A replay of my sold-out session from Adobe MAX 2016 'Success is a choice' that walks you through how to foster a culture that creates strong leadership, grows creativity and understand the most common leadership blind spots and what you can do to overcome them.
SHOW NOTES:
http://thecrazy1.com/episode-21-leadership-success-is-a-choice-from-adobe-max-2016/
FOLLOW THE CRAZY ONE:
Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook
A replay of my sold-out session from Adobe MAX 2016 'Success is a choice' that walks you through how to foster a culture that creates strong leadership, grows creativity and understand the most common leadership blind spots and what you can do to overcome them.
SHOW NOTES:
http://thecrazy1.com/episode-21-leadership-success-is-a-choice-from-adobe-max-2016/
FOLLOW THE CRAZY ONE:
Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook
What's going on everybody, and welcome to the 24th episode of The Crazy One podcast. As always, I'm your host, Stephen Gates. And this is a show where we talk about creativity, design, leadership, and everything else that matters to creative people. And I can't believe how time flies that we are already at the 21st episode. I guess this means the show and I are going to need to go out for drinks afterwards, because I can't believe that we've already made it this far. I have just flown back yesterday from spending the entire week in San Diego. for Adobe max. This is an event that I love going to every year this is no matter what it is either the fourth or fifth year in a row that I've spoken. They're always a really great time really great crowd. This year, I brought seven over seven hours of new content to the event. I did two workshops on design thinking that were absolutely fantastic, great reaction to that. And I did one session just by myself really focusing on creativity and leadership. If you listen to the show, two things that I'm obviously incredibly passionate about, but I think At a session called successes of choice, building creativity and leadership on your team. And we sold out the largest space in the San Diego Convention Center for this session, if you're one of the people that were there, thank you so much. It was an incredible, incredible reaction that I got to that. The byproduct though, was that I spent the entire week doing all this stuff in San Diego. So just to be honest, didn't have a whole heck of a lot of time to put together a completely new show for this week. But for those of you who may be new to the show, for those of you who have been tuning in, but maybe skipping around a little bit, I wanted to do a replay of this session because I spent a lot of time really putting a lot of work and love into this session to truly to really try to distill down and to really focus in on all the things that I've talked about whenever it comes to leadership whenever it comes to creativity, to do it in a really nice, really clean, really succinct hour. That was really going to sum all that stuff up. So that's what we're going to do this week is I'm going to play a replay of this session, because I think like I said, if you've listened to the podcast before, it's a great refresher. If you're just starting to tune in now, I think it's a great introduction to a lot of the stuff that I like to talk about. So until next week, whenever I'll be back with more fun frivolity, and a whole bunch of new content, this is success is a choice from Adobe Max 2016. We'll start with a little shameless self promotion in case you have not a clue who the hell I am. So my name is Stephen Gates. And this is the start of my design education. So I was born into a family who had a father who is a creative director and a mother who makes soft sculpture toys for children. Which means that basically, I was a hipster before I got to kindergarten. Because what that meant was that whenever I showed up at kindergarten, I was very confused why other kids had been buying their storybooks because I had been self publishing for years. And so that was really kind of where it started. So as a result, I have been a designer for over 25 years. I've been leading creative teams For over 15 years, over the course of that time, I've been lucky enough that my work has appeared in I think now it's nine Apple keynotes for TV commercials, you can currently see it in the human interface guidelines and everything else you could possibly want to do with them. I've spent equal parts of time on the agency side and client side so that I have experience on both and can speak to both sides of the aisle. That for nine years, I worked as the VP of global brand design and innovation at Starwood Hotels, until they decided it'd be a good idea to sell to Marriott and I decided it would be a good idea for me to go someplace else. So for the past year, I've been working as the Global Head of design at Citi. And I'm slightly psychic, but I know what you're thinking we're here to hear about design. We're here to hear about innovation and leadership. And the first place we usually turn to turn to is a guy who works at a bank. It's okay I'm used to the applause and to the to the autograph seekers, I found a way through it. And this past June, I launched sort of a passion project for me, which was called The Crazy One podcast. Because for years I've been writing a blog and had this really interesting event where I was asked to go speak at an event in Austria had never been there before. There's a big festival there called the 15 second festival and went there. And I found myself at the after party, surrounded by a lot of these young people. One in particular who came up after me who would literally had to get drunk to come talk to me, who said that he was actually contemplating suicide because his father was in banking, and he never felt like he fit in. And so I walked away from that trip determined that I needed to do something different about the way that I was teaching, because writing wasn't getting it done. So in June, I lost I launched my podcast, which has been a great thing. But I think it was also trying to turn it into something for all these people because especially in those parts of Europe and other things like that. It's a very different situation than what you find here and the way that creativity is looked at. So it hadn't actually made this young man this hat sent it to him. Then my friend started wanting and it's turned into this kind of really interesting movement. And so you know, for me it's really become a platform that I'm really passionate about. But enough about me. Why do we need more leadership? Why do we need more creativity? And the thing that I always do whenever I speak at events like this, is look around. I said the words in a description, leadership and creativity. And we sold out the largest room in the San Diego Convention Center. Don't get me wrong, the ego part of me does little jumping jacks when stuff like that happens. The part of me that cares about this industry gets really pissed off about this, because this demonstrates the fundamental failure of our companies of our leadership and of our industry, because of the fact that leadership, especially at such an unprecedented time, is something that is still so misunderstood. And so what I want to do today is to basically share with you guys everything that I've learned about living leadership, about creativity and to try to do it in a way that there are things that you can go back and take tomorrow and start to work on because I think that is an incredibly important thing. But the other thing that I'll point out to you is that as we talked about leadership, and we talked about creativity, it probably affects you more than you possibly realize. So I'm somebody that was born and raised in Pittsburgh. And so Carnegie Mellon did a study a few years ago that looks at what affects your financial success. The house you live in the car you drive, the lifestyle that you provide for your family. And the numbers should be alarming to everyone here. That 85% of your financial success is due to your personality, your ability to communicate, and your ability to lead. 15% of your success is due to your technical knowledge. That is why for years whenever I have shown up here, there are a lot of other people who are much smarter presenting about how to use Photoshop. This to me is the stuff that will make your career This is the stuff that if you want to make a difference is the thing that you need to really invest in. So, that being said, Who's this session for? And so for me, this is really for anybody who wants to be more creative. Anybody who wants to be a leader, and anybody who wants to make a difference. And I think that has always been a big thing, for me are the people who want to make a difference, because in many companies, it's not short of passion. It's not short of people who want to have ideas. It is desperately short for people who want to make a difference, and who wants to step up and to be the ones to be able to lead that change. So the other thing that I'll tell you as a bit of a spoiler alert, is that there gonna be no magic bullets here. If you've ever seen me talk before or anything like that leadership, your creative process and your presentation style are fundamentally personal to you. Because what