I. About management

     I seem to obsess about how to motivate people, not just consumers, but fellow employees. Maybe it's the old teacher in me. All I know is that, when it comes to the engine of the agency, I can't ignore the sputtering. 

     Recently, someone told me that half the kids coming out of VCU believe they will one day be on their own. In other words, 50% of the kids are not dreaming of working for JWT or Publicis or DDB. My guess is that the other 50% are dreaming of working for Weiden and Droga. 

     They may have a point and it may very well be a legitimate one, but their thinking is flawed – natural to youth but flawed.  They are dreaming of results – glory, wealth, hardware and one’s name on the door, when the real joy of being creative is the process, the journey, the moment. Who’s going to help them with that? To see not only that there is a joy in coming up with a clever idea, but to see the deeper joy in mastering that idea, working out every detail, every flourish, every word. Really owning it.

      I believe there is a cry for that joy – to make that job a craft, to have an earned pride that goes beyond wit, something that a superficial accumulation of skills on a resume won't give them. But they can’t hear their own cry – it's muffled under all the distractions of technology, holding companies, bad management, and so on. And this joy is not something they have much experience with, anyway; so whether it was once on a college art project or on a spec ad for the portfolio, they probably didn't know what it was, didn't have a name for it, only that it felt good. I believe, I have to believe, that this cry is fundamental to truly creative people. No, it’s not about having done big things; it’s about becoming big in the doing. I have to believe that. The quality of the execution, the thing we are ultimately responsible for, depends on it. We have to hear that cry and then help them answer it. If we don't, the most talented people won't stick around. More tragically, some of them won't even know why, wherever they go, unfulfillment keeps following them.

     Essentially, it’s a cry for creative directors who know how to manage. We need to hire and train people to be effective with them. We need the Phil Jacksons of advertising. We need people who know how to give form to that amorphous cry within. That said….