to go and like do a breakfast meeting thing with with Nelson Mandela. There's a whole host of people there like different creative people, all sorts of things. And this wonderful thing happened to them. And it's really what I think Creative Leadership is about just like you say the first one went up the hill. Nelson Mandela was sat in his chair like this and he had people so holding him back and different artists. Coming up reading poems to him and saying thank you for that. And Joan armatrading is an English musician. She got up and she'd written a song for him. She got upside playing the song in the band slightly. And Nelson Mandela just stood up, walked across the stage and started dancing in front of everybody. And everybody, every single person in the room got up and danced with him and throw crying and cheering over you. I kind of think that's like Creative Leadership. It's like an I call it the dance like Mandela moment, because once somebody sees you doing it, and you're willing to do it, then everyone else starts going yeah,
Stephen Gates :we can actually do this when I think that's a big, you know, I think that for me, that was that was probably one of the hardest lessons I've had to learn for leadership and for creativity is I always describe it as kind of like embracing your crazy Yeah, because I think for a long time, I really felt like I was I was different. The standards I had were different. Because I think everybody, everybody thinks that like, if you're a leader and you want to do something different, everybody's gonna throw you a parade. They're not you're gonna you're asking them to do something very, very different, which makes them very uncomfortable. And so I think like, I mean, for me, it was really a Less than that I really kind of took the heart to the place where so like Apple famously had the think different yet commercial and starts with Here's to the crazy ones. Yeah, so I actually have here's a crazy one tattooed on my arm and I always say like, some days it's a reminder and some days it's an affirmation yet I think, you know, because that was that was always the thing is like your leader has to be part lighthouse to show you the way part punching bag to protect the team and part lightning bolt to just smart thing. And I think that's always the thing is, is being the one who I always like the best description I ever could come up with is you have to be the most confident, uncertain person. That's pretty
Unknown Speaker :true.
Stephen Gates :That's a brilliant, brilliant another jack, because I just think that's what it takes to be the first person
Unknown Speaker :in the dam. Yeah, completely. Absolutely. And you've looked at loads of creative businesses and whether those are great people. Yeah,
Stephen Gates :and I think I've been I've been really lucky over the years to work with a lot of really great clients. I've worked with Apple, a lot and a lot of those things and I think that's the thing that you see it is, you know, the teams that are empowered to find their solutions, the the leaders that understand that the way that I have an idea and the way that you have an idea are very different. Yeah. And if all I want you to do is to think like me, the work is not going to be any good. So how do I create a culture that recognizes that everybody's process is different, and that everybody's, the way they connect those dots is different. But then also, how does that culture encourage it and build leaders out of that and celebrate it? Because I think that's, that's the thing that people never get about companies like Apple. It's not the products, it's the people in the culture and the way that they encourage everybody to do their work. Absolutely. Right.
Unknown Speaker :It's there's two things I've I do a lot of coaching CEOs and businesses, and there's a there's a whole range of behaviors that like sort of coach them on to think about how to get the best out of your environment. And there's two things, one of which I've talked about today. And one is radical collaboration. So like the businesses that I see that do really, really well they take people out of silos that they operate in and Bryce go, right is the project on the table, you you you're passionate about, you're passionate, you might be the FD, and you might be the person who's looking after the warehouse, right? We're gonna put you all together, you're gonna create something fantastic. And closely allied to that is this idea of extreme empowerment. So when I was for my agency days over its Archie's, they used to just say, right, you're gonna go and do this tomorrow, you're like, why don't you work out? Right? But they gave you enough responsibility that you knew you had a chance of doing it, right, like three, right, the deep end. But they were always pushing you that a little bit more, because they always saw that the really good leaders in those organizations always see that little bit more that you don't see yourself, right. And then they push you and they keep pushing you.
Stephen Gates :And I think that's one of the things I always do with all my teams is, I will as soon as I come in, I always set up some a call like our beliefs. Yeah. Because you know, there are processes that can define your work. There are other things like that. But how are we where do we get I always say like our swagger from what makes us us. Yeah. And I think that there's a lot of those sorts of things where there are things like everything is your job, you Creativity is a blue collar profession, like the idea that like you have a light bulb, and that's that idea is a lie. Like, that's not the way you do it. Or like what you said where it's like we can be confident, respectful, but we're not delicate. Yes. Because I think it really is the fact that as a leader, I think one of the biggest mistakes that people make is they coach behavior. They don't coach thinking, yeah, and the behavior is an expression. But the thinking is the root. Yeah, and for me, that's what I want to get at is how do I really get them to think different? because then they'll act different. And I think that to me, is like, just one of the biggest lessons I've always had to learn is fantastic.
Unknown Speaker :And on the way in,
Unknown Speaker :we were talking about you even tell me about your environment in which you work, right? You like to go right? This is we're gonna start from scratch.