are your strengths? What are your weaknesses, what are the things that give you confidence? What are the things that make you nervous are individual And different for every person. This is why they will write books on how to be more creative and self help until the world ends. because it requires people to do work. And that's why for me, I always kind of get a little bit grumpy when people come up to me and say, What's the secret to working with apple? And what's the secret to being a great leader? Like somehow there's like a cheat code that you put in and all of a sudden it all comes together. So we'll just get that spoiler alert out of the way. And I think the other thing that it's very important to do is to define what do I mean, whenever I use the word leadership, this is very much like the word innovation where so many people throw it around like they understand what it means. So whenever we talk about leadership, I'm talking about leadership, not management. Management is I'm going to take a project from A to B. And just simply that's all I'm going to do is I'm going to shepherd it through leadership is something fundamentally different leadership is about constructing belief. Leadership is about inspiring people that is something holistically different than hitting a deadline. So, the other thing that I will say is that anybody can be a leader. So many organizations and so many people have been conned into this idea that a leader is simply the person with the biggest title. That's BS. And we're going to talk about this a little bit more later. But the thing is, is that anyone in any position I don't care if you're the intern of the CEO is responsible for leading from their position. They need to be empowered and they need to be the people that are thinking about how they can lead in some way. Because of all everyone is doing is sit around waiting for the person in charge to be the leader, your organization will fail. And so leadership, not surprisingly has two parts. The first one is about you. I felt like with the Cubs winning last night, the Bill Murray one seemed I love how everybody today everybody today is a Cubs fan. I'd like I said I'm from Pittsburgh. So I was not rooting from Cleveland. I'm sorry. But the other part is then your team. And I think so often. This is The part that everybody concentrates on, they concentrate on your team. But I think that the important thing that we need to do is to start with you. Because if you are going to lead as an individual position, if you're going to lead as a team, then one thing has to happen. And that is if you don't have a clear vision, and if you don't have a purpose and a point of view, no one else will. And again, I think that we're going to talk about this in several instances as we go through this, but about the importance of a leader of actually taking a position and this is the hardest thing to do. Because the reality is, in most companies, the status quo is so much simpler. You can float around you can believe what everybody else believes so much easier. At the point whenever you have a point of view, whenever you stand for something you no longer float around. I'm now stuck in a particular position. And now all of a sudden people can judge me on it, they can take shots at it, they can support it or they can vilify it. Most of those are not fun things. But the other thing to talk about is because there really is this epidemic that I've seen, I've seen it. Whenever I work in agencies, I see it whenever I work on the client side of why do so many people who are put in leadership positions fail. And I think that the biggest thing to understand is that just because you're really good at execution, you're a great designer, you're a great writer, you're great at information architecture or whatever it might be. That does not mean that you have any of the skills that you need to be a good leader. And this is why you see time and time again, people are who are such fantastic executioner's who do such incredible work or suddenly put in front of a team and fall flat on their face. And because the reality is, is that execution is about deadlines, and leadership is about people and that is a fundamentally different set of skills. Whenever I have to understand sociology, psychology, social engineering, and the dynamics of all those sort of things, that becomes a huge problem. And this is where the vacuum leadership in our industry becomes a problem. Because most people learn by patterning after a mentor, somebody who doesn't really well, well, that's the person I want to go emulate. Well, if all you have are managers and these people who are just in the execution phase, you don't understand how to inspire somebody. And that becomes a huge, huge problem. So the other thing I want to talk about just before we jump into leadership, and then we're going to go through leadership, and then we're actually going to talk about creativity in the creative process. Because again, I think for both of these, it's worth how do we structure this, but the one thing that you need to be prepared for and the one thing that I will always teach people is that in most cases, leadership sucks. Everybody has been bought into this, like Steve Jobs myth of like, you're gonna come in and you're gonna change the company and they're gonna throw you a parade and everybody's gonna love it, and I'm gonna be awesome and they're gonna put my plaque on the wall and none of that crap happens. Because if you will Do something different, especially if you want to do what I seem to have the sickness of wanting to doing, of coming into a hotel company and saying, Okay, look, we're going to bring digital design into that. Or even better, let's come in as the first head of design and the 203 year history of a bank, and be the person to try to bring design into that you have to be sick in the head if you want to do that. But this is the thing is that you have to be prepared that there are going to be challenges. So let's look at what some of those are, and then just be able to kind of talk about what those are. I think the first challenge of leadership and I think this is what a lot of people struggle with, is it to be an effective leader, you have to understand perspective, perspective, meaning that to be effective, I have to be an insider and I have to be an outsider at exactly the same time. I have to be an insider who is close enough to the work, who is on the ground enough that I can coach my team that I can understand the problems that are going on, I can see the process breakdowns. I can do all of those sorts of things, to be able to get in there to coach them and take care. counsel them on what's going on. But if that's all that I am, I'm chasing short term problems. This is the faster horse problem. Because at the same point, I need to have the ability to step back. And to take a longer view and where does this group need to go, which makes me an outsider, because I need to be able to have that perspective to do it. And the problem is a lot of leadership will fall on one side or the other. If you're just about the execution side, you become more of that manager and you lose the vision of how do we bring change, because that's the problem with leadership is that if you step up and want to do it, it has a shelf life. What I found is, in most cases, if you say we're going to do something differently, I come into a new company, everybody's brand new is gee, isn't that great? If I do not produce something tangible for my team and for the company, and at least the first four to six months, that I'm just a guy that has a really good line of BS but can't get anything done. So you have to be able to balance these two things out of being the insider and the outsider. Because the other problem is if you're just the complete outsider, and I know a lot of very powerful people who could not open up a sketch or Photoshop file to save their life, and who wants to work for that, who wants to work for somebody who you know, is just the figurehead, you need to work for somebody who you know, can get in the trenches with you, who knows that you have the skill set that's just as good as yours. The next one is progress. Because what happens intrinsically, small problems get fixed first, because they're small, they're easy. The big ones, those are the ones that are tougher. The way that I always describe it. And I've described this a lot recently, is that it's the stack of pink elephants in the room that everybody is just standing around feeding peanuts. They all know they're there. us go, because I'll come in. I'll go Wow, that's a big problem. And he goes, yep. So we knew that was there. Oh, yeah. Did we not think that was a problem? Oh, no. It's killing us. Nobody thought we should do something about it's like, Yeah, well, you know, it's work. So this is the problem is how do you make progress? And how do you get some of the bigger problems accomplished, because the smaller ones are just so much simpler. It's the instant gratification of it, who doesn't like to get things done? The next one is fear. And fear is a really interesting thing. So here again, being you as a designer, somebody who likes numbers, I went through and did a lot of look into the psychology behind teams. And one of the things that you'll find is that 85% of people on a team are afraid to speak up, out of fear of repercussion, out of fear of judgment, out of fear of people not liking them or something like that. So as a leader, if you have a 10 person team, and eight of them are not going to tell you the truth. You need to think about what does that mean? When you want to try to get something done, where you have to create a space where it's okay to fail, you have to create a a space where there aren't going to be the sort of repercussions and this world ending scenario that people think is going to be there. But what's even twice as more powerful of fear is futility. And this was something that I see time and time again, whenever I come to internal teams, there's been somebody that's been there before. They've talked about change. They've talked about all these things that are going to happen. didn't show up, didn't happen. Why am I any different? Why the hell should I believe you? Why are you going to do anything different, so that you have to fight the futility? And we'll talk very specifically about how to do that, but to understand the massive gripping power of futility, and whenever you're trying to create belief what that does. And finally, the biggest one, the toughest one is comfort. Comfort absolutely is the enemy of greatness. And I have seen this time and time again. I've seen it in my friends. I've seen it in people who have worked for me and things like that. We're in the moment. They aren't comfortable being uncomfortable, they would rather stay with Something that they know they would rather stay with something that they've done for a long time teams happen with this, where they get very comfortable in the routine that they have your clients get very comfortable. And so the problem is that you have to fight this, you have to continually blow up part of your process part of your relationship, to continue to push yourself, if you want to get better to not get complacent and just stay where you've been. Because great work and satisfaction for you and your happiness doesn't come out of that. So what should we focus on? And so I think there are a couple things that I would tell you to do. And if you're going to come in and you want to take more of a leadership role, I think that the first one is to have an absolutely obsessive focus on the fundamentals. Because the one thing that I will tell you and this was something that in the work that I've done with Citibank, whenever I came in, they said Great, let's do this really cool stuff. Let's do like science fiction and retina scanners and all this really cool stuff. And wow, isn't that great? Okay, if you can't get the basics, right, who cares? If you don't get the fundamentals, right, if your team isn't watching all the details, if they aren't in a place where they understand how the fundamentals really matter, nothing else is going to be built on anything, but quicksand. So the first thing you have to do is have an obsessive focus on all the fundamentals and the things that your team is doing. Because if that isn't right, everything else falls apart from there. The second one, we talked about this a little bit before, but walk your talk. Because what is it with leadership? everybody's seen this, whenever I say this, everyone will immediately think of someone, it is incredibly easy to say the right thing. Doing the right thing, however, is something a bit different. Because the reality is, is that especially with creatives, who aren't just intrinsically people that look for patterns that look for things that are different, they know when you're full of it, and that this is the part where leadership is made is that in the moment when it gets tough in the moment when it gets hard? Are you going to be the person that actually follows through with what you said? Are you going to back down and take the easy road out? So the ability to actually do that is critical. The next one is to understand and value, everyone's create a process. We're going to spend more time talking about this later. But this is just the simple intrinsic idea that everyone creates differently. The teams that fall apart are the ones that are led by people who want everyone to work the same way that they do. Because the challenges is that if I give a problem to everyone in here, everyone will solve it differently. They will connect the dots differently. You have to understand and respect that. The next one is that as a leader, and honestly just as a creative in general. If you think that the product that you are selling to your clients is your creative is your comps or your designs. You're wrong. What you are selling your clients at the end of the day more than anything is trust and content. fidence because if they do not trust that I am going to actually come up with a good idea, if they don't have the confidence that I can get it done, not a single person piece of great work is going to go out the door. And so this is the thing is that this is what it is that you have to build in with people, if these are the things that you aren't working on, if you don't understand that, inherently more than anything is your product, especially if you're leading other people. If they don't trust you, if they don't have confidence in you, you're done, you'll lose your whole team. And so I think that just to think about that those are the products that you really have to be selling people. The other thing that I'll tell you and I see this with a lot of young creatives, I had this conversation with somebody this very morning, is if you're a leader, you lose the luxury of getting a bad day. Your ability to come in to be angry to pout to do these sorts of things stops. Because if I have a bunch of people that are looking to me for leadership, and I'm going around with this sucks like everybody around here stupid. I don't understand why going on, we really got shafted on this one. Yeah, that's somebody I want to go follow. But this is the thing, you lose this luxury. And I just was coaching a young designer on this, who was getting really frustrated. And in the middle of a meeting, he said, You know what, guys, I'm this close. And I pulled him aside. I said, Okay, what that do that made you look kind of like an idiot, but what else did it do? Because I think you just don't get the luxury of that emotional outbursts because people are looking to you for direction. The best definition I ever heard of leadership came from someone who was my mentor, who described a leader as simply the most confident, uncertain person. But that's it. But in that confidence comes from the fact that I'm not going to fall apart. I'm not going to lose my cool and just be able to pout and fall apart because what people need is to believe that I have a plan. And the next thing that I'll tell you, and we've talked about this before about how leadership sucks, if I need to overcome fear if I need to overcome confidence if I need to overcome all of these things, The things that I will tell my team, whenever I take them over is that we're at a very simple fork in the road. Because with most teams, when you try to bring about change, one of two things will happen. The team will either one, start to make excuses about why it isn't possible, why it can't be done. It's hard. It's difficult. Our clients don't listen, people are insane, yada, yada. Or you actually start to figure out a way, you start to make a change. And those are the two paths in the woods. And the thing that I will tell them is that my resolve is stronger than their excuses. And that if we choose the path as a team, where we're going to say that we're gonna make more excuses than solving problems, I am going to make changes to this team until that stops. And that that is a very hard conversation to have. But it's one that you have to actually hold people to the wall and say, Look, this it really makes a difference. The next one I'll tell you is that you need to give regular and consistent feedback. If you are waiting for media reviews to talk to your team about problems you're failing because for me, I use A very simple model that all of you guys can use. And it's three words start, stop and continue. What do you want me to start doing? What do you really? Really what do you really wish I would stop doing? And what do you want me to continue doing? It forces specific feedback, the generic, oh, you're doing fine doesn't work, but get in and actually coach people. The next thing I'll tell you is to simply question everything. Because this is your job as a leader, if you want to do something different if you want to make a difference, see the forest for the trees. Let's do a real quick experiment with this. This is incredibly unscientific, but it's something that I use as just an indicator for this. So we have the four major web browsers up there, Safari, Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox. We're going to divide those down the middle. Can I see a show of hands that everybody on most days Safari and Internet Explorer is the the default browser that you use? Okay, can I see the hands for the people who are the Chrome and Firefox Crowd. This room is in good shape then I'll tell you why I asked this question to people that I interview because there's a basic mental model