Stephen Gates :Yeah, well, I think if you're gonna go if you're gonna be the one of the first people, if you're gonna be the first head of design and a 200 year old institution, to try to bring design into it, I think you need to do things differently. And so one of the things we did was we took one of the floors of the building, which some of them feel very much like a bank with a wooden panel. Things like that and said, all this goes, the offices are gone, the assigned seating is gone, PowerPoint is gone, like all of this stuff is gone. And you know, the offices we're going to cover with idea paint, and that the people who work together are going to sit on this floor together and that the offices are places where we now draw and think. And that that is really we have to just completely rethink the way that we do things. Because I think if you can't put people in the same environment with the same thinking and expect a different outcome, so I think that was a big thing for me was to make it feel different, make it look different. I want that I have people where they'll see me in the elevator and they'll be in their Brooks Brothers suit, and they look at me dressed like this, and I was like you work on 10 don't get it. You're damn right. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker :Don't you wish you did Tim? Yeah. Nice. It's a really good, really good point because I said I work with lots of businesses and they don't often have the luxury sometimes of being able to strip out their office and all that and I would also visit beautiful offices, not spaces
Unknown Speaker :that don't know there are two man band or maybe there's 10
Unknown Speaker :people in the office and they're in like a little In a little place in the middle of London, just scraping by. But one of the one of the most interesting creative techniques, I learned how to get people to think differently as a leader, is we do some called street wisdom. And we've taken people out of their existing zone, we take them out on the street. And what's amazing is that a, the people who bring us in to do street wisdom are really like that. They want to open their teams mind, right? They want to give them that create stimulus. But it's also like when you go out on the street, and you've got a very specific challenge in your head, and you use the street as your stimulus. It's incredible how much stuff that is all around you that Oh, yeah, inspiration. And I think that's the art of calling leadership and creatively is like, making people appreciate and aware
Unknown Speaker :that whatever is in their environment is valuable to them, that they can connect the dots for creativity, and
Unknown Speaker :it's giving people those opportunities.
Stephen Gates :And I think I think it's also giving them permission to fail. Yeah, because I think that's the other thing that I'll do is I'll talk about like building a culture of failure, which CEOs usually don't love when you're the new guy. Built I think that that's one of the exercises that I do to try to help leaders or other things like that understand their creativity is it's called Think fast. Yeah. And it's two decks of cards. One are brands that you've seen. The other one are products, right. So it could be Nike, it could be Apple, the products are purposely almost comical. Yeah. So it would be like, you know, and so I'll give you one minute to think about it in two minutes to pitch me on why would this company do this? It's I will terrify people in interviews with this because like, I don't need more friends, I want you to think, but it's the whole idea of like, why wouldn't Nike make a lipstick? Why would Twitter make jewelry? Why wouldn't Mercedes make an inflatable pool stick? And it's just it really is meant to be? And I'll do it. I'll get the whole group together. And everybody goes up and does it but it's that idea that because we your creativity is the same as your leadership style. Yeah, they'll write self help books to the world. And yeah, because how you connect the dots and creativity in the same way how you connect the dots and leadership are totally different. They're totally up to you and i think but that's the hard part of leadership because you have to be a complete insider know your team and a complete outsider. To be able to get that perspective at the exact same time, and it's it's teaching people to be able to kind of help kind of connect those dots that makes that possible. It's quite funny. I, when I,
Unknown Speaker :when I've spoken a lot about fear of failure and crinkles to fail, I still quite a bit of resistance in a lot of businesses about Oh, yeah. And what I've done is start to reframe a little bit. So instead of calling a culture of failure, or the ability to fail, which by learning culture, it's like literally everything you doing, right? You're gonna you're gonna take hypothesis, you're gonna test it, you're gonna validate it and validates great good Off you go, right doesn't no problem. Yep. But the fact is, what you're trying to get people to do is, is break the mold in thinking and go, yeah, this could be something interesting.
Unknown Speaker :And let's try this. Let's we
Stephen Gates :do the exact same thing. Every Thursday we test Yeah, we bring in consumers and every single Thursday because again, if you're going to talk about leadership, we're gonna talk about design. It's subjective. Yeah. What's not is how people react to that. So every single Thursday, whatever we're doing, we're going to put it in front of people and we're going to test to try to help you to be able to really keep moving and to keep like our customer at the center of the screen. variance testing. So hopefully you enjoyed the conversation. And definitely take the time to go check out Scott. Because like I said before, I think he's just, he's a great person. He's a great part of the industry. And he's definitely somebody you want to be able to go and check out. If Also, if you have the time and you have the ability, go and check out the 15 seconds festival. It is truly something special. It's still in its infancy, but it is going to grow into something that is absolutely spectacular. And to be able to spend some time in that part of the world that desperately needs some more creative voices that needs more creative leadership is definitely a good thing. Even though you will have to fight the urge the entire time as I did, thinking about how it is the hometown of Arnold Schwarzenegger to not simply spend the entire time screaming at the top of your lungs. We need to get to Mars. Because it just, it's just something we all have to do sometimes. But it's the holiday weekend and you're tired of listening to me. But take advantage of all that free time, head over to iTunes And leave a review. Click on the stars write some words say something nice. It brings more people to the show, and it's the only currency I will ever ask for. So for this particular week, like I said, you got no excuse. If you're looking for the show notes if you want to figure out how to get a look at some of Scott's talks, if you want to find out more about the 15 seconds festival, head over to my site, it's podcast dot Stephen Gates, calm as always, Stephen is s t e e p h, e n. If you have any questions, anything you want to find out more about anything you want to hear me talk about, you're always welcome to shoot me an email, you can send that to ask at Stephen Gates calm. I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Or you can look out for the content in a future show. As always, the voice non legal want me to remind you that all the views are my own. They don't represent any of my current or former employers. They're just me out here ranting. And finally, I say it every time because I mean it every time but thank you for your time. I know the time is truly the only real luxury that we have. So I'm always incredibly humbled that you want to spend any of it with me. So recharge your batteries. Enjoy Some time with friends and family, if this is you listening to this in June, once again, where the hell you been? But as always until next time, stay crazy