that says if I use Safari and Internet Explorer, I accept the convention that comes with my computer. And that it is something that I'm not willing to question the norm quite as much as if I have to actually physically go out and download Chrome or Firefox. Like I said, it's incredibly unscientific, but it is a simple look into the mentality of people for what will they question? Those of you who use Chrome and Internet Explorer, don't feel bad, it's not scientific. Some people always come up to me afterwards really pissed. Like what? The last thing I'll tell you, and this is something that I struggled with, is when we talk about that your leadership style, your creativity, style, your presentation style is unique to you. A lot of people will tell you, that being you is different, right? Whenever you come in, you want to make a difference. What's the first thing most people say? Ah, screw these crazy. So what I would tell you to do is to embrace your crazy because this is something that I took Far, far too long to learn to the point where I actually physically have tattooed on my right arm. Here's to the crazy ones. I also have a lightning bolt on this arm because I had someone else describe leadership as part punching back part, lighthouse and part lightning bolt. And I always like the lightning bolt part the best. For me, it makes it much easier because when you walk into a meeting and you have that tattooed on your arm, kind of everybody knows where you're coming from. Works for me, but this is the thing, right? Don't be afraid to back away from the things that intrinsically make you you you need to embrace it. It took me far too long to embrace the standards I have in the way that I did things was my power, not my weakness. Because for too often, I was ostracized and just felt really out of place. This was that kid in Austria who just felt like nobody understood him. But the one distinction that I will tell you to make is that there is a massive difference between crazy and stupid. Because there's some people came back and they're like, I did this. I did this thing and it's like Dude, that was really dumb like Why? So that's the thing. There's a huge difference between crazy and stupid crazy, you can still get things done because there's some some success attached to it. Stupid. Yeah, we all know what's stupid is. Okay, so let's talk about your team. So those are the things that you need to focus on. And we're gonna start talking about your team. There are two things, any team, I don't care if you're leading creatives, I don't care if you're leading welders, I don't care if you're anybody anything in the world. Your team needs two things from you. The first is that they need to understand that the work that they're going to do tomorrow is better than the work they do today. If the work stays the same, or if it gets worse, people leave. Because we all are intrinsically putting part of ourselves out into a creative process. If I hand someone a blank piece of white paper, a blank screen and say create something that is inherently personal, if that isn't growing, and if that isn't evolving some part of my soul as dramatic as that may sound dies a little bit The other thing that everybody intrinsically wants is that whenever it hits the fan, the leader will actually be there to back them up. Because if you fail on this point, whenever it really matters, nobody believes in you. So the other thing that I will say, and I think that this is the number one biggest mistake, and so I have gone around and taught leadership, and creativity, and a lot of companies that you'd be really surprised by, I've taught at Apple, I've taught at IDEO. I've taught at GE, anybody who thinks that you know, these problems, or just the problems that come with small companies are wrong. Because one of the things that I get is I get a report that says, Who are the people just by title and by company, they're going to be in this room. I can assure you that any brand that you idolize someone from that company is in this room, because the reality is, is that every company is dysfunctional. It's just how functional are they with their dysfunction. The best analogy that I ever had, I had a friend to mine at Apple, whenever I started to work with them, he said, You know what, Steve? apples like a duck, like, Oh, this is gonna be good. Like, please tell me how is Apple like a duck. He said, we'll tell the world they see us gliding across the pond and it looks really smooth and it really looks really effortless. He said, If you look below the water, it's this thrashing shit show of stuff that's going on, but it was above the water looks perfectly smooth. And so if you actually go to my New York design studio, there's a picture of a duck taken on the water line, and it's that above the water below the water, but that's the problem. Every company is like this. You're not alone. But the one thing that companies tend to get wrong that those bigger ones, the Nikes, the apples, the Googles get right is one simple thing. And that's what they do is change. People think not the way they behave, because behavior is a symptom of thinking. And the problem is If I get new behavior on old thinking, nothing changes. I have to go through and I have to change the way people think. Because that's where I can get belief from. That's where I can bring about real change is in that power of their thinking. because too many people take the easy route, which is behavior, behaviors, symptom behaviors. And instance, if you correct that, you'll still see that problem, come back up, again and again. So when we talk about that thinking, we're going to talk about changing it in three key areas. The first one is culture. The second one is the way that you view failure. And the third one is creativity. So let's start with culture. Culture is a really interesting thing, because the thing that I found over the course of my career is that culture is either created by default or by design. At the best companies it is by design. Design is the way that I choose to construct this This isn't the we're just going to take the way that everybody acts and what they believe in. And then we're just going to say that's culture, because it's not. And I think that there's a lot of interesting things about this. So how can you actually change your culture? And I think there are a couple things with this. The first one is to just simply look at the tools that you use. Because one of the things that I did whenever I came into city was to do some very interesting things like now Every room has a pad of post it notes and Sharpies, incredibly simple. But to look at those tools that we use to do things like deleting PowerPoint, oh my god, people have to talk to each other. We're not going to spend all day sitting around making decks whenever we show clients, we might actually just do it in sketch. Trust me, if you work at a bank that is like revolutionary stuff. The other thing is to look at the space that you occupy. Here again, whenever I came into city, we took the 10th floor of our building in Long Island City and we stripped out every office Nobody has an assigned seat anymore. The offices were covered with idea paint. And these are now rooms for ideation. And they're no huddle rooms. Because we want people to sit with the people that they work with, we want them to be able to move around their 4k TVs that they can move around. So we actually can interact with each other so that we can work together. But it was just simply by changing the space that you occupy, we spent a couple hundred dollars in paint. That was it. But now whenever people come to the floor, they just, it's just like the moon, they don't understand. And everybody's in there, they're eating, they're working together, because that was the change that we needed in the culture. And the last one really is about the norms that you establish. And what I mean by this is, what is your team believe in? Can you define that? Can you say what that is? And so one of the things that I've done is to really look at how do you redefine a cultural norm inside of a team. And so for me, I do this by creating I've always called it basically a set of beliefs. But these are basically the standards that define the mentality that define the way that we work. And that what these have been is that historically, I've grouped these into five sections. Learn, meaning the fact that I don't care how good you are at the way this industry moves, you never have to stop learning, collaborate, in the fact that creativity is a team sport, creativity is not a department that everybody needs to come together to work on these things to be able to bring about change ideate in the fact that the product that we are judged by is the quality of our ideas. Because if we are like I talked about before, if we're that team that only hits deadlines, congratulations, you're a commodity that can be over that can be out priced and can be replaced like that. If, however, you change your creative team into being all about ideas, a funny thing happens. All of a sudden, the exact same people exact same team. Suddenly just with this shift of instead of walking into a room and sliding a piece of creative across the desk and saying Tell me what wrong with this. Walking with multiple ideas, I want to have a conversation about their point of view. Oh my god, these people are a critical asset. We need them in more meetings, how do we get them more people? Same people didn't get any smarter craft, which is just simply the fact that creativity is a blue collar profession, that you have to take pride in what you do. And so how do we actually reflect that. And the last one is lead in the fact that I expect everyone who's on one of my teams to step up and be a leader. So there is probably four to six of these in each category. I'll give you one example from each. So for learn, it's a simple one turn into a five year old, ask why about everything. Because the thing is that we have to understand the purpose and the cause and the belief behind decisions that get made the days where we just simply will blindly accept something from products that were blindly accepted creative brief, has to be over because we have to protect the product that we do. We have to protect our process to make sure that what goes out the door is something great. And if it comes in wrong, it's going out wrong. As we look at collaborate, it's the fact that design, like I said before, is a team sport. I don't tolerate rock stars, I don't tolerate divas, I don't have time for it. Like if you want to do that go open a consultancy someplace else. I'm not your guy. But this is the thing is that everyone is responsible to work together ideate the fact that a cover band never changed the world. So this is the case, where what we want to do is that we hold everybody accountable for the fact that we are coming up with original ideas, not copying what other ones have done. You won't have a real short conversation on me come in and say, Oh, this is gonna be great. This is gonna be our version of another brands product. Congratulations, go have an original idea. And come back. I don't look like this group is a Xerox machine. craft. And we talked about this before that creativity is a blue collar profession. It's a lot of hard work, and that you have to create ideas differently. Everybody works differently. We'll talk more about this about how we were an entire industry that got conned into this idea that an idea is a light bulb. Where is it that in a minute. And lastly, if anybody who has ever spent any amount of time with me knows that one of the things that would probably sum me up best is that I am respectful, and I am confident, but I am not delicate. And this is one of those things where if there is a problem, we're going to say, hey, that's a problem, not spend weeks tiptoeing around each other all again, feeding the pink elephants in the middle of the room. Everybody goes, yep, that's a big problem. Open your mouth and do something about it. So the reality is, as you sat there reading all these things, I'm sure that you all thought one thing. It's the same thing that I thought whenever I sit down and write these, none of this is rocket science. There's nothing that I put up there that you guys didn't already know. But the funny thing is, that by writing them down, putting them on people's desks, putting them on the wall, that does seem to be rocket science, because now there is a common set of beliefs that we can talk too, and that the best thing that that does is that it gives me a scalable, coachable system. Because what I can do is I can take these set of beliefs. And I can say, as an entire team, this is what we believe. This is where our attitude our swagger comes from, this is who we are. I lead multiple studios around the world, I can take one particular studio, I can take the one in New York and say, Look, you guys need to work on this subset of these, this is where we need to go for there, I can then take a group inside of that studio, give them a different set of those beliefs, I can then take an individual inside of that group and have them work on something else. That is a common shared vernacular that can scale across a global organization so that we all understand what are the things that we need to work on, and we can speak about them in a common way. And that makes a massive, massive difference because everybody then believes and understands the same thing. The other thing that it does, and that's what I said is one of the biggest things whenever I come in is just to empower people to be accountable for the change. Gone are the days where you're going to sit around and It's not somebody else's problem, everything is your problem. Nothing is beneath anyone. And I am a true believer in that. So that this is the thing is that everyone is now accountable for being held to these standards. And what I often do, whenever I come into an organization, if you want to go back to your organization, this is something you want to implement. Whenever you do this, keep your mouth shut for the next 60 to 75 days and just listen, at the end of every day, you go back and you start in those categories to write one of the things that need to change. And what I will tell you is that probably almost every day during that 60 to 75 days, you're going to go back and you're going to rewrite them. And you're going to do it again. And you're going to do it again until you get it to a place where you really have the list that really works. But this is one of those things. I've looked at the actual state of your group and understand what do you need to do? And I think the other thing then is how do you actually want people to act? What should be important to them? And so I think that these are just a few kind of basic things when I also just think about the mentality of of our team and what should matter to them. One is that we are not our consumers, but we have to keep the consumers at the center of what we do. This is why whenever we actually do our work every Thursday, we test it. Because bringing creativity, a very subjective medium into a bank is a lot of fun, because everything is infinitely debatable, but a customer opinion is not, which is why every Thursday, whatever we're doing, we put it in front of the customer to see what it is that they think, so that we can continue to make progress and not go into this endless debate loop. Then a lot of cases to build to think, to prototype to fail faster. We'll talk about this a little bit more as we get down into creativity, to invite diverse perspectives to the table. Like I've done this crazy thing where I now work in a regulated industry, where they will tell you that the lawyers and the regulators are people who are just they will say no to everything. A funny thing happens whenever you actually ask them to become a part of the process, as opposed to just inviting them at the end to tell you what Right or what's wrong or something? magic happens all of a sudden they work with you. You can do things like we had one flow in our app that was 68 fields. That alone is just idiotic. But so now when we relaunched it, it has five. Nobody said this could be done legal wouldn't go for it. Invite these people to the table. We talked about this before, to stay curious to keep pushing on what's going out there to really be able to keep seeing what's going on. And like I said before, to iterate quickly, and frequently, the days that were the design was so precious that it needed to be holding on to those days are gone, you know, our ability to actually get in, and to work on this stuff. And to get it in front of people and to quickly continue to fail is an absolute part of this. And I talked about this before, that great teams aren't just because of a single person, they may drive the vision, but it's up to everybody to adopt these mindsets. And that's why I said is that everybody just needs to have the confidence And the courage and I think those are the two things I keep coming back to. It's up to you to empower them to understand that they can be a part of this. So let's talk about failure for a little bit. And so I think the one thing that I encourage everyone to do, which everybody looks to me, like I've lost my mind is to create a culture of failure. Because what is creativity, if not getting it wrong? a hell of a lot to find something that everybody can agree upon, maybe slightly, right? But you have to create a space where it's okay to do that. Because in most places, we're taught that there is a right answer, the way to do it. This is why I've started to see and start to struggle a little bit as I've started to work with younger designers and millennials who in a lot of cases, understand that there's a right answer to everything, but there's not. and creativity is really about going through and failing. And because the key thing that you have to understand is that failing does not make you a failure. Failing is what is supposed to happen. Failure are the things that we're supposed to do whenever we get through this, to understand what doesn't work, so we can get to the things that do work. And the way that I often describe this is that, you know, failure comes from not learning from what you're doing wrong. I have a very simple phrase that I will beat into the heads of anybody who works for me. What that is, is the first time you do something wrong, it's a mistake. The second time you do it, it's a choice. It's a very simple distinction, because we have to learn from our mistakes. If we aren't learning from that, then we aren't growing and then we're doomed to repeat the same thing over and over again. And it's honestly one of those things where I've gotten so far is I actually celebrate failure because everybody says, Oh, we need to fail more. Great. Be the first guy that stands up and goes, wow, I really screwed up. But what I actually do is I do this thing where we have a belly flop of the week. And so, hey, it works. But what we do team meeting every week, and so we go around and it's like who's the hacker of the week. And then we actually asked people to get up and talk about who screwed up the worst that week, and we give them a bottle of champagne. Because what I want to do is I want it to become socially acceptable to fail. Again, not be stupid, but to do something that there is a learning that other people can learn from, that we actually can celebrate what is the belly flop of the weekend who screwed up the biggest, and that it is okay to admit these sort of things in public. But the one thing that I will tell you about this, is that whenever you do this, understand where it's okay to fail, and where are the places where you still need to deliver because this isn't one of those things where it's like, wow, we blew the deadline. I want a bottle of champagne. No. We're talking about exploring creativity. We're passionate talking about pushing boundaries like those are the places that it's okay to fail because what is the one thing that happens? If you've ever bought a car bought a house? You bought anything of any significance? What do you see? You get this excess process that is the result of either stupidity or lack of communication. Because something went wrong. Oh my God, that's horrible. How do we not do that? Again, I know let's make a process for it. So then all of a sudden you buy a house at seven pages of people who've been stupid. I have to sign some disclaimer because of that. But this is the thing is to understand where the places it's okay, and mark those off. And then where are the other places where we have a process that we need to stick to, because this is what you don't want is we're going through and doing these failures and doing these sorts of things leads to the fact that all of a sudden, your process is so cumbersome, that you can't get anything done. And that's a really bad place to be. So finally, let's talk about creativity a little bit. And so when we talk about creativity, so I'll come back to my lightbulbs are bullshitting a minute. I swear to God, this is the first time I've ever used a lens flare and a presentation of my entire life and I'll never do that again. Like bulbs are bullshit, right? Everybody all over the world thinks that all of a sudden, I have an idea. Light Bulb above my head, all of a sudden it rains, champagne and puppies. I understand everything all at once. That's not the way ideas work. And we need to coach our clients, we need to coach the people that we work with that that's not the way things work. light bulbs are moments of inspiration. But then the reality is, like I said before, creativity is a blue collar profession, that if you think about those sparks of inspiration moments, they were followed by an insane amount of work that had to follow. And I think this is where a lot of people really get hung up. Because what creatives love, we love the 10% in the beginning. We love the challenge. We love the start. We love the two guys in the garage that founded the company, and we love the 10% at the end, it launches we win awards. Everybody loves us the 80% in the middle, kind of sucks. But the problem is that 80% in the middle is what really makes the difference. And so how do we Get more creative, how can you teach people to be more creative. And so here again, we're going to walk through the four parts that I think really go through and define creativity. The first is looking at the problem that you're being asked to solve the inspiration that you use to start your work, the actual ideation and then implementation around these things. So this is traditionally the way that it's mapped out, is that you go from inspiration, ideation into implementation. And you go through these divergent and convergent bends. I have a lot of ideas, I diverge, I edit them back down, I Converse, and I do this over and over again, this is a real simplification, this might be for a simple problem. And there's just one of these sort of bumps. If I do it for most of the projects that I do, maybe there's 40 or 50 of them in there. And then across the bottom are the different stages of that. And we're going to walk through what all this stuff means. But the other thing that I'll tell you is that one of the first things that I did whenever I got to city, was that we went out and park With IDEO, because for me, there is no greater Trojan horse for change if you want to change an organization than using design thinking, because design thinking will prove to everyone that creativity is a team sport, it brings everybody to the table. It's something that I find funny has recently found this big resurgence or like oh, my god design thinking this new thing that was invented in 1962. But it's new. But so this is what it's based on. And this is what a lot of what I've actually come to do with it. So I've gone through a work with idea, we've created our own white label version of design thinking. And out of that I become a certified design thinking trainer. So the first thing that I think you need to look at whenever you talk about being more creative, is where it starts, is to look at the problem. And that's really with a design challenge. That's the very, very beginning of a project. And because the thing that I'll tell you is that creativity has to come out of having the right problem to solve. And that the very key difference here and one of the things I've had to solve repeatedly is that whenever you work With a product team whenever you work with your client, it's about making sure that you have a problem to solve not a solution to be vetted. Because whenever I showed up at Citi, what we had was we had a situation with a product team that had been working with a creative team that had been much more of a production oriented team. So they would show for the solution that we were simply meant to color in. I have no interest in that. You show up with a problem that we need to solve and then we will go through and do that. If this is you're gonna come in and just have us color in the lines. I got a great list of agencies you can go work with. But so let's use an example. There are two creative teams. The first creative team has been briefed that they need to redesign the toothbrush. The second team has been briefed that they need to redesign How do you clean teeth? Well, what's going to happen just from that simple problem statement, the team has been briefed to say you need to figure out how do you redesign the toothbrush is going to come back with a mildly better toothbrush. Maybe it's motorized, maybe it has a few different bristles. But it's essentially the same thing. But if I ask that different other group of designers, how do you read? How do you actually clean teeth? The solution from that is wildly different. Because it isn't been bound in by this form factor, the thinking is much bigger. And so this is the example that I always use about making sure that whenever you're working with your clients, that you're getting the second, ask on that, that you aren't getting an asset that has the solution baked into it, because it constrains your thinking so much more. But this is the problem is that so many of these teams don't know how to set themselves up for success to make sure that they're getting the right problem to solve. So from there, as we look at inspiration, and this is really this first part of the design thinking process. Well, the one thing that I'll often tell you, it's something that I've really haven't done is that I don't think that you need to look at your competition. To find inspiration. You can find a benchmark You can find a great way to go have a feature war. But that's not really where you need to look for inspiration. And because this is what I said before, a cover band never changed the world. Because what you need to do is you need to take the time to find the unique insights and inspirations on your own. And this becomes increasingly difficult, especially the further you go on in your career. Because the thing that you'll find is that early in your career, you had a ton of people who were incredibly inspiring, you could pattern yourself after them, that was the type of work that you wanted to do. Well, then all of a sudden, you start to find your own creative voice. And you didn't rely on them quite as much. But you know, maybe they were more motivating, but they weren't quite as inspiring. Well, now you're at a place in your career where you now need to evolve again, to be much more about leadership. And now at that point, you have to become responsible for your inspiration. You have to become responsible for your motivation. And that's much tougher. This is why oftentimes, whenever people ask me Oh, like, who are the other designers that you're really inspired by? I don't really have that list. I looked at other industries, I look to street art or tattooing or chefs or things like that. Those are the people that really inspire me. But I think that the biggest thing with design thinking is to really come down to empathizing with your customers. I'll give you two examples of this. One was that whenever I first went to go work at Starwood, they gave me a choice. I could either go live in corporate housing, or I could go live at the western Morristown, which is this hotel in Morristown, New Jersey. If you know anything about me, New Jersey, and I don't have a lot in common, but when I decided, everybody from New Jersey is going to find me after the talk, I know it. But what it allowed me to do was to spend 364 days living in a hotel, which is somebody who likes to cook basically means that you have a year long sort of messed up, like Iron Chef sort of thing about what kind of food can you make in a hot pot in a microwave. But the other thing that allows you to do is to have unparalleled empathy for the guests that stay there. For the people that work there to genuinely understand what goes on there. And like I said before I draw a huge amount of inspiration from chefs. One of the best stories that I ever heard was, was this gentleman. His name is Heston Blumenthal. It's one of the best chefs in the world. He owns a restaurant called the Fat Duck. It's about 30 minutes outside of London, and I met him one time in New York. Everybody was very afraid to talk to him and I went up, not being the wallflower. And I said, hesitant. I had this question for you, because I want to talk to them about their process, not really their food. And I said, he said, Can you tell me whenever you go into a restaurant, how do you know if the meal is going to be good or not? It was a one word answer. And he said the butter. I stood there completely confused. I had no idea what the hell the butter had to do with a good meal. And he said it's really simple. He said, If the butter comes out for your meal, and it's rock hard, the meal is probably going to be bad because the chef is not empathizing with the guests in his restaurant. He isn't looking at all the details. If it comes out on the buttery soft, then it's something that you know that he sat in that chair and then He's thought about it. The man has wrecked the last 12 years of dinners with my wife. Because there is not a meal that we've had, from the best three star restaurant in the world to like a dive on the side of the road that the butter doesn't show up either on a plate or in a packet that she doesn't open and probe with her knife and then declare if Heston would be happier not such as my life. But this is the thing is that in any profession, to do this sort of empathy to think about what matters to people, these are the sort of things that you have to really do. And the other thing, like I said before, is that you know, so many people go, Oh, I'm the customer, I understand them. Trust me, I can tell you throughout my career time and time again, I have seen people demonstrate and I've seen the facts that people do not understand their consumers the way that they think that they do. So, ideation whenever it comes to being able to have those sort of ideas whenever we want to go through and we want to ideate and we want to prototype. I think that this is is one of those things about? How can you teach people to have ideas? And so this is the thing that we're, everybody creates differently. And so this is an exercise that I do. I do it in interviews, I do it with my team. It's the number one most stolen idea I've ever had. Feel free to take it. But it's a very simple exercise that I do with people, which really looks at why would a particular brand make a particular product? It's a very simple question. And what I do with this exercise is that you'll have one minute to think about that particular sentence and two minutes on the spot to pitch me as to why would that happen? And so what I do is that so often someone will walk into my office, and there's two stacks of cards. There's Brandon's, that. And there's product brand are the things that are brands that everyone would know, apple, Mercedes, Google, very common brands. The problem the products are purposely absurd, because I want to create a juxtaposition that creates a problem. So we have this brand like Nike And so what I'll do is I'll say okay with Nike, you have one minute to think about why would Nike make a gas can and two minutes to pitch it. I love that even just like telling you this example, you can see fear in some people's eyes about having to do this. But seriously, you want to terrify somebody in interview, do this. Because the other thing for me is when I interview people, I don't need any more friends. I need people who can think I don't need the script. I don't care where you've been. I know a lot of people that have the perfect pedigree that could not fall off a boat and hit water, because they've had great leadership. And that that's why their book is so good. But other examples, why would Twitter make a lipstick? Why wouldn't Mercedes make an inflatable pool? They're purposely juxtaposed to be ridiculous. But this is the thing. But the reason why I do this is because I'm doing it with my own team, I can now start to have a conversation about how did they connect the dots? Because what do we do whenever we think about ideas, we start with the obvious. We start with the things that everyone would think about. It's how you work out past that, and it's so often within that two minute period The best ideas come in the last 15 to 20 seconds. Because that's when you start pushing and reaching. You've burned through the obvious. And that that last section, that's when I want to see what their ID ating. Because what I don't want are the people who just kind of go that last 30 seconds like, I don't know, I'm out of ideas. What I want are the people that can continue to push and be able to spit ball past that. You can use this as a coaching mechanism. You can use other tools like this, to start to have a conversation with the people on your team to start to understand their process. Because this is one of the biggest challenges is just self awareness. Do you have the self awareness to understand how do you have a good idea? Like that was the thing this morning? Whenever I watch Quentin Tarantino on stage, yes, he is certainly somebody that has produced a massive amount of really incredible work. But the other thing that you could hear is that this is someone who absolutely understands his process, to go in to listen to music to start to write, you could hear him verbalize what he does when he has an idea. Because this is something I'll ask most designers when they come work for me and most have not an answer to give them me is how do you have an idea? Can you tell me what do you need to do to have an idea? You look at Quint and you look at Zac Posen, you look at those people, they can articulate to you very, very specifically what they need to do. And so often that's the moniker of success is how in touch people are for that. And the other thing that I'll tell you is that I think you need the ability to measure the quality of your ideas to develop your palate. Here again, I'll turn to another chef. So if you've ever seen the movie Jiro dreams of sushi, this is zero No. One of the greatest sushi chefs in the world who runs a very small restaurant that is in a subway station in Japan. And so talking to Jiro, what I asked him was that he has a lot of young chefs who come to him, how do you teach them how to create world class food. And what he said was that he sends them out to eat world class food because if they haven't tasted great food, they have no idea how to cook great food. Design is no different. If you are not constantly consuming design, if you're not getting Assuming technology, if you are not going through an understanding and developing your palate for what great is, you have no idea when you actually do great work. So that this is something that I constantly work on. This is everyday on the train, I go through Flipboard I go through Pinterest, I am probably the only man in america that uses Pinterest. I will admit it here in public. But these are the inspirations for me so that I can continue to develop my palate to know what great work is because that's the challenge. If I don't have that measuring stick, how do I have any idea of my ideas any good? And I think that that's something you absolutely have to do is to develop this so you can judge the quality of your ideas. And so I think that the last one of these other things I'll tell you is that the other thing is that most creatives need to do is to run a brainstorm. We're gonna get together we're gonna have a brainstorm. These are most often an absolute mess of a bunch of people, a bunch of opinions, all sorts of different stuff. So I want to share with you what are the seven rules, I've narrowed it down to just Seven, the seven rules for running a better brainstorm. And if you do these things, you go back to your individual teams, I promise you, they will get better. The first is to remember that there's a slide that says you have seven rules. The first is to defer judgment. Because so often whenever you do brainstorms, the team will defeat itself. Because all of a sudden, you'll say, Well, I don't know if technology can do that. I don't know if we have the budget for that. I don't know if we have the tech stack to be able to do that. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. The project will limit itself naturally, there is a time whenever that is going to come in. I would much rather go in with the biggest and the best division that I can about something to see where the idea will go and not kill it before it's time to encourage wild ideas. Because a brainstorm is the magic moment why we do this. It comes together with the art of the fact that anything is possible. So get the biggest craziest idea that you possibly can to also to take the time have the discipline to build on the ideas of other people. Even if there's somebody in that room that says something, and in your head you go, Man, that was stupid. build on it, see where it goes. Because so often, what you want to do is to harness the power of the team, not have this be an ego contest, where everybody is going to just simply push their opinion forward. So build on the ideas of other people. A simple one, stay on topic, whenever you're brainstorming, the ability to go all over the place is highly prevalent. So actually try to stay and brainstorm on the thing that you're supposed to do. And this is a tough one. A lot of times I think you have to appoint like almost a police officer to do this. But when you're doing a brainstorm one conversation at a time because I cannot build on an idea that I did not hear. And so often whenever the other thing I'll tell you to do is whenever you do brainstorms if you have 40 people breaking into groups of no more than seven, because doing a 40 person brainstorm is a recipe for chaos, but whenever you do it 100 conversation at a time and give somebody the job of being the cop that if there are two conversations, pause the one, finish the first conversation, come back, finish the second one, and then continue to move forward to be visual. Because this is the other thing, don't just write the words down. Again, this is not something where you have to be, you know, Michelangelo. But there's a lot of cases where sketching and being visual can really help spawn other ideas. And the last one, I'll tell you is to go for quantity to go big to do the divergent to see how many ideas can you actually get when you do a brainstorm, and not fall in love with the first good one? Because that's the other thing I see on a ton of teams is they're doing the brainstorming for the first one that feels right. We like that. There's possibility great, we're done. You have to keep going past that. And then finally, just to wrap this up to talk a bit about implementation, and so I'm a huge believer in testing and going out and to be able to really prototype so that we You can fail faster. I think that's an incredibly important thing. And so I just want to tell you about the four ways that I think about prototyping because most people think about it one way. The first one is I think you can do prototyping for design research. This is really building to think that if we're going to go out and we're going to decide that I don't know what our app, all of a sudden, we're getting rid of the main navigation, it's only gonna be voice driven. Is the community actually ready to adopt something like that, we need to be able to go through and look at this and be able to think to see if this is actually going to work. Then we can do rapid prototyping. This is the part we just want to build. To learn this is we can do an interface on a post it notes, we can do it in paper, we can mock up a physical space in foam core, but it's just the ability to prototype to learn. Then we have live prototyping. And this tends to be the slightly more higher fidelity. This is the user testing sort of thing to be able to see is this sort of stuff actually working. And then finally, the one that most people do is to build it to launch it. This is the live pilot. The problem is If all you're doing is prototyping at the end, it's too late. You made a mistake, there's a flaw in your logic, something like that. It's too late and you're screwed. That's why I said before we test every Thursday, because for us, the consumer is the truth, the work is the truth. And that's why we need to put it out in front of them to be able to get through this stuff. And so I think that also, I'll just simply say, if you want to test anything, focus on three things. One, stay focused on the problem you're trying to solve, don't wander off and do other things, too, especially if you work in digital technology is not an idea. Do not get so focused on the technology that you lose sight of what it is you're actually trying to test. And finally, make sure that there are no flaws that could invalidate your results. Because especially if you're trying to do something new, the small the smallest flaw that could disqualify what it is you're trying to do to prove your new big idea is a huge problem. So, two final thoughts on this, and then we'll take some Questions. So when we talk about leadership, whenever you're talking about building a team, I think there are two things you fundamentally need to think about. And the first one came from last week, I had the incredible honor of sitting down with somebody who is probably my biggest creative inspiration, which is Chef Thomas Keller, who runs the French Laundry and per se in New York. And I went to him and I said, Okay, when you think about leadership, and you think about what are you doing, how do you think about building and running a team? I thought about this for years. And he had the answer that I thought was absolutely perfect, is that leadership means that you're building a sports franchise, in the fact that the people who are on your team, who are the star players today, will leave you, they want more money, they want more opportunity. They want your job and you're not leaving. But this is one of these things where you have to cultivate leadership inside of your organization. You have to create the sort of coaching structures that we talked about. You have to put coaching into your teams to internally grow talent, because that's the thing whenever those people leave If you need the farm team to bring those other people up. And the final thought that I'll have, and the thing that I'll say, was in the title of this talk, at the end of the day, if you want to be a successful leader, if you want to be a successful, creative, success is a choice. Luck is what happens whenever the universe lines up to give you an opportunity. And if you've not been preparing and working to take advantage of that opportunity, then you miss it. Because we're at a time of unprecedented value of design. But if we did not choose to put in the work if we do not choose to learn more about business, if we don't choose to do the things are going to make us successful. We're not going to get there. And so that's why for me the number one biggest piece of advice I've given anybody is that success is a choice. Are you willing to do what is necessary to become successful to do these things because there are plenty of excuses out there are plenty of reasons not to do it. It's the hard decision. And it's putting in the work that makes all the difference. So with that, like I said, if you have any interest in what it is, I'm saying, you can check out the podcast. If you get a chance, please go into the app, fill out the survey, it actually is incredibly helpful for me to be able to understand what people thought about the session, you get a chance you can either win for books or one of my personal favorite things and Intuos tablet. If you need to get ahold of me, I'm on just type my name and anything and it's there. Unfortunately, that's my time for this. So thanks, everybody who's stuck around for that. If anybody has any questions, I'm happy to stick around and answer more. So I hope you guys liked that session. Like I said, there was a lot of hard work and love that went into that and really try to focus in everything that I've done around creativity and leadership. As always, if you like the show, if you like what you're hearing, head over to iTunes, head over to one of those other places. forums, please feel free to leave a review. It's the only currency I ever asked for and it makes a huge difference in terms of bringing new people to the show. If you want to find out more about this episode or any others if you want to get to any of the notes or anything like that, you can head over to podcast dot Stephen Gates calm Stephen is STP ph n.com. Any questions, any thoughts? Anything you loved anything you want to hear more about? You can shoot me an email, you can send that to ask at Stephen Gates calm. As always, the boys down league want me to remind you that all of us here are my own. They don't represent any of my current or former employers. And lastly, I say it every time because I mean it every time. But thank you for your time. I know the time is the only true luxury that we have. And I'm always incredibly, incredibly humbled that you want to spend any of it with me. So until next week, whenever I'll be back with some new content, some new crazy and a fresh batch of interesting as always, stay crazy